Is the Air Coming Out of the Far-left’s Balloon?

I was sitting in the Plaza at Lincoln Center having coffee one day this past June with three fellow stagehands who were working with me on the Summer for the City buildout. All three were in their mid-20s, dressed in black with hair down to their shoulders, piercings and tattoos galore, and all three were ardent Trump supporters. By this time, while being somewhat surprised by this revelation as many stagehands in New York come off as being very liberal, these three were hardly the first guys in this business that I had met who were pro-Trump. Many would ascribe this to the fact that stagehands are essentially blue-collar workers, but by my guess, about half have college degrees. All three of the guys I was having coffee with that June day had either a college degree or had spent significant time otherwise in higher education. As such there’s got to be something more to it than collar color and gender. They all complained about the high taxes and the high cost of housing and food that comes with living in New York City. None of the three could afford to live in Manhattan or any of the nicer neighborhoods just over the river in Brooklyn or Queens. All three said they were tired of all of the immigrants under foot and having to pay for them through their tax bills and all, rightly or wrongly felt that being a white man had put them at a disadvantage in life. Needless to say, and not surprisingly, I have met many more stagehands since that June day who are pro-Trump, to the point that nothing surprises me now. I have had many discussions away from work about what it will take to defeat Donald J. Trump this coming Tuesday. My gut tells me that if more women who are infuriated with the assault on their ability to control their own bodies, combined with those of us who are concerned about the sanctity of our democracy turn out to vote than do those who are fed up with immigration, gender transitioning, defund the police, Woke, Me Too, Reparations, DEI and the imagined efforts to take their guns away, then Trump should be the loser. This is particularly the case in those states that are now considered tossup contests. My gut tells me that women will save the day and with it, our democracy. That said, I think there is a fading tolerance for many of the extreme positions that have been promulgated in the furthest reaches of the progressive movement. I have believed this for the past year or so based on what I have been hearing at work and in social circles and, as such, I wasn’t surprised when I saw an article in this week’s Sunday New York Times, “In Shift From 2020, Identity Politics Loses Its Grip on the Country”, that addresses that very subject. Frankly the only thing that I found surprising was that article was published in the Times in the first place since it is a long-standing bastion of liberal thought, social and political positions. If you’ve been involved in corporate sensitivity / human resources training to any extent you know what has taken place over the past several years with speech being evaluated on how it affects the listener without any real regard for the intention of the speaker being given any weight to DEI hires of people who are clearly unqualified but who must be hired to give the organization the appearance of being diversified to television commercials that would have us believe that every family driving into the Rockies in a Jeep Grand Cherokee is of mixed race. My favorite example of what I consider to be the excesses of the uber progressives is “unconscious bias training”, a training that bears no real grounding in an individual’s life experience or even established history. For instance, I was asked to name my childhood hero who happens to be the British Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson. I was told that my answer was typical of a person with unconscious bias as Nelson was a white heterosexual male. Well, my response was “Show me a lesbian woman in command of a major naval operation in 1805 and I’ll give it a serious look.” Of course, none existed so case closed. My answer wasn’t at all biased, it was based on my interest in naval history and the people who played their part therein. Nonetheless I was told that I harbored unconscious bias, as absurd a notion as that would be seeing as I had little in the way of choice based on established history as it relates to my intellectual interests or choice of a childhood hero. That these excesses would begin to lose their alure and become less appealing is not all that surprising. As the late Charles Krauthammer once observed, using a football metaphor, politics in the United States is played back and forth across the 50-yard line with the 20-yard line in either direction being the extremity to which politics would flow until eventually returning back towards the middle. The Times article sums things up as follows: “What seems to have shifted, according to scholars and political strategists who have closely watched how public views have evolved, is that people are now acknowledging that certain identity-focused progressive solutions to injustice were never broadly popular….By the middle of the 2020 primary, Democrats were engaged in policy debates that no voters asked for — and that had no enduring constituency….The primary debates featured candidates declaring support for slashing law enforcement funding, repealing laws that made unauthorized border crossings illegal and ending private health insurance. Since then, candidates who aligned themselves with progressive activists have fared poorly in many high-profile races, even in deep blue bastions.” Thus, what we are seeing is just what Charles Krauthammer observed over the course of his political lifetime, the ebb and flow of American politics back and forth across the political median. If we are fortunate enough to see Kamala Harris elected to the Presidency, I seriously doubt that this erosion of support for the aforementioned extreme Far-Left positions will be in any way reversed. Kamala Harris is likely to have to govern with the Senate controlled by the G.O.P. and moreover, her support, if it materializes among disaffected Republicans, will simply require a centrist approach to governing. She has emphatically stated that it is time to turn the page and that she will be the president for all the people. This in and of itself bodes ill for any policy or proposal which seems to be extremist or politically unsustainable. The last thing Harris wants for four years of her administration is to be portrayed by the Right as some sort of Far-Left California uber liberal out of touch with the rest of America. Thus, for the near future, if not beyond, extremist Far-Left positions and proposals will have little in the way of the political oxygen needed to survive or even, for that matter, to initially germinate. Political realities and the political dynamic mentioned above would certainly seem to suggest that the now emerging trend towards erosion of such policies and positions will continue. Steven J. Gulitti New York City 3 November 2024 References: In Shift From 2020, Identity Politics Loses Its Grip on the Country; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/02/us/politics/election-2024-harris-progressives.html Steve Gulitti is a political independent and graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of Illinois. He is a retired Chief Warrant Officer in the United States Coast Guard Reserve with 25 years of total service including active duty. He is a retired union ironworker as well. He currently lives in New York City where he presently works as a stagehand under the auspices of IATSE Local 1. He voted for Kamala Harris in early voting and had previously voted for Joe Biden.

On The Treadmill to Political Defeat?

The Hail Mary pass is a play in American football employed in desperation, usually at the end of the first half by a team behind in the score trying to close that gap, or more likely, at the end of a game when a last-minute touchdown would affect victory. It is a tactic with a low probability of success but one employed when victory is otherwise unattainable. This tactic has the eligible players of the trailing team flood the end zone attempting to catch a long-yardage pass from their quarterback. Likewise, Hail Mary passes exist in the world of politics as well. One of the most memorable political Hail Mary passes of all time was John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as running mate. This development did little to help him with women voters or improve his chances of overall electoral success but it would supply late night comedians with near limitless material for satire. In many ways, the relatively late arrival of Kamala Harris as nominee for president can be seen as nothing other than the ultimate political Hail Mary pass. It was never intended for Harris to be the candidate and the reason she is now is because Joe Biden finally and undeniably revealed his shortcomings in a disastrous debate performance, a development that was in many ways presaged for months beforehand by all manner of cognitive failings and functional mental missteps. Democrats had held on to the forlorn belief that beating Trump was something only Biden could accomplish until it was no longer clear that he could, hence the political Hail Mary pass that is now the Harris candidacy. It was simply too late to find and vet another candidate in the time left between the undeniable problems besetting Biden and November 5th, a situation that could contain within it the seeds of political defeat. I believe the aforementioned to be obvious based on the fact that for all we know of Donald J. Trump, from his being a twice impeached convicted felon to a man who ginned up an attempted coup on January 6 to his outright crack pot commentary and his penchant for authoritarianism; this race is still a dead heat. Sure, you can cherry pick whichever poll results bolster your hopes and dreams for his defeat but the best indicator out there, The Real Clear Politics 2024 National: Trump vs. Harris composite of all polling, which doesn't factor in or out anything, shows the race to be a tossup as of this morning, 2 November. That Kamala Harris is in a dead heat with a man who is inherently beatable is beyond comprehension and a sign of strategic failure on the part of the Democratic Party. To me it shows that the Democratic Party has learned nothing from Hillary Clinton's defeat in 2016. Sure, she led in most polling and she got the popular vote, but our elections aren't based on who wins the popular vote so there was a blueprint in her defeat that seems to have been ignored. Did the Democrats bet all their chips on the hope that Trump couldn't possibly again capture the nomination? The result of this failure to learn the lesson of 2016 or to have prematurely concluded that Trump couldn't possibly make a political comeback may be another colossal defeat for the Democrats on election day. Sure, you can make the argument that a liberal friend of mine has: "You have to admit, Hillary would have been a better president." Of course she would have been, so would I have been or so would any number of other people have been, but so what? Focusing on hypotheticals is a useless waste of time in the world of politics. What was needed was a sound strategy of picking a viable candidate and matching that candidate with a policy platform that didn't include nonsense like defund the police. In the future, Democrats need to adopt a more strategic approach to winning presidential elections in a country so sharply divided as is today's America. Political parties exist for one fundamental purpose, to win elections, everything else they do feeds into that goal. The Democrats should have caucused two years ago to consider the age and health of Joe Biden and the probabilities that, if reelected he could effectively serve out a full second term. Conservative commentator David Gergen once pointed out that no matter how much one tries to stay mentally and physically active, by age 80 the vast majority of people are just not as mentally sharp or nimble as they once were. Our bodies just begin to slow down as we run our final laps in life. Now history shows us how an aging president in failing health would struggle to maintain America's best interests. All one need do is to examine F.D.R.'s final days and his performance at the Yalta Conference in 1945 or the prolonged incapacitation of Woodrow Wilson between late 1919 and into 1920 to see that. The potential for something similar was foretold in Biden's troubles in the period leading up to his disastrous debate performance that ultimately gave rise to the Harris candidacy. As such, it would have been beneficial two years ago to examine who, if anyone, among the Democrats would be a formidable opponent to a resurgent Trump in an electorate as evenly divided as this one, an electorate in which his supporters believe lies and fallacies no matter how many facts to the contrary are piled up against them. Is there a good reason why the Democrats have continued to ignore the fact that for all we know to be true about Trump his followers don't care about his shortcomings and that the leadership of the Republican Party has lost all effective control over the base? Can the Democrats not see that these are factors that need to be figured into any equation that should have been formulated so as to insure the defeat of Donald Trump? I don't think there is anything special about either of our two major parties. I personally believe that the Democrats, lacking a clear and universally popular potential candidate willing to run for president should have gone to someone outside the Party in searching for a candidate. It is noteworthy that by late spring roughly fifty percent of registered Democrats preferred someone other than Joe Biden as their standard bearer. I believe that what was needed was someone of national prominence, without too much political baggage, who could appeal to both sides of the political spectrum and draw supporters away from Trump as well as placate disaffected Republicans. People like David Petraeus or James Stavridis, both retired military flag officers, immediately come to mind. Now this is not because they are men, but because if we are really on the brink of an election that could see the erosion if not the end to democracy as we know it, shouldn't we do what is necessary to preserve the democracy that so many of us dearly value? Are we not already in effect in an environment of political damage control based as it is on the very state of American political reality? I fully understand that the Democrats want to make history again by electing a woman of color to the presidency after having successfully elected and reelected Barack Obama, but is this in the realm of the possible given the current political climate? The razor thin margin separating Harris from Trump in the polls suggests that it might not be. Is it the fact that Harris isn't the right woman for the job in the first place? Honestly, I can't imagine a woman politician in America today that has more appeal than Harris, except, perhaps Gretchen Whitmer, but again, the fact that we are still in a dead heat suggests that we still don't have the right candidate, male or female, at the present time. Such are the problems inherent in the tactic of desperate political Hail Mary passes. The current plight of the Democrats is succinctly summarized by Keith Naughton as follows: "At heart, Democrats’ biggest problem is that their insularity is much worse than that of their Republican counterparts. Yes, both parties are living in their own ideological media bubbles. But it’s worse for the Democrats. Within their bubble, denial has reigned supreme as they have pursued their own hobbyhorses. Instead of addressing voters’ concerns, the Democratic political class and their friends in the establishment media continue to focus on Trump’s threat to democracy, his odd behavior and their own supposed victim status. In short, the Democrats are running on issues they care about, not issues that voters care about. The Harris campaign has become comfort food for an anxious, bewildered political class." In the end, 2024 is about two campaigns featuring mediocre candidates who refuse to listen to the voters, stumbling toward the finish line. But if Kamala Harris and the Democrats lose, they have only themselves to blame." The tightness of this race reveals, that from the standpoint of the Democrats, it seems as if the party is almost on auto pilot when it comes to what many voters want. Much of this is of course true for the Republicans as well but since we are worried about a Trump victory I will focus on the plight of the Democrats as being the more important. Recently there have been rumblings among the those on the far left that Harris is spending too much time courting disaffected Republicans. Now it was posited last spring that about a third to a half of Nikki Haley's supporters would vote for Biden if Haley dropped out. Thus, Kamala Harris going after this segment of the G.O.P. base, many in traditional Red or swing states, along with other disaffected traditional Republican makes perfect sense. At the same time, why haven't the Democrats done more to woo back the non-college educated working class? Despite the fact that people with college degrees now make up forty percent of the population, the sixty percent that don't have a degree still matter. To ignore their defection to the G.O.P. was a fundamental strategic mistake on the part of the Democrats. To deride these people as deplorables was even stupider. See the Brookings reference below: "Still, when asked which president in recent decades had done the most for average working families, 44% named Donald Trump, compared to just 12% for Joe Biden." If Kamala Harris goes down to defeat it won't be her fault, it will be the fault of a strategically inert and myopic Democratic Party which has been largely sleep walking through the past decade and which has failed to adequately address a changed political landscape. With the exception of one or two minor faux pas, Harris has committed nothing in the way of fatal mistakes. Sure, she has talked in broad sweeps about policy goals but then again, she hasn't had sufficient time to delve into comprehensive legislative particulars and run a national campaign in the final months at the same time. She has also had to continue serving as Vice President. Again, this can only be seen largely as a problem inherent in the political Hail Mary pass. Lacking a defined and well-articulated public policy platform Harris' single most compelling campaign pitch is her uplifting appeal that, for the good of the country and its civil society, it is time to turn the page on a decade of divisiveness, derision and derogatory political discourse. Donald Trump's increasingly unhinged rantings of the last few weeks simply make Harris' appeal all the more urgent and compelling in its message. Steven J. Gulitti New York City 2 November 2024 References: Progressives warn Harris must change her closing message as the election looms https://daytondailynews.com/nation-world/progressives-warn-harris-must-change-her-closing-message-as-the-election-looms/S6TGXKR4QBB27JXREATWHY6TFM/ Pennsylvanians “seemed to have only a vague idea how the Democratic Party is trying to woo them back,” George Packer writes from Charleroi, Pennsylvania. “A politician has to show up, look voters in the eye, shake their hand, and then deliver help”: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/how-win-pennsylvania/680302/ Republicans and Democrats both need the support of the working class, but neither party is asking the crucial question of what these voters actually want, George Packer writes: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/democratic-republican-parties-working-class-economy/676145/ 2024 National: Trump vs. Harris; https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris What today’s working class wants from political leaders; https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-todays-working-class-wants-from-political-leaders/ Why are the Democrats losing? Hubris. https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4949797-why-are-democrats-losing-its-simple-hubris/ Steve Gulitti is a political independent and graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of Illinois. He is a retired Chief Warrant Officer in the United States Coast Guard Reserve with 25 years of total service including active duty. He is a retired union ironworker as well. He currently lives in New York City where he presently works as a stagehand under the auspices of IATSE Local 1. He voted for Kamala Harris in early voting and had previously voted for Joe Biden.

Revisiting "Women's College Basketball, Well Worth Watching"

Back in April of 2011 I wrote an article about the excitement generated by Texas A&M’s defeat of Notre Dame in the final Women’s NCAA Basketball Championship game. To my mind the women’s final rivaled the Men’s Championship win by Connecticut over the Butler Bulldogs. I went on to explain how men were missing out by dismissing women’s college basketball as not worth watching. Twelve years on I find that most men who follow sports, college sports in particular, remain too dismissive of women’s athletics at any level. This is especially true of those sports where the contest is as truly competitive and exciting as it is in the corresponding version of the sport played by men. I went to a local sports bar, to watch the LSU-Iowa Woman’s NCAA Championship and the bartender didn’t have the sound on. Now there wasn’t anything more compelling or important being televised in the world of sports so as not to. A number of other men at the bar agreed that it was only women’s sports so why turn off the juke box to listen to that game. I guess to them there was more value to listening to songs they’ve heard forever for the past 40 years. I tried to make the point that this game was, in fact, history in the making as neither Iowa nor LSU had ever made it to the Women’s Championship. All of my efforts were to no avail, my point generally fell on deaf ears. Luckily for me and other interested parties at the bar who had also requested the sound be turned on, the juke box ran out of songs played with five minutes left in the game and the sound was turned on thereafter. Once again, I can’t understand why men don’t give women’s sports the respect it deserves. The LSU-Iowa game was as exciting as any number of the games played by men in this past tournament. Now I’ll be the first to admit that a women’s college football game wouldn’t rise to the level of the men’s game, but when it comes to tennis, basketball, downhill skiing, soccer, ice hockey and golf, among others, the differences in the levels of competition and intensity are insignificant when comparing the games of one gender to the other. All one need do is think back to the last two women’s ice hockey finals in the Winter Olympics, the downhill skiing competitions in those same games or the final match of the last Woman’s World Cup Soccer tournament to see what I mean. One of the most exciting finales to a woman’s competition that I ever witnessed came back in 2011 when the Japanese Women’s Soccer Team won the gold medal in that year’s Women’s World Cup. This victory came within months of a disastrous earthquake and accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant, it was a victory that lifted the spirits of an entire nation. With regard to the LSU-Iowa Woman’s NCAA Championship game, the viewership while lower in absolute numbers than that of the men’s final still represented the most watched women’s title game of all time according to the Advocate, a newspaper out of Baton Rouge, home of Louisiana State University: “LSU’s 102-85 victory over Iowa on Sunday was the most-viewed women’s college basketball game of all time, drawing 9.9 million viewers across all ESPN and ABC platforms, according to a company release. Those numbers topped several of last season’s biggest college football games, including LSU-Alabama (7.58 million), the Big 12 championship (9.41 million), the Pac-12 championship (5.97 million), the ACC championship (3.47 million), the Sugar Bowl (9.14 million) and the Orange Bowl (4.6 million), among others, according to Sports Media Watch. The LSU-Iowa numbers blow away averages for NBA regular-season games (1.6 million last season) and were within shouting distance of the ratings for last year’s NBA Finals.” The growing prominence of the women’s game was best captured in the commentary of Jerry Bembry, Senior Writer and a Video Producer at ESPN who said: ” This year’s Final Four feels different in the sense that it’s the first time that the conversation about the women’s event is more elevated than the men’s. The women are just as intense as men. The women play defense with the same tenacity as the men. The women shoot 3-pointers with the same extended range as the men. And then there’s the trash talk and emotions that maybe exceed what occurs in the men’s college game. New rivalries have put the women’s game among the top trending topics since the tournament began.” Likewise, South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston’s observations on the tournament speak to the changes that are already underway: “You can always think about people making negative comments about women’s basketball, women’s sports in general, but it’s proof that the numbers are going up,” Boston said. “Everyone is excited to watch the women’s game. You can’t really deny that people are interested in watching women’s sports. It’s just really exciting to be part of the generation that’s continuing to help it grow.” At this point I think it’s hard to deny the obvious and that is that women’s sports are on the rise and that the competition is just as good and just as intense in many cases as is that of the men’s game in several sports. It has in fact become too good to ignore, a factor that will drive even more viewership in the future. So, what then is it that is holding so many men back from embracing women’s sports to the same extent that they embrace men’s? Misogyny may explain some of it but I don’t think that is the essence of the issue either; sports enthusiasts love the high they get from watching an intensely competitive contest. Attitudes continue to change and the demise of Trump era misogynistic rhetoric will only hasten more change in this regard be it in society in general or in the world of sports in particular. With regard to college basketball, it may be more a function of sports viewing overload for many. After all, just how much college basketball can you watch with 134 individual games played between the Men and Women’s NCAA tournaments, plus the NIT and division 2 competition, all of it coming only a week after college basketball’s Tournament Week. Moreover, I’m just talking one particular aspect of sports here. There’s a host of other sporting events on at the same time that March Madness is in full swing. The unrelenting pressure of increased women’s athletic competition will eventually reverse the slow pace of accepting women athletes on the same plane as those of men. One must remember that men who began watching men’s sports growing up will naturally be inclined to continue to do so, not because they are misogynists but more due to societal inertia, an inertia that will only have its course changed as the level of competition in women’s sports becomes to compelling to ignore, which it will. Don’t forget that once upon a time, in the late 1960s white college football players in the Deep South were legally prohibited from playing teams that had black players on their squads. This ruling was later modified to only pertain to college football games played within the South and within southern conferences. Eventually teams from the region could compete against integrated teams outside of the old Confederacy or in certain bowl games like the Rose Bowl. In time black players were allowed onto southern college football teams as well, competitive pressures being the driving force behind that change. Today the sport of college football is fully integrated as is the broadcasting and reporting of the sport as well. In 1971, the year I graduated high school, the University of Alabama football team was all white as was that of Ole Miss. Look at those teams today. Thus, it is just a matter of time before women’s sports become just as viewed as that of men’s and the more competitive women’s contests become the faster will be the rate of that change. In a sense we are, all of us who follow sports, watching history in the making whether we like it or not, sound on or not. Steven J. Gulitti New York, N.Y. 10 April 2023 Sources: Women’s College Basketball, Well Worth Watching; https://shadowproof.com/2011/04/05/womens-college-basketball-well-worth-watching/ CNBC: CBS saw 14% decline in viewers for NCAA men’s basketball championship game, while ratings for women’s title match on ESPN grew https://cnb.cx/2OxaH0s ESPN: TV ratings for LSU’s win over Iowa drew an all-time high for women’s college basketball https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/espn-lsu-iowa-drew-all-time-high-womens-basketball-ratings/article_ad131dac-6d5a-5221-bd9e-b503a7136bdb.html Jerry Bembry: ‘The talent is evolving in women’s sports’: Comparing the Final Fours in Dallas and Houston https://andscape.com/features/the-talent-is-evolving-in-womens-sports-comparing-the-final-fours-in-dallas-and-houston/

4 April 2023 - My Interesting Day at the Courthouse

Seeing as I live in Manhattan, I couldn't resist making my way down to the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse at 100 Centre Street to be a witness to history. That is exactly what I did to the extent that I could judging by the crowds, blocked streets, police presence and the barricades. Luckily, I was able to get inside Collect Pond Park and to within 50 yards of the Courthouse's main entrance. By the time I got there it was already 11:30 in the morning and the very short and apparently ineffectual Marjorie Taylor Greene show was already over. Did it ever really get going at all? Seems that our gal from the hills of Northwest Georgia had already skedaddled and retreated to who knows where after, for all the hype, a surprisingly short performance. Needless to say, it wouldn't be long before the star of today's impromptu reality show, Donald J. Trump, would himself be late to his own gig. Luckily the crowds were largely well behaved, the worst of the day being nothing more than opponents screaming at the top of their lungs at each other across a DMZ patrolled by the police. I had originally dressed in a plaid flannel shirt with my LSU hat on as I'm still celebrating the Bayou Barbie's NCAA college basketball victory. However, my wife said I looked like a Trumper, which might be hazardous to my health in liberal New York City so a change was in order. She suggested I wear one of my old USCG jackets but I doubt the Commandant or the local command wanted that kind of advertising on a day like today so I said no to that. I settled on a safer FDNY shirt and a Binghamton University hat that my niece gave me. I however, did not heed my wife's suggestion that I leave my pepper spray behind, lest I be totally unarmed if things sank to the level of a riot which mercifully, they did not. I was also pleasantly surprised to make the acquaintance of Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC after he stood next to me and I introduced myself. We had a great conversation which lasted about twenty minutes when thereafter he took his leave and disappeared into the crowd. In many ways today is a sad day seeing that the country has come to this, but it's also a great day because it shows the system is working to rid the body politic of a sickness; in this case Donald Trump's ill-conceived efforts to subvert democracy. What also makes today a great day is that D.A. Alvin Bragg had the courage to indict a former president, a fact that, in the long run, may have as much impact as this particular case does in and of itself. Now even if this case doesn't rise to the level of criminality that interfering with the election in Georgia does, or the January 6 insurrection does, or the classified documents case may, it opens the floodgates for those behind the 18 other cases pending against Trump to bring their cases forward. For them, there's now no need to worry about bringing forth an indictment or the public fallout that attaches to being the first person to charge a former president with criminal conduct. The Rubicon has been crossed and now the attorneys behind the other 18 cases can come forward with one big hurdle eliminated for them and the question of the viability of indicting a former president behind them as well. Yes, today is both a sad day and at the same time a great day for democracy in America. Why, because the system of justice still seems to be working. It was a great day because political opponents could face off against each other without it devolving into the disgrace that we all witnessed on January 6 of 2021. It's also a great day for an American who has the courage of his convictions to do the right thing no matter the cost and risk to himself and even his family and that is what Alvin Bragg did today when he moved to indict Donald J. Trump. The late Mark Sheilds who was for years a fixture on the Friday Night PBS News Hour, once said that there's a reason why John F. Kennedy's book, Profiles in Courage, is less than a half an inch thick. The reason for that is that in reality not all that many American leaders have ever had the courage to do the right thing when their decisions were made in an intensely dangerous political environment. Whether or not Bragg's decision rises to the level of historical decision and risk that John Adams took when he defended the British soldiers who participated in the Boston Massacre is beyond my pay grade to answer. That said, few objective observers today would dispute the fact that Alvin Bragg displayed great personal courage in his decision to go forward with the indictment of Donald J. Trump. Steven J. Gulitti New York City 4 April 2023

November 2016 - America at the Dawn of the Great Dismal

In mid-October Hillary Clinton was ahead of Donald Trump by 11 points, as of this morning, 11/6/16, most of that lead had dissipated thanks to the latest batch of e-mails, which may have been inappropriately released, many of which may in fact be duplications. That gnawing question about Clinton’s honesty and trustworthiness just won’t go away and with it the outcome of the election is no longer a given. Meanwhile the number of woman who have accused Trump of sexually inappropriate behavior has reached double digits. Serial adulterer Newt Gingrich harangued Meygn Kelly about her “obsession with sex” suggesting that her animosity towards Trump, founded on his poor behavior towards her during the presidential debates, impeded her ability to honestly cover his candidacy. Against this backdrop of tawdry and salacious news, Roger Ailes at Fox News is forced off the stage which has been the fountain of truth for America’s conservative rank and file for decades, and that as a result of his own sexual misconduct. Rudy Giuliani told us that Trump was a “genius” for not paying taxes for 18 years, leaving the rest of us to conclude that we’re just suckers. If you’ve been watching Fox News it’s ironic to see Bill O’Reilly and Bret Baier have to swallow the reality of Trump as the conservative standard bearer even if he’s not even remotely close to being a genuine conservative. Barry Goldwater’s granddaughter, Carolyn Goldwater Ross, said that Trump violates all of her grandfather’s core values. Ironically Miss Ross made that statement while appearing onstage with Michelle Obama at a pro Clinton rally in Phoenix. Mr. O’Reilly went so far as to say that Trump was not “seasoned enough to understand the geopolitical world” while at the same time bemoaning “Clinton is too far to the left.” It’s safe to say that this acceptance of Trump is more a function of a deep seated disdain for all things progressive than it is for a true affinity for Trump himself. Fox News has apparently looked past Trump’s fact free messaging, his dishonest twisting of those facts that he does employ, his foreign policy ignorance and his baseless economic positions, apparently concluding that the election of Hillary Clinton would be the greater of two evils. Some have even suggested, sardonically, that we should return to being ruled by the British. I could go on with the examples but if you’ve been paying any attention to politics over the past year I think you get the point and that point is that this country is on the threshold of a very unsettling immediate future. The political system is broken and this election is, in the words of pollster Peter Hart “about fear not hope.” How can one honestly vote for a candidate, in this case Miss Clinton, when a major organ of the Democratic Party, the D.N.C., actively sought to derail a legitimate contender as they did in the case of Bernie Sanders? How can one support a candidate who was given questions before a debate so as to make sure she had the answers? How can one vote for a candidate that has one policy view when talking privately to Wall Street bankers and another when she’s standing in front of a campaign crowd addressing the very same issue? How can one vote for a candidate who says in private that she favors pipelines while in public raises an alarm over climate change? A good friend of mine told me I should vote for Hillary because she’s more likely than Trump to promote programs that benefit me but seeing as much of Clinton’s campaign rhetoric is a function of outmaneuvering Bernie Sanders I just can’t buy my friend’s logic. I was burned by Bill, how can I trust Hillary? In the case of Mr. Trump, the misogynistic aspects of his background, his dog whistling on Hispanics and Blacks, his misconceptions on economic facts and his isolationist foreign policy position along with his affinity for Vladimir Putin make him most unfit to sit in the oval office, let alone have access to the nuclear codes. Scores, if not more than 100, former Republican security officials and military advisors have gone on the record in opposing a Trump presidency. More troubling in Trump’s case is his suggesting that extra legal means may be an option in opposing a Clinton presidency, that “Second Amendment remedies” may be in order or that he may refuse to concede, if he loses, because “the system is rigged.” Then again after the release of the latest batch of e-mails Trump suggested that “maybe the system isn’t rigged after all.” Talk about a situational reality. Yet for all of his flaws, which are more than obvious, Trump appeals to a great many Americans and for good reason. If approximately 65 percent of the American people don’t go to and graduate from college and those same people traditionally relied on mining and manufacturing for providing a middle class lifestyle, what are they supposed to do when all they have for an explanation of their human condition is some set of airy fairy economic theories that are academic in nature and inapplicable in reality? This was supposed to be the election where third party candidates had a real chance to shine but their performance has been tragi comical at best. The Libertarian Gary Johnson doesn’t know where Aleppo is, or what it is, even though it’s the oldest inhabited place on earth and it has been reported on in every major newspaper several times a week for over a year. The Green Party’s Jill Stein wants to pardon Edward Snowdin and give him a cabinet position. Many of my Libertarian friends complain that their point of view wasn’t given a fair hearing during the debates but if the American people were truly looking for a third party alternative they surely knew where to look and having done so they, most likely, came to the conclusion that the alternatives were worse than the mainstream candidates. What else explains this latest of third party failures? Did I hear someone say check please? When I started to write this piece, and before I left for an afternoon of NFL Football, there was no indication that James Comey and the F.B.I. would come out and once again state that there were ”No new conclusions in Clinton email investigation.” Thus, for now it looks like, once again, Hillary Clinton is off the hook for criminality and, running true to form, Donald Trump is back to claiming that “the system is rigged” which implies we’re back to not conceding defeat or the seditious conspiratorial lure of revolt and possibly revolution. Just so that we’re all on the same page here, advocating violence against, or impeding the lawful functioning of the federal government is seditious conspiracy punishable by a lengthy prison term. See “Election rants, threats are pushing First Amendment limits” an article written by a registered Republican and cited in the sources below. So a day or two before the election here’s where we are. A large portion of the American people feel they’ve been left behind due to globalization, which is certainly true and those former Democrats are now Republicans or vote as such. They are the one’s powering Trump’s rise in American politics and they see nothing to attract them to Hillary Clinton. It is naïve to think that the defeat of Donald Trump will in any way mollify their anxious feelings or their rejection of social change. The rank and file person of color feels that he’s got no place in the G.O.P. unless he’s a parrot for the party line or a token personality. Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Trey Gowdy, (R-SC) U.S. Representative for South Carolina’s 4th congressional district and veteran Clinton hunter among others all vow to investigate Hillary Clinton the day after her inauguration. The talk of impeachment is in the air and as of this evening only 40 million votes are in. The sorry fact of the matter is that whomever is elected they will probably be the subject of investigation. There is no reason to think that the grid lock of the past 8 years is even close to being a thing of the past on the morning of November 9. This past Friday night I was having a beer at “happy hour” with a number of fellow union iron workers and a retired member among them, and veteran liberal hater, said to my wife and I “I can’t wait for this election to be over.” Not trying to purposely ruin his weekend or his immediate outlook I said that the election’s passing would merely be nothing more then the beginning of what I now call “The Dawn of the Great Dismal.” Is this the worst political climate we’ve seen in the post WWII era? Most likely it is. Is it the worst in American history, not even close, well not at least thus far. Let’s face it after the election of Abraham Lincoln we sank into a civil war that took the lives of up to, or possibly more than 620,000 Americans out of a population of just 31 million. That said unless we can get beyond the rank partisanship of mass and social media, be it left or right, and unless we can accommodate social change and reconcile that with basic American core values and changing American demographics we’ve got nothing to look forward to but more of the same. There is no reason to believe that the end of this election cycle will meaningfully change anything when it comes to political polarization. Personally I can’t bring myself to vote for Clinton, Trump, Johnson or Stein. Together they may as well be the four political horsemen of the absurd. I think it’s pathetic that in a country that’s supposed to be the beacon of freedom that this is the best we can do. Hopefully we’ll get trough the next four years and true leaders will rise from among the American population, much the same was as they did in the dark days of WWII and we’ll be able to build upon that and move forward, beyond the “Great Dismal”. After all a country that defeated Fascism, that out lasted Soviet Style Communism and put a man on the moon should be able to meaningfully change course and sail out of the “Great Dismal” and into a new age of dynamic democracy. Till then, good luck. Steven J. Gulitti New York City 11/6/2016 Sources: Donald Trump has never been closer to the presidency than he is at this moment http://wpo.st/cVIC2 The electoral map is definitely moving in Donald Trump’s direction http://wpo.st/uTIC2 Dems getting nervous over Michigan http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/304557-dems-getting-nervous-over-Michigan Nate Silver: Clinton one state away from losing electoral college http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/304551-nate-silver-clinton-one-state-away-from-losing-electoral Buchanan: Trump has a path to victory http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/304508-buchanan-trump-has-a-path-to-victory Trump and Clinton running neck and neck in Ohio and Florida http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/304546-trump-and-clinton-running-neck-and-neck-in-ohio-and ‘The FBI is Trumpland’: anti-Clinton atmosphere spurred leaking, sources say https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/03/fbi-leaks-hillary-clinton-james-comey-donald-trump?CMP=share_btn_tw Possibility of FBI leaks to Trump campaign raises alarm; http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/new-concerns-fbi-is-leaking-to-trump-campaign-800667203987 Politicizing of FBI becomes hallmark of 2016; http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/politicizing-of-fbi-becomes-hallmark-of-2016-801655363718 Can Fox News survive the forces it unleashed on the 2016 election? https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/20/fox-news-changes-donald-trump-rightwing-politics-roger-ailes?CMP=share_btn_tw Trump’s growth projections leave economists in disbelief http://thehill.com/policy/finance/302271-trumps-growth-projections-leave-economists-in-disbelief Donald Trump’s Denial of Economic Reality; http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/opinion/donald-trumps-denial-of-economic-reality.html?ribbon-ad-idx=8&rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article Beyond Lying: Donald Trump’s Authoritarian Reality; http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/opinion/beyond-lying-donald-trumps-authoritarian-reality.html?ribbon-ad-idx=8&rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article Queen Offers to Restore British Rule Over United States http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/queen-offers-to-restore-british-rule-over-united-states 50 GOP national security experts oppose Trump @CNNPolitics http://cnn.it/2b8JTPP GOP Foreign Policy Hawks Pen Letter Opposing Trump’s National Security Views https://n.pr/1TM1qaE Trump Gets Ready to Be a Bad Loser http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trump-gets-ready-to-be-a-bad-loser House Oversight chairman: FBI has not changed conclusions http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/304587-house-oversight-chairman-fbi-has-not-changed-conclusions Trump Supporter Tells Reporters ‘Hillary Needs To Be Taken Out’; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgo_i8MtRsU&feature=youtu.be Legal expert: Election rants, threats are pushing First Amendment limits http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/303569-legal-expert-election-rants-threats-are-pushing Threat of investigations looms large over Clinton-Trump race http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/304399-threat-of-investigations-hangs-over-clinton-trump

Rand Paul and Another Libertarian Fizzle

If Rand Paul had ever had the juice behind his presidential bid that Donald Trump had and then failed to perform I’d label his departure from the 2016 race a flameout. However in this case, as in many libertarian efforts in the past, it’s really just another fizzle. An analysis of Rand Paul’s political fortunes shows that he has been consistently mired in single digit support levels or low double digits at best. This can be verified by an analysis of the data in RealClear Politics and PollingReport.com going back to the beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign, referenced below. Every time Americans become disillusioned or disenchanted with government, particularly the concept of “big” government, the country’s Libertarians seem to pop up like mushrooms after a spring rain touting their well worn, stock critique about how we currently govern ourselves. Every time this happens more than a few politicians suddenly voice support for Libertarian ideas, say that they are devotees of Ayn Rand or that they subscribe to the ideas of the Mises Institute with its the Austrian school of economics and libertarian political theory. Conservative media grabs onto the new found enthusiasm for Libertarian ideas with headline stories or an interview of some small band of college Libertarians who, like Pope Urban the Second, proclaim that we are on the verge of a great crusade to free people from the serfdom of modern government, one which will take us back to the realm of the unencumbered “noble savage’ who is free to do as he pleases, the public be damned. And every time, as in the past, this passing flirtation with Libertarianism fades as the dynamics of the American political process plays itself out. What is noteworthy about this latest Libertarian fizzle is that even during a time of great turmoil in the American political life where so many are searching for something new or revolutionary, the ideas of our current Libertarian standard bearer have been trampled underfoot in the melee of the 2016 presidential contest, left to bleed out on the field of political battle and largely ignored. As I have pointed out in the past, in the great scheme of things, there are just not that many libertarians in America and the very life blood of the “movement’ is a function of a few zealous billionaires who prop up Libertarianism. Citing the article below, ”Where Have all the Libertarian’s Gone?”: “… how is it we have over sixty five Libertarian organizations afloat in the body politic according to Wikipedia? The Stason Organization lists 11 “Major Libertarian Organizations” and 33 “Think Tanks”. But this begs the question: Why so many organizations for just over a half of a million voters, or less than one half of one percent of the voting public? It seems a bit fishy to me that we have all of these “Libertarian” organizations in a country that seems to have so few Libertarians. If we have so few Libertarians, then where does the cash that fuels all of these “Libertarian” organizations come from? After all it would be pretty hard to fund this large number of organizations out of the pockets of just 0.4% of the voting public. Could it be that these “Libertarian” organizations are propped up by those with a specific agenda and deep pockets or do these 523,686 voters just all happen to be billionaires?” Likewise as I pointed out in “Have Libertarians Forgotten the Republican Primaries? “: “First, if Libertarian ideas are so compelling, how come Libertarians garner such a small portion of actual votes during major electoral campaigns? Secondly, if Libertarians command such low voting totals, how is it that there is such a disproportionate number of Libertarian organizations and who is putting up the money to support them?” The bottom line, to my mind is this, the American political landscape just isn’t fertile soil for the ideas that Libertarian movement puts forth. As is the case with Marxism, America just isn’t the kind of place that Libertarian ideas can take root and flourish to the point that it can sustain and propel a major political movement. Like Marxism, Libertarianism is a sidebar topic in American political life, a side show to the big show if you like. Steven J. Gulitti 2/3/2016 Sources: RealClear Politics; http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/# PollingReport.com; http://www.pollingreport.com/wh16rep.htm Mises Institute; https://mises.org/about-mises Have Libertarians Forgotten the Republican Primaries?‏; http://bluemassgroup.com/2012/03/have-libertarians-forgotten-the-republican-primaries%e2%80%8f/ Why Can’t Libertarians Get Any Respect?; http://bluemassgroup.com/2011/08/why-cant-libertarians-get-any-respect/ Where Have all the Libertarian’s Gone?; http://bluemassgroup.com/2010/09/where-have-all-the-libertarians-gone/

Latest Budget Deal Just Another Setback For The Far Right

Latest Budget Deal Just Another Setback For The Far Right; http://oursalon.ning.com/profiles/blogs/latest-budget-deal-just-another-setback-for-the-far-right