The 10th Justice

A year ago, a good friend of mine, an observant Jew, bought a house in Scotland. This was right after the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, anti-rally and death a year ago. By blaming both sides for this confrontation President Trump implied that racism is okay. He doesn't understand this. Nor does his spokeswoman. But my friend did. He grew up in Pennsylvania. His dad was a Jewish physician and had several friends who had left Nazi Germany to come to America rather than being killed. They told my friend that in prewar Germany, Jews were even better integrated into society than they are in America today. Until the rise of Nazi Fascism and anti-semitism, that is. When my friend heard Trump's response to the Charlottesville violence, he felt that Jews might be next, and liking Scotland, he bought a condominium there, in case he needed to escape from America, like his father's friends needed to escape from Germany. Now the Pittsburgh shooting of Jews in the Synagogue......

There is nothing to say anymore about Donald Trump. Whatever he says is not worth listening to because he has poisoned his own well. For anyone who doesn't know the concept, poisoning the well means that a person has convinced listeners that anything another particular person says is not to be believed because that person lies. The term is an analogy to a well in which the water is poison so that any time one gets water it has to thrown away rather than drunk because it will harm the drinker. In this case Trump has poisoned his own well with his constant lying and uncivil comments, the words of a compulsive liar and bully. Well, I've drunk from the well of Trump too much, and it has definitely poisoned my mind. Unfortunately, some people don't realize they have been poisoned. The anger toward non-white Americans, against immigrants, against muslims, against the press, against women, against faithfulness in marriage, is continually fueled by a lying president. In another b...

Just a few words about electromagnetic radiation....... Earlier this year I got my first ham radio license. My son got me interested. He got interested because he joined the neighborhood emergency response team and they all use handheld radios to communicate. The walkie-talkie that anyone can buy operate on the Family Radio Service frequencies in the ultrahigh frequency (UHF) range have too little power and too short a range to be truly useful in a large disaster. To extend the range higher powered radios are required so we both got licensed by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) so that he could use a more powerful radio during his emergency response training and so that we could communicate in case of a real disaster. Our city is scheduled to have a large earthquake sometime. What interested me more than their disaster application was how these radios work. I don't mean which button to push. The dials, buttons, switches, antennas, batteries, speakers, etc. are complica...

Here's an article from the NY Post I've annotated it in red...... Trump is totally right about the dangers of Medicare for All By  Betsy McCaughey October 16, 2018  Sen. Bernie Sanders says that because Medicare is “the most popular, successful and cost-effective health insurance in the country” everyone should have it, regardless of age. But watch out for the bait and switch. Truth is, Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation actually abolishes Medicare and Medicare Advantage (It doesn't abolish Medicare, it expands it) , as well as employer-provided coverage, union plans and plans people buy for themselves. Every person will be forced into a mandatory, government-run system with the phony (clearly biased from the beginning by using the word “ phony ”)  name “Medicare for All.” Whether you want it or not.   The quality of your medical care will plummet . (my underlining - this is a negative assumption with no evidence - the quality could ...

Yesterday, on NPRs show, I head Alex Burns, a political reporter for the New York Times sum up the current status of the mid-term elections. He said the democrats have a fair chance of taking the House but will probably lose seats in the Senate. At the end of the show he reminded me of how our congress is constructed; an idea I had known but forgotten. We have two houses of government to protect the smaller, rural states from being run over politically by the larger cities and states. Giving them this edge gives them a reason to remain in our federation of states called the United States. Several times in my blog I have used the phrase 'one person, one vote'. This is wrong in America and the reasons for it are probably good reasons. We don't want the majority to steam roll the minority. We want all sides of an issue to be represented in debate. We want to stay together even if we don't all agree like a family usually stays together in spite of political differences....

Adam Tooze's book Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World , is a good reminder of how much about international economics I don't know. And probably never will. However, for anyone interested in the events that caused the 2008 recession, why that recession was an international event, and its repercussions, the book is worth struggling through. For a non-economist I have a pretty good understanding of the mechanism that led to the 2008 recession. During that difficult financial time, articles from NPR, the New York Times, Rolling Stone and Bloomberg did a good job of explaining how the housing crisis developed. The creation of mortgages that required no down payment and no collateral, the combining these into MBSs (mortgage backed securities) and CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), and all the insurance that went with them in case they failed, the CDSs (credit default swaps), are explained and amplified in Tooze's narrative. What was new to me was th...

What does squalor have to do with saving democracy? Immigrants of all eras have started their lives in our poorest neighborhoods in order to get a foothold on starting the climb to the real American dream: the dream of a decent life. This often means living in squalor. Everyone I spoke to in these neighborhoods while canvassing for the mid-term elections were polite, interested and almost all said 'thank you' for the literature and campaign pins. After a while the abandoned automobiles looked more like projects, the non-working refrigerators on the porches looked like they had been replaced with new ones, the black plastic bags of trash were waiting for a day off work to be disposed of, and yips of the herds of chihuahuas sounded musical and humane as well as being a security system. People around the world love America for its freedom and its laws. They don't love its military presence, but they respect it and, in some cases, rely on it for stability. Migrating to and ...

Here is what I learned from a week of canvassing for Lisa Brown in Washington's 5th congressional district. 1. Democracy is slow and awkward. We knew this already. But we didn't experience its slowness and awkwardness until we walked door to door, dodging chihuahuas and kids, to talk to the adult in charge about voting. One by one we worked our way through the lists. Sometimes we would stumble on a great person who not only listened but who had a story to tell. These conversations were important because they activate, hopefully, the householder to tell his or her friends and family about our candidate, thus amplifying our effort, sort of like 'social media' but real not virtual. Democracy is also slow and slower if you are old. Making personal contacts is not as quick as a email note or a Facebook post. Does personal contact have more impact? Who knows? The Russians didn't go door to door for Trump that we know of. Maybe they know something we don't. Or may...

My friend Larry and I are starting our 3rd day of canvassing households in Walla Walla for the Lisa Brown campaign. It is a slow process reaching out to each individual. Lisa is running a little behind the incumbent Cathy Rodgers and she needs a boost. You would think a college town with a large hispanic population would support a Democratic candidate. Let's hope they do. Yesterday, we joked a little about doing a retro campaign where we get a bull horn and drive through neighborhoods, lawn signs strapped to our car, shouting "Vote for Lisa Brown". We're going to talk to Megan, our campaign coordinator, today. Yesterday, while canvassing, Larry had walked to the next block to the final two addresses on our Minivan list; number 208 and 218 Carlton street. Minivan is the telephone based software program that gives us the names of the people we are targeting. While he walked ahead I moved our car to the block he’d walked to, parked and got out. Across the street I co...

This morning I woke angry. Kavanaugh was confirmed as our newest Supreme Court Justice. Perhaps taking the oath of office to that revered position will jar him into being a fair judge. Perhaps my hero for who I named this blog, Judge Hand, will possess him and instill him with the spirit of fairness and objectivity. But I am not angry at the Kavanaugh appointment. I am disappointed that someone fairer and temperamentally judicial was not confirmed. My anger is aimed at those who are responsible for the Kavanaugh nomination: Trump, McConnell and Ryan. Here's why. Steven Pinker's most recent book E nlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress tells the story in clear english and graphics how much progress the human race has made in the last 400 years and why. The extended title of the book says it all: reason, science and humanism. Over the last 400 years, a tiny blip in the history of our species, we have risen out of poverty and disease to become ...

Politics in America has changed. The debate has ended. The president, Republican Senators, and Representatives, realizing they have lost every argument based in fact and reason, have strapped on their guns, stopped talking, and are headed for the street. Lawlessness is the strategy. Gerrymandering, rule breaking, and lies are the tactics. Authoritarian rule is the prize. If they win this prize, we will lose America as a free, democratic state. 
 Our country was founded with the rule of law and civil discourse to settle arguments. In the legislature one side argues against the other but in the end both sides are part of the same structure, the same country, and the same world. It feel now as if the two sides are farther apart then they have been since 1858, the lead up to the civil war. Perhaps this has happened because we are a diverse nation. Large segments of our population have pledged their primary allegiance to something other than making our country work well, to something ot...

We have 42 days until the mid-term elections. For America this is our best chance to reduce the likelihood of becoming a fascist dictatorship, run by a minority party. Democrats have a steep hill to climb because of the Republican gerrymandering. This illegal process is slowly being taken apart by the courts but in many places it still exists. This means more Democrats need to vote to offset the effects of unfair redistricting. The fact that it exists demonstrates that Republican are not interested in fairness, nor in the democratic ideal of 'one man, one vote'. They want to hold on to power in the face of the demographic tsunami of people of color who will eventually wash them away. In the past the Republican party was a party of conservative ideas, not fundamentalist christian ideology, white supremacy, male chauvinism, or crazy Ayn Rand economics. It was a party that argued for fewer taxes and smaller government, a completely reasonable point of view and one that balanced ...