Easy Sunday: Scenes from Washington, D.C.

     "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."
         JFK inauguration speech, January, 1961

I felt the same feeling of national pride as did Jack Mullen, today's guest post author, back in 1976. 

President Kennedy's words were still fresh. Moreover, the country had just decided that a president who lied about a burglary, then obstructed justice to cover up the lie, was not fit to be president. Republicans agreed. America was better than that, the country's leaders decided, so we cleaned house.

That era seems so remote. President Trump openly and proudly enriches himself, demands he be exempted from IRS audits, sells pardons, robs gullible investors, obstructs justice, and is corrupt at a level unimaginable 50 years ago. It is a take, take, take world for Trump, and the country is ripe for the taking. Republican voters seem OK with it. 

Trump has put his stamp on America. He has also put his stamp on the 250th celebration of the country's founding. Jack Mullen grew up in Medford, worked with me in local orchards, attended the U. of O., served in the Peace Corp, had a long career in publishishing, and is now retired and living in the District of Columbia, where he is an eyewitness to our capital city in this era of Trump.

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

I remember the pride felt at the 1976 bicentennial parade in Ashland, Oregon. Locals cheered bands and local officials as they marched down Siskiyou Boulevard to Lithia Plaza. I live in our nation's capital, and hoped to rekindle that feeling when America's 250th birthday occurred. I have watched in disgust as President Trump pushed aside long-planned events, and decided to do things his way.

The America250 celebration spans the entire summer. The kick-off event, a UFC cage fighting event on the South Lawn of the White House, occurred June 14th, Trump's 80th birthday. I had no interest in attending the fight. However, my curiosity got the better of me, and I set out to catch a glimpse of the massive overhead steel structure of the fighting arena, nicknamed by locals "The Claw."

My trip to grab a glimpse of "The Claw" led me to unforeseen obstacles. A fortress of security roadblocks forced me in circles, which eventually led me across Memorial Bridge and into Arlington, Virginia. Since I was already in Arlington, I decided to contemplate and, in a way, celebrate America's 250-year history by revisiting the resting place of generations of American soldiers at Arlington Cemetery.

The Memorial Bridge, which led me to the cemetery, was designed to connect the Virginia side of the Potomac River and Arlington Cemetery to the Lincoln Memorial. The bridge was built to symbolize the reconciliation of the North and South after the Civil War. This visual connection of Civil War soldiers to President Lincoln will soon be lost if Trump is allowed to build a 250-foot granite "Arc de Trump" (officially the United States Triumphal Arch).

The "Arc" is meant to commemorate America's 250th birthday and has nothing to do with Lincoln or the cemetery. A Trump-appointed commission gave preliminary approval to the design in July. The National Park Service dutifully requested public comments on the structure, which were overwhelmingly negative, 99% against. The comments will be ignored, and another commission vote may occur on September 3. But there is hope that ongoing litigation and Congressional opposition will at least slow the construction down or reduce the arch's massive size.

A week later, my wife and I decided to take advantage of a balmy Saturday and re-visit the newsworthy Reflecting Pool at the base of the Lincoln Memorial. Members of the National Guard patrolling the area never bothered us as we took a few photos to pass on to friends. The pool was coated with green, and workers were standing in waders skimming it off. There was no evidence of the “American Flag blue” coating. Shortly after our visit, Park Police, at Trump’s urging, arrested several people for supposedly vandalizing the pool by removing small pieces of the coating that were floating to the surface. Bet on it – there will be no convictions. Soon after, Trump erected dark covered fences around the pool, just one more pockmark in our nation’s capital. Meanwhile, the Justice Department just renewed its investigation of possible vandalism.

Mercifully, the “America 250” celebration officially ends this weekend when the 2026 Indy Car race takes place on the streets of Washington. 

 

Billed as “America Speed, America Greatness for One Week” by the White House, the race will consist of 147 laps around the 1.7-mile course down Pennsylvania Avenue (but not in front of the White House) and around the National Mall at speeds up to 175 mph. The National Gallery of Art has braced some of its more fragile works for the vibrations from the race.

I’m not sure where the pit area exists where drivers refuel and change tires, or stop if they encounter mechanical problems. My curiosity will be rewarded if I tune into Fox’s complete race coverage this Sunday morning.

When we Washingtonians return to our normal lives on Monday, August 24, half of the 5,000 National Guard personnel used to patrol American 250 celebration will return home and the District of Columbia will be left, until January 2029, with the regular 2,500 Guard personnel patrolling streets and picking up litter. Total cost to taxpayers $1.4 billion.

 

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Melons, Grapes, and Puncture Vine

It isn't all politics, all the time, everywhere.

Part One: Melons.

(I will catch you up on grapes and the noxious puncture vine in subsequent posts. If posts about melons bore you, skip reading now.)

I still grow a few melons in a small patch next to the vineyard. I grow them out of habit and inertia. 

Jerry Evans, with a sample of the melons we picked Tuesday morning

Southern Oregon residents will recognize Jerry Evans, the owner-operator-host of the fine-dining restaurant The Jacksonville Inn, now retired. It was a great restaurant. It served presidents, senators, celebrities of all kinds, billionaires, poor people, and teens on prom dates. He came out to the farm to look over my grapes and melons.

My father, brother, and I started growing melons in about 1961, when I was 11 years old. We sold them to local produce markets and to Sherm's Thunderbird, who made the effort to buy local produce. My brother and I each banked $1,000 every summer. That amount was over half of the tuition at Harvard; it was $1,760 my freshman year. Melons got me though college debt free.

My farm roots may have allowed me to win election to the county commission as a Democrat, notwithstanding the Reagan landslide election of 1980. My election opponents described me as a fish out of water, a local boy ruined by an east-coast education. But I was authentically poor. I drove an old truck. I got dirty working. I was proud to call myself a truck farmer. And people saw my melons, rubber stamped "SAGE" in stores. 

When I was freshly retired from my career as a financial advisor in 2015, I experimented with growing a large field again and I invited people out to see the melon field.

I had fun watching parents and kids eating watermelon.

Roy and Barbara Saigo

There was a problem. I had aged out of doing field work. Carrying multiple loads of 60-pound buckets of melons became more than my back could handle. 

I still host people at the melon patch, but do so a much smaller scale. My niece and nephew got a small taste of the farm six years ago.

My nephew, now age 18, is a huge help with the vineyard as we put up bird netting. More about that shortly.

There is an art to picking a ripe watermelon and there is some guesswork. The proof is when one cuts it or drops it.

But most of the other varieties of melons that I grow have an unmistakable look when they are ripe. Cantaloupes turn color, from greenish-buff to tan. The field is best picked every day to catch them at that first day when they will "slip." Refrigerated, they may last a week. On a kitchen counter they are still perfect for about three days.

The best way to have a melon that looks great on the shelf in the mass-market supply chain is for the grower to pick it a few days before that moment of perfect ripeness. The result is an OK melon. That is changing, though. Plant hybridizers have created a melon variety, the Tuscan-style melon, which is rather forgiving of being picked early. I am a melon snob, but admit that even when picked a bit green, they are pretty good. The ribbed melons being held by Roy and Barbara Saigo and the melons in the grey bin are Tuscan style melons. 

The yellow and green melons in the Saigo's hands are a Spanish melon called Piel de Sapo, sometimes called "Santa Claus" melons. In the U.S. at this latitude you would see them starting now. Look for this and try them:

They are astonishingly sweet and "melon-ish" in flavor.  They are my favorite. 

Melons are in season now. Ten months of the year you are doomed to eat, at best, pretty-good melons. Now is the time to eat a very, very good melon, especially if you buy them in a place that sources local fruit.

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"Answer the question!"

    "Is there anything President Trump could do that you could see yourself opposing?"

          Retired journalist Alberto Enriquez, to U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz

  "Yes, but don't ask me for a list."

           Bentz, at the Medford Rotary Club, August 18

It turns out that that was his answer. All of it.

He said "yes," telling the audience that he was not a mindless sycophant and enabler of Trump, while simultaneously giving himself deniability. So Trump does illegal, immoral, dangerous things? Don't blame Bentz. He said he didn't agree with everything Trump does, right there at a Rotary meeting. But as a loyal part of the GOP caucus, he enables Trump to do anything and everything Trump wants simply by consenting to it.

If even a half-dozen GOP congressmen objected to a Trump action, a House majority would be there to impede Trump. Bentz does nothing. He cannot shed accountability by saying he dislikes things that he then allows. Bentz cannot hide from the power of his office.

Bentz's answer is unworthy of an elected representative.

Bentz makes no objection to Trump making war on Iran without consulting Congress. He makes no objection to Trump imposing tariffs, a congressional responsibility. Nor does Bentz make a peep of objection to Trump's preposterous, pretextual justifications for the tariffs. Nor to the $1.776 billion legal settlement with himself, a blatant self-dealing theft from the public treasury. Nor to the crypto self-enrichment scheme that provided an open-ended way for favor-seeking individuals and governments to invest in a Trump crypto coin that sends money directly from them to Trump. Nor to Trump openly celebrating their loyalty with a recognition dinner, so they know Trump got the message of their tribute. Nor to Trump's active stock trading, with investments in companies whose fortunes rise and fall on Trump's own announcements. Nor to Trump selling early notice of presidential announcements for personal financial gain. Nor to Trump selling pardons. Nor to the DOGE cuts to the Forest Service. 

Immediately after the non-answer, Bentz began a three-minute period of pressured speech — a non-stop ramble of constant sound that blocked any opportunity for interruption. He began by blaming the state of Oregon for high gasoline prices. Then Democrats in the U.S. Senate — the minority — for causing forest fires. Then Iran, saying that their leaders hated America and that they shouldn't have a nuclear weapon (leaving aside the fact that Iran is in a far stronger position now than before the war, and that since the war demonstrated our inability to protect Saudi Arabia and the other countries of the region, they are strongly incentivized to get nuclear bombs themselves. What could go wrong?). Then, not missing a beat, he said that "Trump One and Trump Two" generated more fossil fuel, not mentioning that U.S. oil production went up under Biden. Then he said, "Thank you for your question," in the way speakers do to show that they are done.

A woman in the audience shouted out, "Answer the question! You didn't answer the question!"

Bentz:

"I did. At the very beginning. He asked if there was anything that I would vote against. I said yes. There it is."

The woman made a sound of protest. The audience made restless, jostling sounds. The room started to get away from him.

Bentz:

"Why would I guess whatever he is going to do?"

[Unsaid: Why would I reveal what I object to, but fail to stop, when I can give myself an out, and tell you troublemakers to pound sand?] 

Enriquez spoke up again, saying that 2,000 homes burned in Phoenix and Ashland, Oregon, in the Almeda Fire. That wasn't a forest-management problem, Enriquez said, it was a climate-change problem.

Bentz scrambled again, with more pressured speech. He said that in hearings when he was in the Oregon legislature, he learned that climate change was "baked in." It is real and unstoppable. It is too late to change anything:

"We have to acclimate. We have to protect ourselves from the consequences of hotter, warmer, dryer. That's what's happening."

He said maybe Medford could build a biomass facility and make kerosene out of wood chips, then said an abrupt, "Thank you very much" and left the lectern.

I think Cliff Bentz's performance is shameful. Bentz found career success in politics. He is, after all, an incumbent congressman. He is a below-average public speaker, but he gets through material approximately as articulately as did Joe Biden in 2020, a low bar, but good enough. You don't need to be a great political athlete if you're in the right place at the right time, and Bentz was. Pundits call this a safe seat for Bentz. It is safe in part because he blows off accountability, brushing off constituents with non-answers, while doing exactly what Trump demands.

It seems like a waste of a congressional seat, but he likely gets to keep it. He is a good boy, keeping his head down.

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Death with dignity: A physician's perspective.

"And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain . . . .
I did it my way"
          "Comme d'habitude," translated into English by Paul Anka, made popular by Frank Sinatra, 1969

Sometimes people have had enough. 

Of almost 4,000 posts over 11 years, the post with the widest distribution was the one where I described helping my friend die.

It was a solemn, emotionally-charged day for me. It was a quiet relief for my friend. I wrote about it from the point of view of the helpful friend who could legally acquire and mix the prescription medicine that would end his life, then hand it to the patient. Bill Southworth read that post. He writes today sharing a physician's perspective on end-of-life care.

Bill Southworth became a licensed physician in Oregon in 1979, then worked and practiced in Ashland, Medford, Yreka and other locations. When he retired 2003, he changed his Oregon license to “active emeritus status” which allows him only pro bono volunteer work. He told me he follows the rules and answers to Oregon law, to the Oregon Health Authority (OHA), and follows best practices and reporting requirements of the Academy of Aid in Dying Medicine.

Guest Post by Bill Southworth, M.D. 

I am now 85 and see only terminally ill patients seeking access to MAID. The term Physician Assisted Suicide is discouraged (I consider it pejorative.) Assisting a suicide by a physician or anyone else is a felony in all U.S. jurisdictions. The cause of death recorded on certificates of patients who have met all eligibility requirements for obtaining and using a legal MAID prescription carry the diagnosis of the underlying disease that allowed them to qualify.

I became exclusively a MAID provider in 2016. Since then I have counseled around 100 patients, and have written prescriptions for 40 or more, around 10 per year. I attend ingestions and deaths when asked or needed. I taught a class at OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) on DWD/MAID, which was well attended. This has been the most important and deeply satisfying work I have ever done. It is time-consuming to visit patients in homes or places of care, examining them, reviewing records, seeking a confirming consultation, communicating with family members, to establish eligibility according to the DWDA. Add to that record-keeping and reporting requirements. I’m not held to productivity goals and cannot send bills. I don’t know how I would have fit this into an office schedule. Most of the patients I see are too ill to leave home easily and be transported to an office. I have received more expressions of gratitude from patients and families than I ever did during my previous practice years. I don’t hide what I do. Even a couple of my conservative friends, probably Trump voters, have said MAID is a good thing, consistent with their ideals of freedom of choice.

I learned about caring for dying patients as an internal medicine resident in 1975 during my rotation on hematology-oncology. I learned more in the 1990s as an office-based internist when I referred several terminal patients to hospice programs. I continued to follow them at home or in nursing homes. Hospice agencies have greatly improved since then. MAID and hospice are not either/or choices. I require admission to hospice before issuing a prescription.

I encourage an effective advance directive and sometimes refer to the federally enacted 1990 Patient Self Determination Act (PSDA). In recent years more local community physicians have become comfortable with prescribing for their own dying patients and accepting referrals, no longer afraid of the “doctor death” stigma or attacks from militant moralists. Clinic-based specialty physicians have become more willing to provide the confirming consultation to enable another doc to prescribe, though some groups forbid their member physicians from prescribing.

Other pro bono MAID providers around Oregon believe the option rightfully belongs within the range of services provided by hospice for patients who ask for it. Several already have in Washington and California. Their medical directors can now prescribe MAID drugs. I’ve been told by an unnamed source that two Oregon hospice programs include MAID, but so far none in our part of the state.

I wrote in support of Oregon’s DWDA in 1997 when the initiative was on the ballot. Several respected and sincere colleagues at the time wrote in opposition, citing adherence to the Hippocratic Oath and religious values. When I graduated from UCSF School of Medicine in 1969 my class of 120 was asked to stand and recite the oath in unison. I remained silent. I thought it was a perfunctory exercise, pledging to mythical Greek gods to abide by an archaic ethical code. It was never enforced in modern times anyway. The AMA code of medical ethics still said that lethal medication to end a dying patient’s suffering was incompatible with a physician’s role as healer. That has changed. It’s now a matter of individual conscience, and in a 2017 issue of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) a secular pledge of responsibility to patients was published based on the World Health Organization’s 1948 Articles of Geneva for Health Care Professionals, emphasizing patients’ rights to self-determination and privacy.

All local hospice programs provide professional and compassionate bedside care. The MAID cocktail is not included with hospice comfort medications, nor covered by insurance. Hospice personnel are not expected (in most cases prohibited) to mix or handle the MAID medications, but their continuing bedside support of dying persons and their families following ingestion is essential. Unconscious and in deep coma after 5-10 minutes, 80 percent of deaths occur within two hours after voluntary ingestion, but occasionally it may take several hours. Patients are never left alone.

Bedside support and guidance by trained volunteers is encouraged through End of Life Choices Oregon (EOLCOR), a non-profit agency with local teams based in several regions including in Southern Oregon. They are proficient in finding cooperating physicians (don’t ask for a list) and handling the compounded powder, mixing it at the bedside, relieving family or hospice personnel of that task with steady hands. I’m counting on them to be there should the need arise.

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Medicare for all is mainstream now.

The U.S. healthcare system is expensive, inefficient, and full of gaps. Americans rank 33rd among 35 developed countries in longevity.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden says it's time to stop trying to repair a flawed system. It's time to reimagine it.

Wyden says we need "Medicare for all."

Wyden was in Medford, Oregon, on Monday finishing up field hearings on health care in America. Health care professionals and patients testified to what was wrong.

-- Hospitals were closing because they couldn't get paid enough to provide the services they offer.

-- Rural areas and small cities couldn't recruit physicians to practice there, forcing people to travel long distances for care.

-- Patients couldn't get insurance approval for life-saving drugs.

-- Mental health care was hard or impossible to access.

-- Uninsured and underinsured people delayed preventive care, leading to higher costs when treatable problems became critical.

-- Health insurance premiums have become unaffordable, made worse by the cuts legislated in the "Big Beautiful Bill."

-- Health care workers are unhappy. We train enough nurses, but we still have shortages, because people leave the profession.

-- Physicians spend their time and energy on billing, coding, and negotiating with insurance companies rather than seeing patients.

Wyden's support for Medicare for all is a shift in the political environment within the Democratic Party. This looks like another iteration of Ernest Hemingway's observation on bankruptcy: it happens gradually, then suddenly. 

In 1993, First Lady Hillary Clinton tried to shape a health care program to provide universal coverage — the Health Security Act, known as "Hillarycare." It faced strong opposition from lobbyists and Republicans, and it contributed to a disastrous 1994 midterm election defeat for Democrats. Barack Obama's 2008 election brought Democratic majorities, which made enactment of the Affordable Care Act possible in 2010. It was a patchwork mixing private health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance bought through exchanges. Joe Biden famously called it a "big fuckin' deal," but the program was new and complicated, and the rollout was ragged. The result was another midterm wipeout for Democrats in 2010. Republicans ran on platforms of "repeal Obamacare."

But the political tides were shifting. Voters, including Republicans, liked the provision that allowed businesses and their uninsured employees to buy health insurance through the exchanges. They liked the provision that required insurers to accept customers with pre-existing conditions — a provision that freed people who had stayed in unsatisfying jobs because if they left they would be uninsurable and at risk of catastrophic medical expenses.

President Trump did not argue that Americans should be self- reliant and take their chances in an unregulated marketplace. He said he supported a bigger, better, cheaper health care program. Trumpcare would be better than Obamacare. Trump is selling wishes, not a program; he has never offered an alternative plan of his own. But Republicans now understand that there needs to be some kind of national program: either the flawed Obamacare they oppose, or some magical better one that they are forever positing.

Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign moved the ball forward with his call for Medicare for all. It was simple to explain. Medicare already existed, and most participants liked it. Republicans derided it as unaffordable socialism. Democrats were divided. Labor unions, some of which had negotiated excellent health plans, opposed it, because their special paid-for benefit would become available to everyone. Moderate Democrats looked for a middle ground. Pete Buttigieg called for "Medicare for all who want It," and that became the middle-ground position among Democrats. The middle-ground position presumed something inevitably complicated: a mix of private plans, union-based plans, and needs-based plans, with a variety of subsidy formulas designed to keep plans affordable for both taxpayers and the insured.

Wyden: Centered, but ideologically left

Ron Wyden's adoption of the phrase "Medicare for all" signals a shift in what will become commonplace Democratic policy. Wyden is a liberal — by some measures, roughly the 10th-most- liberal U.S. senator — but he has served in the Senate for decades and risen to ranking member of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. Wyden works effectively with Democratic colleagues and Republicans to get legislation through the committee and passed into law. In that sense, Wyden is the establishment: a senator who operates within the group that reflects majority opinion. He isn't an outsider insurgent; he is in, and creates, the majority.

Wyden's move signals a change in the Overton window, that measure of whether an idea is revolutionary, merely edgy, or mainstream. Medicare for All is mainstream for Democrats now. 

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Jon Ossoff makes a fool of Trump. The campaign warms up.

Senator Jon Ossoff:

"[President Trump] golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn't want to do his job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar."

Ossoff is fleshing out his brand. He's shaping a narrative about the U.S. — a place with a strong, competent military — and contrasting it with a foolish, knavish leader: a Nero-Trump, fiddling with a staff member while the country burns.

Take two minutes and watch the clip. It shows why Trump is reacting so strongly. This is the kind of opposition that is harder to counter than California Governor Gavin Newsom's criticism. Newsom is permanently stained by the "California" brand. Ossoff is still undefined, with a "New! Improved!" quality — some mix of JFK and Barack Obama. He gives Trump more to worry about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bSpkFqypbw

The line that caught people's attention referenced the 35-year-old aide, Natalie Harp, whose unusual closeness to Trump was the subject of Regime Change, the book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. They reported that the Secret Service was concerned. She leaves love-note-style expressions of devotion for Trump to find. She sticks close by his side; Melania is often absent. She was on the plane back from Turkey when Cabinet members and the media were not. She carries a printer so she can hand Trump articles he'd want to see.

The physical closeness raises eyebrows — Trump has a reputation. Is she a new, younger girlfriend, replacing Melania? Or a personal aide with wipes and fresh underwear, handling the needs of an older man with health issues? Either way, it's an odd arrangement, either naughty or pathetic, and people are asking what the deal is.

Ossoff didn't frame this as an accusation of infidelity, but as evidence of careless inattention to the job. Given the choice between calling Trump foolish or knavish — incompetent or evil — Ossoff chose foolish. That's sound branding. 

Voters seem to want strength more than they want virtue. A corrupt, selfish Trump at least provides leadership, which is more than Congress offers; he'll be cruel to enemies as well as the innocent. Voters decided that overthrowing an election wasn't disqualifying. Biden's feckless handling of the southern border, by contrast, read as weakness and inattention, and voters found that unforgivable.

Besides, painting Trump as a highly-sexed Lothario is a net positive for him and would be a mistake for Ossoff. Trump-as-playboy fits his Hugh Hefner image, a complement to Trump's winner-take-all brand; he is Rambo in the bedroom. Trump likes to say other men settle for less-attractive women, but not Trump; he taunted Ted Cruz with it in 2016.

Trump did it again this week when he taunted Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic primary election in Michigan, with this Truth Social post:

It is astonishingly petty, juvenile behavior, but Republican voters seem to be OK with it. 

Ossoff understands Trump's brand. Trump's access to beautiful women is proof of success, of winning. Ossoff doesn't shame him for it — he turns the attribute into a liability, saying that Trump would rather be distracted by Natalie and golf than do his job. That's why things are a mess.

Trump's team is scrambling to paint Ossoff as small and inconsequential. Trump nicknamed him "Pee Wee Herman," which is unlikely to stick — Ossoff is half a head taller than I am, and had 5-o'clock shadow at noon. He looks strong, not wimpish. 

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung leaned on the same theme, saying "Jackoff Jon is the biggest cuck loser in politics," shockingly strong language from the White House. Jackoff? Cuck? The White House is worried. Ossoff is married with two young children; there's no clear reason to imply he's a sexual loser. But the insult reinforces exactly what Trump considers his own strength: that he's the winner in any contest of sexual conquest.

Trump is missing the point, and digging himself deeper into the hole he is digging for himself. Ossoff isn't contesting Trump's sexual distractions, whatever they may be. He's calling attention to them; meanwhile Rome burns.

My college classmate Sandford Borins, a scholar of political narrative, once described the three-part structure of political campaign branding: fool, knave, and hero. Ossoff has built a campaign narrative around it. He claims the hero spot, of course, with camera angles looking up at his strong jaw and firm neck, the classic "hero shot."  Ossoff positions Trump as the fool: old, bumbling, selfish, distracted by leisure and young women. Meanwhile, the young man addresses the serious work of making voters' lives better. It's a simple, persuasive story. 

In a Democratic primary, Ossoff has a stronger pitch than "California is actually better than you've heard," which is the brand I think Ossoff's most serious competition is stuck defending.

Ossoff may stumble, but he is on the move.

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Trump's effort to overthrow the election was bad, maybe, but not too bad.

Republican voters like what they like about Trump more than they dislike his attempted coup d' état. 

I wrote last week that I have a litmus test question for Republican candidates: If they cannot dare say aloud that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, it means the candidate will echo a dishonest pretext to stay Trump-compliant. It is a bad sign. It shows they cannot be trusted if he asks them to adopt some other false pretext to do something illegal in the future. 

One commenter to my post said my litmus test was a trap, intended to trip up the candidate. Another commenter said I was demeaning the candidates by suggesting they would cave to Trump's demands. I invite candidates to show my suspicions are unfounded.

I consider my question an opportunity for candidates to break free from the straitjacket of needing to agree with Trump, even when he is plainly wrong and lying. I suspect it would be a significant advantage to their campaigns if they appeared independent of Trump, especially in blue states and districts. I suspect that saying that of course Biden won the 2020 election would do them more good than would spending millions of dollars saying that they are good, upstanding citizens, even while refusing to admit that Trump lost an election. The problem for GOP candidates is that to appear independent they would need be independent.

The candidates' dilemma is not theoretical. It is as current and real as last week's news, in the case of Trump's newly-appointed U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. The Department of Justice had clear evidence that the Reflecting Pool liner was mis-applied and detaching on its own, and that the person they had indicted was innocent of vandalizing it. The DOJ needed to withdraw the case. DOJ lawyers risked sanction for pursuing so meritless a prosecution. Trump had a different idea in mind: The fault simply could not be his or his contractor's; it had to be a vandal, so stick to that pretext. There is truth and there is Trump-truth, the pretext truth. Trump demands the DOJ and Pirro pursue Trump's truth and re-prosecute the guiltless man. Trump criticized Pirro and may replace her, just as he replaced her predecessor.

It must be humiliating for GOP candidates to pretend blindness and recite a dishonest pretext when one knows better. It is the GOP version of Maoist re-education performance. It is the self-abasement GOP candidates endure to achieve their ambitions. 

Trump's threats against non-compliant Republicans have credibility because there is a large body of GOP voters who follow his direction. Trump is their guy, and he gives them the policies they want. They are being practical. This isn’t a test of character and patriotism; it is a choice between a Republican or a Democrat. 

--  Trump is doing something about the openly porous border that Biden failed to address until it was too late. 

--  Trump gives wealthy people lower taxes than Democrats would propose.

--  Trump is anti-woke. Trump shows it is OK to reveal prejudices against other ethnic groups. Trump showed he didn't like Covid-era efforts to enforce social cooperation. He says what is on his mind even when it is rude and crude.

--  Trump appeals to people who think climate-worry is a hoax.

--  Trump appeals to people whose lives involve using natural resources, rather than protecting them from misuse, including farmers, ranchers, miners, loggers, and oil drillers.

--  Trump is more anti-abortion than any Democratic alternative.

--  Trump represents Christian primacy.

My litmus test question points to a delicate point for Republican candidates. Candidates need somehow to accept that Trump making an attempt to overthrow an election isn't disqualifying. His crime can be rationalized and minimized. Democracy is only one thing among other things. Maybe trying to overthrow the election is only a little bit bad, balanced by the things they like. Look at all the good he does. On balance, it isn't about respecting the rules of a democracy, even if we put our hands over our hearts and say the Pledge of Allegiance, respecting the flag and the republic for which it stands -- a republic, where leaders are elected.

Republican voters have taken a long journey from John McCain, who prolonged his stay in a Vietnamese prison out of patriotic duty to other POWS. Trump scoffed at McCain. This is a different era. Look out for number one. Patriotism is for suckers.

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Easy Sunday: "And here's the surprisig part."

Would someone please train large language model artificial intelligence to stop using the same tiresome device?

"Hey! Wake up! Here comes the point."

You have read it. You have heard it in scripts for TikTok, Reels, Instagram, YouTube Shorts. 

--  "Here's why that matters."

--  "But here's the kicker."

--  "Here's what nobody expected."

-- "The result?"

--  "But here's the thing."

--  "But it turns out that what is really important was what no one noticed."

Those are AI giveaways and I see them several times a day. So is the "em-dash," although I have sometimes used an em-dash instead of commas to set off appositive phrases for the 11 years that I have been writing this blog. 

I don't use artificial intelligence to write blog posts, so readers will find fewer examples of the "look-at-this" device in these posts. Since I tend to "write long," and then cut about a third of what I wrote before I push the "Publish" button, those phrases usually get cut.

I think AI offers bullshit in opinion journalism. It creates the equivalent of empty calories. Vague words gloss over knowledge gaps. It is a conflict-avoider in a realm where facts and opinion conflict, and the edges of agreement and disagreement are the point. For example, if I wanted AI's help to describe U.S. policy on Israel, it might say;

Under Biden, America's forward-facing, qualified and guarded support for Israel's military engagement with Gaza contrasts with Trump's more-robust stance, although Trump was restrained by policy constraints imposed by an increasingly-restless public.

I believe the sentence above is  accurate, but every descriptive word is unfalsifiable. Forward-facing, guarded, more-robust, restrained, constraints, and increasingly-restless are words that likely conform to what a well-informed person could agree with, but that person would be filling in the blanks from his or her own existing knowledge base, thinking "Yeah, that is sort-of right." The sentence fills up space; it doesn't inform. It did not require the purported author to state a position about either fact or policy. If I were to write that way, why bother?

So here's the thing: I expect to keep writing the old fashioned, do-it-yourself way.

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A litmus test for Republican candidates

I have a question for Republican candidates:

 Would they defy their oath of office to please Donald Trump?

The litmus test is whether they dare disagree with his assertion that he won the 2020 election. If they won't risk his wrath now, they will surely cave when it really matters.

Click for Audio and transcript

Phone call between President Donald Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Saturday, January 2, 2021

Trump:

You know, we won the state. If you took, these are the most minimal numbers, the numbers that I gave you, those are numbers that are certified, your absentee ballots sent to vacant addresses, your out-of-state voters, 4,925. You know when you add them up, it’s many more times, it’s many times the 11,779 number. . . .

 Raffensperger:

Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong.

Trump:  

I mean, look. Brad. We have a new tape that we’re going to release. It’s devastating. . . .

Raffensperger:

 You’re talking about the State Farm video. And I think it’s extremely unfortunate that Rudy Giuliani or his people, they sliced and diced that video and took it out of context. The next day, we brought in WSB-TV, and we let them show, see the full run of tape, and what you’ll see, the events that transpired are nowhere near what was projected. . . .

Trump:

I won this election by hundreds of thousands of votes. There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes. 

But in Fulton, where they dumped ballots, you will find that you have many that aren’t even signed and you have many that are forgeries.. . . And you will find you will be at 11,779 within minutes because Fulton County is totally corrupt, and so is she totally corrupt.

Ryan Germany, the General Counsel in Raffensperger's office:

 What we’re seeing is not at all what you’re describing. 

Commentary on this hour-long phone call has primarily focused on Trump and his plea that Raffensperger find him 11,780 extra votes. Read in its entirety, one sees how skilled and formidable Trump is as a negotiator. Trump is relentless, unwavering, adamant, and the hard sell goes on for an hour. 

One also gets new respect for Brad Raffensperger. He was under enormous pressure, and he didn't cave. He did his duty.

Trump has a technique that we observe in this conversation and we see repeatedly in his second term of office. He asserts a pretext which is untrue and even implausible on its face that justifies doing something illegal. Invade Venezuela because they are carrying out a "foreign invasion." Impose tariffs on every country because every foreign country is supposedly using slave labor. 

In the conversation with Raffensperger, he was giving a multitude of face-saving pretexts to get the result Trump wanted. Make Trump happy -- or else disappoint him and face the consequences.

The cost of angering Trump is well understood by Republican officeholders and candidates. The list of political roadkill is long: Liz Cheney, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, Jeff Flake, Tom Massie, Bill Cassidy, John Cornyn, and the Indiana state senators. I watched the reaction of Republican activists to Pence in New Hampshire. He was not celebrated as a profile in courage. Quite the opposite.

Pence may get his reward in heaven, but not from Republican voters. I was happy to do a selfie with him at a GOP event. He was standing around friendless.

Friendless Pence

GOP candidates for a state office might want to dismiss Trump and his claims as irrelevant to their office, saying it is a federal matter and about Trump, not them. That isn't the reality. Candidates for state office are subject to being dragooned into Trump's web of dishonesty. It is happening in Oregon right now where Trump claims, despite evidence to the contrary, that our vote-by-mail system allows multitudes of illegally-cast votes. 

If Trump were to telephone a Governor Christine Drazan and demand that she use a pretext of "questionable" votes in Multnomah County, perhaps based on a meritless accusation by a talk show host or Republican precinct committee person, and she received the full-court-press Trump laid on Raffensperger, would she defend Oregon's vote, or would she cave? If the same call were made to the Republican caucus of the Oregon state senate, perhaps a demand that they file a lawsuit claiming that alternative slates of electors be given equal weight to the ones who were actually elected, would Brad Hicks consent? That is not a theoretical idea. Incumbent Republican state senator Kim Thatcher did that in the days prior to the January 6 Capitol invasion, and she was re-elected and remains a senator in good standing.

We are at a moment when Republican candidates can prove up. A candidate who mumbles, distracts, and avoids disagreeing with Trump's insistence that he won the 2020 election in a landslide is showing his or her true colors: They are unwilling to disagree with Trump's pretexts. Willingness to concede a loss is an essential element of democracy. If they won't do it now, they surely won't do it under pressure and when it really counts.

Republican candidates might be "nice people," or have "common sense," or be regular church-goers, but if they cannot disagree with a dishonest attack on democracy, they are unfit for political office in a democracy.

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