Of Sound Mind and Body

Posted on October 9, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 9, 2020

Once again, we find ourselves mired in chaos created by Donald Trump. This time it’s about his physical and mental health a week after being hospitalized with COVID. There was a time when contradicting his doctors and public health experts and making demonstrably untrue assertions about the pandemic left much of the country wondering about fake news. Which reality was true, the overwhelming consensus of scientists and physicians, or the erratic, self-contradictory vision painted by Trump’s tweets and rants?

Twenty-five days before the election, Trump’s version has far fewer followers than it might have a couple of years ago, partly because it changes with his whims, sometimes multiple times a day. The reality of science and medicine has been consistent and almost unanimous for months, despite Trump’s attempt to re-write history.

He often defends his refusal to wear masks by claiming Anthony Fauci said masks were unnecessary back in March. But Fauci never said that. At a time when the nation’s stockpile of necessary medical supplies was severely depleted, Fauci suggested it was more important at that moment to assure that medical personnel had sufficient supplies of masks than for every American to have one.

We’ve seen what happens when decisions affecting millions of lives ignore science in favor of  one man’s self-interest. In the past few weeks, the president has recklessly put people directly at risk of catching the virus while attempting to convince his supporters that common sense recommendations by the CDC were just the radical left and the deep state trying to restrict their personal freedoms. And now, with COVID infections peaking all over the country, he wants to resume rallies, while unwilling to reveal the details of his health status.

There is no longer any doubt about who is promulgating fake news. The doubt and confusion which the president creates no longer obscure the truth. Instead of condemning white supremacists and hate groups, he admonished them to “stand by,” and a week later the FBI crushed a right-wing militia plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Witmer. Amid concerns that such militia groups have been emboldened by Trump’s refusal to discredit them, and fears that they may be planning massive acts of insurrection and civil war, FBI Director Christopher Wray said domestic terrorism is the most dangerous threat facing the country.  Trump said the plot to kidnap Witmer was her fault for not opening her state fast enough.

Trump’s assertion that he has beaten COVID and Americans should not let it dominate their lives are driven by his desperation about re-election.  The same desperation caused him to attack Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, because he hasn’t produced new evidence about Hillary Clinton’s emails, and Attorney General Bill Barr, because the investigation led by Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham into the “Russia hoax” will not be completed before Election Day. No October surprise?

This week, there is more evidence of Trump’s erratic behavior. He changed his mind three times in less than a week about whether he will debate Joe Biden on October 15th. He flipped back and forth over a new stimulus bill for a month, accusing the Democrats of holding up a bill while ordering Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin not to budge on the Republican Senate bill that would provide funding to bail out airlines and protect employers against liability if employees brought back to work in violation of CDC guidelines became sick or died.

Three days ago, after arguing that Nancy Pelosi wanted over a trillion dollars to reward Democrat-run states for decades of overspending he ordered Mnuchin to end negotiations with her. Yet today he undercut his own Senate caucus, telling Rush Limbaugh’s audience that he wants a huge stimulus, much larger than Pelosi’s. There’s a clear pattern in all this. We’ve seen his obsession with remaining in power play out repeatedly. But now he appears panicked, leading much of the medical community to wonder if the drugs he’s been given are affecting his stability and judgment.

We wouldn’t accept a last will and testament whose author was not demonstrably of sound mind and body, and we cannot accept the president’s version of his own legacy. In a very real sense, he is bequeathing the current state of the nation to the next administration. The body of evidence that includes both his record and his physical and mental health is all on the ballot this year. Far more important than politics, it creates a stark contrast between the current president and Joe Biden, his opponent.

If Americans can put aside their differences and focus on what’s best for the country, the choice couldn’t be clearer.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Reading Trump’s Tells

Posted on October 8, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 8, 2020

Donald Trump’s most notable talent is a native ability to create chaos, sow discord, and enrage his adversaries in the hope that it will either intimidate them or negatively impact their judgment. He touts unpredictability and his ability to constantly keep everyone else guessing. Since people like Trump are thankfully rare, most of us were unprepared when he came on the political scene in 2015.

The way he decimated fifteen other Republican candidates in the 2016 primary race was testimony to both his power and its limitations. He reminds me of a major league baseball player from my youth. Ryne Duren pitched for the Orioles and Yankees in the 1950s and early 1960s. When he first came on the scene his trademarks were a previously unheard of 100 mph fastball and coke-bottle glasses. He would begin his warmup pitches by throwing the ball as hard as he could, missing the catcher by twenty feet.

The idea was to convince batters that his vision was so bad, his aim so erratic, it would be dangerous to get in the batter’s box. Yankees manager Casey Stengel said he’d be terrified to hit against him. Duren’s mystique worked – for a while. He convinced me, but I was only eleven. After a while, batters figured out Duren’s act. He was still formidable, but hitters stopped fearing him and they learned to hit 100 mph pitches routinely.

One trick ponies like Duren and Donald Trump always come back to Earth. Trump’s ability to make people’s heads spin has a finite lifetime. The shock and awe he practices whenever the cameras are on him loses its opacity after a while. Listen carefully to him, and his meaning and intent become clear.

One reason he succeeds is that Americans are loath to believe people are evil. Despite mountains of circumstantial and substantive evidence, it takes a lot to make us suspend our disbelief. Trump is a narcissistic sociopath; if you keep that in mind it’s easy to spot his tells. Consider his actions Wednesday afternoon. First, he released a video claiming he was fine. He’d beaten the COVID virus and was a “perfect specimen” of health. He was no longer contagious, and he was ready to resume campaign rallies.

Physicians watching him unanimously blasted the video, and his own doctors have been unwilling to offer specifics on his condition, despite voters’ right to know the health of the person they vote for. Doctors who knew what to look for easily spotted his difficulty breathing and accused him of lying. He is still a sick man whose symptoms are being masked by the drugs he’s taking. There is no evidence that he is no longer shedding the virus.

The tell for us non-doctors was the part about getting back to his raucous, maskless tight-packed rallies. The only thing that matters to Trump is looking tough to his base, no matter how many of them he infects and possibly kills. It matters so much, he was willing to steal the spotlight from his running mate, Mike Pence, who was about to debate Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

The interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business News, yesterday, had a similar tell. When the Federal Debate Commission announced that next week’s presidential debate would be virtual, Trump was furious. “I’m not going to waste my time on a virtual debate. That’s not what debating is all about. You sit behind a computer and do a debate. It’s ridiculous, and then they cut you off whenever they want.”  

If you listen carefully, he always telegraphs his genuine intent. His objection to a virtual debate is that it undercuts his ability to ignore the rules and dominate the proceedings with bluster and constant interruptions. He cannot accept the idea of following the same rules Biden agreed to or of agreeing to limit his personal freedom to speak whenever he wishes. Allow some loser CSPAN host to turn off his microphone?

I shudder when I think of the harm he can do between now and January, to our country and the world.

Does Trump seem more erratic and crazy than usual? Many physicians believe he is being affected by psychotropic side effects of the medicines he’s taking, which led Nancy Pelosi to suggest he is living in an “altered state.” That, combined with desperation over his failing poll numbers, may be why he is acting like a caged animal. He seems more reckless every day as the election draws near. He changes his mind  daily about a new stimulus bill as more and more people become sick with COVID and employers lay off workers and cancel their health insurance. And he still holds the nuclear missile codes.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Trump’s Hubris

Posted on October 5, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 5, 2020

In 2016, millions of Americans felt powerless and left behind. Many of them were hard-working people who the system allowed to fall through the cracks, like the “working poor” who earned too much to qualify for Medicaid but could not afford private health insurance because Mitch McConnell held the public option hostage when Obamacare was passed, hoping to assure its failure. Many had lost their jobs because it was cheaper for their employers to farm them out to China, Indonesia, and anywhere else that had no worker protection laws. And many were simply angry, about non-whites growing in influence, about anything with the word “liberal” attached, about birth control, and about propaganda that people on the left wanted to take their guns away.

People who feel angry and hopeless, who believe they’ve been ignored and see others buying new homes and fancy cars are easy prey for demagoguery. When you’re desperate and someone comes along and claims to feel your pain, promising to fix all your problems, it can be difficult to distinguish healthy, positive self-assurance from hubris. It’s understandable that they were taken in by the con man who now lives in the White House. It’s not their fault that they were caught up in the chaos created by Trump and his Russian surrogates and trusted Facebook and Twitter to shield them from lies.

They know better, now. They know Trump’s signature achievement, a three trillion-dollar tax cut that enriched his wealthy friends and grew the national debt into a burden their children will bear did little or nothing to benefit them. They know he hasn’t stopped corporations from outsourcing jobs, and has continued to do so himself. They know he isn’t smarter than his generals or public health experts, and that he lies virtually every time he speaks. If that wasn’t sufficient, they can now see that his self-serving downplaying of COVID worsened the pandemic, continues to threaten them and their families, and may have damaged our economy so much that their jobs no longer exist.

Now they know what happens when their president, whose primary responsibility is keeping his citizens safe, reneges on that obligation for his own benefit. They know science was right at every turn and Trump was wrong, and arrogance about the virus allowed it to spread out of control. Science predicts that the death toll of 210,000 Americans could grow to 400,000 by year end. Trump’s approval ratings are tumbling as many who voted for him in 2016 now see his demeanor as pure hubris.

He has been humbled by the very virus he helped spread, and irresponsibly infected the people most loyal to him. He claims that being sick with COVID has educated him, that he gets it now, yet he still pressures his doctors to lie about his condition, to convince Americans that the virus isn’t as dangerous as the rest of us know it is. He still refuses to lead by example, eschewing masks and social distancing, placing his own staff in jeopardy.

Yesterday, we witnessed the spectacle of our chief narcissist being chauffeured down Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda so he could bask in the love of his most rabid supporters. He ignored the advice of his doctors and exposed the Secret Service agents traveling with him in a hermetically sealed SUV to the active virus. Taking a bullet for him may be in their job description, but dying of COVID to satisfy his ego is not.

Ignoring CDC’s rules, Trump continued to hold public, close-packed events refusing to require masks, until his Rose Garden presentation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett turned into a virus super-spreader. He may have even infected the judge, but we won’t know for several more days. That, my friends, is HUBRIS. He might as well have held the ceremony in a live mine field.

Today may have been the icing on the cake, when his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, whose unfailing loyalty has tarnished her reputation as a legitimate journalist, reported that she too was infected. No one thought to warn her that presidential aide Hope Hicks, with whom she interacted daily in the mask-free environment of the West Wing, was shedding the virus.

And perhaps worst, from the point of view of national security, is continuing to try to hide the truth about the president’s health because he fears it could cost him votes. That includes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who must be kept apprised at all times. If Vice President Pence were to become incapacitated at the same time as the president, Pelosi would be required to serve as Interim President.

Before it was just words and bombast. Now it’s clear that Trump’s hubris is more than noise. It’s a serious threat to our nation’s security.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The President’s Illness

Posted on October 3, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 3, 2020

Whatever else it may be, Donald Trump’s personal battle with COVID-19 is a wake-up call for every American. After months of being battered into submission by both the virus and the political bombast that erupted in its wake, Trump’s illness is like a 5 a.m. reveille. It forced me to ask myself some critical questions.

I have made no secret of my disdain and disgust for this president’s policies, lack of a moral center, and disregard for the truth. Given my oft-stated concern that they will wreak serious, permanent harm on our country, my first question was, “do I want him to die?” The answer is a resounding “NO!” Regardless of how I feel about Trump, his death would be a catastrophe for the country.

A subtler version of that question was, “do I care whether he survives, and isn’t every human life, even his worth saving?” If I’m being honest, implications for stability and national security aside, I care about his life and health about as much as he cares about mine. As to whether he survives COVID, the best I can do is quote what he said about the 210,000 people who have already succumbed to the virus: “It is what it is.” Whether he lives or dies, the country needs him to simply go away and never come back.

The most important thing, now, is to not lose sight of what is at stake. Of primary importance is assuring that the election moves forward no matter what else happens. It must proceed in a manner that assures Americans, our allies, and adversaries that whoever wins did so fairly. If the legitimacy of the next president is in question, nothing else will matter. Don’t take your eye off the ball. However you do it, make sure your vote is counted.

No one asked for the president to contract the virus. Most people, including the entire public health and infectious disease community argued relentlessly for him to observe proper protocols. Relentlessly but pointlessly, apparently, as even during the last few days we’re learning his actions were completely irresponsible, if not criminal. He knowingly placed himself in situations that almost guaranteed people around him would be infected.

It’s ironic that based on what we know now, the people he infected were mostly his supporters. Several prominent Republicans, including three senators and multiple senior aides are now in the early stages of the illness, and there will surely be more. And what of the eighteen donors who paid $250,000 each to bask in the glow of their idol Thursday evening? Too bad no one warned them Trump was bringing them a special thank you gift.

If there is justice in this, it is that the president is now a victim of his own criminal malfeasance. It’s not a result of incompetence, as many people charge, although incompetence in governing has been a hallmark of Trump’s administration. It’s the cynical disregard for the lives of all those “disgusting people” whose hands he had to shake. When the smoke clears, we must not forget that he brought this on himself.

There is no longer any doubt that at least 80% of the 210,000 American deaths so far caused by the pandemic would have been averted if Trump hadn’t placed his concern about re-election ahead of everything else. He would have us believe that he was interested in preserving our economy, when it’s clear that all he cared about was preventing a crash in the equity markets. The majority of health experts and economists have said that continually arguing to keep the country open, as Trump likes to say, put the long-term health of our economy at greater risk than shutting it down would have. A presidential mandate to wear masks and keep our distance from each other would have left us in an entirely different place today.

Instead, we have chaos approaching a critical election which Trump and his surrogates attempt to undermine and discredit daily. Instead, with all the crises facing us, the administration’s first and only priority is filling a vacant Supreme Court seat with a Trump-friendly justice before the voters have their say on the direction of the court. Amy Coney Barrett wouldn’t be my first choice, but if Trump won re-election, I’d accept his right to appoint whomever he chooses. Judge Barrett wouldn’t be the first Justice to surprise those who picked her for political reasons who rose above her religious views and ruled with integrity.

The best we can hope for is that Trump survives and having experienced some of the pain he caused millions of others, comes out of it a better man. He may never be capable of empathy, but at least he’ll understand. Unfortunately, that’s as likely to happen as the sun failing to rise tomorrow.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Presidential Debates 2 and 3

Posted on October 1, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 1, 2020

After listening to Donald Trump for five years, we know how to interpret his words. They almost always mean the opposite of what they would if anyone else said them. Every time he accuses someone else of being flawed in some way, he projects his own insecurities and shortcomings. He’s been saying since the first presidential debate last Tuesday that he’s getting rave reviews for his performance.

In a typically Trump-spun version of the truth, he fails to mention that all those positive reviews are from his surrogates who are reading White House talking points. Everyone who watched that debate knows what actually happened. There was one loser and no winner. Unfortunately, the loser was the voting public. Just ask Trump’s two debate preppers.

Chris Christie, who sent Jared Kushner’s father to prison for two years in 2004, for what in Christie’s words was “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he ever prosecuted, and now has to sneak into the White House when Jared isn’t around, admitted that Trump came on much too strong and hurt himself. Christie opined that Trump might not be able to repair the damage. And legal lapdog Rudy Guiliani, who left his integrity in Central Park sometime in the 1990s and is never at a loss for words, has been silent.

Yesterday, when Trump claimed Joe Biden wouldn’t show up for the next debate, he was really telling us two entirely different things. One is that he desperately wants to avoid another face-to-face showdown himself. A public debate is the only setting in which he cannot spew lies without being called on them in real time in front of what turned out to be an audience of perhaps a billion people in 200 countries last Tuesday. The other, more important message was that he knows Biden has no reason to ever debate with him again, and he wants voters to think the former Vice President is afraid to.

As to the latter point, Trump’s premise is correct even as he lies and attempts to manipulate voters. Joe Biden has absolutely no reason to ever appear on a stage with Donald Trump again. Nothing good can possibly come from a second or third debate. If you’ve ever watched or participated in a real one, as opposed to the nonsense that passes for debates during political season, you know why. A debate can only be meaningful when both parties follow the rules and deal with facts and rational arguments. When either party acts like an out-of-control adolescent, the only possible result is chaos, which is exactly what Donald Trump intends.

I am concerned that Biden won’t heed that advice, because it is not his nature to back away from a confrontation. Moreover, it must be irresistible to be able to counter Trump’s lies as they come out of his mouth with everyone listening. I say, “Don’t waste your time, Joe. Engaging with Trump directly only dilutes your message.” Worse, like two kids fighting in a schoolyard, it never matters who threw the first punch. Once the mayhem is under way, they both look bad, and that is precisely why Trump behaves the way he does.

Speaking of schoolyards, in my mind I keep returning to Biden’s off the cuff taunt of Trump a few years back when he invited him to settle their differences the old-fashioned way the way bullies were dealt with in high school. Part of me would love to see that, but I digress.

The image of Biden on his COVID-sanitized Amtrak train doing whistle stops in Pennsylvania and Ohio was beautiful. For most of the next four weeks he should ignore Donald Trump completely and just ride that train back and forth between Philadelphia and Minneapolis. If he does that as COVID cases are surging in those states because of the criminal malfeasance of his opponent, he will sweep the rust belt, easily winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota, and will have a good chance of taking Ohio, at which point the fat lady will belt out “God Bless America” and we can begin recovering from the physical and moral sickness Trump has left us with.

Think FDR and Harry Truman. If Biden intersperses train stops with flights to Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada, he can achieve a Reagan-style landslide, with the Senate riding his coattails. That’s exactly what the country needs right now. It will enable the strong guiding hand of a decent leader who genuinely cares about people to get us back on track, and maybe even start to heal the partisan divide by example.

Please, Joe. No more debates.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The History of COVID-19 in 21 Minutes

Posted on September 29, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 29, 2020

The “failed” New York Times has produced a video that documents the history of the United States’ pandemic response. It is well worth watching, because it is free of hyperbole and politics. It begins with President George W. Bush in 2005, when he realized we were totally unprepared for a pandemic and takes us through the summer of 2020, and features Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, Angela Merkel, Dick deBlasio, and its principal star, Donald Trump.

If you know anyone who is undecided about how and why 206,000 Americans are now dead, most of whom would still be alive if our leadership had acted responsibly, send it to him or her. You might be instrumental in saving lives. I’ll stop here, because watching the video is a better use of your time than reading my words.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

This Must End!

Posted on September 27, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 27, 2020

Imagine for a moment that you’re a Canadian. Most Americans are vaguely aware of Canada as our neighbor to the north. Some can name most of the Canadian provinces, and some fraction of those can even locate them on a map. On any given day, however, most Americans don’t give Canada a thought, except for trite but largely true aphorisms like, “Canadians are just like us, only nicer.”

As a Canadian, however, you would be aware of your neighbor to the south on a daily basis. It’s bigger, wealthier, militarily stronger, and as individuals, more heavily armed. You‘d know our countries experienced many of the same problems: the embarrassment of genocide against our First Nations, racism, economic ups and downs. You’d be a citizen of a proud independent nation, but at some level you’d always know your fate was inextricably tied to ours.

If our economy fell into a major depression, so would yours. We experience the same climate change problems, and any major war that involved us would invariably drag you in as well. You’ve mostly admired us in the manner of a kid looking up to his big brother, even when he doesn’t treat you well. Lately, however, you’d wonder why your big brother seems so intent on destroying himself, and possibly taking you down with him.

You must shake your head in disbelief. Maybe the COVID virus, which you handled so well, has driven your neighbors to the south insane. You closed our shared border, which protected you from the virus, but if everything went to hell down here, a closed border wouldn’t protect you. Watching Donald Trump cavort around like a sociopathic clown at a distance may have been amusing at first, but seeing him willing to destroy everything America stands for to retain power must chill you down to your core. Most Americans feel the same way.

Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson summed it up perfectly in yesterday’s edition of her daily Letters From an American: “Trump and his cronies are trying to create their own reality. They are trying to make people believe that the coronavirus is not real, that it has not killed more than 200,000 of our neighbors, that the economy is fine, that our cities are in flames, that Black Lives Matter protesters are anarchists, and that putting Democrats in office will usher in radical socialism. None of these things is true. Similarly, Trump is trying to convince people that he can deploy the power of the government to remain in power even if we want him to leave, creating uncertainly and fear. By talking about it, he is willing that situation into existence. It is a lie.”

Watching all this from across the border must make you feel the way Europeans felt watching the Fascists transform Germany and Italy in the 1930s. You might even be justified in blaming America’s arrogant complacency and intellectual laziness. We created this problem by turning blind eyes to the rifts in our society and allowing them to grow into chasms that become harder to bridge, the longer they persist. We have let the subsurface anger and frustration of large segments of our population explode into a tableau that looks scarily similar to the days that preceded our Civil War. It has to stop, and soon.

We have created the spectacle of a power-mad president who masquerades as a populist, whose approval rating has never touched 50 percent, and who, five weeks prior to the presidential election has the support of only two in every five Americans. In a true democracy that would presage an end to his autocratic fantasies. But our archaic Electoral College could subvert the will of the majority, as it has in the past, only this time, it may cause permanent harm.

Americans have usually responded well to wake-up calls like this, and we had better this time, or the America our grandchildren grow up in will look nothing like the one we did. If we permit a cult based on divisiveness and partisan hatred to steal this election with lies and fearmongering fantasies, our alleged democracy is doomed. If Donald Trump’s cynical, deliberate mishandling of the pandemic, his implicit support for the murder and suppression of our minorities, his disregard for the health of the planet, and his lack of a moral center haven’t convinced Americans that this must end now, our country will never again approach the ideals of its founders.

To Americans who say things like, “If Trump wins I’m moving to Canada,” I say, “Think again. What makes you think they’ll let you in?”

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Protecting Your Vote

Posted on September 25, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 23, 2020

To date, the best example of mail-in ballot fraud the Trump campaign has come up with was nine ballots allegedly found in a waste basket in Pennsylvania in 2016. That’s nine out of more than six million. There are two ways to look at that. One is that those ballots represent less than 0.0015% of the total, and while there is always a vanishingly small chance that the margin of victory could be that small in one state, it has never come close to happening. Even in the contested 2000 election in Florida, which was decided by the Supreme Court, George W. Bush’s margin of victory over Al Gore in that state was more than 500 votes.

A more pragmatic way to look at it is that it is impossible to reduce the number of invalid ballots to zero. Everyone involved in statistics or quality control understands that targeting a zero error rate is the surest way to bring productvity to a permanent halt. The argument that mail-in ballots will make it impossible to have a fair election is entirely specious, one of a large number of attempts to create chaos and undermine voter confidence. It’s the sort of thing we’d expect a hostile foreign power that wanted to weaken our country by sowing dissension to do. The only reason an American president would resort to such a tactic is that he prioritizes his own power and ambition above the security of the nation.

States have used mail-in ballots to some degree ever since we’ve had elections. It’s regularly done in Donald Trump’s business world as well, where people even allow others to cast their votes for them by proxy. Is voting by mail safe and reliable? Let’s look at some facts.

Last Spring, when COVID-19 concerns forced most states to examine how to conduct elections safely, Federal Elections Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said, “There’s simply no basis for the conspiracy theory that voting by mail causes fraud. None.” She further noted that the percentage of Republicans and Democrats who prefer to vote by mail are almost exactly the same.

Since 2010, California has processed more than 33 million mail-in ballots with no evidence of voter fraud or difficulty in counting votes. Seven states have been mailing ballots to every registered voter for years with no significant reported problems. And yesterday, former Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich said that in all the years his state has used mail-in voting there were no negative outcomes.

Our intelligence services have warned us since 2016 that potentially hostile nations are attempting to manipulate American elections using the internet, through social media and overt attempts to hack state election systems. Russia, China, Iran, Ukraine, and North Korea have frequently been cited for such actions, and those efforts have been intensified in 2020. Banks and major retailers have had their databases hacked repeatedly, because no computer system can be made 100% percent secure.

But mail-in voting does not depend on the internet. Once voters have paper ballots in hand they cannot be hacked by external bad actors. From that point of view, mail-in voting is as secure as voting in person. The only identified impediment to mail-in ballots has been the president’s own public statements that he has deliberately degraded the postal service’s ability to deliver ballots on time.

More Americans are likely to cast votes for president in November than at any time in our history. Allegations and hyperbole about mail-in voting are entirely without substance, designed solely to undermine confidence in the election. There is no reason to be concerned that your vote won’t be counted if you don’t vote in person. If you choose to vote by mail you need only do two things to assure that your vote matters.

First, request or download your ballot, depending on the rules in your state, at the earliest date your state allows. My state, Maryland, has already notified every registered voter who requested a ballot that it is available to be downloaded, and it can be returned as early as next week. My wife and I have already printed and marked ours.

Second, and most important, if possible, bring your completed ballot to a secure drop box at a location designated by your local board of elections. Most states are placing them at locations that are easily accessible to the great majority of voters. Depositing your ballot directly in a secure drop box bypasses the postal service and any possible delays. The earlier you vote, the easier it will be for your state to know the result of the election on November 3rd. If you follow those steps, no one can keep you from voting, no one can steal your vote, and it can’t be hacked.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

McConnell and Trump – Odd but Dangerous Bedfellows

Posted on September 21, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 21, 2020

President Donald Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell couldn’t have more different styles. They have two things in common, however, which make them extremely dangerous when their self-interests align: both are corrupt and addicted to money and power. Trump is shamelessly overt while McConnell prefers to fly under the radar. Trump is constantly in everyone’s face, an intimidation tactic that served him well in business, while McConnell, the quintessential politician is the ultimate snake in the grass.

Trump’s narcissistic flamboyance and McConnell’s southern gentleman veneer often have them at odds. They clearly dislike each other, but they need each other. Neither has an ideology beyond opportunism. Neither respects “Christian” values, although they both pander to groups who do, the best example being their stances on abortion and gender issues.

Almost every significant accomplishment of the Trump administration was facilitated by McConnell. Without the Senate Majority Leader’s support, Trump would have accomplished little of note. If you paid attention since 2017, you noticed a pattern. Trump tweeted and shotgunned, seemingly at random, flouting tradition and ignoring laws and the Constitution. McConnell often remained on the sidelines, letting Trump negotiate with Democrats, knowing those talks would go nowhere and his hands would be clean. McConnell hid as Trump withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal and the Climate Accords, initiated trade wars, alienated our traditional allies, sucked up to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and conducted his absurd love affair with Kim Jong Un. That’s an impressively long list of failures except for the renegotiation of NAFTA. McConnell knows when to lay low.

The 2017 tax cut, on the other hand, was the baby of McConnell and then House Speaker Paul Ryan, that had been gestating in oblivion for twenty years waiting for an opening; that is, waiting for a president who was happy to profit from its passage. Trump returned the favor by looking the other way as McConnell’s wife, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, ran her department like an old-fashioned corrupt city hall.

She promoted trade agreements that enriched her father’s shipping company and not incidentally, enriched her and her husband as well; she delayed divesting her profitable interest in a construction materials firm, an obvious conflict of interest with her duties in DOT; and she continually diverted money toward Kentucky projects in districts favorable to her husband while holding back funding to repair the crumbling Gateway Tunnel used by railroads serving blue states in the Northeast.

All this is background for Trump and McConnell’s joint effort to pack the courts with judges favorable to their political agendas. The decision to proceed immediately with the appointment of a Supreme Court justice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg was one of the rare instances when Trump and McConnell acted publicly in unison as though they were choreographed (which they were.) They want to create a youthful right-wing majority in the courts that will overturn every liberal decision in the last fifty years. It’s in their mutual self-interest to have judges in place who can protect Citizens United, defend the wealthy against programs like universal health coverage that would require them to actually pay taxes, and issue rulings that will help Trump and McConnell retain their power.

Trump has created an environment of chaos and division in which it’s easy to get lost in the weeds, but it’s all smoke and mirrors. The issue is what it has always been – greed and power running roughshod over decency and integrity. Don’t be fooled by feeble attempts to dress this pig in silk. And don’t forget that if Donald and Mitch are successful in placing Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court, we could be living with a right-wing majority for decades.

It would be bad enough if that represented the desires of a majority of Americans. But poll after poll shows that Americans want a balanced judicial system free of political influence. That will never happen in the ideal, but this extreme attempt to pack the court is a test of the viability of our whole political system.

Forcing a nomination through is wrong no matter who wins in November. If Trump is re-elected and McConnell keeps his majority in the Senate, the fight will be moot. But, if they seat their new justice as the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, the next four years will be a time of retribution and even worse partisanship. Full control of the government will enable Democrats to expand and re-pack the Court while holding public executions of anyone who supported Trump and McConnell. That may gratify some people, but it will be a disaster for a country already staggering from its own missteps.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

RBG’s Legacy

Posted on September 19, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 19, 2020

We are deeply saddened by the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She fought for equal rights, not only for women, but for everyone. Because I honor her legacy, I will not attempt to memorialize her here. Many people far more qualified than I have already done that. The best thing I can do to honor her is help assure that the things she achieved are not lost.

The way to accomplish that is to immediately begin fighting against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s determined effort to fill her seat on the Supreme Court with yet another reactionary judge appointed by Donald Trump. If that sounds crass, consider that McConnell and Trump have been salivating over this moment for months, waiting for Ginsberg to die. The speed with which both men have pounced on the opportunity speaks for itself.

Trump and McConnell dislike each other almost as much as they are disliked by most of us. Their cynical lack of integrity, the only thing they have in common, shines brightly today. They cannot be allowed to succeed. Either McConnell must be stopped from bringing Trump’s nomination to a vote or at least four people in his caucus must be convinced to not support the effort.

If John McCain were still with us, we would only have to convince three Republican Senators. McCain’s integrity and patriotism would assure that he placed country over party as he did when McConnell tried to force through a health care bill that would have taken away coverage from more than twenty million Americans. But McCain’s ghost may wind up playing a critical role this time.

McCain’s former Senate seat was filled when Arizona Governor Doug Ducey appointed Martha McSally, but the law requires that she must stand for election this coming November to retain the seat. Astronaut Mark Kelly is contesting McSally and according to the polling website 538, currently leads her by eight percentage points.

An Arizona Superior Court judge recently ruled in a similar case that the winner of such a special election may be seated as soon as the victory is certified. Pointing to that case, Tim LaSota, a former general counsel for the Arizona Republican Party, said: “I think the law is clear that under such circumstances you don’t have to wait for the regular term to end. So I do think Mr. Kelly — if he does win and the canvass is in — he’d take office early… I’m obviously not biased in favor of Mark Kelly and will vote for Martha McSally [but] the law is the law.”

If Kelly were sworn in on November 30th, McConnell could afford to lose only two votes from his caucus, but fear not, he will try every trick in the book to prevent it. Whether he succeeds may depend on how hard the rest of us fight him. He has demonstrated an unscrupulous lust for power almost as extreme as Trump’s, but there’s hope that some in his caucus may feel differently.

Mitt Romney (UT) is one; Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AK) have both shown a willingness to stand up to Trump and McConnell, and Collins is in a desperate bid to hold onto her seat in November.

There are others, too. Marco Rubio (FL) was quite vocal in 2016 when McConnell refused to allow the Senate to vote on Barack Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Court. He said it was wrong then. What will he say now? And Lindsey Graham (SC) argued in 2016 that a president should never try to force a Supreme Court nomination through in the last year of his term. “If there’s a Republican president … and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.” Of course, he reversed himself today, saying he would support whomever Trump nominated. Lindsey Graham can’t even be shamed by Lindsey Graham.

Keep in mind as you approach this that every sitting Senator’s first priority at all times is being re-elected. People like Joni Ernst (IA) and Cory Gardner (CO) are locked in difficult races. And there’s Lamar Alexander (TN) who claims that he deplores partisanship. Alexander is retiring in January. Is he more interested in loyalty to McConnell or his legacy?

The country didn’t need another crisis. Our democracy is being severely tested. But we can still use our voices and our checkbooks. If Trump and McConnell win this fight and you just sat on your hands watching, who are you going to blame?

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments