Posted on by rjonakait

That Colorado Ballot Decision

The United States Supreme Court will hear arguments this week in the case that seeks to exclude Donald Trump from the ballot in Colorado. The constitutional provision at stake is Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was adopted in the shadow of the Civil War and reads: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. 

The Supreme Court has never before considered Section 3. We have a constitutional tabula rasa. This dispute presents an opportunity for each of us to think about how we would interpret the Constitution freed from past decisions.  

I know the answers from many. Some would say it is clear that Trump engaged in an insurrection, and he should be barred from being president again. Others will say that barring him from the ballot harms democracy and will lead to more divisions in the country. It is better that the voters decide whether he should be president again. But, of course, those are conclusions that skip over important interpretive questions that the constitutional provision presents. 

There are different modes of constitutional interpretation, but perhaps all can agree that the start should be the text of the Constitution itself. If the words are clear—Congress shall have two houses, for example—we have no problem, but often a provision is unclear and reasonable people might differ over its interpretation. The Constitution gives no clue how the charter should be interpreted when interpretation is needed. Instead, interpreters make choices for their interpretive methods. And we should be aware that no matter how hard we may try, at least, subconsciously, that choice is unlikely to be a neutral one. We will have the tendency to adopt the interpretive method that reaches the results most pleasing to us. 

Of course, this only matters if Section 3 has parts that aren’t so clear that they need interpretation. Perhaps you noticed what others have: While the provision expressly bars people from certain positions—Senator, Representative, elector—it does not explicitly prohibit anyone from being president. Does Section 3 not cover the presidency? Others reply that “officer of the United States” includes the president, but it is at least curious that “elector of President” is explicitly listed, but not the presidency itself. 

Perhaps you also noticed that the provision only applies to those who have previously taken an oath “to support the Constitution” and know that the Constitution prescribes an oath for the president that does not include the word “support.” Instead, to become president people must swear or affirm to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” Does that matter? 

Perhaps most crucial to the Fourteenth Amendment’s Section is that a person has to have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the” United States. Of course, we know that the provision was enacted in reaction to the Civil War, and clearly that conflict was considered to be an insurrection or rebellion against the United States. But what else constitutes insurrection? How would you go about finding that meaning? A modern dictionary defines insurrection as “an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government.” Another dictionary states that an insurrection is “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.” The two definitions are similar but not the same. Does that matter? 

Or perhaps you feel that we should look at what the terms meant when the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted and adopted. Those nineteenth century folk were probably familiar with Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary, which defines and explains insurrection as “A rising against civil or political authority; the open and active opposition of a number of persons to the execution of a law in a city or state. It is equivalent to sedition, except that sedition expresses a less extensive rising of citizens. It differs from rebellion, for the latter expresses a revolt, or an attempt to overthrow the government, to establish a different one or to place the country under another jurisdiction. It differs from mutiny, as it respects the civil or political government; whereas a mutiny is an open opposition to law in the army or navy. insurrection is however used with such latitude as to comprehend either sedition or rebellion.” 

A good court decision should first determine what “insurrection or rebellion” means. Only after that can it be decided whether January 6 fell within the purview of Section 3. But if you determine that by the definition you accept, January 6 was an insurrection, you should examine what else might be an insurrection to test out your definition. Does a mass movement that refuses to pay federal taxes come within the ambit of Section 3? Or imagine a Black Lives Matter protest that has surrounded a federal office building shoulder to shoulder making entrance into the offices impossible without some sort of force. Is that an insurrection? 

If the behavior at the Capitol was an insurrection, did Trump, who was not on Capitol Hill, participate in the insurrection? He did not do anything violent; as far as I know, he only spoke. The free speech provision of the First Amendment seems to come into play. The Supreme Court has decided cases trying to delineate when speech advocating illegal action is protected free speech and when it is criminal incitement. I’ll spare you the details, but it is hardly clear that Trump’s comments were criminal incitement. A few years ago I was asked to conduct a friend’s college seminar about free speech while he recuperated from Covid. The students had studied the Court’s incitement cases. I had them read Trump’s January 6 address. Putting it mildly, the students were not Trump acolytes, but not one of them thought his remarks fit the Supreme Court definition of criminal incitement. Of course, I am not saying the students’ reactions were right, and I only had the students read the comments. A cold, printed record can, of course, be much less inflammatory than actual oral remarks, but how should the First Amendment come into play in evaluating Section 3?  

Assume, however, that it has been decided that the presidential oath and the office of president fall within the ambit of Section 3. Assume there is a workable definition of insurrection. Still, however, some individual or institution must authoritatively determine whether what happened fit the insurrection definition and, if so, if Trump engaged in it. Section 3, however, does not tell us who or what makes these factual determinations. 

Some contend, including many Republican Senators and Representatives, that Congress must first either make the Section 3 determinations itself or set out the procedures for making the judgments. They get support for this position from an 1869 decision by a Supreme Court justice who was acting not as part of the Supreme Court but as a lone appellate judge. It, however, presented a much different circumstance than whether someone should be kept off the presidential ballot. In this nineteenth century case, a man who had been convicted of a crime in state court maintained that his conviction was faulty because the presiding judge at his trial was disqualified under Section 3. The trial took place after the Fourteenth Amendment had been adopted, but the judge had validly ascended to the bench before Section 3 was in effect. No one contended that the trial was unfair, and the Supreme Court judge upheld the conviction, suggesting that Congress had to act before Section 3 was enabled. 

Perhaps upholding the conviction was right, but the suggestion that Congress must act to make Section 3 operative is bizarre. Perhaps someone can point out an example, but I don’t know of another constitutional provision that is a dead letter unless a majority of Congress acts. Instead, our constitution puts governmental structures and individual rights out of reach of majority control. Concluding that Congress must act first for Section 3 to be enforceable would make that provision different from other parts of the Fourteenth Amendment. For example, the first part of that amendment states that a state shall not “deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The equal protection clause does not say how it should be enforced, but it does not require congressional action to be enforceable. Instead, as in school segregation cases, courts have enforced the equal protection clause without congressional action. And notice that Section 3 says that the section’s disability can be lifted by a two-thirds vote of each congressional house. Why put in that explicit language and not tell us that Congress must act in order for the provision to be enforceable?   

It is not courts, however, that are the primary supervisors of our elections. Instead, state secretaries of states, boards of elections, and the like first determine whether a person is qualified to be on the ballot. However, Section 3 applies equally in all the states, and a person should be a disqualified insurrectionist in all the states or in none. Section 3, when it comes to the president, is akin to the requirements in Article II that says no one can be president who is not a natural born citizen, thirty-five years old, and resident of the country for fourteen years. It would be nonsensical for one state to bar a candidate because he is not thirty-five, while another state determines he is old enough.  

There is yet another wrinkle. A person is entitled to due process in the determination of whether he is disqualified for office. The Supreme Court should rule on what process is due, but to my mind this should include an adversarial trial where our potential candidate should be allowed to cross-examine witnesses and be able to call witnesses. The burden of holding such a proceeding in every state would be overwhelming. Are we really going to say that a bystander witness to the possible insurrection must testify in Arkansas, Utah, Vermont, etc.? And what should the Supreme Court do if there are contradictory findings about whether the person participated in an insurrection? The Supreme Court normally decides issues of law such as what is the definition of “insurrection”; it does not have a mechanism for deciding which findings of fact among competing ones are the ones that control.  

Of course, Congress might act and set out a structure for determining whether Section 3 disqualifies somebody. Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment states that “Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” Congress could pass legislation that, for example, says the federal courts in the District of Columbia have the exclusive jurisdiction to try all actions to disqualify any person from office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But we don’t have such legislation, and we won’t any time soon.  

I know how I would answer some, but not all, of the issues raised by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. I have little idea, however, of the reasoning the Supreme Court will use to reach its result. Of course, perhaps most of the country will only be concerned with the outcome, but since this constitutional provision presents a messy situation, I expect the Supreme Court to give us messy opinions.  

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Snippets

I sometimes wonder what we would have done for literary novels, popular fiction, spy and mystery stories, movies, TV programs, and streaming shows had there not been a World War II. 

I bought some whole wheat crackers. The package announced it a plant-based snack. Aren’t all crackers plant-based unless you include in the category buffalo chips? 

Germany’s economy shrunk last year and is not expected to do much better this year. A fact like that is important in assessing our economy, which, of course, grew last year and will this year. The economy is a worldwide one, or, you might say: No country is an island entire unto itself. (Okay, ok, I have to rethink this aphorism because of Australia and some specks here and there.) Assessments of our own economy should consider what’s going on in the world. 

Who coined the phrase “in harm’s way” and why? It is simpler to say “in danger” but the nuance seems to be different. I think of a palpable entity with “harm’s way.” Harm is a large ship and smaller craft must get out of its path. I don’t have those thoughts when someone is in danger. 

Positive consumer sentiment, which dropped precipitately under President Trump, has recently increased at a rate greater than has been seen in the last twenty years. 

Axios: “Your perception of the economy used to influence your political leanings. Nowadays, Americans’ political leanings determine how they perceive the economy.” 

A wise person said: “It is poor economy to cut down on schools, healthcare, jobs, and job training and use the money later on jails.” 

Remember those tax cuts that were passed by Republicans when Trump was president? I thought they were meant to give a permanent boost to the economy. They are still in effect, but conservatives say the economy sucks. I am not holding my breath waiting for them to explain how their tax cuts failed.  

“I have a photographic memory, when it comes to me.” Gary Sheffield. 

Donald Trump is promising that any day now he will produce Biden’s birth certificate proving Joe was born in Kenya. 

I am like some of those treasures on Antique Roadshow: I have conditions issues. 

The street person was waiting for the gym to open. “I am going to get fit,” he announced. Asked if he had paid the dues, he replied, “No, but (holding it up) I have this nice hardback book.” 

As if she is the only one: The kitchen sparkled. The spouse had scrubbed it. Nancy, the cleaning person, was coming the next day. 

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First Sentences

“General Phillip H. Sheridan sat motionless atop his horse as the summer sun beat down upon him.” Sean Mirski, We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and Rise of the American Colossus. 

“My name is Lila Macapagal and my life has become a rom-com cliché.” Mia P. Manansala, Arsenic and Adobo. 

“Sometimes your body is someone else’s haunted house.” Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present. 

“I sometimes wonder what was disappeared first—among all the things that have vanished from the island.” Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police. 

“On the morning of August 2, 1973, from his summer cottage in Goose Prairie, Washington, Justice William O. Douglas set in motion one of the strangest proceedings in the history of the United States Supreme Court.” Stephen Vladeck, The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic. 

“They crested the hill to see the winter sun hovering on the far horizon, a wide vista of pale grey hills and leafless woodland ahead and the dark ribbon of a river threading the valley floor below.” Christobel Kent, A Murder in Tuscany. 

“There was once a doe that was portal through time.” Sinclair McKay, The Hidden History of Code-Breaking: The Secret World of Cyphers, Uncrackable Codes, and Elusive Encryptions. 

“It was ten years since Mrs. Bradley had been at the institution known as Shafton.” Gladys Mitchell, When Last I Died. 

“Far below the walkway that circled the top of the Cook County courthouse, Chicago spread itself out beneath Mathias Schaefer, an ordinary fireman in the most fire-prone city in the world.” Scott W. Berg, The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City’s Soul. 

“Bunky Millerman caught me from behind on the first day of Woody Wilson’s little escapade in Vera Cruz.” Robert Olen Butler, The Hot Country. 

“Yes, I do have a Texas connection, but, as we’d say in the Midwest, where I grew up, not so’s you’d know it.” Calvin Trillin, Trillin on Texas. 

“On a warm midsummer’s evening just before the end of the last century, in a book-lined lawyers’ office in the pretty town of Kent, Connecticut, I handed over a check for a moderate sum in dollars to a second-generation Sicilian-American, a plumber named Cesare, who lived in the Bronx but who had driven up in the lush New England countryside especially for the formalities of this day.” Simon Winchester, Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World. 

“His green-and-vermillion topknot was as colorful as a parrot’s, and in Colleton County’s courtroom that afternoon, with its stripped-down modern light oak benches and pale navy carpet, a cherryhead parrot couldn’t have looked much more exotic than this Michael Czarnecki.” Margaret Maron, Bootlegger’s Daughter: A Deborah Knott Mystery. 

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It Was Evening All Afternoon

         It was evening all afternoon. 

          It was snowing 

          And it was going to snow. 

          The blackbird sat 

          In the cedar-limbs. 

Wallace Stevens 

When I change my opinion, I applaud my open mindedness and willingness and ability to learn from experience. But I realize that sometimes the changed mind has come because I have fallen out of touch with the circumstances that helped create the original opinion. Take winter, for example. 

I only knew Wisconsin winters growing up. The family could not afford to travel to warmer climes for even a break in the January or February weather. (I had only left Wisconsin once before going off to college and that was to some sort of church retreat just barely into Illinois. Three hours each way crammed into the back of a Rambler to see people I did not know in some obscure small town did not give me a taste for travel.) 

Did I regard the Wisconsin winters as harsh? Not really. It was all I knew, and I also knew from looking at the newspaper page that printed the temperatures from around the country that winter was colder elsewhere. Indeed, Lake Michigan, a few blocks away from the house, gave Sheboygan a bit of a maritime climate moderating winter weather. Madison, a few degrees of latitude south but nowhere near the great lake, had colder temperatures. And if I really wanted to cheer myself up, I would look up the weather in Minneapolis or Fargo. Now those places really had winter. 

It was only when I went off to college in New Jersey that I began to realize that the seasons, even in the Northern climes, had different meanings in different places. Spring was a delight in New Jersey. It came weeks earlier than I had experienced. It was not just a time of mud from the remaining melting snowbanks. The snow had disappeared before winter had ended. I was seeing New Jersey flowers when Wisconsin still had slush. 

When I moved to New York City I would hear weather reports that would say a winter cold front was a coming bringing “frigid” or “Arctic” temperatures. They were forecasting temperatures that might be eighteen or even fifteen degrees. And then I would scoff. The historical highs for the coldest times of the year in New York City are about thirty-nine degrees with a low of twenty-seven. By contrast, the average low at the end of January where I grew up was fifteen degrees. What was “Arctic” in NYC was just an ordinary morning in Sheboygan. Thus the scoffing. Since I was only a decade away from those Wisconsin mornings, those reasonably fresh memories made the cold of New York winters easy to endure.  

When it snowed in New York, I again thought of my boyhood. I was raised in a modest house on a modest lot, but that modest lot was sixty feet across. That meant shoveling sixty feet of snow from the front sidewalk. But wait, there was more. There was the walk from that sidewalk to our front door, perhaps ten feet and then the porch had to be cleared. And the walk to the backdoor had to be shoveled. It was narrower than the front sidewalk, but at least as long. Then there was the path from the backdoor to the freestanding garage, perhaps twenty feet. And, of course, the driveway had to be shoveled, and that was wide and might have been eighty feet long. I don’t pretend I ever did this by myself. It was a family affair, but after a heavy snowfall, it seemed also to be an all-day affair.  

It was much easier in Brooklyn. Of course, with the higher average temperatures in New York City, precipitation that would have been Wisconsin snow was Brooklyn rain. In addition, however, our row house is twenty-five feet wide. A front stoop which abuts the front sidewalk also has to be cleared, as does a space, perhaps ten feet square outside the lower door. A relative piece of cake that I actually enjoyed doing because the end point, even with the first couple of shovelfuls, always seemed near. 

The snow not only seemed easy to clear, I loved the aftermath of a snowstorm in New York. Although we live in what I consider to be a quiet neighborhood, heavy snow stopped almost all traffic, and the neighborhood then seemed to belong just to me and the neighbors. After a winter storm, a different kind of light settled over the city than at other times, one that brought on a sense of peacefulness. That light and the absence of traffic caused us few pedestrians to treat each other reverentially as if we were the deepest friends on a meditative retreat. A nippy wind may have made cheeks rosy, but stomping on and over the banks of still pristine snow warmed the body as well as the heart. These were the kind of days where I was thrilled that there was a winter and that I was in it. I could relate to what Alexander Pushkin (James E. Falen, translator) wrote in Eugene Onegin: “And all the hilltops soft and glowing/ With winter’s brilliant rug of snow—/ The world all fresh and white below.” 

I admit, however, that, while I can still appreciate the crystal-clear sky of a winter blue that January can bring, I now simply tolerate it. Life has changed. Over time the spouse became more dependent on car travel for work and pleasure, and we park our car on the street. The car has to be dug out to go anywhere after a heavy snow, and finding a dug-out parking space upon return has become harder and harder with more cars in the neighborhood.  

And I, of course, have gotten further and further away from my childhood experiences. While thirty degrees was a nice winter day and twenty degrees is what I could expect most mornings as a kid, that was a long, long time ago. Now below freezing always seems cold and ten degrees below freezing is frigid to this aged body. And snow shoveling no longer produces the sense of accomplishment it once did. It’s just a chore. 

Even so, I don’t have fantasies of living in a warm climate all the time. I do want, however, what I can’t have. I want winter, but I want it to start the week before Christmas and end January 31. Six weeks of winter with cold clear air and some pristine snow that I know will soon disappear is what I want. 

          One must have a mind of winter 

          To regard the frost and the boughs 

          Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;  . . . 

          For the listener, who listens in the snow, 

          And, nothing himself, beholds 

          Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 

Wallace Stevens  

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Snippets

People must be seeking out probiotic products because they seem to be everywhere. But how many know what a probiotic is? Don’t put me on that list. (Let me guess: Someone in favor of a biotic?) And now I see a product advertised as a prebiotic. I don’t have a clue.

In the delicious irony department: Bill O’Reilly is furious that the Florida law that allows the removal of books from school libraries, a policy he supports, caused some of his books to be removed from school libraries.

The little white board in the corner of the physical therapy facility asked its question of the week: What year is it in Ethiopia under the Ge’ez calendar? The correct answer, I was told, is 2016. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church calculates a different time for the birth of Jesus than those who created the Gregorian or Julian calendars. Right now that puts Ethiopia eight years behind us, but the Ethiopian New Year comes in September. Then it will be only seven years behind until our New Year’s Day. With the Ge’ez calendar, I learned, there is no need to memorize the childhood poem beginning Thirty days has September. Ethiopia has thirteen months. Twelve are thirty days long. The month of Pagume, the outlier, has five or six days depending on whether it is a leap year. Who knew?

What does it take to get into heaven? If it is not doing harm to others, I believe I stand a chance. If it is how much good is done to others, I am not so sure. If it is the amount of sycophantic praying to an Almighty, I don’t stand a chance.

When Trump was president murders in the U.S. increased at the fastest rate since national statistics began in 1960 even though murder rates did not increase in other countries during the same period. We should be grateful that murder rates without Trump as president are now precipitously declining with rates much lower than in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.

From now on, whenever I hear that we need armed non-criminals to stop gun violence, I will think of Uvalde.

When I sat down on a bench outside the coffee place to watch the world go by, I immediately saw a shopping cart overloaded with large plastic bags bearing bottles and cans being pushed down the street. This regularly occurring sight is a consequence of two things: New York requires a deposit on bottles and cans of beer, wine, soda and the like. And the New Yorkers I know who have paid the deposit do not return the containers to collect the 5-cent refunds on each container. Instead, we just willingly pay extra for what we buy and feel some very minor righteousness because we place our empties in a recycling can which is (supposed to be) picked up by the city once a week. We recycle and have done our bit for landfills and against litter. Free enterprise steps into this breach. People collect refundable bottles and cans out of those recycling bins and load them into plastic bags on shopping carts, like the one I saw outside the coffee shop. Presumably these go to a redemption center, but I, like my friends, have no idea where the nearest redemption center is. I have read that 64% of the refundables are redeemed in New York state. The 5-cent deposit is the same as it was when the law took effect in 1982, and a higher percentage of bottles and cans were returned back then. Perhaps more would be returned now if the deposit had kept pace with inflation. In any event, many bottles and cans that have exacted a 5-cent deposit are not redeemed, and that means a whole lot of money is not paid back to depositors or the freelance collectors of bottles and cans. Have you ever wondered where the money goes? (I am working on a new song for this age: “Where have all the d’posits gone?”)

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Snippets

An NFL playoff game was played in cold—very cold—weather this weekend. But although minus five degrees with wind chills in the minus thirties is admittedly a bit nippy, I was somehow pleased that it was not so cold as to become the coldest playoff game. That record is still held by what became known as the Ice Bowl where the Packers met the Dallas Cowboys for the NFL championship on the last day of 1967. On that morning, the father got a call at our home fifty miles from Lambeau Stadium from an acquaintance and was asked whether he wanted to go. Showing wisdom I did not always give him credit for, he declined and said that we would watch the game from the comfort of home. It was not that we were not experienced with cold. The average high for the three winter months in Sheboygan was in the mid-twenties with the average low fifteen degrees colder. Whenever there was a cold snap, we would wake up to below-zero days, and I can regale you, as I have the son and the spouse many times, about how I walked to school in that cold, although I lied if I ever said that I had to do it without shoes. We knew cold, but we also had an understanding of cold, and December 31, 1967, was extraordinary. The temperature at kickoff was minus fifteen, but, of course, there was a wind, which plunged the wind chills into the minus forties. I can go on about that game, but you can read about in the pioneering book by Jerry Kramer, who made the key block, and Dick Schaap, Instant Reply, but I don’t think that book contains this nugget: In those long-ago days, spectators could carry beer into the stadium. I was told that those who did found their six-packs frozen before the first quarter ended. For Wisconsinites, that brought on real suffering.

Snow is beautiful if you are watching someone else shovel it.

I look at many news sources every day. I, of course, know that there is an opioid crisis in this country made even more frightening by fentanyl. I did not know, however, that an anti-fentanyl bill has passed in the Senate but languishes in the House. I only learned about this because one of the cable networks had clips from the testimony of Jelly Roll, the unlikely but enormously popular entertainer whom I did not know. I still don’t know what is in the bill and why it is not moving through the House, but I thank Mr. Jelly Roll for his testimony that gave the situation some publicity. However, I wish that cable news would resist presenting erroneous news that the fentanyl crisis is primarily caused by a porous border that allows illegal aliens into the country to spread the drug. Credible sources show that the fentanyl crossing the southern border comes at the legal crossings, over eighty percent of those convicted for transporting or distributing the product in this country are Americans, and those who die from it — none of whom have been forced by an undocumented person to take the drug — are U.S. citizens. Perhaps news sources could tell us more about what is in the anti-fentanyl bill and why it has not been moving forward.

We are attacking the positions of the Iran-backed Houthis in the Mideast. We are also concerned about the activities of the Iran-backed Hezbollah. Learning this, I think back to my trip to Israel two decades ago. Funded by a conservative organization, it allowed me and others to study terrorism and anti-terrorism from an Israeli perspective. We met several men (they were all men), who were recently retired Israeli intelligence operatives. They were mystified by our invasion of Iraq. One said that the state sponsor of terrorism in the region was not Iraq but Iran, who would only be strengthened by our actions. He, of course, was right. We were led into that senseless Iraq war by conservatives. Some prominent Democrats who had presidential aspirations voted to authorize the invasion, but the majority of Democrats in Congress voted against it. Now conservatives seem shocked, shocked I say, that Iran has such influence in the Mideast when they helped create it.

The orthodox Jewish cardiologist has sometimes felt uncomfortable since October 7 by the looks many have given him. He thought that he would feel safer if he replaced his yarmulke with a baseball cap. That makes sense if it was a Mets hat. Everyone wants to stay clear of Mets fans.

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First Sentences

“There is a perennial temptation to read the greatness of distinguished men backward into their youth; to imagine that, if one just knows where to look, their early lives will provide evidence that the fully formed person was there in microcosm all along.” Troy Senik, A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland.

“Á filthy boy stood on the doorstep.” Zadie Smith, The Fraud.

“If you were searching for world-famous deep-sea monsters, a stately building at the top of a hill in Upsala, Sweden, is not the first place you’d look.” Susan Casey, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean.

“This early, the East River takes on a thin layer of translucence, a bright steely skin that appears to float over the river itself as the water turns from its nocturnal black to the opaque deep green of the approaching day.” Michael Cunninghan, Day.

“A young woman sprinted ahead of the fleeing soldiers on the forest path, her long red hair streaming on the wind as if it were a banner urging them onward to escape their own destruction.” Peter Stark, Gallop Toward the Sun: Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison’s Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation.

“Needless to say, when Julia Prentice began to cast her huge, hazy eyes in the direction of my husband, I should have snapped to immediate attention. But at the moment I was too distracted thinking about her breasts.” Lindsay Maracotta, The Dead Hollywood Moms Society.

“European Wars would bookend Rudolf Diesel’s life.” Douglas Brunt, The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genuis, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I.

“The night I watch Athena Liu die, we’re celebrating her TV deal with Netflix.” R.F. Kung, Yellowface.

“‘Please throw down the box.’” John Boessenecker, Gentleman Bandit: The True Story of Black Bart, the Old West’s Most Infamous Stagecoach Robber.

“Possum Creek trickles out of a swampy waste a little south of Raleigh.” Margaret Maron, Bootlegger’s Daughter: A Deborah Knott Mystery.

“Jim Wedick yanked at his collar as he walked across the parking lot toward the Thunderbird Motel, a sprawling Native American-themed lodge in suburban Minneapolis.” David Howard, Chasing Phil: The Adventures of Two Undercover Agents with the World’s Most Charming Con Man.

“In the drowsy heat of the summer afternoon the Red House was taking its siesta.” A.A. Milne, The Red House Mystery,

“Since first setting foot on the Te-Chag-U ranch, Gil Bonifácio Carvalho Neto had felt a growing sense of dread—but it was only after uncovering a hidden clearing in the jungle that he began to truly fear for his life.” Heriberto Araujo, Masters of the Lost Land: The Untold Story of the Amazon and the Violent Fight for the World’s Last Frontier.

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A Response to a Friend

A knowledgeable friend concerned with the state of America asked me to comment on some of his views. He thinks that Biden does not understand that people don’t care much that the rate of inflation is dropping when they see that things still cost more than they did a year or two ago. The Southern border is a “mess and leadership demands some reasonable proposals to stop the bleeding in a fair amount of time.” He concludes that while he could never vote for Trump, his many issues with Biden will make it hard to vote for him just because he is “less of a disaster than the other choice.” The friend says he may vote for a third-party candidate and choose “to throw my vote away.” I responded in the following manner:

I agree with much of what you say. The inflation rate may be dropping but, as you point out, Americans in general may not care much about that. Those of us who lived through the regular inflation of the 1960s and 1970s might be impressed with the current lower rate of inflation, but many Americans only remember a world that for practical purposes had no inflation. I sometimes think that the presidency largely depends on the cost of gas, milk, and eggs, and those costs are higher than in recent years.

This hurts Biden, but as with much of the economy, I don’t know how much the president should be held responsible. Developed countries everywhere had inflation. It was not just an American problem, and our inflation rate was less than almost all of the European countries. By that measure, we did well on inflation. And, of course, by many standard measures—job creation, unemployment, GDP, average wages, the stock market–the economy is doing ok-to-quite good. If Biden is to be held responsible for inflation, then he should be given credit that it was lower than Europe’s rate and that the rest of the economy has performed well. However, the administration is going to need to amp up its messaging if this going to penetrate to the American electorate.

Many forecasters over the last 18 months predicted a recession. That has not occurred. I am not sure that Biden should be given much if any credit for this, just as I am not sure how much blame he should get for the inflation, but if a recession had occurred, he would be blamed for it. Inflation is a reason why Biden might not be reelected, but it is not a rational reason not to vote for him. But as someone observed, “A great president is the one who happens to be on the job when you are on a run of good luck.”

Immigration is both a political and policy mess. Biden comes across as not caring about the border, and that is a huge mistake. I thought from the beginning of Biden’s administration he should have tried to seize control of this issue by saying that it is not a southern border issue. We need comprehensive immigration reform. Biden should have been making it clear that we need immigration and that such statements as Lindsey Graham’s recent one that “the country is full” is silly, dangerous demagoguery.

I believe that the birth rate is below the replacement level. Without immigration we will have a shrinking workforce. If a 55-year-old wants to get social security, we need more workers, which means more immigration. Biden should have been making that clear. Many industries depend on immigrants. Biden should have been enlisting these industries into reform proposals. Of course, many conservatives are happy with the border crisis because it is such a potent political issue.

Biden should have put forward proposals to the Republicans that he would support massively increasing border security personnel if they massively increase the number of immigration judges — which requires additional government spending — and accept DACA reform. Of course, the conservatives would not do that. Compromise is not part of their game plan, just testosterone-fueled “solutions.” But Biden should have been stressing that our whole system is a mess and needs reform.

I have learned how little I know about our immigration system from many of the people I have met in my local biergarten. Many are immigrants, both legal and not, with at least one seeking asylum. I had little idea how complicated our system is and am still amazed that Viktor asked for asylum over five years ago and still does not have an answer. Every one of these immigrants works hard and has added to this country, but they live under an incredibly bad system.

I do have my criticisms of Biden, but I also believe that he has accomplished more than is generally recognized. Most important is the infrastructure bill, which is only a start on what is needed. Trump regularly talked about infrastructure but did nothing while Biden got something passed. It is always interesting when conservatives who voted against the bill have something from it rolled out in their district and then try to take credit for the coming improvement.

Democrats have many failings. One of their biggest, as mentioned above, is messaging. They have not touted their successes on infrastructure. Or on the economy. When Obama was President, I heard frequently how bad the economy was when it wasn’t. Most of the important indicators were favorable. Many of those economic trends continued under Trump, but by then the indicators were publicized to show how great the economy was. It was basically the same economy under both, but the conservatives messaged better about it, as they do now.

Biden has accomplished other things that fly under the radar. The spouse reads Heather Cox Richardson who regularly reports on Biden accomplishments that the spouse was not aware of. I was reminded of this while watching a Sunday morning show. A firefighter was talking about the high cancer rates among his colleagues. This has something to do with the protective gear they wear, and he was saying how changes needed to be made to improve the health of firefighters. He then went out of his way to thank Biden and Debbie Dingel for their efforts in this regard. Who knew?

Throwing away your vote where you live may not matter. Your state is likely to go Biden no matter what, but throwing away votes is how Trump got elected. In spite of popular perceptions, there was no great surge to Trump in 2016. He got almost the same percentage of the vote that Romney had four years earlier. However, an important percentage of the population apparently felt that they could not vote for Hillary Clinton. I guess that most of those thought she would win. They could not stomach voting for Trump so they voted for third party candidates. In most places that did not matter, but it proved decisive in enough battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — to give Trump the presidency. In those closely contested states, Trump did not get majorities. Sometimes he did a little better than Romney had, but not much. Hillary, however, underperformed in these states and did not get the majorities that Obama had. Apparently a sizeable group decided they would “throw away” their votes. The third-party totals, while small, often doubled and tripled. This allowed Trump to get the pluralities in these states and their electoral votes. And thus Trump became president. In 2020, the percentages for the third-party candidates followed the pre-2016 historical trends, and Trump lost. Fewer people threw away their vote in 2020.  

“Throwing away” your vote can have unexpected consequences. This year, the consequences are too dire to contemplate. Sometimes a thrown away vote is not really thrown away; it just goes into a trash pile you didn’t anticipate.

Posted on by rjonakait · 2 Comments

Snippets

I get e-books from the New York Public Library. If the book is not immediately available, it is reserved and I get a message indicating, not very accurately, what the wait will be. Right now I have a reservation for A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland by Troy Senit. The library notice tells me that the biography will be “available for checkout in less that 23 days.” From my grade school grammar, I was taught that less is wrong here and should be replaced with fewer. But this comes from the New York Public Library. Surely they know better than I (not me.) Do I not remember my grammar, or has it changed? I was struck by this question when I heard an NFL ad that was a warning about betting. It said that about 25% of pro football games are decided “by three points or fewer.”

A wise observer said, “I feel that progress is being made when people agree with my ideas.”

I just finished reading The Red House Mystery. It was written by A.A. Milne. Yes, that A.A. Milne. (Is there another?) And yes, it is a mystery. Who knew?

I was in the hardware store buying a mousetrap because even though the neighborhood has become more upscale, every so often the little furry creatures get in the house. As the store clerk put my purchase in a bag, he told me to bait the trap with peanut butter. I replied that sometimes I use chocolate peanut butter. He exclaimed, “No, no, no! For Fort Greene mice you now have to use organic peanut butter.”

Another sage observation: “We like to have people come right out and say what they think, when they agree with us.”

You attend a classical concert. You know that an acquaintance has also gone to that performance, but you don’t see each other exiting. It is always interesting to see the reaction of that person when you meet again by saying, “What? You stayed for the Debussy after that Mahler?”

What is Beethoven doing now? Decomposing.

Although the spouse and I had partaken of a few finger foods at the reception after the dance performance, we were still hungry. We walked into an Italian restaurant around the corner from the Mark Morris Dance Center, but it was too noisy for our liking. We passed a Mexican place and entered a Haitian restaurant—I think its name is the same as its address, 33 Lafayette—and were quickly seated by a gracious host. We later learned that he was a co-owner. I thought that a couple of appetizers would suffice and ordered coconut shrimp, which were divine, and smoked herring in plantain cups. I associate herring with northern climes, and the menu said that the fish were from Canada. I told the host that I was surprised to find a Haitian restaurant offering herring. He replied that Haitians regularly eat herring and have it even with spaghetti and pizza. He said it might have entered Haiti’s cuisine when Haiti opened its doors to European Jews before World War II. Who knew? But I later learned that you can find many Haitian herring recipes online. I don’t plan to try them.

Posted on by rjonakait

Collected Resolutions That I Might Resolve.

I resolve in 2024 to:

  Work “Time will tell” into conversation at least once a week.

  Not act my age.

  Get better at making lists.

  Not dress my age.

  Use the phrase “It’s a no-brainer” more often.

  Not skydive.

  Not learn how to moonwalk.

  Stop daring people to lick frozen flagpoles.

  To drink one fewer cup of coffee every day, week, month, year.

  Only eat white snow.

  Perfect my Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation.

  Ask at restaurants if I can substitute another glass of wine for the fries.

  Learn how to swear in multiple languages.

  Eat more cheese platters.

  Stop introducing the spouse as my first wife.

  Perfect the art of silent karaoke.

  Consider lifting the TV remote as exercise.

      Not get stuck in a lobster trap.

  Try to avoid clichés like the plague!

  Remember that ice fishing works better if you cut a hole in the frozen lake surface.

  See the untoward not as mistakes but as happy accidents.