Lenten Musings 2017

6 March 2017
Over the past w/e came the 0535 hrs. Twitter storm … from Mar-a-Lago (where the much put-upon American taxpayer is shelling out millions every w/e for Enhanced Security while the upscale boutiques of West Palm Beach & environs are losing their shirts (what a shame. Not Fair).
    All kidding aside, the storm alleges that during the campaign & the interregnum, Trump was being wiretapped under orders from President Obama. (You read that correctly.) Three days into this shit storm, Trump has demanded that Congress (!!!) launch a full-blown investigation into these allegations, and Congress seems to be saying, “OK, Donnie.”)
    This is probably just what we’ve been waiting for.
    • None of the tweets has any substantiating evidence for the charges. (There are three “wiretap” rants; the next tweet is about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s departure from “Celebrity Apprentice.”)
    • I’m no lawyer, but even I understand that these charges, if false, are libelous, even though directed @ a “public figure,” and they’re actionable.
    • Why bring Congress into it? Trump is the Commander in Chief. He can have the directors of FBI, NSA, CIA, USACIC, ONI, everybody, on the carpet in 20 minutes & just demand to know: WHO THE FUCK DID THIS? But he didn’t do that; he fobbed it off on Congress (which, of course, has been so speedy gonzalez in convening hearings on the whole Trump/Russia bidness).
    • (This won’t shock you.) Trump heard this story from some wing nut radio guy who was later picked up on Breitbart. The wing nut was just hallucinating. But my guess is: He made a lucky guess. Trump IS under surveillance by his own government. Not in the White House, but Trump Tower, certainly, and definitely Mar-a-Lago (that one’s a Gift from the Gods for the snoops).
    • We have to back up a second. Everyone connected with the Obama Administration vehemently denies that they are or were wiretapping Donald Trump.
    If the Obama Adm. WAS wiretapping DJT & his campaign, then either (1) The Government got a Warrant (therefore they proved in Federal court that there was probable Cause of a Crime & we wanna’ know what) … OR (2) There was no warrant & the taps were gotten up by a freelance bunch of rogues, who intended to do … what?
    • Let’s not lose the thread here. Was Trump under surveillance? Not personally. But many, many persons he was in contact with were under surveillance (and I daresay still are). The people legally under scrutiny are all foreign nationals, you don’t need a warrant to wiretap a foreign national. Jared Kushner didn’t know that, although he maybe he does now. Mike Flynn knows now.
    • How does Trump know he was being wiretapped?
    Because over the past weekend, the Russians told him so.
    There are transcripts of him speaking with Russian operatives, and US Intelligence has them and in due time will use them. And over the weekend, Malcolm Nance and his boy Bourne did the right thing: They told their Russian counterparts the jig was up. (No one wants nuclear war; on either side).
    Trump’s response was to cook up this I’m-a-Victim-of-Wiretapping story (since rescinded & fobbed off on Congress) but it hardly matters. It’s over.

*****
    • This is All About Money, and DJT’s 1040’s (every line item of which is almost certainly “misstated,” incidentally) are now a Matter of National Security (as well as forgery, perjury & embezzlement). .
    •  “The Facts” are DJT owes the private wing of Deutsche Bank hundreds of millions of dollars he cannot pay. He’s leveraged to the hilt, and he has to keep booking Chinese government Christmas parties into the Post Office Bldg hotel just to make his nut. He’s like a puppet on a string, and Vladimir Putin, who IS the Very Richest Man on This Planet, is pulling the strings.
    What does Putin want? (Same thing Steve Bannon does) Chaos in the World Order: (1) a weakened NATO; (2) the breakup of the EU; (3) Russian military expansion in the Black Sea & especially the Mediterranean; (4) the reconstruction of the USSR; and, most important, (5) US complicity in this agenda.
    Back in the fall, Putin must’ve been pissing himself. It SO looked like he had it all. Trouble was, Vladimir Putin isn’t that smart. Trump fooled him, too! Just like he fooled all those racists in PA & MI. But he, Putin, is a real Communist, a real chiliast: he really thought he could jump-start history, do in six months what would have/should have otherwise taken a century to accomplish.
    And if “the deep state” plays this out the way I suspect they will try to, the (eventual) Fall of Trump will be the first domino in the (subsequent) Fall of Putin. And wouldn’t that be nice? 

11 March
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? It’s an old question, and you want all the gory details? Pull up wikipedia and type in the question. (I must say this, though: I first read Juvenal as a senior in high school; my version of the Saturarum [Hardy, 2nd edition, 1891], which I still own, did not include the sixth satire, which even in 1965, and in Latin, was considered too risqué for adolescent minds!) Suffice to say the context for the quip is: How to deal with a faithless wife? Or in our case, a faithless, traitorous Administration.
    What do we do about Trump and bringing him to account? Congressional hearings? House and Senate Intelligence Committees? They’re ultimately run by Republicans, who set the rules. What stops them from suppressing information? Not even bothering to call certain witnesses who could be as embarrassing to them as they would be to Trump?
    A Special Prosecutor? You have to have a legitimate suspicion that there have been Crimes committed or conspired over before you prosecute. And Trump’s own Justice Department would be running the prosecution -- with a whole bunch o’ US Attorneys recruited this week.
    How ‘bout an Independent Commission, a la the 9/11 Gang? Better than the other two; independent of Trump & Sessions, but do they have subpoena power? Or is it going to be Mitt Romney and John Kerry co-chairing, in effect, a whitewash in which no one  “remembers” or goes on the record but instead does his best impression of Rafael Palmeiro in front of the Senate Steroids Committee?
    If what I think is true … that the Russians took every advantage of the greed, venality & utter damnability of Donald Trump and his band of traitors to wheedle him and his people into power, then this is far from over. Putin has pulled us inside out. The President of the United States is a Soviet mole, with the power to do anything he wants to (1) make life easier and more lucrative for Russian autocracy; (2) make life easier and more lucrative for the rich people who bankroll the Congressional Republicans; (3) enrich himself and his sub-human family beyond the wildest dreams of avarice; and (4) Cover It All Up while he’s doing it.
    You think I’m a wing nut? Fifty Days in -- we’ve rolled over on helping maintain an independent Ukraine & let Soviet military power loose in the Eastern Mediterranean … let McConnell & Ryan turn health care over to the tender mercies of “the Market” = millions dumped off the rolls, massive tax cuts for the richest few thousands of Americans, higher insurance premiums for millions more; fuck you cuts for the oldest, the poorest, the most infirm, the disabled, all of whom rely on Medicaid … China (!!) has granted Trump 38 new trademarks and patents … And where are the lawyers & the tribunes of the people to redress these grievances?
    Oh, we need an Independent Commission all right. And I’m afraid there’s only one person I trust to head it: Jack Ryan. [Think of it as a 21st-century take on “Tinker, Tailor,” with Putin as Karla & Rex Tillerson as Gerald, the mole.] Ryan can call in the IMF, I hope, of course the Secretary has disavowed them, Malcolm Nance, Evan McMullin, the Washington press corps, and if he needs even more muscle, he has access to Jack Reacher, John Wick, and the Equalizer (plus the guy Gerard Butler plays in those “[your location here] Has Fallen” movies. And maybe Obama’ll come outta retirement in Act IV.
    Quis Custodies Ipsos Custodes, indeed.

*****
The point of all this is the saddest thing: Just How Much in Common Putin’s Russia & Trump’s America have with one another.
    The Soviet Union has gone up in chunks and Vladimir Putin, for one, is the Last Man on Earth who wants to resurrect it. His Russia is an Oligarchy (and he’s the Head Oligarch; the Wealthiest Man on the Planet). I daresay Trump knows him well enough to idolize him.
    [I’d love to see a dossier on Putin. I figure him as ruthless, expert @ tradecraft & the dark arts of espionage & subversion; as a Russian patriot and imperialist; also as an aesthete (he counts Grygyev as a friend!); not a European, though; and certainly not a Christian. There’s nothing of real Russian culture -- Tolstoy’s humanism, or Solzenitsyn’s conservatism -- in him. He’s one of Dostoyevsky’s Devils not one of his heroes…]
    The USA, too, is an Oligarchy.
    We have a Ruling Class, the One Percent, on which there are no checks & balances whatsoever; they do whatever they want; and when they run afoul of some old law or regulation that impedes them, they get our Tribunes of the People to change it, or ignore it or repeal it, or make sure it doesn’t specifically apply to Them.
    Why shouldn’t reactionary & counterrevolutionary elements in the Russian oligarchy collude with like-minded Americans in “arranging” their/our elections (all of which are polite fictions, anyway). Putin hated Hillary Clinton for getting up on her high horse & trying to influence Russian elections into being truly democratic (as if anyone in power could give a Flying Fuck what the Great Unwashed Thought About Anything).
And that’s Trump. He’ll tell you ANYTHING. And if he can’t think of anything germane, he’ll just fucking make something up. … He’s venal, greedy (my God!), vain, infantile, Narcissistic, sexist, and dystopian -- he has none of the Four Cardinal Virtues & displays every one of the Seven Deadly Sins shamelessly -- luckily, he’s too stupid to do any permanent damage.
    And he may even be a blessing in the long run, because We Elected Him. Maybe people will think next time … and maybe he is so out of touch that, like Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, he’ll start the conflagration out of sheer clumsiness. Unless, of course, 330 million people just don’t give a shit; give them their opioid suppositories & their NFL & their devices and internet porn, and repress all the niggers and wogs they’re afraid are going to steal their devices and you can probably get away with Fucking Anything. Or not. But we’re well on our way to finding out if you can, aren’t we?

13 March
Dear GOP,
    Congratulations!
    The tar baby now (and hereafter) known as ‘Trumpcare’ is SO YOU!!!
    Yes, it Actually lowers the deficit over 10 years, but it does the Big Stuff first: Cuts taxes for the Needy One-Percent & shifts the bill onto people (in districts you guys don’t represent) who are such slags that most of them are barely making $26,000 a year. Brilliant! [And fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke, especially that guy making $24K whose health bill goes from $1750 p/a to $14,355 under your plan; you are Not Expected to be bothered.]
    The GOP is the P of the Stakeholders. And these schmendricks have no Stake in anything.
    Just one little inconvenience: All these fools are also Trump Voters. Sure, Trump Voters make the Stepford Wives look like Bolsheviks but lower Federal health-care spending by one trillion dollars over the next 10 years and even these dim bulbs might figure out they’re being had. “Heap bad for White Chief”: Trump Voters might start blaming Trump for being the Lying, Psychotic one … “Heap bad for Tribe”: They might actually vote for a Democrat next time.
*****
    In the wake of that Twitter Tirade on “wiretapping” (06 March), the walk back from 1600 is making the Long March of Mao Tse-Tung seem like two centenarians running a 50-yd. dash. Now “wiretap” has air quotes around it, per Spicer, and -- Honest to God, we had no idea that accusing an ex-President of treason could be construed as a Felony (and actionable, even against a sitting President). Look, we just thought it was still the campaign ,,, is that so Wrong?
    So now the story is: there was “surveillance” and WE WERE SURVEILLED against our rights, and our wishes …
    And you know what? There was Surveillance: of the Russians. FBI tapped their phones; NSA had listening devices stuck up their rectums; CIA had ALL of them covered the second they crossed the border. They Bugged the Russians’ communications! And the little bonus in doing this is getting to hear the people On The Other End of The Fucking Call. Now, usually, it‘s just hookers (gender negotiable), but a lot of the time it was the other regulars, or: as they call them down @ the Precinct House: “The Trump Campaign.” 
30 March
• Tonite: Flynn volunteers to talk -- in exchange for immunity.
    Usually, the first guys trapped in the investigation tell their tales and get the most lenient sentences: “Yeah, you did it. The Truth’ll make you free. Six months in Danbury (you’ll serve seven weeks). Go away, and sin no more.”
    This time, the first name on the docket isn’t Segretti or Dahlberg or even one of the burglars: it’s the fucking Campaign’s National Security Adviser!! (Who all the while he was exhorting the lynch mob in Cleveland to “Lock Her Up!!!” was also a Paid Secret Agent [secret from -- well, everybody except his paymasters] for Putin ally Turkey.)
    Hand it to Comey. He only started in July but he went through the small fry like shit through a goose; he’s got the goods on Flynn in less than eight months. Flynn’s ready to sing “Vesti la giubba” to stay outta Danbury. God, would I hate to be Paul Manafort right now. … Not to mention Donald Trump. … Look, I always hoped we could just box this in: “the voters made a mistake, we’ll quietly fix it, paper it over with medical shit & a resignation, etc. Sorry. Nope. I think we really do have ourselves a Constitutional Crisis here. I just want to make sure it doesn’t end in a world war.
• FTR: Russia had a whole smorgasbord of Misinformation, agit-prop, fucking nonsense, etc., etc. -- which is STILL in place and being used to muddy any waters still standing. Know where Trump got the idea that Obama was wiretapping his campaign? (Of course, you do.) This is far from over.
    Let’s be fair: Nothing Russia did, hack wise, effected the vote count. It only effected/affected the voters. We’re not talking about election fraud; we’re talking about an Act of War v. the American electoral system & our ’free market of ideas.’ Anyone on our side who colluded with that attack, advised it, directed it, knowingly profited from it,
is a traitor.
• On the first day of the House hearings (almost two weeks ago), FBI director Comey stood up and called President Trump a liar about his “wiretap tweets,” then he said the Trump campaign has been in the FBI’s crosshairs since July 2016. He dared  Trump to fire him!!
    Nixon, even in extremis, had no compunction about firing Archibald Cox, even though his own Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, and Richardson’s deputy, William Ruckelshaus, both resigned rather than obey the President’s order. [The man who did fire Cox, Robert Bork, did it because he couldn’t see how it was illegal. But he did regret doing so; perhaps never more than when it helped cost him a seat on the Supreme Court he was extraordinarily well qualified for.]
    Tell you what’s funny about that first (and, since then, only) day of those House Committee Hearings: The Democrats (& Comey) tore Trump a new asshole, and all the GOP guys did was bitch about how awful & shameful & embarrassing LEAKS are and it’s gotta be stopped. Nunes let Schiff open with a 15-minute grand jury indictment & none of the Republicans said a single discouraging word about the Russians as they threw Trump under the bus!
• We’re still a long way, of course, from Grand Juries, but already tonight, Devin Nunes’ midnight escapades from earlier this week, going to the Eisenhower Bldg. on the WH grounds to see classified info that is literally “Eyes Only” & then going back to the WH to tell Blondie (right after he told his Speaker) but didn’t tell his Ranking Member or the rest o’ da committee is -- even before the first Grand Juror is sworn -- starting to conjure the Killer Phrase in all this conspiracy shit: Obstruction of Justice.
• The Burr/Warner Committee is negotiating to call MI6’s Christopher Steele to testify.
Nothing to do with politics …
****
Jimmy Breslin is dead. I’m betting he outlived Rosemary. Of all the writers I learned from, all the writers I’ve treasured all these years, he’s the one I stole the most from. I stole everything from him. I loved Hemingway & Chandler, but I couldn’t write like them, cause I didn’t know anything they knew. Jimmy Breslin wrote in the newspaper about the stuff I knew and he showed me how to do it. Give me a lotta credit here, cause what he did so effortlessly was so difficult to do: I filled a dozen Gregg notebooks 1965 ff writing about my day-to-day life and writing about it as if I were Jimmy Breslin, always looking for the weird characters, the O. Henry twists, the punch lines, the glib one-liners that made every Breslin story just POP: On arsonist “Benny the Bug”: the cop says, “we find gas cans in the place, they’re not paying off even if Eisenhower owns the building!”

On a happier note (but one Jimmy would’ve smiled at), I offer you some advice: If you’re ever just chatting with Barbara Stanwyck & she just casually mentions “accident insurance” -- just put on your hat, open the door & RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. [“… I killed him … for money and a woman. And I didn’t get the money & I didn’t get the woman.” … “Straight down the line, Walter.”]
    How much of that is Cain & how much is Wilder & Chandler? I dunno. … Anyone who remembers Fred MacMurray nowadays will remember “Flubber” & My Three Sons, but there was an Edge to MacMurray -- as the mutinous writer/instigator in “The Caine Mutiny,” as the lecherous office tyrant in “The Apartment,” as Walter Neff, the mild-mannered insurance man who kills both (!) the Dietrichsons -- this guy could be dangerous: “Straight down the line, Baby.”

31 March
• The Phillies current financial commitment to their entire 2018 roster is $6.8 million. (Think about that.)
• PBS stations are STILL using Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz” to raise money! The other night on WNJT was like August 1980whatever @ Broadkill Beach all over again (except for the sex & the seafood).
    It’s still the Quintessential Marty movie: (1) it’s a musical (2) it’s gorgeous looking and irresistibly watchable and (3) all of its lead characters are thoroughgoing second raters, guys who you wouldn’t want to share an elevator with let alone have a personal relationship with. To whit, Every One of the Guest Artists Who showed up @ Bill Graham’s Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving Day 1976 to perform @ this farewell concert is head and shoulders better than everyone in The Band.
    Marty was doing a LOT of coke @ the time (which explains those goofy interview segments) & was developing a long-lived man crush on Robbie Robertson (another undercurrent of the movie production that pissed off the rest of the guys, almost as much as the money they saw from the DVD’s et al., which was None.)
    Best Guest Performances (totally subjective): Neil Diamond, Paul Butterfield, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, “Caravan” !! … Hell, ALL the Guest Performances are fucking great!
    Guest Performance that I Never Before Realized Was That Great: Emmylou Harris
    Best Tagline: “Why do the best things always disappear?”

• Always wanted to see this movie and thanks to TCM On Demand, I’ve finally gotten to: Ishiro Honda’s 1954 (dare I say it?) masterpiece “Gojira.”
    You know damn well what this is because in the summer of 1956 you went to a local bijou to see the American version of it, something called “Godzilla, King of Monsters,” starring a Canadian-born Hollywood heavy named Raymond Burr as Steve Martin, a US newspaperman who narrates a tale about an Atomic monster who damn-near destroys Tokyo.
    The US version of “Gojira” is a mess, a grindhouse ripoff. But it’s a grindhouse ripoff of a Really Good Movie. The TCM version is Honda’s 1954 original, in Japanese with English subtitles, first seen here at various film festivals in 1982.
    Talking Points:
    (1) Plot: Professor Yamane wants Gojira preserved for study … pitting him against the swaggering salvage company captain, Ogata, who also loves Yamane’s daughter, Emiko, who, in turn, is betrothed to the enigmatic Dr. Serizawa, who obsessive study of Oxygen has led to a terrifying discovery: The Oxygen Destroyer, which removes all O2 from water.
    (2) Serizawa, in a moment of rashness, shows his device to Emiko, and swears her to secrecy. But after Godzilla’s second assault on Tokyo, all bets are off. She & Ogata go to Serizawa demanding he weaponize the Oxygen Destroyer. He destroys all his notes so no one else can ever build the device … and, as the script tells us, he destroys himself in the finale so that no one else can force him to remember how he built it in the first place. Harrowing stuff. And hanging over it all is the Hydrogen Bomb. H bomb fallout has revived Gojira ..
    (3) Honda & his producers wanted to do Gojira in stop action animation, which would have taken seven years and more yen than anyone of them could borrow … “Gojira” is an amalgam of the Japanese words for ‘gorilla’ and ‘whale’; they decided on a dinosaur Gojira instead. (At one point Prof. Yamane tells us Gojira hails from the Jurassic, which he says was two million years ago. Hardly.)
    (4) Point is: Honda knew on Day 1 his King of Monsters was a man (two men, actually, taking turns) in a rubber suit. So he did just what Spielberg did in “Jaws”: He held off as long as he could before showing you Gojira, racheting up suspense that’s been totally obliterated in the cut-and-paste Raymond Burr version.
    (5) And it’s the inspiration for my all time favorite Woody Allen ripoff: Speaking of my own love life, not Alvy Singer‘s, “I just wanted a relationship that would last as long as the one between Emiko and Doctor Serizawa.”

15 April
59 Tomahawk jet-propelled Cruise missiles (at a million dollars a throw) shot off o’ ships at a Syrian airfield and they didn’t even put potholes in the runways … The “Mother of All Bombs” -- 11 tons of TNT (at $1.45 million a ton) targeting ISIS in Afghanistan -- manages to kill anywhere from 36 to 94 of the fuckers (and how do they know that? Somebody go in and count?).
    This is your Commander in Chief, folks, Two Gun Trump. A man who never wore the uniform; and man who bent every loophole to make sure he would never have to wear the uniform, a man who has never heard a shot fired in anger (least of all one fired in his direction). A physical and moral coward. A golfer.
    OK, Golfer, what are you going to do about the North Koreans? (Besides just hoping the Chinese make them go away?)
    C’mon, amaze me.

As a faithful steward of the Public Purse, Two Gun, so far, is making Jack Sparrow look like the tight-ass down @ the DB Cooper Federal Credit Union who gave you that car loan back in 2013. This schmendrick has already pissed away more than $35,000 of the taxpayers’ money on (wait for it) GOLF CART RENTALS. … Each of the $1m missiles was a total write-off, but depending on getting an exact body count, we can make a pretty good estimate from the MOAB blast: One dead IS fighter costs us anywhere from $177,800 to $450,000. Think about that. 

While Congress is in recess (with GOP types avoiding their districts as if they were leper colonies) we’ve been treated to a week or so of Donald Trump the Clintonian: flip-flopping on a whole bunch of his Campaign Shit (suddenly sucking up to “currency manipulating” China, proclaiming NATO “solete,” shooting off rockets & bombs Whack-a-Mole style @ any Moslem who pops his head up anywhere in the Middle East); this in addition to running the first 15 (scripted) plays from the Clinton Playbook: fill the West Wing with unpaid advisors who just happen to be members of your own family, and hire a bunch of guys from Goldman Sachs to run the economy and plan your tax-reform agenda.
    MEMO TO MY FRIEND HUGH HEWITT: Don’t despair! Domestically, ol’ Two Gun is still Your Boy. He got Gorsuch onto the Court; he destroyed forever the time-honored tradition of Senate bi-partisanship, he let a bunch o’ states defund Planned Parenthood; he’s going to let Firefox sell Everybody’s browser history to Ashley Madison (no use trying to flog it to WikiLeaks; they already have it), oh! And he’s going to roll out version 2.0 of ACA Repeal, the no-frills version, which is basically Survival of the Fittest (and the rest of you can fucking die).  … He HAS to do health care first because “health care” is really just an elaborate way to put even more millions into the pockets of the One-Percent, and without it, his “tax reform” can’t be “deficit neutral.“
    Don’t be surprised, though, if Trump/Ryan “tax reform” is a National Sales Tax, what the Brits lovingly call the VAT.
    Know how not to pay sales tax? Don‘t buy anything. Lease it. Although you might wanna‘ think about buying stock in Rent-A-Center and Aaron‘s.

Baseball Quiz!

With another season almost here, time to jog your memories a little ….    

    (1) As of Opening Day, who is active leader in wins by a pitcher?
    (2) Name the three active Major Leaguers with at least 500 career home runs.
    (3) Again among active players, who is the career leader in stolen bases?

Now for the immortals …   
    (4) Nine men have hit 600 or more career home runs. Who is the only one of them who didn’t play at least 20 seasons?
    (5) Reggie Jackson struck out more times than anyone: 2,597 times (in 9,864 AB). And Alex Rodriguez is the active career leader, having been rung up 2,220 times in 10,341 AB. Which inevitable Hall of Famer is second in career K’s, and who is second to A-Rod among active players in being punched out?
    (6) Here’s a select group: The 2,000--3,000--600--2,000 Club, i.e., guys with 2,000 or more Runs Scored, at least 3,000 Base Hits, 600 homers and 2,000 RBIs. Who’s in it? (I’ll tell you someone who isn’t: Babe Ruth.)
    (7) Winning the Triple Crown is no mean feat, especially in MLB. Who won the most recent one?
    (8) Name the only two men to win the Triple Crown twice. And…
    (9) Name the two men who won the Triple Crown in the same year that they were also playing in the same city.
    (10) Rube Waddell was the first Big Leaguer to strike out 300 batters in a season (1903); he punched out 302 in 324.0 innings. Who is the most recent pitcher to turn that trick? (Hint: he only needed 232.2 IP to fan 302.)

Extra Credit.
    Here are the career lines of two recent right-handed pitchers.
                          IP      W         L      SO     ERA    CG    SHO
Pitcher A    2827.1      219    100    3154    2.93    46    17   (18 yrs.)
Pitcher B    3261.0      216    146    3116    3.46    83    20    (20 yrs.)

    Recognize them? One is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, the other one couldn’t get elected as a Donald Trump delegate in Maricopa County. OK, here are their post-season records…

One of Them        14 GS, 96.1 IP, 6 wins, 4 losses, 3.46 ERA
The Other One:    19 GS, 133.1 IP, 11 wins, 2 looses, 2.23 ERA

Got ‘em now?

And, finally, only because I happened to stumble on it: In 1955, while he was having his average season on the mound (305 IP, 23-14, with 3 saves), Robin Roberts came to bat 107 times and hit .252 -- with nine doubles, four triples, two Hrs, 13 RBIs and 18 walks. His OBS was .827

Snapshots

Feb. 21, 2016 -- Jeb! suspended his campaign last night. (One less Wanted poster on the post-office wall.) I suppose he only ran in the first place because he thought it was his responsibility to run. Where he got that idea I can’t imagine (probably from his mother). His father is/was a great human being, a conscientious but uninspiring President; his brother remains -- as a man & a Chief Executive -- something akin to the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, i.e., someone/something that makes Michael Moore wanna make another (tedious, patronizing) fucking movie. Jeb! saved us all a lotta heartache.*    
    Now that we’re down to the Elite Eight Minus One (with Sanders & Clinton already seeded into one of the semifinals), I’m suspending my campaign, too. There’s nothing else I can say or do to ameliorate matters. My younger daughter changed her registration to Democrat (to vote for Bernie) all by herself. On line. You can do that.
    Before I go, by which I mean stop posting election-specific columns on this blog, I would like to indulge myself with some parting thoughts on the folks who are still in the field. And why may I not? If you are reading this, you have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me (with your time and attention), and I am determined that you shall have me -- though I may be the biggest fool in the land, and bore you beyond all precedent.**

    Shufflin’, shamblin’, slow-talkin’ , sleep-walkin’ Ben Carson is really the Poster Boy for what this campaign has been all about. Don’t confuse him with Herman Whatzizname, the pizza guy who was cast as the token black Republican hopeful four years ago. Dr. Carson is the Real Deal. This egomaniac has raised millions of dollars, and done just what I would have done with it -- skimmed off my tribute and then spent every nickel of it on more fund-raising. The Ben Carson campaign isn’t a crusade to save America; it’s an ATM for the Ben Carson cronies who have been cranking out all those TV ads you’ve yet to see one of. Oh, and don’t think it’s been po’ black fo’ who have been sending in all those schekels. That dough has been Mau-Mau’d out of just the kind of assholes who deserve a mugging like this: guilty, white suburbanites from states like, oh -- Pennsylvania. Friends, this fabled neurosurgeon turned motivational speaker actually interrupted his campaign, while his poll numbers were nearly Trumpian, to go on a two-week-long book tour.

    John Kasich looks like a wide-mouth frog. He has been a US Congressman and is the sitting (re-elected) governor of the Great (Swing) State of Ohio. If you have an iron butt, you can read every stance on every issue Kasich has ever endorsed or voted for on his wikipedia page. If you have some vague, generous idea that he is a sheep in Republican clothing, forget it. He is running for Vice President because his views are so toxic that he won’t ever get a third term even from Ohioans. After he drops out of this fool’s errand of a campaign, he will go back to where he came from, filling in for Bill O’Reilly when Bill-O is off on his next “Killing [fill in the blank]” book tour.

    His absolutely glittering CV notwithstanding, Raphael Edward “Ted” Cruz is still assailed, stupidly, over whether he holds jus soli citizenship status. Let me clear that up for you right now: his mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. He’s an American.
    His father is the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
    Which is why he looks like that. And talks like that. (He doesn’t speak in long sentences with dependent clauses and rhetorical flourishes in them because he has gills.) And it’s why no one who remembers him -- even people from Princeton and Harvard Law and the Federal Trade Commission, none of them -- has ever said a kind word about him. He is a sitting United States senator (albeit from Texas) who has succeeded in shutting down the Government. Now he wants you to let him run it. Like having DB Cooper in charge of American Airlines, or Carly Fiorina running General Electric, or -- I don’t know -- someone like Roger Goodell as Commissioner of the NFL. I mean, what could go wrong?

    That leaves us the Semifinalists.   
    In the Blue Bracket …. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the two sides of the same coin, in this case, a 1943 steel penny (and you don’t see many of them anymore).

    Bernie’s Tails. The flip side. The B side. The “better angels of our nature” side. He expresses, sometimes so that it’s almost understandable, a desire for a better life for everyone, a (naïve) sense of fairness, a sad old man’s regret that the world he’s lived in and the system that he’s served are, when all is said & done, a swindle. Which it is.
    And which he can do nothing about. He’s not a revolutionist. He wouldn’t have a clue where to begin. And (alas) there’s no constituency for revolution, anyway. Which leaves Bernie what he is … at best, a progressive who’s not afraid to slice up the pie so that other people get a bigger piece every so often, and at worst, a senile old fart in a long white robe walking down the middle of Central Avenue in Los Angeles gesticulating wildly and baying at the moon. “Tails” as in “tails, you lose.”

    Hillary’s Heads. The brains. The moxie. The “Heads, I win” heads. … Crusty and crazy and annoying as hell as he may be, you can’t help but like Bernie Sanders: he’s the second husband of your mother-in-law’s oldest sister that you always gravitate toward during those interminably horrible family Christmas reunion parties. … No one gravitates toward Hillary Clinton. She’s a horror. A monster of ambition. (And greedy as hell. Look, I suppose former Cabinet secretaries feel they have to support their families. But if you leave office expecting to run for President, do you actually take a six-figure fee from John Kasich’s old firm, Lehmann Brothers?) And that’s what it is with the Clintons, both of them, they just don’t get it -- for them, “the rules” are for other people. It’s almost as if they’re both Secret Agents from Mars, sent to infiltrate & destabilize Earth from within its very power structures and some dumb Martian bureaucrat gave them the instruction manual from 47 BC. … And maybe the Martian thing is why it sounds to me like a dog whistle every time I listen to her open her mouth.

    And in the Red Corner: Donald Trump vs. Marco Rubio.
    I’ll do Trump first, just to get him out of the way. And I’ll change this up by making a list:

The Most Unlikable Things About Donald J. Trump in No Particular Order of Nauseating
(1) His mouth. Which only seems attached to his skull by invisible wires, and (not a pretty sight, also) hangs open all the time.
(2) The way he always seems to be groping at his hotcha daughter.
(3) That fucking dead bleached raccoon that’s been stapled into his head.
(4) The fact that Franklin Roosevelt didn’t raise the Inheritance Tax rate on every estate above $150.00 to 100% when he had the chance.
(5) The total irresponsibility of the man. People -- OK, maybe not Real People (maybe not even real vertebrates), but GOP primary voters -- are voting to elect this cretin President of the United States, and he refuses to tell anyone what he would do -- and how he would try to pull it off -- if he actually won.
(6) His vulgarity.
(7) His obvious disrespect for the Nation he’s making an international laughing-stock of (and whose wartime draft he so cleverly dodged).
(8) His (latest) trophy wife.
(9) The Ben Carson money he’s making selling campaign gear.
(10) That he plays up -- and up to -- the racialist, sexist, xenophobic hatreds that embody Cliven Bundy’s America.

    On the other hand -- look, I know the list could be lot longer (add your thoughts in Comments) -- on the other hand, he had the balls to say, to South Carolina Republicans, that there were no WMDs, that the (second) Iraq War was folly, that the US military “doesn’t win anymore” (anymore? I’m 68; it hasn’t won a war in my lifetime! It didn‘t even win the war I was in!). He told Jeb! he was “low energy.” He told Pope Francis to “fuck off.” And how do you know Megyn Kelly wasn’t on the rag when she tore into him? All right, that’s the stuff you hope to hear from the next George Carlin. Not the next President.
    Look, the man is a Fascist. Pure and simple. (I’ll drag out the essay I wrote more than a year ago about fascism, clean it up & post it later this week.) He’s also a blowhard, a bully and an ignoramus. If he wins the Presidency, it’ll only be because we were complicit in it.


    Which leaves (my guy) Marco Rubio.
    I like him because he’s young. And the smartest guy in the room. And personable, obviously decent, serious (my God!), well-spoken and politician enough to know that virtually everything he tells his GOP base is horseshit: just the stuff he has to say to get the nomination. I think he wants to be President, and I can’t but admire his ambition. And I think that (unlike Trump) Rubio knows what a President actually does and has to do. I think there’s no doubt he’s a wonk. Day One he’ll have white papers and legislative agendas … and if that makes Marco sound kinda Al Gore-like, well -- that’s my worry.
    There is a bit of Al Gore in Rubio (you don’t just wake them up in the morning, you also have to reboot them). You get the sense with both that even their ad-libs are rehearsed. Al Gore, though, the one we elected in 2000, was the finished product. Son of a legendary Tennessee legislator, to the manor born, Al volunteered for Vietnam, worked his way up through elective offices, etc., etc. When Scalia et al., snatched the ultimate prize away, he eventually had Scalia murdered. [WAIT A MINUTE -- Blogspot Editor]
    I’m sorry. I was talking about Marco. Who wasn’t, as he is fond of saying, to the manor born. He’s the Stranger in a Strange Land in a lot of ways. You see it in his face and his mannerisms. He wants to please; the smile lasts too long; he often seems really uncomfortable. Precocious people are like that. I’ve seen it in the mirror. I guess what I’m saying is I wish Marco had sat down and read a book that wasn’t about policy or history or economics or some other Serious Shit, and that book had made him see that things aren’t all that -- serious.
    Or maybe I should just stop fretting like an old hen and mail him my old copy of “Catch-22.” Best campaign briefing book he’ll ever read.

Footnotes

 *Jeb! & Michael Moore have a lot in common: they both know what’s Good for You, they both buy their clothes at the Men’s Wear House (of Pancakes), and Other People give each of them millions of dollars to advance agendas most Americans couldn’t give a flash-frozen tub of margarine about. I mean, can you imagine how tedious Michael Moore’s “Bush! XLV” would be?

**The first poster in the Comments section (below) who correctly identifies the American classic I am paraphrasing in that last sentence wins Lovely Parting Gifts. [Not necessarily lovely, nor exactly “gifts” -- Blogpost Editor.]

Is Bernie Sanders a Socialist?

February 12, 2016 -- Well, that’s really two questions, isn’t it? What is Bernie Sanders? And what is a Socialist?
    What’s a Socialist? Classically (as derived from Marx--Karl, not Chico), a Socialist is someone who believes that the state should control “the means of production.” I don’t know what that means, either, but I’ll give it a shot: Imagine an America in which the majority stockholder (and in some cases, the monopoly shareholder) in everyone of our large corporations is -- the United States Treasury. That’s Socialism.
    The Government of the United States -- (and who is that, actually? Well, that’s The People) -- owns control of corporate America. We own the Big Banks, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the automakers … we own Corporate Agriculture (you know, ConAgra & Perdue & Dole & Del Monte & Hershey) … we own the energy companies, we own the railroads, we own the utilities, we own the internet service providers. We own the movie studios and the television networks… That’s Socialism.
    We don’t own all of everything, of course. We don’t own little corporations -- until they get to be Big Corporations. Then we buy them. But, as I understand Socialism, we don’t just passively “own” stuff like Sprint or Bank of America or Con Edison or Comcast Universal, we run them. Your elected representatives (executive branch appointments confirmed by the Congress) select the board members who oversee these corporate entities. Tell them what to do. Which is, basically, turn a profit. Because what’s the point of owning all the stock in Comcast Universal if the executives managing the damn thing can’t make money?
    And the other -- really nice -- thing about Socialism: the corporate tax rate on net profits (i.e., gross receipts minus expenses, including depreciation) is 100%. Under Socialism, equity markets as we know them today -- with capital gains, leveraged buyouts, mutual funds, sub-prime-mortgage (junk) bonds & the other stuff in “The Big Short” that went right over my head -- would disappear faster than Kaiser Sose.
    It’s a brave, brave new world, and I would love to live long enough to see my country transition toward it. There are fascinating questions. What would we do with Major League Baseball, for instance? The People aren’t going to own the Philadelphia Phillies. As a limited partnership, they won’t be subject to the 100% rate on corporate profits, although I dare say, their $20 million-a-year leftfielder (should they ever find one) will get a hefty personal income-tax bill every year from the IRS. … And certainly, Socialized America will never tax Venture Capitalism out of existence (better individual entrepreneurs take the risks on the Next Great App You Have to Have than having We, the People lose your money on it). And I could go on, but that’s not the real point tonight.
    The real point is Bernie Sanders, and I think I have reassured all of you who need reassurance that, whatever he is, Bernie Sanders is anything but a Socialist.

    Did you watch the debate with Hillary from Milwaukee on Thursday night? I did it for you. And took notes. So what does Bernie want?
    (1) Universal, single-payer health care for everyone in America.
    (2) Tuition-free public college (presumably, for everyone who can pass the entrance requirements, and pay for their own books)
    (3) Massive public spending on infrastructure improvements
    (4) Bringing “offshore profits” back to the US and taxing them
    (5) Funding (a lot of) these measures by imposing a “speculation tax” on Wall Street
    (6) Raising the minimum wage
    (7) Lifting the cap on incomes subject to the FICA (Social Security) tax
    (8) More (any?) Federal regulation on insurance companies, investment banks & mortgage lenders -- entities that weren’t reined in by Dodd-Frank (as if anyone has a clue about Dodd-Frank, except that “Frank” was the fackin’ gay guy from Boston).
    (9) Invoking Teddy Roosevelt … Break up the Big Banks….
    (10) Take “on” the entrenched interests

The Ten Commandments, huh? Well, George Carlin was here decades ago  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5rLWJntz-o   But that won’t stop me from stealing a page from his songbook: (4), (5), (8), (9) and (10) amount to the same thing: shaking down the financial system for more tax money, or (to be honest) making them pay at least some of the dough they’re hiding from us. (10) alone demonstrates Bernie is no Socialist. He wants to take “on” the entrenched interests. I’m a Socialist. I want to take “over” the entrenched interests.
    The other five demands are just old-fashioned populism combined with common sense. (1) is self-evident. Romney care (which is what we have) just enriches Big Pharma & Big Insurance … (2) is an “obvious” extension of what we have now, except it will enrich a Democratic constituency (unionized teachers) at the expense of local taxpayers. … (3) is what we should have been doing for decades … (6) is another way of raising taxes on small businesses hard-pressed to pay them: raise the wage, you also raise the employers’ share of FICA taxes … (7) is just a way to keep the same money coming into FICA every year after small businesses fire all the people they can’t afford to pay $15 an hour to.
    I have to back up a sec. (5) the “speculation tax” is the one I simply don’t understand. I thought at first it meant a capital-gains tax, which we have, or an increase in capital-gains-tax rates, which are ridiculously low. Now I think I have it figured out. He means an excise tax on stock purchases -- a sales tax. If you buy 100 shares of Universal Widget @ $44.00 a share [$4,400] Bernie would charge you Sales Tax on it (1%? $44) and this would be over-and-above the 6% [$264] you paid your broker to make the trade for you. In other words, you just bought Universal Widget for $47.08 a share. You better really believe it’s gonna go up

    So what’s Bernie? Sad but true, he’s just the latest incarnation of that old Republican bugbear, the tax-and-spend Democrat. In Kipling’s finely turned phrase, he wants “to rob selected Peter to pay collective Paul.”
    He’s Robin Hood.
    He’s a thief.

On the Eve in New Hampshire

February 2, 2016. OK, Iowa was fun …
    · Hillary & Bernie finished in a dead heat. Not the best news for Bernie. If he can’t beat her among the legions of progressives who make up the Iowa Democrats, where can he beat her? (OK, yes, in New Hampshire, where this morning he seems to be holding a 17-point lead -- something like 58-41 -- but don’t expect a margin like that to stand up.) And down the road, I don’t see unionized Hispanics rallying to Sanders in the Nevada caucus, which is No. 3 on the campaign slog; and I certainly can’t imagine Sanders winning a majority of South Carolina Democrats. The majority of SC Dems are Black.
    · Marco Rubio finished third on the GOP side, grabbed all the TV attention with a pre-11 PM {ET} victory speech -- and pretty much nailed it. He “won” Iowa ‘16 the same way Gene McCarthy won New Hampshire ‘68, just by exceeding expectations; or, doing the very thing Hillary will do next week when she loses NH by “only” seven points.
    · And a big shout out to the sheer chutzpah of the Clintons. The once (& future?) First Family stormed the stage en masse for her stridently bizarro victory speech -- while, on the other half of the TV screen, Ted Cruz was still luxuriating in his no-surprise win.
    · Look, kudos to Marco, but leave us not get carried away. Sixty-three percent of the GOP votes -- 28% to Ted, 24% to Donald, 9% to Dr. Ben, 2% or so to Carly -- went to Rank Outsiders. Iowa! Good God-fearing, Bible-thumping, Hawkeye-stubborn, high-school wrestling, shirt-off-their-backs-should-your-crop-ever-fail, “Field of Dreams” Iowa, where the economy is good, and almost two out of three went with the haters, the prigs, the rabble-rousers & the idiots. Hell, Rand Paul, who probably isn’t a GOP insider, either, even though, at least for now, he is a sitting United States senator, did better than all four of the past & present GOP governors on the ballot!
    · And finally, Bill Clinton looks as if he’s had a stroke. … And when Ted Cruz gets close enough to the nomination to panic the GOP hierarchy, they’ll destroy him -- by leaking everything they have on him in the X-Files.

A Modest Proposal: Primaries

   
January 27, 2016 -- A poll out today, reported by MSNBC, has already made a mockery of next Monday’s Iowa caucuses.
    It says that if 200,000 Iowans show up and caucus, Donald Trump beats Senator Ted Cruz by, like, 47 to 29 (whopping). But if 170,000 show up, Cruz beats Trump 33 to 25. Scenario #1: Donald Trump is America’s Choice. Scenario #2: "Conservative Republicans will not support Donald Trump." Scenario #1: He’s Home. #2: He’s Toast. … So thirty thousand people in Iowa, who either do or don’t turn out, are setting the agenda here? That’s just stupid. Thirty thousand people? More people than that live in Radnor Township; cram 30,000 people into Citizens Bank Park and no one has to sit in the upper deck. C’mon, 30,000 people in a state with six electoral votes? Enough.
    Here’s what we oughta do (& you can have this for nothing…)  
    Leave the Iowa stubborn their moment on the National stage & let them keep their first-in-the-Nation caucuses, last week in January. On the condition that national news media covering these superfluous caucuses devote some serious time to informing Everyone about US Government Farm Policy. Which I will bet tomorrow’s lunch you don’t know anything about.
    What is our agricultural policy? Who gets to decide it? (The President from Chicago? The senators from Arkansas? Nancy Pelosi?) Who gets the subsidies? (we know there are subsidies; that’s the only thing about farm policy everybody Knows). How do those subsidies make the consumers’ lives any easier? …. Why is a pound of hamburger twice the price of a gallon of gasoline today? … Can Willie Nelson & John Mellencamp & Neil Young’s constituents make a living and afford to send their kids to the University of Nebraska, or is the “family farmer” (as I suspect) about to follow the trilobite down the historical oubliette?
    Do we Import food? Or Export it? (Or Both?) Well, I know we import fruit & vegetables (in season) from Latin America because I buy only fresh fruit & vegetables. But what about the big stuff -- wheat & rice & corn & soybeans? I mean, we live in a capitalist society & prices are prices: Is the USA a net exporter or a net importer of agricultural products? I don’t know.
    And if we are net Importers, I’d like to know why; and I’ll bet a lot of potential caucusers in Iowa would too.
 
    As for that first primary, first Tuesday in February, don’t anyone dare take it away from New Hampshire. The small states deserve their day in the sun, and none more than the Granite State … because Everything People Think They Know About NH Is Wrong. There are more Democrats in NH than there are Republicans, and more Independents than there are Democrats. And Independents can make up their minds to vote in either Presidential primary the moment they sign in.
    New Hampshirites (is that a word?) are on average more affluent than most Americans & better educated than most Americans. Over the last 30 years or so, most of the most important elective offices in the state have been held by women. If any state should be the first to pass judgment on this cycle’s Presidential Pretenders (lookin’ at you, Senator Cruz), thank you, Jesus, it’s New Hampshire. … Just outside the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border, IN New Hampshire, I-95, which is at least a six-lane highway here, forks to form a huge island in the middle of the road. On that island is the most amazing liquor store I have ever been in (and I have been in liquor stores in Moscow. Russia.). You want it? They got it. You never even thought about it? They got that, too. And the prices are a  m  a  z  i  n  g. New Hampshire! Chip Kelly used to coach there.

    All that said, after that, though, we’re gonna’ need some reforms. The current SEC Primaries in the first week of March are anything but representative, and yet skew the conversation & the strategies & the donations (shall we say?) disproportionately.  Both parties have to realize that having primary voters in the Old Confederacy essentially pick their national nominees is … well, it’s just stupid, too. The Democrats could run the ghost of Pierre Gustave Toussaint Beauregard in the primary election and still wouldn’t win South Carolina in November. No. This is what we should do:
    After Iowa & New Hampshire, there are 48 states left. Beginning in the first week o’ March over the next nine weeks (we‘re going to skip the Tuesday after Easter), six primaries a week in the remaining 48 states -- in alphabetical order. Week 1: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado …. Week 6: Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming. … California gets to throw down a marker for the Democratic nominee right off the bat (and maybe it saves someone on a fool’s errand a helluva lot of other people’s money) but you could say the same for how AL, AZ & AK view the GOP field. And I’ll stay up late to see how Colorado views this entire 2016 class.
    The Important Thing is: before these reforms can be made, we have to call a truce. Both parties must agree to stop their voter-suppression efforts, and invite in United Nations observers to make sure every dumb asshole in this wonderful nation of ours gets to express his asshole opinion in a voting booth. Oh, and one more thing, every few years every eligible voter will be issued a Voter Ticket -- an actual piece of paper -- and every so often, such voter must show up on Election Day and literally get his ticket punched. And if you are at any time unable to produce a punched ticket, you are disqualified from buying a gun. In fact, you are disqualified from having a gun. Nobody gets to exercise his 2nd Amendment rights until he can prove he’s exercised his 15th Amendment rights first.
    Takes care o’ that.
    So there you have it. A system that maximizes Participation. And interest. That also somewhat (but crucially) weights things toward the states that really matter: Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas … I’m kinda keen on the idea of really, really, really close races in both parties coming down to Virginia. I’ve lived & worked in Virginia, and I don’t know if nowadays it’s in the South or the North.
    This last little thing we have to insist on … All these primaries .. No more Winner-Take-All states. The Presidential Election is something else. But for primaries, my plan has to insist on proportional representation. Be fair: If it’s February, and 40% of voters want Lennon and 30% want Harrison and 20% want Starkey (and the other 10% is scratching its heads among McCartney, Obama, Dave Clark & Durbano), it’s only fair to parcel out the delegates won proportionally. (Hell, suitably reinforced, Dave Clark might come on to win the nomination!)
    And this is not a hardship or a deal-breaker for the Parties. Both have enough Superdelegate rules written into their nominating processes that they’ll all be able to rally around their party’s most electable candidate, even if it is Mitt Romney. Or Michael Dukakis.

Chocolate Mousse

This is how you make Chocolate Mousse, the best dessert ever. (And it's so easy to do that I can do it.)

(1) What You’ll Need

2 tablespoons (or 2/3 of a package) of unflavored gelatin (Knox)
1 can (15 oz.or so) unsweetened condensed milk (Eagle brand)
3 squares of unsweetened chocolate (Baker’s)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons cognac [optional]
3 eggs (separated)

(2) What You Do

· Soften the gelatin in ¼ cup of cold water
· In a double boiler, over boiling water -- boil water in a saucepan & put another metal bowl on top of it -- heat the milk and the chocolate until the mixture is smooth and thick [10 minutes or so]
· Slowly add ½ cup water to the mixture -- and keep stirring -- until the mixture is smooth [another five minutes or so]
· In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks until smooth; then add a little of the hot chocolate mix to them. Put the yolks into chocolate/milk & cook until smooth and thick [another 5 minutes]
· Remove from the heat; add the vanilla, gelatin & cognac
· Beat the egg whites to a froth. [You can do this by hand, but an electric mixer makes it a helluva lot easier.] When the whites peak, fold them into the chocolate mix.
· Put the mousse in a lightly greased 5-cup mold (if you don’t have a five-cup mold, put it in a bowl it won’t overflow), and refrigerate it for three hours or until firm.
· Unmold and enjoy (with or without whipped cream).

Testing. Testing. Testing. Is this blog still a going concern? Can I post to it?


Never underestimate the thoroughgoing greed, selfishness, intransigence, venality -- and most of all -- the sheer complacency and stupidity of the moneyed class, the “donor class,” the people who really pull the strings in this Republic.
And while you're at it, never underestimate the thoroughgoing greed, selfishness, intransigence, venality -- and most of all -- the sheer complacency and stupidity of the boot-licking, toady political cadres who do their bidding.                                                                                                               {1 August 2014}

Great Journalism III

Written for the July 2000 issue of Satellite ORBIT, this story is basically a list. Its purpose is/was to tell DirecTV subscribers about a whole class of channels and programming they are/were lucky enough to get because they subscribe(d) to DirecTV. I did a story like this every month for years. I post it here because, in re-reading it, I think it's a damn fine, clever way to make a list, and I'm kind of proud of it. Any editors scouring this blog, be advised, I'd be happy to do things like this for you, too. Just post a comment down below.

Money Games

DIRECTV's business-news channels have no shortage of hot stock tips.

by Simon Bourne

Tuesday, May 16, 2000. One hundred years from now, economic historians will remember it, if at all, as just another day in the Great Bill Clinton Prosperity & Bull Market--Day 3,425 of Wall Street's hit game show Who Doesn't Want to Be a Millionaire. In the moment, though, it was something else. As one tuned into the financial section of the DIRECTV dial, up there in the 350s, there was a frisson everywhere. Later in the day, the Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve was expected to weigh in with another increase in the Federal funds rate. Increases in interest rates, goes the conventional wisdom, are bad for stock prices. Today could be hairy.

For the investor looking to make a quick killing in Wall Street, these channels--CNBC (ch. 355), CNNfi (ch. 358) and Bloomberg TV (ch. 353)--are must viewing. They aren't fancy, just a parade of talking heads talking (much too quickly) about stocks with the same passion, and devotion to statistics, that sports fans use when they talk baseball, while underneath the picture, the ticker rattles along like a breakaway freight train. Every so often, a host on CNBC will take off his suit jacket, and Bloomberg has so much other information on the screen that it's like watching the home page of a website, but otherwise, they are pretty much alike. In a given day, the same CEO's will show up as guests on all of them. And, to make sure you understand that Wall Street is a game, they even have pre-game shows, like CNBC's Squawk Box , that preview the day's trading before the bell sounds.

Much like any sports show, these are full of predictions. On this particular Tuesday, the buzz is all about Lycos, the Internet portal, which is expected to be gobbled up by the Spanish telephone giant Telefónica. Meanwhile, storm clouds are gathering over Coca Cola Enterprises, which will report 2nd quarter earnings of 50¢ a share (the Market expected 71¢) … one brokerage house (this one went by so fast you couldn't hear who) thinks Genzyme Molecular is going to move … the CEO of Brocade Communications is on every channel, saying his NASDAQ-listed firm is making money (most don't), and whatever it is they do is interest-rate immune. An hour later, Bloomberg says that Prince Walid bin Talal, nephew of the Saudi king, is investing $1 billion in 15 U.S. stocks, including Amazon.com, WorldCom and eBay. … and everyone's waiting on the Fed. Word is the rise will be 50 basis points, the biggest single hike since 1991. Cue the heavy breathing …

These shows do not reach massive audiences. CNBC, the most-watched of them, probably gets about 300,000 viewers at any moment. However, they do reach a very desirable audience for all the Internet brokers and computer companies who advertise on them non-stop, and they are profitable, especially CNBC, whose earnings are on pace to eclipse those of the broadcast network.

Nor are these shows aimed at the concerned citizen trying to make practical investment decisions about retirement or socking away money for the kids' tuition. These shows are so deep into the forest all they can see are the trees. Financial author Andrew Tobias ("The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need") hits it right on the head when he says, "The immediacy of TV investment reporting is just what the long-term, thoughtful investor probably does not need. But there are certainly a lot of bright, engaging folks on those programs, and they're a lot more interesting than the folks on QVC."

Still, if you look hard enough, there are places on the dial that take a less immediate view of things. ZDTV (ch. 354) has such a show in The Money Machine (weekdays at 1:30 & 4:30 p.m. ET). Engaging, and opinionated, hosts Pam Krueger and Carmine Gallo can show you the micro solutions, like how to get a good rate on a car loan, as well as some macro tips, like avoid B2B website stocks and--whatever you do--steer clear of penny stocks (what Gallo calls, "the toxic waste dump of the market").

Sound advice is also the hallmark of TV's longest-running investment program, good, gray PBS's good, gray Wall $treet Week. Host Louis Rukeyser has been crossing swords with the bears since Nixon was President: "If you want horror stories, read Stephen King," Rukeyser quipped in a recent commentary on the April downturn in Internet issues. "If you want to make money, treat these habitual pessimists with the total disrespect their awful records merit." The Rukeyser take on investing: be patient and stay bullish--"when the going gets tough, go to a movie [because] the economic fundamentals are still terrific--and that's what counts in the end."

Meanwhile over on CNBC, the Fed dropped its 50 basis points bomb at 2:05 in the afternoon, and the Dow lost 100 points in the blink of the eye. At which point, the small investors went back into the market. ("The best thing going for the small investor," intones Rukeyser, is "the stupidity of the large ones.") And at the closing bell, the Dow was up 126.79 and even the volatile NASDAQ was up 109.92. High interest rates are bad for stock prices.

And among the trees--well, Lycos was up 11. So was Brocade Communications. Genzyme Molecular made 2.81. Coca Cola Enterprises lost 30% of its value. Oh, yeah, the Prince had a good day, too. His little portfolio was up 26.56. Alan Greenspan was not available for comment.

————————————————————————————

Simon Bourne last wrote for Satellite DIRECT on The Travel Channel.

There is no Simon Bourne; I'm Simon Bourne. But I probably had another feature story in that month's issue, and rather than have it look as if one guy was writing the whole comic, I always filed the second story under a nom de plume. We did that at TV Guide, too. I knew a girl there who had the best pen name I ever encountered: Erica Blair.

Great Journalism, Part Deux

A Story on the 2000 New Hampshire Primaries, written for the best editor I ever had, Tom Weiner at Satellite Direct magazine (TV Guide for DirecTV subscribers). Eight years down the road and here's that McCain guy again! Also: This is the first national magazine story that featured comments from Sean Hannity. Yes, I gave him his first big break.

Persona Politics

by Art Durbano

In the wake of the anti-World Trade Organization demonstrations that rocked Seattle in December, it was Gail Collins of The New York Times who got off the best line: "All that excitement over something that used be called GATT has given the presidential campaigns new hope. If people are taking a genuine interest in the W.T.O. today, perhaps tomorrow they'll become enthralled with John McCain's position on the Internet tax or [George W.] Bush's plan for the Department of Education."

And, then again, perhaps not.

The night of the first GOP debate in New Hampshire, Bill Maher, the host of ABC's Politically Incorrect, began his monologue by telling viewers that, even though the show was being taped before the debate, "I promise you, nothing happened and nobody cared."

Too true. A November survey by Harvard University's Vanishing Voter Project found that more than half the eligible voters polled were paying no attention to the campaign, that two-thirds of them found it "boring," and that as to where the various candidates stood on the various issues, 80% of them had no idea whatsoever.

Yes, it's early, and those numbers will surely change this month, as real voters finally get their say in the always-first New Hampshire primaries on Feb. 1. Both races are liable to be close, but with the Republic prosperous and at peace, and little of substance separating the major contenders, the nominating campaigns of 2000 have, so far at least, been less about the issues than the candidates themselves. As Alan Colmes of Fox News Channel puts it, ruefully, "There now seems to be this attempt to find the dirtiest, nastiest thing we can say about these people, and the person with the least baggage wins. That's the way it's being played out." And, of course, it's being played out on television.

"I think very often, with the people we elect," says Colmes, "it has less to do with character than with a persona that resonates with the public. Jimmy Carter's did, because 'I'll never lie to you' was very appealing after Nixon and Ford. Ronald Reagan got elected largely because he came off as optimistic and sunny, although perhaps not very deep. He seemed to be the right man at the right time. That persona is often a misrepresentation of who the candidate really is," cautions Colmes. Still, for each of the four major contenders vying to come out of New Hampshire with "the big Mo," persona is very much an issue, so much so notes The New York Times correspondent Richard Berke, that it "has led the contenders to scramble to define themselves before their opponents define them first."

For George W. Bush, the Republican front-runner, the persona issue is one of gravitas: is he smart enough to be President? He got a spectacular F on one TV journalist's "pop quiz" about various world leaders (although, to be honest, 99.9% of the electorate would have also flunked it). And while it was little more than "gotcha! journalism" on the part of the reporter, in the wake of it, Bush beat a hasty retreat back to his prepared text. During the first GOP debate in New Hampshire, his answer always seemed to be, "I was twice elected governor of Texas," even when the question was: "What are you reading lately?"

"He's got this rap that he's a lightweight, an empty suit," says Colmes. But even Colmes, a self-described Democrat and liberal, thinks that may be an inaccurate label. "I thought he had a good line when he said, 'You know Ann Richards underestimated me and look what happened. She's out of work'." Colmes' Fox News Channel co-anchor, Sean Hannity, thinks the whole thing is a tempest in a teacup. Bush, he says, "wasn't entirely comfortable" in the first debate, but in every appearance since, he has improved. These debates "are not an easy thing to do, and people are just waiting with their headlines, 'You Screwed Up!'" But, in truth, George Bush just isn't that smart, right? "You're right," says Hannity. "He's not as smart as Bill Clinton, who had sex with an intern and lied repeatedly about it. He's not as smart as Al Gore, who said you can't judge a leopard by its stripes, had no idea what e pluribus unum meant, thought he was the father of the Internet, father of Love Canal, thought "Love Story" was [written about] him. You're right; he's no Al Gore."

And to give the governor his due, away from the quiz-show format of the debates, Bush has looked more at ease. In his 20/20 interview with Sam Donaldson, he came across as both folksy and high-minded, a man who has found Jesus, but also a man with a sense of humor. ("What do your friends call you? George W.? Dubya?" Donaldson asked him. "George W.," he replied, then waiting a beat, added, "You can call me 'Governor'.") And out on the hustings, if Frank Bruni, who follows the governor around for The New York Times, is to be believed, Bush is downright frisky, kissing babies, winkin' at their mamas, kissin' their grandmamas; hailing young male voters as "Dude"; greeting the older men with a "How ya' doin', Buddy?" In Nelson Rockefeller, this was hideous affectation; with the governor, it seems to be authentic: George Walker Bush is not a man with a lot of self-doubt.

For Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic front-runner, part of the problem is his past success. "It's hard for any Vice President," says Colmes, "both to demonstrate that he was loyal to his boss, which is what a Vice President is supposed to be, and also to be his own person. And Gore has it especially difficult because of all the 'sins' of Clinton."

Gore's biggest stumbling block, though, may be Jay Leno. The stereotype of our 45th Vice President--that he's wooden at best and downright mechanical at worst--has become so ingrained in the national psyche that not a night goes by without Leno getting off at least one dig. "The Al Gore doll," says Leno, has "no moving parts." Do you know what Tipper's going to do for Y2K? "Reboot Al Gore." When NASA lost communication with the Mars Polar Lander, Leno's solution was to have Gore try to speak with it, "robot to robot."

Seeming to be stiff and robotic does detract attention from other aspects of the Vice President's record: his fulsome support for Bill Clinton at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, his campaign-contribution phone calls from the Vice President's office, that Los Angeles fund-raiser with the Buddhist monks. That's more than enough baggage for any candidate, but even Hannity, who has no love for Gore, concedes that he is no pushover: "Don't underestimate him in a debate, because he wants to make you look bad. Al Gore," Hannity insists, "plays dirty. Here's two quotes from Al Gore: 'Republicans want to poison the air, poison the water and kill more people.' And to the NAACP a couple of years back, he said, 'Republicans don't even want to count you black people in the census.' Al Gore will sink low to get to where he wants to go. He'll do anything." He and President Clinton, says Hannity, "are so sanctimonious, and think they are so right that for them to demonize the Republicans and misrepresent their positions on Medicare or school-lunch programs or the environment, or use the racial political card, is justified because they think Republicans are evil and they think that they represent all that is good."

Mr. Gore, of course, is a man faced with the unenviable task of running for Bill Clinton's third term. Only four times in history has a sitting Vice President been able to win in such a situation, and John Adams (in 1796) and Thomas Jefferson (in 1800) really don't count. The other winners, George Bush and Martin Van Buren, succeeded Ronald Reagan and Andrew Jackson, two extraordinarily popular Chief Executives. But neither would have won without some help: Van Buren slipped by because the Whigs ran three candidates against him, none of whom was Henry Clay; Michael Dukakis was generous enough to let Willie Horton out of prison and then have his picture taken in that tank. Incidentally, the man who handed the Horton issue to the GOP was Al Gore, who first broached it a Democratic primary debate. A robot? The Terminator was also a robot.

How the Vice President stays so comfortably ahead in the polls may have more to do with his only challenger, former U.S. senator from New Jersey Bill Bradley. If the stereotype of Mr. Gore is that of a lifelong pol, who will say and do anything to get elected, the rap on Mr. Bradley is that he's dull and dyspeptic, a sourpuss, and a Prince Hamlet, who retired from the Senate rather than face another bitter re-election battle, like the one he so nearly lost to Christine Whitman in 1990.

Gore and Bradley seem to have agreed at the outset that their contest would not be about personalities, but Colmes, for one, thinks the former college and NBA basketball star may have gotten a leg up in the persona battle: "I think Bill Bradley has been successful at reversing the stereotypes. He speaks from the heart. You don't get the sense he's programmed. You get the feeling that what you see is what you get. He may be dull, but he's also sincere." Hannity, not surprisingly, thinks his partner is half-right: "Bradley is dull," he says, "and he's a superliberal. He's left, left, left." More government is his answer for every question, and that, says Hannity, is just not going to resonate with a national electorate.

Mr. Bush's chief rival, Arizona senator John McCain, has probably had the best and worst of it in the persona wars. A truly courageous man, who endured years of torture and solitary confinement in a North Vietnamese POW camp, he has forged a strong 17-year record as a legislator. Yes, he has a temper. Notes Colmes: "Journalists in Arizona are saying, 'You national journalists, you don't know the real McCain. We do'." McCain has deflected mention of his volcanic temper with sound bites, wisecracking that comments about it "really make me mad."

More insidious are the whispers that he's crazy--that his ordeal in the Hanoi Hilton has turned him into the Manchurian Candidate. Again, he's quick with a quip: Crazy? To seek the Presidency, maybe you have to be. "If [his temper is] a demon he can't control," points out Hannity, "it's going to come out. But, you know, sometimes people blow things up bigger than they are. Having interviewed him a dozen times, I've never seen anything like that, and I find him actually to be very humorous."

Millions of dollars behind Mr. Bush in campaign money, the maverick senator is a long shot for the nomination, but he seems to be a force in New Hampshire, where he is certainly the media's favorite, because, Colmes admits, "he's so accessible." Ted Koppel of ABC's Nightline, even wondered aloud on one broadcast whether McCain "is just so popular with us in the media that we are artificially breathing life into his campaign."

Were all this media sparring and persona building not complicated enough, there are, come Election Day, the unique local characteristics of New Hampshire itself to factor in. The Granite State is ever jealous of its right to hold the first primaries. Unlike New York, to name one, this is a state where politics are conducted at the retail level, and with civility. Its "Live Free or Die" motto notwithstanding, New Hampshire is not the bastion of Coolidge Republicanism outsiders assume it to be. Independents here outnumber both Democrats and Republicans, and may vote in either primary. The governor is a woman Democrat; the state senate is controlled by the Democrats, and their leader there is also a woman. New Hamshire's citizenry are on average both better educated and more affluent than their fellow Americans, and come general election time in November, invariably back the eventual winner. The primaries can be another matter. Pat Buchanan won the 1996 GOP primary with 27% of the vote; Steve Forbes was fourth with 12%. In the most famous New Hampshire primary of all time (1968), Lyndon Johnson actually outpolled Eugene McCarthy; he just didn't outpoll him enough.

Whatever happens in New Hampshire this year, it is only the beginning. "New Hampshire can remove the sense of invincibility from George W. Bush," says Colmes, "but it doesn't necessarily predict the outcome," for Mr. Bush or Mr. Gore. The Super Tuesday primaries in the South, where both front-runners should do well, and the big plums of New York and California (March 7) follow soon after--states so big and so diverse that only the media can carry the message to everyone. That message is going to be about persona, and the candidates better get it right.

We'll leave the valedictory to Peggy Noonan, the one-time speechwriter for the Reagan and Bush White Houses: "It's true what Andy Warhol, the only artist ever quoted in the Reagan era, said, but when you get your fifteen minutes, you're going to be reduced to a photo-op and a sound bite, and they're going to be 'the truth' about you long after you're gone."

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Art Durbano is a Contributing Editor to Satellite DIRECT.

A Letter to the Church at Springfield

Whether we wish to believe it or not, these are serious, nay critical, times in the Episcopal Church. The proceedings from our 74th General Convention in 2003 have stirred debate and dissension that are not going to go away, no matter how fervently we may wish for it. We have seen already extraordinary responses from the other prelates of our Anglican Communion, the sad spectacle of American and Canadian bishops read the Riot Act because of their stand on the issues of same-sex marriages and homosexuals in the Episcopate. Many in our denomination continue to be perplexed by these issues. And yet here at Redeemer, they have gone largely unaddressed, as if it were someone else’s business, someone else’s problem. I believe it is high time—indeed, beyond high time—that these issues be openly considered. That is the rationale behind this letter.

To begin, it is my belief that the election of the Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson to the Episcopate and the approval of a motion to bless same-sex marriages are not, as their defenders claim, manifestations of the Holy Spirit, calling us to greater honesty, openness and tolerance. Nor, as their critics insist, are they last straw in what must become the eventual dissolution of the Anglican Communion. What they are is little more than the logical and inevitable results of a way of thinking among the Church’s hierarchy, lay and clerical, that has been going on for some four decades, and which, in and of itself, has brought the Episcopal Church to the pretty pass at which it now finds itself.

Forty Years of Good Intentions. The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, founded in 1789, achieved the largest membership in its history—just over 3.4 million souls—in 1965. 1965. Some of you surely will remember that church: a mix of “high,” “low” and “broad” parishes, where Holy Communion was a once-a-month phenomenon; an authoritarian church with a strong moral code; demanding doctrines (try getting a divorce in that church); dignified if aloof ministers. It is, obviously, not the Church we attend now, yet it was not without its attractions: between 1955 and 1965, the number of Episcopalians grew 22 per cent.

The politically charged 1960s were not kind to that church. The Episcopalians did not have a “good” Viet Nam War. Like the Church of England in World War I, the Episcopal Church did not distinguish itself ministering to the troops in the field (I know, I was there). Rather, back on the home front, high-profile Episcopalians, most notably New York bishop Paul Moore, were instead turning out in the streets to support the protestors. It made wonderful newspaper copy: “Anglican Bishop Sides with Hippies and Freaks” was the original “man bites dog” story, but it was clearly dangerous and mistaken conduct on two significant counts. And, forgive me, but they bear explanation.

First off, there was nothing morally superior about church-led or church-influenced opposition to the Viet Nam War, whether it was Quakers counseling draft evaders, Catholic priests, such as the Berrigan brothers, committing their rosary of felonies, or the Episcopal bishop of New York haranguing student protestors through a bullhorn. If anyone, it was the Johnson Administration who had better claim to the moral high ground in Indochina; it wasn’t Lyndon’s GI’s or the indolent army of Cambodia’s Lon Nol, or even the troops of Generals Khanh, Minh, Ky and Thieu who were rounding up people and putting bullets in the back of their necks just because they were teachers, or small landowners, or union activists or members of any other arbitrary list of “class enemies”; it was the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese who did that. Was the opposition then politically superior? Perhaps. In the end, it proved to be. But it was, first and foremost and forever, political. And therein lies the second mistake.

The Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, had labored mightily to build a wall between Church and State. The 1960s proved how miserably they had failed, for there was no wall. It was more of a dike, and it was leaky. The Negro civil-rights movement (essentially a phenomenon of the 1950s, but still a headline-making force in the Johnson years) washed right over the dike. Church-led and speaking the language of religion in ways no other mass political movement in America had done since Abolutionism, the civil-rights movement was perceived as morally superior (which it was). But in splashing over the dike, and slopping around on the Church’s side of things, the civil-rights movement caused irreparable harm. Every “good” cause that followed in its wake, beginning with Viet Nam, but well after Viet Nam had run its sorry course, quickly found its clerical champions. In the 1970s, the Deeply Committed at every Church House in the Republic would be speaking out prayerfully for or against—well, what you got? Everything from abortion & apartheid to welfare rights & women’s lib—found its champions in the Episcopalian pulpits.

All of them worthy causes? Sure, if you say so. But all of them of a pattern. All of them with the same premise: white men had been and continue to be bad by denying us our basic liberties. All of them with the same lesson to teach: you can get anything you want out of the white men who run this country, if…you can portray yourself as an oppressed minority; you organize; you make sure you get a lot of publicity; and you have absolutely no scruples.

The womyn were first. And we all know how that’s turned out. The Indians had a nice run there in the ‘70s and wound up with the casinos. The handicapped forced local governments to spend a king’s ransom on new sidewalks. Illegal aliens (oh, sorry, “undocumented” aliens) got the right to a free public-paid-for education. Even other species had their moments—remember the snail darter? Best and last of these rights movements (at least so far) is that of the homosexuals.

But it is important to keep in mind that all of these “rights” movements are and have been secular movements. On the surface, they have nothing whatsoever to do with the practice of Christianity. Civil rights was relatively easy for a practicing Christian to advocate. The Bible does not endorse racism. Indeed, it has nothing whatsoever to say on the subject. [The so-called “Curse of Ham” (Gen. 9.20-27) has been used by some as an apology for Negro slavery because Cush, one of Ham’s sons, is supposedly the founder of the black race; and because another of Ham’s sons, Canaan, was cursed by Ham’s father, Noah, and pronounced a slave to his brothers, it is hence assumed that the Bible condones Negro slavery. In fact, the curse is directed neither at Ham nor Cush, but at Canaan, and can be seen most simply as an ex post facto, allegorical explanation for and defense of Israel’s subsequent subjugation of the Holy Land. Any reference to Cush or black people is totally extra-Biblical.]

But I digress. The question we must ask ourselves is: What Does Any of This Have to Do with the Practice of Anglican Christianity? In 1973, the Gallup Organization reported that church attendance in the U.S., which it had been surveying since 1955, had hit an all-time low. In 1955, 49 per cent of church members attended in an average week. By ’73, only 40 per cent were actually in the pews. Episcopalian attendance was right on the average, but the number of Episcopalians on the rolls had shrunk to 3.1 million, a drop-off of nearly 10 per cent in less than a decade. The next year, 1974, came the crisis over women priests.

The decision to acquiesce in the ordination of women is particularly illustrative of the political and secular impulses that had taken control, not just among Episcopalians, but among all the Mainline Protestants. A little background: Women had been admitted to the Episcopal diaconate in 1970. In July 1974, right here in Philadelphia, four Episcopalian bishops not affiliated with the Bishop of Pennsylvania officiated at a ceremony in which 11 women were ordained priests—an action that was promptly condemned by the General Convention at the time assembled. The next General Convention, just two years later in 1976, raised only token objection and the ordination of women promptly carried the day.

An Idea Whose Time Had Come. Despite its more outrageous demands (or perhaps because of them, the “right kind” of orgasms, for instance), the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s was ineffably the decade’s the good cause. Forget the fact that its basic premise was to repeal Nature by an Act of Congress. No well-meaning person could dispute the second-class status of women in the workplace, the schools, the professions. (And though Baby’s come a long way since 1974, the glass ceilings and unequal-pay complaints continue to ring true.) The question to be considered here is not was it politically correct to admit women to the priesthood, but was it necessary?

There is nothing in Scripture that says you can’t ordain women. The Old Testament tells of Deborah, who is both a judge (i.e., a war leader) and a prophet. Acts and Paul both testify to women in leadership positions in the Apostolic Church, and women seem to have been (in some of the more remote areas of the Empire) administering sacraments in the Byzantine Church until as late as the 8th century. The arguments against ordaining women spring entirely from tradition. The evidence of the early Fathers is that women held positions of authority in many of the Gnostic churches and were certainly serving as priests in the most popular of the 4th-century heterodox sects, Montanism. Indeed, from the time of the Council of Nicaea onwards, women priests are synonymous with heterodoxy and heresy. Church doctrine, and hence tradition, from then on held that, as Jesus was a man, so should His senior clergy be men.

So why change now? Well, the Bible is specific that, in times of crisis, when the whole community is in peril, women can and have come to the fore (viz. Deborah). The 1970s, though, were hardly a time of crisis—fecklessness, selfishness and defeatism, surely—but hardly crisis. It is notable that in times of genuine crisis, during the Civil War and the Great Depression, the Episcopal Church did not ordain women. It only ordained them when the political pressure for women’s equality became something the church felt it could no longer ignore. [If further proof is required about the absence of crisis, let me add this: If you are going to throw away 1600-plus years of Apostolic tradition, shouldn’t the women you ordain at least be of singular saintliness? Especially deserving of the honor? I can’t tell you who any of these pioneer priests was, or is; and I have to wonder why eleven of them were singled out. That just seems like a very large number. There were only 13 people at the Last Supper…]

To a disinterested observer, it would seem that tradition having been overthrown in the matter of the women priests, tradition itself had become the enemy (although Goodness knows to what). How else to explain the divisive—and totally unnecessary—decision to revise The Book of Common Prayer? The 1928 revision had been done with an airbrush to take out only the most obscure of Cranmer’s Tudorisms; the new book sticks us with one of the sillier liturgies and some of the most mundane language anywhere. Or how else to explain the two most recent revisions of the Hymnal? Now we have songs that sound as if Joan Baez at her most maudlin had been run through a Mr. Coffee machine, while Healey Willan, Ralph Vaughan Williams and “Jerusalem” are consigned to the dustbin of musical history.

Ah, but what did you expect? Remember: in February 1975, a man named Vaughan Booker had been ordained a deacon in this church. At the time of his ordination, Booker just happened to be in Greaterford Prison serving a life sentence for murdering his wife. Which, although it may not seem like it, brings us at last back to V. Gene Robinson.

“We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.” The so-called Gay Rights Movement began, in especially tawdry circumstances, with a riot outside a Greenwich Village, New York City, bar called the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969. The NYPD had raided the place (again), because it was a public nuisance. But on this occasion, proceedings quickly degenerated: an angry mob of cross-dressers began to throw rocks, bottles—and a single high-heeled pump—at the policemen, who barricaded themselves inside the Stonewall, which the rioters then tried to burn down before order was restored. The (remarkably) unforeseen upshot of this was a sudden swelling in gay pride, and—although it took more than 30 years—a marvelously well-crafted agit-prop campaign that, for better or worse, has now led to the repeal of every anti-sodomy law in America. Pari passu, it has also led to increased toleration among most Americans for homosexuals and homosexual behavior. The downside of this homosexual social progress—the careers of Robert Mapplethorpe, Liza Minnelli and Village People, the AIDS plague, the epidemic use of Quaaludes among American teen-agers, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy—will pass here without comment.

The issue before us now is two-fold: the ratification of same-sex marriage and the ordination of avowed homosexuals. And here there is Scriptural guidance. The Bible is specific about sodomy. Leviticus 20.13: [The Lord said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel…] If a man lies with a male, as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.”

And this is in conjunction with commandments condemning giving one’s children to Moloch (20.1-5); turning to mediums and wizards; cursing your parents; and sleeping with another man’s wife. It comes in the sequence right after the incest taboo, and right before commandments against sleeping with (a) your mother-in-law and (b) animals.
OK, it’s just the Old Testament, right? The same place where it says we shouldn’t eat shellfish. Well, The Articles of Religion are pretty plain on the teachings in the Old Testament: “No Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called moral.”

The New Testament doesn’t cut homosexuality any breaks, either. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals…” [1 Corinthians 6.9-10] 1 Timothy 1.10 echoes similar thoughts, and Romans 1.24-32 elaborates on both. In no case does Paul endorse sodomy. Even between (among?) consenting adults.

Everywhere it mentions the subject, and there aren’t many places, since there seems to have been little homosexuality in the culture of the Bible, the practice is nevertheless condemned in the most rigorous language. It’s an abomination. I think it is, therefore, safe to say that Scriptural authority proscribes same-sex marriages. According to the Bible, homosexuality is not an “alternate lifestyle.” Nor is it—as the American Psychiatric Association maintained until the 1980s—a mental illness. It is an abomination.

Now I have no intention of making ad hominem attacks on Canon Robinson except to point out what is in the public record, that 13 years ago, while a priest, he left his wife and two children to live openly with another man. I suggest to you that if he had left his family to live with another woman, he would have been (justifiably) defrocked. And not so long ago, whether he was living openly with a woman, a man or a St. Bernard, this church would have characterized Robinson as a “notorious evil-liver” and made him ex-Communicate. How it ever ordained this man is a curiosity: his pre-ordination counseling should have caught him out. How it elevated such a person to the Episcopacy is stupefying (rather like George Bernard Shaw’s description of the Socialist bishop, William Temple—“a realized impossibility.”) No doubt, Mr. Robinson has a great many saintly qualities; but I’ve always followed George Orwell’s advice in this matter: “All saints should be considered guilty until proven innocent.”

In the case of the women priests, the Episcopal Church showed how it can repudiate its own creeds when key segments of it sense that the political winds are blowing strongly enough. The sad thing about the Robinson affair is that there’s no reason why anyone should be amazed that the same influential segments will just as quickly repudiate Scripture. But let’s call things the way they are: For the last 40 years, this church has been shifting its reverence toward worldly things; it has turned from worshipping God to worshipping the secular. And there is a name for that: idolatry. And it is a sin. And in case you’ve forgotten, “sin” is the word we use in English to translate the Greek word άμαρτια (hamartia), which means “offense against God.” It’s the state people find themselves in when they despise God and His commandments, when they rebel against God and violate His laws, and when they injure others (or themselves), both of whom are objects of Divine providence and protection. Hamartia is also the power that separates people from God. The personification of that separation has a name, too: Poneros ( Ό Πονεροσ), the “evil one”—Satan.

What Is to Be Done? Whatever your feelings about the screed you’ve just endured, we all need to educate ourselves more. I believe first off that every concerned Anglican should read the Windsor Report. In its entirety. Yes, it’s tough slogging in places, but its central recommendations, while veiled in irenic rhetoric, are pretty precise. [Check it out, with commentaries, at http://www.anglicancommunion.org/windsor2004/index.cfm ].
Seconding them,
I call upon the Episcopal Church in the United States to cease ordaining unrepentant, practicing homosexuals; to cease and desist from the blessings of same-sex marriages; and to express the regret called for by the Report; specifically:

I call upon Canon Robinson to resign any and all offices, lay or clerical, which he holds in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America;

I call upon the Rt. Rev. Frank Griswold to resign as Presiding Bishop;

I call upon every bishop who voted to approve Robinson’s election, including Charles Bennison, to resign;

And I call upon the Archbishop of Canterbury to proclaim a Day of National Prayer and Mortification for this entire province.

Simply put: Put this matter and put this man behind us. And from there, I humbly propose that we build anew. I believe that it should be the overwhelming priority of the national church and each and every parish to devote ourselves over the next few years to a comprehensive program of prayer, study and renewal. If I had all the details of this, I would be on television or something. But I know there are some things, many things, that we should be doing and doing now. Therefore, I call on the national church and the parishes…

To institute education programs on the history of the Anglican tradition;

To take back that tradition through the occasional use of historically accurate liturgies and church music;

To call the whole church back to a moral code that condemns sin rather than celebrates it;

To preach the True Gospel. Not the Gospel According to the United Way or the Springfield Republican Party. But the Gospel of Christ, “who will come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead.”

And all that would be very, very nice. But let’s be realistic. The Powers That Be in this church, in this Diocese, are totally inimical to the solution I propose. None of them is going to resign, because none believes he has offended anyone, because all believe they have received some epiphany, some assurance from God that everything Christians have always believed and been taught are—wrong, overturned, somehow usurped. All of my opponents are men and women of good conscience, who truly believe that what they are recommending as regards tolerance for homosexuality and the consecration of same-sex marriages is God’s Will. (At least I assume that’s so.) They are, however, in error.

And error (or perhaps, Error, capital E) is, in the end, what this letter is all about. In the 19th century, it was Roman Catholic Error that agitated so much of Anglican belief. The entire career of John Henry Newman can be read as a gloss on one single question: Where is the Roman Church truly in error? And I will confess, for Episcopalians like me—former Roman Catholics who have converted—there is, in a crisis such as this, the unconscious pull back to Rome. Newman finally took that route himself, but … But I, despite having been raised a Roman Catholic and become a Communicant in the Catholic Church, have nevertheless accepted the principles that compelled the separation of Church and State in England in 1558, and I cannot go back. [Full Disclosure: I am in many ways a Mel Gibson-type Catholic. I’m an ex-altar boy (duh!) and the last Catholic liturgies I regularly attended were Latin-language Masses celebrated (illicitly and for a very select congregation) by an U.S. Army chaplain in Viet Nam.]

All of that said—and none of this is about me, it’s about you—what are we to do? First. I would pray that you would think about what I’ve been writing about. You’re more than encouraged to disagree, but please! Give what I’ve brought up some thought. This letter has taken me months: to work out, to write, to get the courage to share… This hasn’t been easy, for many, many reasons. I am, for instance, a great believer in Authority. It especially pains me to challenge the authority of my own bishop. I think many of you may feel the same scruples. ……

Robinson is not a litmus test—this church is not doing Jesus’ business if it presumes not to minister to someone because of his or her sexual preference, but—still, these issues cannot be ignored in our search.

I would urge all of us to return to that Reformation staple, Plain reading of the Bible.

I hope many of you will underwrite—subscribe—to the positions I’ve advocated in this letter by forwarding it and the blogsite to other concerned Episcopalians.

I hate meetings, but it may be time for them, enlisting persons of our denomination who have expertise in Deanery and Diocesan procedures. We cannot be sheep; we must act. We must refine and define our positions, and be persuasive….

We’ve come too far in the wrong direction, erred & strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep.
And we need to pray to the Holy Ghost that He will be among us.

All Christians, even Episcopalians, know full well that these are the Last Days. We live in the End Time. The current Dispensation certainly is the Last One. There is not, nor shall there ever be, a Third Testament. It is time to purify this church, to drive the idolators from their palaces and pulpits, and to put on the armor of the righteous. A gay bishop is not the end of the world nor the end of the church. Both will be judged in due time, as shall we all. Let us pray that it is not we who are found wanting.


Art Durbano
January 2004—September 2005