The Most Important Election Since the Great Depression

Posted on November 5, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 5, 2018

Tomorrow, the nation will participate in the fifth midterm election since Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 – at least some of it will. There are two very significant things everyone should know about mid-term elections.

First, they usually serve as a significant check on the actions and power of the current president. Presidents Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama all suffered devastating setbacks to their political agendas in their midterms, and the polls (I can’t write that word without cringing) suggest that might happen tomorrow.

Perhaps more important, and certainly more surprising, despite the sharp turnaround in national political attitudes that usually result from the midterms, turnout is always disappointing. In the first midterms held for each of the previous three presidents, the turnouts in percentage of eligible voters were: (1994) 38.8%, (2002) 37.0%, and (2010) 37.8%. That’s absolutely shocking.

After twelve years of Republican governments, Clinton’s first two years in the White House saw an abortive attempt to reform health care and the beginning of extreme right-wing radio led by Rush Limbaugh. The latter continually unleashed scathing and not always factual attacks against the Clintons, including thirteen-year-old Chelsea. The result was the “Gingrich revolution,” in which the Republicans gained fifty-four seats in the House of Representatives and eight seats in the Senate.

Bush’s first two years included nine-eleven and the initial, successful stages of our war against the Taliban. It was also the last time there was any general sense of unity in the United States, and the Republicans, the party in power, actually gained eight House seats and two Senate seats in the 2002 midterms. But with anger over our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan mushrooming, the Democrats gained thirty-one House seats and six in the Senate in the 2006 midterms.

In Obama’s first term, anger over the passage of Obamacare despite unified Republican opposition caused the 2010 midterms to be devastating for Democrats. Republicans gained sixty-three House seats and six Senate seats, the largest swing in Congress since 1948.

The stakes in all those elections were very high, but none higher than they are now. We’ve always had bitterly disputed elections, but there hasn’t been a time when the party in power attempted such a radical change in the face of America since Franklin Roosevelt’s first term in the early years of the Great Depression. And there hasn’t been a time since the Civil War when the party in power relied so heavily on gender- or race- based pandering to divide and polarize the country.

No president in recent memory has instigated hate and turmoil the way Donald Trump has. No president in anyone’s memory has flaunted a vulgar immoral character the way Trump has, and none has been a party to attempting to take away desperately needed health care benefits from over twenty million working class Americans. Trump’s singular achievement was a massive tax cut which primarily benefited large corporations and wealthy Americans. No matter how anyone tries to sugar-coat it, his entire administration has been about class and gender warfare and keeping non-whites out of the country.

The pollsters say this election will be decided by women, since most of the contested House seats will be decided in affluent suburbs. I wondered in 2016 how so many women could bring themselves to vote for Trump. His treatment of women, personally, and his disdain for their rights in general couldn’t have been clearer. We’re told now by those same pollsters that many women who voted for Trump in 2016 regret doing so, and several million angry women are a powerful force to reckon with.

But we also know low voter turnout among minorities, especially African Americans in urban areas, are probably what won the election for Trump in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida. Will history repeat itself? Will only three of every eight eligible voters turn out tomorrow? That would be a disaster for our democracy.

It’s up to all of us. Early voting numbers suggest that we may do better this time. Already, the number of people who have voted this year is a third of the total who voted in 2016. Both sides claim that heavy turnouts will benefit them, but this isn’t about sides.

I believe this is the most important election of my lifetime, and I’ve been voting since 1961. If Americans do not turn out in huge numbers, it could be a catastrophic blow to our two-party system. And if Democrats and Independents stay home they will  dangerously increase the power of a megalomaniacal president who seems intent on undermining the safeguards in our Constitution.

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Hatemongering is Not What Made America Great

Posted on November 2, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 2, 2018

When I began America the Beautiful, I selected the maxim “Dedicated to preserving what has made America great.” It wasn’t intended to be subtle. The truth is, I hate blogs. But I hate hypocrisy and anything else that denigrates our country even more. So I bit the bullet and somehow, I’ve managed to publish 160 articles since Trump was inaugurated.

I’m old enough to have followed Donald Trump’s career ever since he forced himself into the public eye, and I despised everything he stood for long before he was either a politician or a Republican. For Donald Trump to have adopted “Make America Great Again” as his campaign slogan was pure chutzpah, (which probably demonstrates that whatever else he is, he’s not anti-Semitic.) It’s no surprise to me that he doesn’t know America’s greatness had nothing to with ideas like winning at any cost, putting money above everything else, or bulldozing his way through life without a moral center.

I know what made America great. So do you. I grew up in New York in the years after World War 2, believing we were the greatest country in the world, and carrying that feeling with me ever since. We weren’t perfect by any means, but I never doubted that we were the best.

I knew we had just saved Europe from the Nazis, and we’d been the principal driving force in ending Imperial Japan’s brutal domination of Asia. I also knew we’d taken the task of rebuilding Europe and Japan after the war on our own shoulders. We were the only country in the world with the resources to accomplish that and we did it willingly and generously. We were admired by people all over the world, and as Donald Trump has pointed out in his uniquely twisted way, they all wanted to come here.

We let them come, as we had done for two hundred years before that because we knew that once it had been our own grandparents who came here, and it was their work and commitment that had made America great. Despite what Donald Trump screams at his rallies, the people who come here seeking better lives for their families are not losers. They’re the strong ones, the ones with the courage to leave everything they’ve known all their lives and strike out, often with little more than the shirts on their backs. They’re the ones that come here and sacrifice everything for their children’s future.

We had our own problems back then. Immigrants were called Micks and Wops and Kikes and Niggers and Spics and Gooks, but they came anyway and for the most part became the backbone on which our prosperity grew. Is there something wrong with me for having to take a deep breath every time I fly over the Statue of Liberty or drive within sight of it?

My generation struggled to overcome its demons. We desegregated our schools and passed laws to help people rise out of poverty and get decent educations. We weren’t always successful, but we made human rights a part of the face we showed the world, and we were revered for it. We’ve made mistakes and we’ve sometimes let greed shape our futures. Those flaws almost brought us down a couple of times but we’re still here and better for the lessons we learned.

So I absolutely reject the politics of hatemongering. As despicable as Donald Trump seemed to me in the past, with his unethical business practices and lack of respect for the truth, his involvement with organized crime bosses, and his disregard for everyone who was hurt by his business scams (have you seen Atlantic City, NJ recently?) nothing prepared me for what I’ve seen in his presidency.

Stock market rallies come and go, but morality and integrity once lost are forever tarnished. Trump’s disgraceful behavior leading up to next week’s election and the even more disgraceful failure of his own party to hold him accountable are the antithesis of what made us great.

What’s most interesting is that Trump has come out of the closet. He doesn’t even pretend any more. All that matters to him is winning, so he’s spending the final week stoking up the racist elements of his base, spewing lies and filth and hate wherever he goes. It’s nauseating, and it’s what we must become if we don’t put a stop to it.

Barack Obama held a rally in Miami today. He was greeted by pro-Trump goons doing everything they could to disrupt his message. Whatever you think of Obama’s presidency, and I had many disagreements with the things he did, today he reminded us of what it means to be a Mensch, that is, the opposite of Donald Trump. He didn’t call anyone names. He just went on talking about love and unity the way he always has.

In the end we usually get what we deserve.  We took our eyes off the ball in 2016, and we’ve paid for it with a huge chunk of our national soul. We can fix that simply by voting. If we don’t we may slip so far down the slope we’re on that we won’t ever get back up.

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What Hath Trump Wrought?

Posted on October 29, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 29, 2018

As you contemplate how you will vote this year, keep in mind that President Trump has characterized this election as a referendum on him. Of course it is. In Trumpland, everything is about him. Let’s go with that and look at the facts.

Trump and his Republican dominated Congress passed what the president called the largest tax cut in history for the middle class. But a recent poll commissioned by the Republican National Committee found that an overwhelming majority of voters believe by more than two to one that the tax cuts benefit the wealthy instead of average Americans. Only you know how it affected your taxes, but what you may not know is that as a result of the tax cuts, the gross federal debt increased by $1.25 trillion in FY 2018, and in FY 2019, which began on October 1st, the federal deficit is expected to increase from $779 billion to $984 billion.

The unemployment rate has continued the decline that began during the Obama administration and is now at a twenty-year low, but from September 2017 to September 2018, real average hourly earnings increased by only 0.4 percent, before inflation. And the stock market boom that was attributed to Trump’s election is over. On January 1, 2018 the S&P 500 index, the single best indicator of the strength of US industry, stood at 2790. When the markets closed on October 26, it was 2659. That’s a drop of 4.7%.

Under Trump’s tax law, your personal tax cuts will decrease each year until they disappear in 2026, and by then, the government may have no choice but to severely cut Social Security and Medicare to avoid insolvency. Trump’s actions have already increased health insurance premiums for millions. Decide for yourself whether, on balance, all that is positive or negative.

We have lived for more than three years in the moral vacuum of Trump’s rhetoric of hate and division. He has raised the national level of anger and mistrust to levels not seen since the darkest days of the Vietnam War. While I’m sure that Trump, personally, is neither racist nor anti-semitic, he continues to pander to White Supremacists, religious bigots, and right wing conspiracy advocates. He also accepts no responsibility for the results of his rabble rousing. Despite provoking rage and feverish discord at every opportunity, he would have us believe that the explosive divisions in our country are the fault of the media.

I don’t believe that, and neither do most Americans. Acts of violence by mentally unstable people have been with us for decades. In the past we’ve wrung our hands about the availability of guns and a health care system that mostly ignores the mentally ill, and then watched in horror as our lawmakers said, “Guns don’t kill, people do,” and made no attempt to solve either problem. Over time we’ve come to accept that these randomly occurring events were part of life, and hoped we wouldn’t be among the victims next time.

But it’s different, now. Today, Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager was the latest Trump sycophant to claim that the president’s rhetoric is not responsible for the recent spate of violence. But we know better, don’t we? There was nothing random or accidental about what happened last week. Three horrifying acts of domestic terrorism in one week, just as Trump turned up the hate volume at his Nazi-style rallies leading up to the election cannot possibly be unrelated to the president’s behavior.

Three violent acts by deranged individuals charged with rage until they suddenly reached the breaking point all at the same time should have the same effect on us as fire alarms and air raid sirens. We’ve been broken for a long time, but Donald Trump has exposed every crack and fissure in our national psyche and exploited it. He has magnified them until he created a monster and then looked away and claimed it wasn’t his fault.

Of course it’s his fault. Is it a coincidence that every person on the current mad bomber’s list was someone targeted by Trump at his rallies? Is there no relationship between a professed racist suddenly acting out his rage against black people in a Louisville supermarket and Trump’s refusal to condemn proponents of racism because it would cost him their votes?

And in the very same week, when another mentally ill loser decided to kill people in Pittsburgh just because they were Jewish, in the midst of the president’s constant verbal attacks against everyone outside his base, these events cannot be unrelated. When the Jewish community in Pittsburgh, having suffered this tragic loss, said the president was unwelcome there until he clearly and positively refuted the causes of racism and neo-Naziism, they spoke for all of us.

We’ve had enough of Trump’s false platitudes and self-serving hate-mongering. When I cast my ballot on the first day of early voting in Maryland last week, every box I marked was in the knowledge that Trump’s shadow was on it. He’ll be there when you vote, too.

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Inciter in Chief

Posted on October 25, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 15, 2018

Since the day he announced his candidacy for president, Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked the media. His initial attacks were completely unprovoked, as all of the major cable news channels devoted far more airtime to his campaign than anyone else’s. Those long, raucous rallies he conducted were covered live from start to finish with virtually no commentary.

Leading up to the 2016 primary elections, the media were united in their criticism of Trump’s campaign tactics – yes, even Fox News. Fox was the voice of the Republican establishment, and Trump was threatening to turn it upside down. When the media began criticizing Trump it was because of his divisiveness, his pandering to the most negative elements of our society, and his demonstrated attitude toward women. Also because millions of Americans old enough to remember World War II and its aftermath still cringed at the striking similarity between Trump’s rhetoric of hate and anger and that of Adolf Hitler during his rise to power.

Today, the same Donald Trump who last week re-enacted the criminal assault of a Congressional candidate in Montana against a reporter claiming, “He’s my kind of man,” has the unmitigated gall to blame the climate of anger in our country on the media. I could fill pages recounting the times Trump encouraged his rabid, screaming supporters to punch protesters in the face, throw people out bodily, lock up his opponent, accuse Mexicans of being rapists and murderers, even suggesting that Senator Ted Cruz’s father was somehow involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy – the list is endless.

When Trump was recently asked if he regretted anything he’d said or done, he said, “I don’t regret anything. It all worked out, didn’t it?” All that mattered to him was that he won.

The truth is that President Trump is the chief inciter of violence in this country. He refused to condemn the White Supremacist march in Charlottesville, and he has consistently defended everyone accused of violence against women. He demonizes Muslims, lies outrageously, and peddles fear wherever he goes. When he’s done stoking anger at his rallies, the crowds sound like lynch mobs.

The majority of Americans, even many who support his policies are horrified by his demeanor and lack of a moral center. Our country has become a tinderbox that threatens to explode into violence at the merest provocation. It undeniably divides families and destroys friendships. The question today is whether the climate of hate and anger Trump has created contributed to the actions of the people who mailed bombs to two former presidents and at least seven other people, every one of whom was specifically targeted by the President’s vitriol.

A Trump supporter I spoke to yesterday compared the current acts of terrorism to the shooting of Representative Steve Scalise and others during a Congressional baseball practice last year. He argued that that attack was the act of a crazed liberal, and that attributing the actions of the current mad bomber to Trump was simply exaggerated bias on my part. I’m sure most of Trump’s base agrees with him, but common sense says otherwise.

Do I believe the bombs were part of some plot dreamed up by Trump’s staff? Of course not. But I and many others have said from the beginning of our Donald Trump nightmare that his behavior as a role model was a danger to our country. Mailing bombs isn’t the act of one insane individual with a grudge. It is a carefully planned attempt to either kill or terrorize a specific list of people the president has identified as enemies.

The real question is: has our president’s rhetoric of hate and divisiveness created a climate in which terrible acts of violence are more likely to occur? We’ve all heard people we love and respect erupt with a level of anger and rage that shocked us when the subject was Donald Trump. Most of those people were not prone to violence, but what about the millions who are less stable? Given the level of untreated mental illness in our country, how many people who are unbalanced to begin with hear our president inciting violence against specific individuals or institutions and interpret that as permission if not outright encouragement to do violence?

I believe the terrorist actions of whoever sent those bombs were inevitable in this climate. Trump may not have intentionally encouraged those bombs, but he very deliberately created an atmosphere in which one spark could set them off. His narcissistic lust for power and his willingness to win at any cost make him culpable.

Trump has been telling the crowds at his rallies to vote as if he were on the ballot on November 6th. In that, I agree with him. Get off your butt and vote as if your life depended on it, because it very well may.

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Waves (Blue, Red or Purple)

Posted on October 21, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 21, 2018

For the next few weeks it will be impossible to watch or listen to news or social media and not be reminded that there’s an election on November 6th. Many millions of dollars will be spent on making sure we hear everyone’s opinion about who deserves our votes.

While the various media are the recipients of all that money, I do not believe they are our enemy. I don’t watch either Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow because I’m not interested in their one-sided spin on every issue. But even being selective in the news and opinions we expose ourselves to doesn’t shield us from the constant bombardment of psychological propaganda.

Some of it is purely political. Every media outlet uses the ploy of balanced panel debates, and most of them are simply tedious. Allowing extremists on both sides of the spectrum to shout at each other on TV isn’t balanced reporting. They’re all paid “contributors,” which means their primary job is to increase ratings so sponsors will pay more.

Because it’s more subtle, sometimes almost subliminal in nature, the commercialization of the media is more insidious than flooding the airwaves and the internet with fanatical opinions. We can ignore Hannity and Maddow because it’s easy to identify what they stand for. It’s far more difficult to avoid being influenced by the insinuating hype practiced by every news outlet.

In the months and weeks leading up to the election, which is thankfully only sixteen days away, we’ve been bombarded by predictions and graphic representations of blue waves, red waves, and purple waves. We’re presented with projections based on nonsense like the notion that off-year elections in a president’s first term always go against the administration. Specific groups of voters are being targeted, warned that if they don’t turn out in sufficient numbers all will be lost.

I’d prefer that the media treat us like adults with functioning brains. We all need to take this seriously and think. People who don’t realize this is one of the most pivotal elections in our history might as well not vote. If they’re as tuned-out as that, their votes would be at best uninformed, and at worst simply reflect the last thing they saw on social media before they voted. I don’t believe in voter suppression, but we’d be better off if those people stayed home.

If women haven’t yet figured out that our president is not their friend, if Hispanics choose to sit out the election as the media warn they might, and if African Americans and immigrants haven’t yet figured out that Trump’s main concern is what’s best for wealthy, white America, it’s on them. The best we can do is to try to convince all Americans that it’s up to them to defend our democratic principles and our commitment to human rights.

We get a chance to change directions every two years. The idea that if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem applies to all of us. We heard it from the Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver in the 1960s, and fifty years later from Paul Ryan when he was running for Vice President. They were both right.

Last year, I lost count of how many people complained to me about Trump’s behavior as president. Ironically, most of them either didn’t vote at all or refused to vote for either Trump or Clinton. I hope they all realize that they were part of the problem in 2016. If you don’t hold your Senator, Representative, or Governor accountable for their actions or inactions on November 6th, you forfeit your right to bitch about the outcome. I certainly don’t want to hear it.

This year thirty-four states and the District of Columbia allow “no-excuse” early voting, three states have “all mail-in voting,” and the rest permit absentee voting by mail. If you don’t vote you really have no excuse. If your state doesn’t allow early voting or mail-in only voting, it’s up to you to make sure they do next time. Being restricted to a single day on which illness, indisposition, family problems or weather can prevent you from voting simply amounts to voting rights suppression, whether or not it’s intentional.

My state is one that allows early voting. I intend to vote on the first day I can. Will you?

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The Saudi Cesspool

Posted on October 19, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 19. 2018

For as long as I can remember, the Saudi Royal Family have been racist, misogynistic, elitists who care only about wealth and power. They are ruthless and cruel, and no friend of the United States except in the sense of mutual profiteering and the Arab tradition of “the enemy of my enemy.” With an economy almost entirely based on the West’s unquenchable thirst for oil, Saudi Arabia is a country that would be insignificant if not for its huge, untapped reserves.

On its face, the apparent murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who wrote for the Washington Post while residing in Virginia, is an awful crime. It’s the sort of act that violates local and international laws, and the diplomatic protocols that protect journalists everywhere. Rarely has the international community been in such tacit agreement that a horrendous crime was committed and its perpetrators need to be severely punished – slam dunk, right?

It might have been if the Khashoggi case were actually about law, human rights, and respecting journalistic integrity. As the guilty Saudis scrambled to invent a narrative that trod the precarious line between implicating the Royal Family and finding a scapegoat to sacrifice, President Trump made it clear that he would oppose any action that might damage his relationship with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

We’ve heard things like this from Trump before when he or someone he liked was credibly accused of wrongdoing. Whether it was his corrupt Cabinet officers or Roy Moore or Brett Kavanaugh, or accusations of his own sexual misconduct or possible involvement with Russia, Trump played the innocent-until-proven-guilty card repeatedly whenever he was invested in the outcome.

In the Khashoggi case, Trump even invented a rogue killer theory as an unsubtle wink to the Crown Prince, while maintaining there was no reason to cancel a $150 billion arms deal that’s still in the works with the Saudis, because it would hurt American companies and cost American jobs. I had the same knee-jerk response I usually have when Trump invents a fantasy based on alternate facts, but this time I couldn’t go there.

For once, Trump is telling the truth, and the fact that it’s a very ugly truth that we’d rather not face doesn’t make his point of view any less valid. Decades of allowing corporate greed to slow our path toward energy independence has left us squarely over the same barrel we were hung up on during the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-4. Forty-five years have passed since then, when we could have been maximizing development of renewable energy and protecting our environment in the bargain, instead of letting OPEC and the oil cartels determine our energy policies.

Another ugly truth is that in the horrific triangle that is Middle East politics, despite the likelihood that the nine-eleven attacks were funded by Saudi oil money, we chose Saudi Arabia as the Sunni bulwark against Shiite Iran. Thus we are backing the Saudis in their three-year war against the Shiite Houthis in Yemen, whose slogan is: “God is great, death to the US, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for Islam.” No wonder we’re on the side of the Saudis … except that the Saudi Royal Family said much the same thing when Israel was created by the UN’s partitioning of Palestine in 1948.

The Saudis were still saying it when we re-supplied the Israeli military in 1973 after a couple of Arab-Israeli wars; the Royal Family was the driving force behind the Oil Embargo. To illustrate how convoluted our relationship with the Saudis is, there were reports in both the Arab and Israeli press in 2015 that Israel had offered its Iron Dome technology to protect Riyadh from Yemeni missile attacks.

The strains on U.S. bilateral relations with Saudi Arabia over the “contradictory demands of unflinching support for Israel and the preservation of close ties to the Arab oil-producing monarchies” were made more complicated by the 1979 Shiite revolution in Iran. When Trump broke with our European allies and withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, our entanglement with the Saudi Royal Family became even more strangling.

With our mid-term elections eighteen days away, many in Congress are grandstanding against the president’s reluctance to punish the Royal Family for its obvious involvement in Khashoggi’s murder. Their anger is fueled by Trump’s relentless attacks on the press as the enemy of the people, which they view as enabling the Saudis to eliminate a journalist whose writings made them uncomfortable. The result is that the legal and moral implications of Khashoggi’s murder are submerged so deeply in our domestic politics and our complicated foreign policy agenda as to be unrecognizable.

But unless the Congress forces Trump’s hand, when the smoke clears, the despicable Saudis will continue with business as usual. There are a couple of ways to look at that. You might say we can’t fight sewer rats without getting down in the sewer and just shrug it all off. Or you can recognize that we’re locked in a Faustian bargain with the Royal Family, and as Faust learned, the Devil always wins.

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Trump is on the 2018 Ballot

Posted on October 15, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 15, 2018

Ever since Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president he has made it clear that he has no respect for the Federal Reserve Board and the economic models they use to maintain a stable economic environment. It was thus no surprise when he went on a rant about the “crazy interest rate hike” last week or that he displayed complete ignorance about it. He believes that only he drives the markets – how dare the Fed take its role seriously? His main concern is the mid-term election and the harm a falling stock market might cause to Republicans. The modest hits to stock prices last week will be forgotten by Election Day.

What should not be forgotten is the importance of this election for everyone who believes that there’s more to maintaining America’s greatness than healthy stock prices. Take the rule of law, for example. We are continually reminded that our president has a very different view of that than most Americans.

The case of the mysterious disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi national who has been writing for the Washington Post and living in the United States is almost a microcosm of what most Americans find abhorrent about Trump. As we have seen repeatedly, our President considers denial of accusations to be proof of innocence. As a devotee of the Roy Cohn Philosophy of Jurisprudence, Trump has always relied on denial as proof of his own innocence, whether he was in court defending himself against charges of fraud and corrupt business practices or in the court of public opinion against credible accusations of sexual misconduct by nearly twenty women.

We saw it in his defense of Brett Kavanaugh, his unwillingness to deal with corrupt Cabinet members, and again today. Trump seems to unquestioningly accept Saudi King Salman’s “very strong denial” that his government had nothing to do with Khashoggi’s disappearance despite mounting intelligence that Saudi operatives had him killed. With the whole world listening, Trump endorsed Salman’s alternate theory that Khashoggi was the victim of rogue killers. One has to wonder if they’re related to the four-hundred pound man in a bathtub who Trump suggested was the real hacker who interfered with our election in 2016. Given Vladimir Putin’s denial of Russian responsibility, any other explanation was preferable.

Equally disturbing are the other issues raised by the Khashoggi case. Khashoggi was an unabashed critic of the Saudi government’s policies, much like the journalists and media outlets Trump refers to as enemies of the people. Is that why he is so willing to accept the King’s denial? This is the same King Salman who unequivocally denied Saudi involvement in the nine-eleven attacks. Robert W. Jordan, our ambassador to Saudi Arabia at the time, said this morning that today’s denials are no more credible than the one’s he made back then.

This case is also an example of the degree to which Trump scoffs at the notion of America taking the moral high ground in world affairs. He claims that punishing Saudi Arabia by canceling our massive arms deal with them would hurt American jobs and defense contractors, while many, including our European allies and Ambassador Jordan suggest that the only action necessary would be withholding shipments of spare parts, which would quickly ground the Saudi Air Force. That’s the same Air Force that is accused of bombing civilians in Yemen, which Trump excuses as an unfortunate consequence of the ongoing battle against Iran.

The same president who has repeatedly accused our allies of acting against our interests and has unleashed a massive trade war, primarily against China, suddenly fears that punishing Saudi Arabia in any meaningful way would weaken our ability to counter Iran. That simply makes no sense. It’s more likely that Trump’s financial involvement with the Saudi Royal family plays a large role in this decision, much the way many people suspect his financial entanglements with Russian oligarchs seem to always give Putin and Russia a free pass.

As our election nears, these are the things Americans need to be concerned about. Trump has shown an uncanny ability to intimidate his own party, which makes their control of Congress a real peril for our nation. Our Constitution was built on checks and balances which are in serious danger of being permanently undermined. The most important thing Americans who care about our nation’s future can do in this election is assure that there is a strong, loyal opposition to a president who would prefer to act without any restraint.

Trump loves to tell voters that he is on the ballot this year, and he’s right. There’s nothing more critical at stake than the restoration of a vital two-party system.

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Presumption of Innocence

Posted on October 5, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 4, 2018

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a classic speech this morning. He’s at his most eloquent spewing political spin disguised as high-sounding principle. In this case, he was making the innocent-until-proven-guilty defense of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Presumption of innocence is one of the pillars on which our system of justice is based, and the one that most set us apart from our European forbears two hundred and fifty years ago. No less than Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have said, “it is better one hundred guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.”

Christine Blasey Ford delivered heartfelt testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, in which she accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were both in high school. Despite the fact that a sizable majority of Americans believed Ford, without corroborating evidence, it’s doubtful that Kavanaugh could be convicted in a court of law based on what she told the Senate. That’s not surprising given the history of the way our law enforcement and legal systems have treated sexual assaults against women and the fact that the alleged attack occurred thirty-six years ago.

But the controversy triggered by Ford’s testimony isn’t about whether Judge Kavanaugh could go to prison; it’s about whether he’s fit to serve for decades on the Supreme Court. It’s also not about entitlement. No one, no matter how talented or hard-working can claim a seat on the Court as a birthright. It’s also not about him being uniquely qualified. Even President Trump said Kavanaugh was merely one of twenty-five highly qualified candidates on his short list.

Kavanaugh’s likely confirmation is also not about the ordeal the process has put him and his family through. Anyone who stands before Congress for a critical position in the government understands the game he’s involved in. If Kavanaugh’s not confirmed, I won’t feel any more sympathy for him than I did for Tom Brady when his New England Patriots failed to win the Super Bowl or for Bryce Harper when his World Series-bound team imploded around him. They’re all big boys who are worth millions.

What this is about − the only thing it’s about − is what is best for our country. McConnell claims Kavanaugh should be viewed as innocent because it cannot be proved with certainty that he’s guilty. But is that a high enough bar for a Supreme Court Justice?

If fifty Senators vote to confirm him, their motives will be anything but pure. They all have political baggage, bases to please, and overarching desires to be re-elected. For some, Kavanaugh represents an extension of the judicial philosophy that ruled large corporations have the same status as people, and since “political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment,” they cannot be limited in their spending in support of political candidates. For others, he represents the hope that Roe v Wade will be overturned, and for still others, his conservative values equate to support for the super-rich in the never-ending battle over entitlements and transfer of wealth.

Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate told us a lot more about him than whether he was guilty of sexual assault. He revealed himself to be unable to control his rage or to keep from being verbally abusive to members of the Committee. Worse he displayed a partisan anger that sounded like the beginning of a vendetta against Democrats that could affect his legal opinions for years. He proudly announced that had written every word of his remarks himself the day before, which means they weren’t just the product of an over-emotional temper tantrum. They were carefully thought out and reviewed over a period of at least eighteen hours, and as such represent a uniquely clear look into his soul.

Today, as the confirmation vote nears, and after doubling down on his defense of himself all week, Kavanaugh finally realized he needed to apologize for both his tone and his words. Even if his apology was sincere, if anything it only the underlined the inappropriateness of his belligerence and highly partisan political leanings. Many of his initial supporters, including two retired Justices have withdrawn their support for him based on what he revealed about himself during his testimony. If Kavanaugh’s rant before the Committee felt eerily familiar, President Trump’s disgusting mockery of Professor Ford during a rally in Mississippi a few days ago was a disheartening reminder of who he sounded like.

And speaking of our loutish president, let’s not forget what the confirmation vote will really be about. Kavanaugh was selected from that short list of twenty-five because of his extensive writings on the limits of presidential power and presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. As Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s activities draw to a close, the issue of whether Trump or his family members can be charged with crimes is almost certain to be heard by the Court. When that happens, do we want someone like Brett Kavanaugh casting the deciding vote?

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Senator Jeff Flake

Posted on September 29, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 29, 2018

Opinions abound concerning Senator Jeff Flake’s (R, Arizona) motivations. Yesterday, he forced Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, Kentucky) to allow a one-week delay in the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to fill the Supreme Court seat currently held by Anthony Kennedy.

Women’s rights activists criticize him because despite making speeches about Donald Trump’s lack of respect for truth and what Flake considers the president’s generally immoral behavior, he votes with Trump 95% of the time. Trump supporters call Flake a disgruntled lame duck Senator who was rightly forced to give up his seat by the president he attacked, while many Conservatives and Independents who dislike Trump view Flake as an honest man whose conservative principles and Mormon values guide his decisions.

In August 2017 I posted an article titled Conservative Values. I had read Senator Flake’s book, The Conscience of a Conservative, and came away from it with a revelation of sorts. It was no coincidence that he named his book after one written by Barry Goldwater almost sixty years earlier. Flake wears the mantle of a latter day Goldwater, even having served as the Executive Director of the Goldwater Institute.

I never expected to find common ground with his values, but politics aside, I was in complete agreement with Flake’s governing principles. I found his book honest and sincere, the work of a man who believes in bipartisanism and integrity in government. I disagreed with the way he voted most of the time, but never with his conduct as a Senator.

Flake was inclined to support Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination based on his writings and decisions, which seemed to be aligned with his own ideology. But he strongly opposed the hyper-partisanship of Mitch McConnell and the other Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee, and said that confirming a Justice that way denigrated the integrity of the Court and undermined the confidence of everyday Americans.

I was watching the hearings when the Committee voted 11-10 along party lines to move Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate. Chris Coons (D, Delaware) had just completed a speech imploring his colleagues to wait until the FBI could investigate the allegations against Kavanaugh. He’d spoken softly and compellingly, but Chairman Grassley forged ahead with the vote, during which Flake, to the dismay of millions, voted with the majority.

After the vote, while Grassley was preparing to adjourn, Senator Flake quietly left his seat, walked behind the Chairman, and tapped Senator Coons on the shoulder, after which they left the  room together. The torment on Flake’s face and the body language of the two men made it clear that something unexpected was about to occur.

Flake had decided to cross the aisle and force the majority to compromise. He wasn’t convinced Kavanaugh was innocent of the charges leveled against him and he felt the harm the divisiveness was doing to the country. He understood that it was important for the nation to accept Kavanaugh’s confirmation, and that that could only happen if the Senate ceased its attempts to force it through under a cloud of doubt and partisanship.

The subsequent confrontation between Flake and two women activists in an elevator has been seen by everyone who is not in a coma. Flake appeared devastated by it. If he still harbored doubts about his decision, that encounter silenced them, and he issued his ultimatum to his party’s leadership. Say what you will about his lame duck status. Flake’s action was exactly what the country needed. If there was ever a perfect example of putting the nation ahead of politics, that was it.

Will an FBI investigation change the outcome? Given the vagaries of memory and the thirty-six years that have elapsed since the alleged assault on Professor Ford, I doubt that anything conclusive will be found no matter how thoroughly the FBI does its job, but the facts will be out in the open.

I absolutely believed Professor Ford’s testimony, but it’s possible that they were both telling the truth as they remembered it. If Kavanaugh was as drunk as Ford claimed, he might well not recall the incident, but whether or not we ever know for sure what really happened in that room, we’re learning other things. We saw the raw hatred and rage Kavanaugh feels toward Democrats, which raises questions about whether he can ever be an apolitical Justice.

It’s clear that he misrepresented the choir boy image of himself during his high school and college years, and we’re already learning more about who Judge Kavanaugh really is as people who know him come forward to testify. Confirmed or not, the country will know who he is when the process concludes.

We can thank Senator Flake for that. The country desperately needed someone to step up yesterday, and Flake did. I’m going to miss his voice in the Senate.

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The Morning After

Posted on September 28, 2018 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 28, 2018

Yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court came off yesterday pretty much the way Chairman Chuck Grassley intended. There were no witnesses other than Professor Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh. None of the eleven white male members of the Committee questioned Professor Ford directly; instead, Rachel Mitchell, a professional prosecutor with a long history of trying sexual assault cases addressed all questions on their behalf.

There were some positive differences in style between the Kavanaugh hearing and the Clarence Thomas hearing of 1991. Professor Ford was treated respectfully, and Ms. Mitchell addressed her with professional calm and sensitivity, but then, Mitchell was there to assure that no Republican Senator could say anything that might be taken as offensive to women. They were simply muzzled.

Except for those differences, the hearing was a replay of 1991. Anita Hill was a credible, sympathetic witness back then, and Professor Ford was even more so, yesterday. Even the Republican members of the Committee acknowledged her sincerity and admitted that her testimony was believable. No one accused her of lying outright, but all of their other words and actions suggested as much without saying it directly.

The partisan nature of the confirmation process mirrored everything else the current Congress has done. We’re used to extreme partisanship, but we’ve never seen it so starkly exposed in a Supreme Court confirmation proceeding as we have this week. In 1991, the Democrats held a 57-43 majority in the Senate, while Justice Thomas was the choice of a Republican president. The final confirmation vote was close, 52-48, but it was notably bipartisan with eleven Democrats voting for confirmation and two Republicans voting against.

There was one aspect of yesterday’s hearing that I found absolutely chilling. Like Justice Thomas, Judge Kavanaugh forcefully defended himself against charges of sexual misconduct, sometimes quoting Justice Thomas verbatim. But where Thomas was disciplined and calm in his defense, Kavanaugh raged like a caged animal. Whether his fury was genuine or a well-rehearsed act, it showed a side of him that made many people, myself included, question whether he would be capable of reasoned decision making when something angered him.

Justice Thomas spent his time addressing his accuser and the allegations against him. Whether we believed him or Dr. Hill in 1991, he at least responded directly to the charges. Judge Kavanaugh spent the majority of his time in a partisan rant against Democrats, attacking Senator Feinstein (D, California) for rigging the process against him, and even accusing Democrats of seeking revenge on behalf of the Clintons because of his decades-old work with Independent Counsel Ken Starr. It was abundantly clear that his anger against Democrats was the primary motivation for his remarks.

Even highly conservative justices like Antonin Scalia, who imposed their ideology on dozens of decisions, never expressed the kind of partisan wrath and anger that was the entire substance of Kavanaugh’s response. Whatever else you may think of Kavanaugh, did his remarks before the Committee yesterday sound like the kind of reasoned Justice you want on the Supreme Court? Until yesterday, I was resigned to the likely inevitability of his confirmation. But yesterday, he scared me. His testimony sounded like Donald Trump at one of his staged campaign rallies, and I fear he will take his partisan anger with him to the Court.

As expected, the hearing ended with no input from professional investigators or any witnesses other than the accuser and the accused. Everyone knew at the outset that like the Clarence Thomas hearing this one would end with no clear outcome. With the possible exception of Senator Flake, the Committee would be evenly deadlocked along party lines. Flake could have derailed the nomination process simply by not voting with the other Republicans to send the nomination to the full Senate, but he announced this morning that he will vote in support of Judge Kavanaugh. I wish he’d gone the other way, but I believe he acted with integrity.

So we’re back where we were when Mitch McConnell tried to force a bad health care bill through the Senate. The Republicans have a razor-thin majority, and once again the decision will come down to two women, Lisa Murkowski (R, Alaska) and Susan Collins (R, Maine). I don’t envy them. They will be relentlessly hounded by the president until the final vote, and they will have to decide based on a seriously broken and partisan process.

Personally, I still believe that President Trump’s motivation in nominating Judge Kavanaugh was that he believes it will insulate him from the findings of the Mueller investigation. That’s unfair to Judge Kavanaugh, because we really don’t know how he’d rule if the Special Counsel finds that the President should be charged with crimes, but that obvious bias taints Kavanaugh’s nomination. The Trump administration has shown a reckless disregard for the rule of law since day one. It’s not surprising that that stench may now spread to the Supreme Court itself.

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