Easy Sunday: Take a break from the election

Ten days until the election. It is a moment of anticipation and dread.

It is like waiting for the pathology report.

Let's get away for two minutes to a time 21 years ago. A young girl was struggling to sing the National Anthem at a Portland Blazers game. The Blazer coach stepped over to rescue her. It is the oldest trope in Western literature. The good guys on the home team rescue a young woman in distress. This time it wasn't Agamemnon and Achilles. It was Maurice Cheeks.

I am going to resist overthinking this. Nor will I relate it to the election, nor liken it to the impermanence of bright red leaves on the tree, nor make it a metaphor of anything. I am going to try to ignore whether the event models parenthood or masculinity, whether it demonstrates the power of social cooperation, or whether it is a comment on patriarchy, good or bad. 

Let's just dedicate this easy Sunday post to people who can just take a quiet moment to enjoy a simple gift when one comes along.

CLICK HERE

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Looking at the Rubicon

Chris Christie condemns Donald Trump, saying he is a danger to America and the world.

He doesn't want to say he will vote for Kamala Harris.

Christie, laying into Trump in New Hampshire

Guest post author Rick Millward says Chris Christie is "All MAGA, No Hat." Christie talks big but he won't cross the Rubicon. He won't openly say he will vote for Harris.

There is a difference between letting something happen and causing it to happen. In hypotheticals to test ethical principles, people typically say they favor an outcome where a locomotive heading toward a fork in the tracks takes the direction where it kills only a single schoolchild rather than the track where it mows down 20. But if asked whether one would intentionally murder that one child as the mechanism to divert the locomotive from hitting the 20, people feel differently. Me murder the child? No, not that. They want it to happen, but not by their agency.

Christie wants Trump to go down, but not by his hand.

Rick Millward is a musician, song writer, and music producer. He moved to Southern Oregon from Nashville. He performs primarily in wine venues in Southern Oregon.

Guest Post by Rick Millward

All MAGA, no Hat?

Today I watched Chris Christie on "The View." I listened to a long critique of Trump that included “I don’t disagree with what others are saying.” That's what he said when reminded that other Republicans said Trump was a fascist. Christie didn't not want to say it himself. He wanted one degree of separation. To their credit, the hosts asked him directly if he would endorse the vice president, and his answer was: “She hasn’t convinced me yet.”

Wow, Chris, really? How disappointing. I actually expected him to endorse Kamala Harris, and what better venue than "The View?"

What more does he or any “good” Republican need to know? Christie took every opportunity for the last year to diss Trump. Christie blamed Trump for their election losses in 2018, 2020, and 2022, noting that Trump picks his candidates based purely on loyalty, not experience or electability. Christie doesn't mince words:

 *** Referring to Trump having diverted campaign contributions into payments of his legal fees, he called Trump "the cheapest S.O.B. I've ever met in my life." 

***Christie said, “He’s becoming crazier. And now he’s citing Vladimir Putin as a character witness, a guy who is a murderous thug all around the world.”

*** Christie said, "He’s disgusting. And what he’s doing is dog-whistling to Americans."  

*** Reacting to a Trump video mocking his weight, Christie said, “It just renewed in my own mind what a child he is. He’s a baby.”

Christie said, “I think character is destiny for this country, and we’ve got to make a decision about what the character of the person should be who sits behind the desk in the Oval Office.”

All this, and some praise for the vice president as well, and yet no endorsement of her? Every day the list of “good” Republicans grows. It began with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and is now in the hundreds; It includes elected officials, Trump cabinet members and White House staff, and military officers -- people who saw Trump up close and say they endorse Harris' election.

Perhaps Christie has some hope for a political future inside the GOP that would be lost if he ever stepped over the line and urged voters to support a Democrat. While many have finally gone through the five stages to acceptance of the death of the Republican Party, far more are still at the bargaining stage. Christie is somewhere on the journey. Christie knows that if the Republican Party is to be reformed, it must include the banishment of Trump and MAGA. This purging won’t happen if Trump is elected, and in fact will become impossible if these non-democratic forces become entrenched. Good Republicans have nothing to lose by voting for Democrats if they hope to restore sense to the GOP. 

The Lincoln Project, The Bulwark, and others believe the Republican Party is salvageable. That process begins with Trump losing this election. Trump loses because Harris wins; it is that simple. It is time for holdouts like Christie to say it, yes, they support Harris because that is how Trump loses, America wins, and the restoration of the GOP can begin.

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Eleven hundred and one Town Hall meetings

Ron Wyden met with Phoenix High School students in his 1,101st Town Hall since becoming a U.S. senator.

It took place in a meeting reserved for students and media.

Wyden, in front, sitting with students following the Town Hall

Wyden hears the Star Spangled Banner behind the Phoenix Pirates lectern

Wyden set an ambitious goal when he was elected to the Senate back in 1996. He said he would meet with citizens in every one of Oregon's 36 counties every single year. That promise meant that Wyden -- who lives in Portland and had represented a Portland-centered congressional district -- was committing himself to spending serious time well outside blue metropolitan Portland where most Oregon voters live. He would be hearing from people in lightly-populated rural districts, some of which vote three-to-one, four-to-one, and in the case of Lake County to the east of Medford, five-to-one for Trump. Ron Wyden is a Democrat.

A Wyden Town Hall in July in Medford was interrupted at its beginning by an organized group of six or eight audience members who stood up and began shouting while pacing around the meeting room reading from scripts. 

Their message was opposition to American support of Israel, but the primary intent was disruption, since each person was shouting out a different script. I wrote in a post the following day that I thought that after three to five minutes the large contingent of police on hand should have escorted them out. I considered their removal a way to protect free speech. (No one asked for my opinion.) The police did not remove them, the disruptive shouting continued, and the Town Meeting adjourned after a few minutes.

The protesters planned a return. They announced their intention by mass leafleting Phoenix High School on Wednesday and again yesterday prior to the 10 a.m. meeting. 

The School District saw the material and considered it disturbing enough that they went into a lockdown protect-the-students protocol that is now commonplace in this era of school shootings. The event was open to students but closed to the general public. I was able to attend. I wore lanyards with MEDIA and UpClose identification. I was granted entrance after going through locked doors and metal mesh gates in hallways that are open and closed by designated officials with coded buzzers. School architecture has changed into defensible spaces since I was in school. The main office for the school is locked, and entrance both in and out of that office requires that the door be activated by a person with a code.

The Town Hall itself was an engaging exchange with a high school audience primarily of juniors and seniors. The questions had an education and jobs focus. What is Wyden doing to help teachers? What are you doing to help young people going to college? What about student debt? What about mental health care for young people? 

There were questions, too, about broader public policy. A student asked: What about Israel, Palestine, and Gaza? Wyden said he had deep sympathy for Jewish mothers who lost children in the October 7 attack and for Palestinian mothers who lost children in Gaza. He said he favored a two-state solution. 

Wyden is adept at the format. He gives 30-to-60 second answers that directly address the question asked. He makes jokes familiar to people who have attended other Town Halls: his dashed dreams of being a college and NBA basketball star, his threat to give a long opening and closing address, and his request for softball questions. He bantered with audience members and asked a tall young man with a big U. of O. shirt about his plans to play basketball and study engineering. He stood for photos with teachers, students, and school board members.

This Town Hall was an adjustment from traditional formats of open-to-the-public, come-one-come all events. This Town Hall had more attendees than the one in July, but it was not the same. Wyden met at length at a public event at a Children's Museum ribbon-cutting event at the re-purposed Carnegie Library building in downtown Medford. It went off without trouble. Wyden is getting out there.

The threat of disruption demonstrates the fragility of democratic representation. Normally, Town Halls are unguarded and unfiltered opportunities for citizens to see their representatives. They take effort to set up; they are easy to disrupt.  A small group of people willing to shout can stop one meeting and intimidate a cautious school district into limiting attendance at another. 

This may become the new normal.

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So very cynical. Two ads

One ad tells Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan, that Kamala Harris is a Jew-loving supporter of Israel.

Another ad tells Jewish neighborhoods in Pennsylvania that Kamala Harris is an anti-Semite who panders to Palestine.

The ads are by the same PAC, with the same format, running at the same time. Today.

Elon Musk funded the ads.

The ads are startling for their cynicism, even in this cynical age. It isn't just the hypocrisy of the opposite messages. It is the damage the ads leave behind. The ads are straight-up appeals to bigotry.

This ad "Stands with Israel" runs in Michigan, in zip codes with significant populations of Muslims. 

 Ad narration:

Vice president Harris has chosen a side -- the right side. Harris has made herself clear: She stands with Israel and the Jewish people. And joining Kamala will be her husband and top advisor, Doug Emhoff, who would be the first Jewish presidential spouse ever. Kamala relies on her husband Doug for counsel on the toughest issues like Israel's noble fight against the radical terrorists in Gaza. And when Doug talks, Kamala listens. Kamala and Doug, America's pro-Israel power couple.

                                           ---   ---

Another ad, "Stands with Palestine," runs in Jewish neighborhoods in Pennsylvania. It accuses Harris of being the opposite of what it says in the Dearborn ad: 

Ad narration: 

Two-faced Kamala Harris is secretly campaigning for Palestine and trying to get away with it. In Jewish communities throughout America questions are being asked why is she is running ads pandering to Palestine Why did Kamala Harris support denying Israel the weapons needed to defeat the Hamas terrorists who massacred thousands? And why did Harris show sympathy for college protesters who are rabidly antisemitic? We must stand up to anti-Semitism. We say no more. Kamala Harris, stop pandering to Palestine and stand with our ally Israel.

The ads are funded by Future Coalition PAC. It's sole funder was another PAC, Build America's Future PAC, funded by Elon Musk.

The ad running in Dearborn doesn't assert that Doug Emhoff is pro-Israel, a matter of politics. The ad dangles in front of its audience that Emhoff is Jewish, a matter of identity. Harris is married to a Jew!

It is fair to ask me: Am I so new to politics, so naive, so delicate, that I am able to be surprised by this pairing of ads? Don't I realize that all's fair in love and political war? 

I surprised and dismayed. It is another erosion in our politics.

Future Coalition PAC could easily have disguised the fact that both ads were created by the same entity, and paid for the ads from different PACs. They didn't bother. They didn't mind their hypocrisy being immediately noticed -- two opposite messages. Cynical manipulation -- whether it be inventing a story of Haitian immigrants eating cats, or this pair of ads -- is a virtue now. One can admit it and be proud of doing so. Dishonesty and hypocrisy don't matter. 

Political total war has another consequence. It leaves the home battlefield in worse condition than before. This ad doesn't create anti-Semitism, but it feeds it. And the American public gets increasingly accustomed to being lied to.

Today is a mixed day for Elon Musk. Possibly some opprobrium sprinkles down on him for his involvement in this bit of damage to American politics. But it is also a day in which Tesla's shares rose on the announcement that profits beat expectations and his projection of 20% vehicle sales growth next year.  

Personally, I feel worse about Musk and Tesla. The content of those ads, and their pairing, just seems so wrong, so destructive. As I had written a month ago, I had looked forward to buying a Tesla for my next car. Now I am not. Musk has changed the meaning of the Tesla brand. There is an implied MAGA bumper strip on the car. There is a faint watermark of "I'm okay with a little anti-Semitism if it wins Michigan for Trump" on the rear window.

Musk and Tesla will do well without my purchase. Most people won't notice or care about the Musk overlay onto the brand. And there are plenty of anti-Semites and Trump supporters who will be okay with the implied badges.

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No do-over.

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
    Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward FitzGerald

Democrats are frustrated. Trump might win. How can Americans possibly vote into a position of power and trust a person of such obvious bad character and behavior?  

Democrats made mistakes. 

Democrats are getting the blame for inflation. It hurts them, but it is mostly a bad rap. It was the inevitable after-effect of Covid's disruptions and a rational, successful response to it. 

Democrats are getting the blame, too, for high rents and homelessness. That, too, is a bad rap to blame on Democrats. It was and remains a bi-partisan failure. Both parties ignored very bad mortgages in the housing boom. Both parties own the housing construction bust.

But Democrats need to be honest and clear-eyed about two big mistakes that undermine the Harris candidacy. There should be a bright line difference between Harris and Trump. In fact, it is muddled. Democrats believe that Trump is so bad that the little misdemeanors of Democrats pale in comparison with Trump's. Trump is a convicted felon, for gosh sakes. He lies shamelessly

Republicans and non aligned people see it differently. 

Democrats don't start from a presumption of neutrality or good faith. Harris presents herself as a "normal Democrat." That isn't good enough. This is an era of mistrust. 

The public now understands that Democrats hid the ball on Biden's state of health and competence. He declined in the past three years from marginal but good-enough to something less than that. I commented on his use of teleprompters for his stump speeches back in 2019. He rambled without them. It was worse in the hour I saw him at a Portland, Oregon fundraising event in 2019. Attendees were forbidden from photographing or recording it. I think they were hiding him even then.

It is possible that in the judgment functions of a president, Biden is still fully competent. But the job of the president does not take place solely in small rooms with key advisors. It is a job of leadership, which requires word and body-language communication with the public. One can call it a conspiracy to hide the truth. Maybe it was just wishful thinking by close advisors. Maybe it was careerists pleasing a boss who wanted to stay on.The Democratic Party hid an important truth from the public. 

Democrats hid Biden's condition. It was a kind of sleight of hand. I realize Trump's betrayal was worse. Trump wanted to overturn an election and defy the public will. But either way, the public wasn't getting what it thought it was getting.

Democrats can answer that they fixed it. They forced him out. No harm, no foul. But they cannot fix the fact that they hid a problem. 

Democrats dithered dealing with mass uncontrolled immigration, especially at the southern border. Democrats spent three and a half years in inertia mode, still operating on knee-jerk opposition to Trump. Trump is racist, crude, and cruel. But that does not mean that he did not identify a legitimate point of concern. Democrats didn't want to offend a progressive constituency that defined border control as racist cruelty. They waited too long to do something. Democrats said everything was okay when it wasn't.

Democrats can answer that they fixed this, too. Biden issued executive orders. But they cannot make the problem go away. 

Trump's betrayal is worse than Harris'. But for a great many people, the character and honesty issue is a push. They figure that everyone in politics lies. That frees a non-aligned voter to forget about character and compare issues of importance. Who is better on the economy? Who handled inflation better? Who looks stronger? 

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Giving good weight.

A story of Trump business practices 

     "Mr. Trump's attorney said, 'If I would sue The Trump Organization I would probably get that money,' but he made very clear to me that it was his job to make sure that it took me so long and so much money that it was probably wise to accept this very meager sum of money. Which I did."
          Andrew Tesoro, an architect stiffed by Trump

When I was starting junior high school, my father decided my brother and I should have a farm crop to sell. We planted a quarter acre of melons that first year. Our first regular customer was Blunt's Ranch Market, a bright orange fruit stand on Highway 99. In those days, melons were marketed in reusable wooden boxes that would hold 50 pounds of melons, a manageable weight for a 12-year old boy. 

When we weighed out the melons, Dad said we would always add two pounds for the box and then another three pounds. Dad called those extra three pounds "giving good weight." 

"Since Mr. Blunt is paying for 50-pound boxes it is important he always gets more than 50 pounds. Sometimes he will weigh a box or two to check on you. Or sometimes he will re-sell whole boxes to a restaurant and he will pull one out of the cooler and put it in the restaurant's truck. Later, when the restaurant weighs it, Mr. Blunt's reputation is on the line that that 50-pound box will weigh out at at least 50 pounds. You want a reputation for honesty. It is how successful people do business. Always give good weight."

My father rarely mentioned Bible authority. But he cited this one many times over the years:

You don't muzzle the ox that treads out the corn, and the laborer is worthy of his hire.

Dad explained: If an animal or a person works for you, you make sure he gets paid. It's wrong to cheat a worker.

The three-minute video below is not a one-off. Trump had a reputation for doing exactly this with vendors. He doesn’t pay the final invoices. He has leverage then. They have done the work and they have paid their subs and their own workers. They need money and they have nothing to withhold. They are in a weak position. He tells them he won’t pay. He tells them their recourse is to sue. They can’t afford to sue. He wins. 

Hear his story:

Click here

There is an idea out there among Trump supporters that Trump's me-first bullying behavior and mindset are exactly the kind of tough-mindedness we need to advance America's interests. As a businessman, he squeezed workers and vendors. The idea is that as president he will squeeze China, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Mexico, NATO, immigrants, bureaucrats, Congress, and Democrats. Mexico will pay for a wall. Chinese businesses will pay our taxes. He's a negotiator. As a tough negotiator he plays hardball and squeezes a little extra -- maybe a lot extra -- out of the loser on the other side. America comes out ahead.

It is immoral. It is also bad business. His companies have filed for bankruptcies six times. In the long run, bad behavior catches up with people, businesses, and governments. Cheaters never prosper. 

If he will betray the people who did good work for him, why in the world would people presume he won't turn around and betray the American people, including the very people who are voting for him?

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Trump is Archie Bunker in a limousine

     "Peter, I resent enormously you thinking that I and other Trump supporters are racist. There isn't a racist bone in my body."
            Comment sent to me this week.

  

Donald Trump is an everyday, garden-variety bigot who doesn't mind offending people when he voices his prejudices. 

It is what people liked about Archie Bunker, too.

Liberals never learned to love Archie Bunker. They thought they needed to fix him, shame him, out-live him, or out-vote him.

It is tempting for Democrats to overthink Trump's bigotry, or act like they found something hidden or obscure. Trump claimed Obama was born in Kenya, that Mexicans are criminals and rapists, and that Haitian immigrants eat cats. Big discovery: Trump is racist. Trump is a playboy tycoon who bragged about grabbing and assaulting women. Big discovery: Trump is a sexist misogynist.

Trump supporters resist admitting that Trump is a misogynistic racist. Trump is open about it. So was Archie Bunker.

Last Thursday I wrote about the lesson I learned from Mr. Conway, the Irish-American father of a girl I took out for a date in 1967. He told me that voters voted along ethnic group lines. It is still true. I would generalize that to saying that people vote along links of perceived affinity. People segment and associate with people they feel comfortable around. Liberals do it, too. There is a way of saying some of the things said by Trump and Archie Bunker that aren't mean spirited. Mr. Conway was proper and circumspect in his language. There was nothing wrong with Italians, Jews, and Blacks -- just that they were on different teams. Mr. Conway wasn't endorsing predatory misogyny. He feared it. He was protecting his daughter's honor and virtue. 

I liked and respected Mr. Conway. Democrats would win more elections if they could get comfortable with people like him.

Democrats may be on the short end of the culture war fight over racism. Democrats see racism and misogyny as pervasive and morally wrong. They condemn those thoughts and the people that have them. Republicans resist the shaming. They consider the thoughts are natural, reasonable, and well-justified. They don't want to admit the Archie Bunker in themselves. 

Erich Almasy did what Trump opponents sometimes do. They document Trump's racism and misogyny. Maybe sunlight will disinfect it. I share his comments below. These incidents are moral errors for Trump, but not political errors. They are qualifiers. Credentials. Trump, like Archie Bunker, is proud of who he is. When Trump displays his prejudices he gives permission to his tribe to do the same. They turn the attack onto woke liberals who look for and find prejudice. 

Erich and his wife Cynthia Blanton, both college classmates, live in the Mexican city of San Miguel de Allende.

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

Racist and misogynist both.

If Trump is a racist, why are Black men voting for him? The simple answer is that misogyny (or patriarchy) “trumps” racism. Namely, some Black men cannot abide the idea of a woman (any woman) being President. The more complex answer is wrapped into what NYT columnist Charles Blow stated last week: the willingness of Black men to downplay racism as a political consideration (Opinion | When Patriarchy Trumps Race).

Does Trump fit the definition of a racist, “a person who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward people based on their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group.” His racist history goes back to 1973, when the Department of Justice sued him and his father for denying Blacks access to their 10,000 apartments. More famously, he called for the execution of the "Central Park Five", four Blacks and a Latino who were convicted of a brutal rape through coerced confessions, despite DNA evidence that proved their innocence, Trump continues to claim their guilt. 

He fired longtime adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman, the only Black in a senior advisor position in his administration. She recently came out for Harris and stated that “Trump losing to a woman of color would be devastating to his ego.” This may explain Trump’s recent extraordinary and demeaning comments about Harris, including his assertion to an audience of Black female journalists (and on Truth Social) that she “isn’t Black." He has a particular soft spot for Haitians, deriding Haiti as a “shithole” country and fantasizing about them eating cats and dogs in Ohio.

Isn’t he also a convicted misogynist, aka rapist? That is, “a person who hates, discriminates against, or is prejudiced against women or girls.” Since the 1970s, at least 26 women have publicly accused Trump of rape, kissing, and groping without consent; looking under women's skirts; and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants. His 2016 taped admission on Access Hollywood should have been enough to disqualify him from the Presidency. But White males and antipathy toward Hillary Clinton saved him.

So, how should we categorize Mr. Trump? I lean toward a “bigot,” a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people based on their membership of a particular group. This seems to cover Blacks and brown people, Latin and South Americans, Caribbean people, Muslims, Liberals, RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), and women. We have fewer than three weeks to add another group to his hate list. 

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