The 10th Justice

We now have a reason to impeach Trump and remove him from office. Senior officials in the bureau of Homeland Security, which includes cybersecurity, say that Trump's senior advisors refused to allow the director to bring up the issue of protecting the 2020 election from Russian influence, because Trump refused to discuss the issue. Trump does not want any discussion of the "fact" that the Russian's helped get him elected. He does not want to have this "fact" diminish the legitimacy of his election.  The only thing we hear from Trump about the Russians is that he didn't collude or conspire with them. If I were the Russians I wouldn't want anyone as immature and unpredictable as Trump on my team carrying out a secret operation, so they probably actively worked to keep the bozo off the team. We have heard nothing from Trump about how to protect our elections from foreign influence. Is that not conspiring by doing nothing?  In his oath of office he ...

The NBA playoffs are beginning this weekend. Benjamin Hoffman of the New York Times predicts the Oklahoma Thunder will beat the Portland Trailblazers in 6 games, mostly due to the loss of Nurkic and the undeniable abilities of Russell Westbrook, Paul George, and Steven Adams. But I've been watching the Trailblazers and I have a different prediction. I think the Blazers will win in 5 games. Enes Kanter has integrated into the pick and roll system of the Blazers very well. He is a better scorer and offensive rebounder than Nurkic but not as good a defensive player or passer. On balance I think he will do well inside against Adams but in a different way from Nurkic. Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum are in good shape physically and will outplay, and probably outscore the Thunder forecourt. But those things aren't going to win it for the Blazers. What will win it is pure fire power. This week, a 6 man squad of rookies and non-starters beat the first team of Sacramento. It was like s...

A recent Fox News poll that suggests that one in four Americans think God wanted Trump to be president and it is hard to argue with God. The thing I can't understand is why God would want to elect someone who lies continuously, and is such a blowhard, as my father would have labeled Trump. Can't they see the con coming? Or is religion such a long term con that they accept it as normal? Perhaps that is the real answer. Many believers of all religions are returning, in my opinion, to a more fundamentalist belief system. The reason for this is clear - confusion. The internet contains so much information that people can no longer sort it out. So, they throw up their hands in frustration and return to a simpler way of making decisions: let someone else do it. Religious fundamentalism answer tough question by referring to the bible; one book to replace the almost endless, almost infinite, pieces of information on the internet. The bible seems comprehensible. It is finite. You can h...

Yesterday it came to me in a flash, as many revelations do, why Trump lies continuously. He isn't actually lying in the way that you and I do, in order to avoid the bad consequences of a bad decision. Trump's world is not yours and mine. Trump lives in an imaginary world. Perhaps he is a true Romantic in the literary sense, like Wordsworth and Coleridge, whose felt the imagination could alter the world for many people, in an artistic way. More likely Trump imaginary world is the world of a person with an anti-social personality or a narcissistic personality. These folks make up a world that suits their needs. Since Trump has little or no facts about the real world except those he gets from selective television watching his world is really inside the tube and can be altered with a new script whenever it suits him or he needs something. I am not speaking metaphorically here. And there is one more troubling possibility, a possibility that seems increasingly likely, that Trump'...

Texas is planning on legalizing religious intolerance. The bill is Senate Bill 17 and was introduced by Charles Perry of Lubbock and it would, according to reporting in the Texas Tribune, would allow occupational license holders like social workers or lawyers to cite “sincerely held religious beliefs” when their licenses are at risk due to professional behavior or speech Other reporting on the bill says that SB17 would allow doctors to refuse to treat patients that they felt somehow were incompatible with their religious beliefs as long as there was another doctor who was available and willing to tolerate treating a Muslim, a gay man or woman, or an atheist. The bill does not have a name yet but clearly it should be named the Texas Intolerance Bill. This is just what the country needs. We all need to confront, proselytize, demean, or disregard anyone who doesn't believe what we believe. This brings me back to the book How Democracies Die. Tolerance of others is required if we ...

The only thing that has changed in politics is that lying has become acceptable as a way of doing business. This isn't new. Recently I had lunch with a young woman who has an MBA from Yale. I've know her since she was born and respect her ethics and intelligence. She has the remarkable job of a helping resolve conflicts or problems within programs at the Oregon Health Sciences University. We had lunch because I wanted to hear how business principles were applied when money wasn't the main issue. During my career in medicine which began in 1968 and ended in 2012, I saw business people come into the profession and remake it into a cash cow. We had many salary and structural negotiations with the 'businessmen' hired to run the hospital and the system. They often lied to us. I thought maybe it was part of what was taught in business school. So, my last question during my lunch with my businesswoman friend was whether they taught MBA students at Yale to lie during nego...