THE MESS IN AFGHANISTAN

   "I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan-two Republican, two Democrats.  I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth."-President Joe Biden

The longest running war in American history has come to a tragic, and sadly fitting end.  Fulfilling a promise that he made on the campaign trail, (and one that was supported by a large majority of the country), President Joe Biden has pulled American troops out of  Afghanistan.  By doing so he held to a withdrawal bargain that the Donald Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban fighters of Afghanistan before he left office.  The  result has been an overwhelming show of force of the Taliban, who have taken over all the country's major cities in a surprisingly short period of time, as the American trained Afghan soldiers fell or fled without American support.  Over the years our country has spent tens of billions of dollars trying to train an independent Afghan army, and yet the Taliban was able to topple them in a matter of days, a powerful example of what a difficult conflict this has been.

The whole situation with Afghanistan has always been a complicated one: I still remember how after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 the country was filled with understandable anger and rage.  Surely, striking back at the people who organized the attack made sense, and their headquarters were in Afghanistan.  But once the invasion was made and the Al Queda organization there was smashed, how much obligation did the US have to stay and try to stabilize the country? The goals of the war were met within a few years, with the war becoming more of a violent occupation than an outright war, one with no easy endpoint.

  The first president to deal with Afghanistan, George W Bush, seemed to lose interest in it when he prioritized the invasion of Iraq in two thousand and three.  Barack Obama, on the other hand, ran on ending the war in Iraq, and he did.  But he doubled down on the conflict in Afghanistan, surging in thousands of more American troops in two thousand and nine, along with trying to train and build both a native army and the country's infrastructure.  His intentions were good, but the results were mostly more failure, with much of the money intended for infrastructure building being lost because  the country's centralized government was weak and corrupt.  The continuing difficulties of the war  led Trump to run on a campaign of withdrawal, which Biden has continued.

It should be noted that not all of the effects of the American invasion of Afghanistan have been bad: the New York Times recently noted that in the twenty years of the war, the infant mortality rate has been cut in half, and far more of the Afghani people have access to electricity.  And of course, things have gotten better for the women of the country, with girls being allowed to go to school and adult women being allowed into the workforce on a wide scale for the first time.  So far, the Taliban has pledged that they will not force girls out of schools and women out of their jobs in their new regime, but the history of the Taliban does not bode well for the Afghani women. 

 Although I essentially agree with the withdrawal of American troops, the handling of it has been a chaotic mess, with the Taliban retaking power far faster than the Biden administration expected, leading to a horrifying refugee situation that's led to terrible images of desperate people clinging on to departing helicopters (a grim reminder of a similar situation that happened at the end of the Viet Nam war).  The best thing the country can do is help as many refugees as possible relocate here in the US or in other countries.  The Republican party will scream over an influx of Muslim immigrants, but it's the least we can do for all the people who allied with our country in this decades long war. 

THE BIDEN BUDGET BLUEPRINT AND A CONSERVATIVE CONTRADICTION

Way back in nineteen seventy one, congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Bill, which would have created a public childcare program for all American parents.  Sadly, a program  that would have been a great benefit to poor and working class households was vetoed by President Nixon.  The reason he gave was that he didn't want  a "communal approach to child-rearing."  He also added that it would have "family-weakening implications."

Last February, Utah Senator Mitt Romney proposed a universal monthly payment of three hundred and fifty dollars per child to families with children.  His proposal went nowhere, as members of his own party attacked the idea, calling it  “welfare assistance”.

 Recently Democrats in congress unveiled a three and half trillion dollar spending bill that would, if passed, be the biggest social spending plan since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs of the nineteen sixties.  Along with trying to fight climate change, a significant portion of the bill is reserved for spending on a national childcare program plus a generous paid leave program for new parents.  The bill will have to pass through reconciliation in the Senate, which means that it will probably have to undergo some cuts before all the Democratic Senators will support it.  The support of all the Democrats is necessary because the Republican party will inevitably unanimously vote against it. 

Equally relevant is the fact that recent population studies have found that Americans are having fewer and fewer children in the past few years.  While there are a number of reasons that American fertility rates are down, from better sex education, more birth control choices and more women wanting to focus on their careers, one of the main reasons is that having children in America is expensive.  And it's an expense that Republicans (except for Romney)  have done nothing to relieve in years.  Yes, the party that wraps itself in family values refuses to do anything to help poor and working class families and those families have responded by having less children.

I find it amusing that some conservatives have responded to the country's lowering birth rate with alarm, failing to see that it's the inevitable result of their anti-family policies.  Just take a look at our lack of paid national maternity leave: the US is one of the few countries in the world to not have any national maternity program.  Instead, we allow twelve weeks of unpaid leave for women who work at companies with more than fifty people, and no mandatory leave at all for women who work at companies with less than fifty workers.  Oh sure, women who work at high paying jobs often get paid leave, but women in poor or low paying jobs have little or no choice but to go back to work just a short time after giving birth.  So it's no surprise that so many women are saying no to motherhood or having less children.

Why do conservatives fail to understand this contradiction?  Part of it may be that they're still stuck in the fifties mentality that dictates that the most successful families are ones in which dad goes to work and mom stays home with the kids.  The fact that the country's growing income gap and stagnant wages for the middle class means that many families can't even afford to live this way anymore doesn't seem to enter into their thinking.

A more cynical reason is that conservative politicians oppose these programs because the wealthy corporations that pay for their campaigns don't want them to exist.  And, as long as the Republican party is able to convince middle class white voters to support them while doing nothing to help the middle class, they can just keep right on doing nothing to make child rearing a little less expensive for our families.  They just shouldn't be so surprised when those families respond by having fewer or no children.

ANDREW CUOMO AND REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY

During the pandemic, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo became a media darling as he tried to handle being the governor of a state that was the epicenter of the pandemic.  For a while there the tough talking New Yorker was poised to become the next Rudy Giuliani, and even a presidential run didn't seem out of the question.  What a difference a few months can make.

When the first sexuall assault charges were made against Cuomo, his denials seemed somewhat reasonable.  Perhaps he was just an overly affectionate guy from a different era when it was alright for a boss to be so.  But now that a through investigation has been made, it's clear that the man went beyond mere friendly affection.  Eleven different women detail stories of him making creepy comments and groping them, and there is one clear case that he retaliated against one of the women after she spoke out about it.  Add to that reports that he openly lied about his success battling covid, and it's easy to see why President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have both called for him to resign.

Right now the governor is fighting back, releasing an odd video in which he defended himself by showing pictures of him being publicly affectionate with other people in the past, as if that explains the behavior that many of these women claimed happened in private.  To me, there's no question that he should step down, both for the good of the state and his political party.  But it is possible that he could successfully hang on to office and finish his term.  In other words, he could pull a Donald Trump.

In October of twenty sixteen, which seems like a lifetime ago, the infamous Access Hollywood tape hit the Trump presidential campaign like a ton of bricks.  Along with the tape, twenty five different women claimed that he had sexaully assaulted them in the exact manner that he had bragged about on the tape.  It's so hard to believe now just how finished Trump's political career looked, as numerous Republican party members withdrew their endorsements of him and Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence considered dropping off the ticket.  Trump, like Cuomo, just plowed onward, dismissing the words he spoke on the tape as "locker room talk" and shrugging off all  the sexual assault charges, claiming that he would eventually sue all the women making them (something he still hasn't gotten around to doing). 

It appears that Cuomo, just like Trump, seems to think that blanket denials will work for him.  But the Democratic party is not like the Republican party in that they do not just worship power.  Even if Cuomo does stay in office, his career as a Democratic leader or spokesperson is over; I can't imagine that the party will ever embrace him again.  This stands in sharp contrast to Trump, who's time as a pariah in the Republican party only lasted until election day.  Once he somehow eked out a victory, everything was forgiven, and some of his biggest critics, like Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, became some of his most toadying lackeys.   Things like yet another woman coming forward to say that Trump once raped her in a dressing room were completely ignored, as absolute loyalty to him became the standard for nearly every member of the party.

It seems hard to believe that the same Republican party that once forced Senator Bob Packwood to resign because of sexaul assualt charges back in nineteen ninety five could now continue to support Trump even as he is out of office, but those are the depths that the Republican has sank to ever since they turned a TV celebrity into a demagogic cult leader.   No, the Democratic party isn't perfect, but they certainly hold the higher moral ground when it comes to punishing deplorable behavior from a party leader. 

THE UNVACCINATED

"99.5% of deaths are among the unvaccinated." US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy on recent coronavirus deaths.

The anti vaccine myth first took hold in the world back in nineteen ninety eight when former British surgeon Andrew Wakefield published a poorly researched study claiming that there was a link between certain vaccinations and autism in the medical paper The Lancet.  Although the article was later retracted by that paper, the damage was done; propped up by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, lies about one of the greatest scientific advances in the history of the world were spread all over the media.  The one good piece of news is the anti vaccine belief never hit the mainstream in the US, with it mostly staying on the fringes of society.  

Sadly, the same cannot be said about the anti vaccine movement that has arisen during the covid crisis.  Recently, the European Union exceeded America in the percentage of its people being vaccinated, and with recent polls showing a whopping forty seven percent of Republicans saying that they do not plan to get the vaccine, these depressing trends appear to be ready to continue.  The reasons people give for not getting vaccinated range from reasonable sounding (the vaccines are too new) to insane (magnetism!).  It is truly upsetting to consider that while other countries are begging for more vaccinations, many parts of America are running a surplus!

So why are so many Americans turning away from a vaccine that  has been used on  billions of people around the world, even as a more contagious strain of the virus is spreading around the nation? It appears to be a unique brand of American stubbornness, combined with anti intellectualism.  Now while there is some distrust of the vaccine in African American communities (who's basis for distrust of the government regarding health has historical precedent) it is mostly in politically conservative, mostly white communities that the anti vaccine attitudes run the strongest.  Most of this is due to the downplaying of the virus that the Donald Trump administration did almost from the beginning of the pandemic: from him calling the coronavirus a "liberal hoax" to his claims that it will disappear when the weather gets warmer, Trump shrugged off the threat for a long time before finally starting to care when it kept getting worse.  Even then, he seemed to support anti mask protests going on in places like Michigan.  And, taking their cues from the president, the right wing media fell in line with him, shrugging off the virus for far too long  even as cases soared.

To be fair, both Trump and the right wing media have equivocated on this issue: Trump got the vaccine himself, but allowed no photography of the moment and defends people who don't want to get it.  Conservative commentator Sean Hannity spoke out for vaccines, before just seconds later when he condemned universities that have vaccination requirements.  Obviously, coming after months of misleading covid statements coming from both the former president and Fox News, this is all a little too little and a little too late. 

While Joe Biden has admirably tried to encourage people to get the shot, the sad fact of the matter is that the more he talks about it, the more conservatives are digging in, just to defy him. To them risking their own lives and the lives of people around them means less than admitting that they're wrong.   (Anyone who's ever argued with a Trump supporter knows how hard it can be to change someone's mind).  And everything from offering free marijuana to lottery tickets hasn't moved the needle enough. Right now Biden is considering requiring all civilian federal employees to either be vaccinated or regularly tested, and I absolutely think that that is the right thing to do.  And I hope that private businesses and universities join in on vaccine mandates.  Sure, the right wing media will howl, and there will be protests (a similar decision made by the French government was recently protested) I still think it's the right thing to do (the decision in France  also led to a big increase in people getting vaccinated).  We need to show the unvaccinated that life will be much harder for them until they finally give in and just get the same shot that hundreds of millions of other Americans have already gotten.  Putting it simply, some people's desire to "own the libs" is not more important than a return to normalcy. 

TRUMP'S RECKONING?

Back in the nineteen eighties, president Ronald Reagan was often called the "teflon" president, because no matter what happened around him, it never stuck to him.  From the Iran Contra scandal to ignoring the deaths of people with AIDS, Reagan always seemed able to emerge unscathed from problems that might have sunk another president.  His amiable (if absent minded) persona always seemed to win enough of the support of the American public to keep him popular.

A few years ago, people started calling then president  Donald Trump "teflon Don", implying once again that we had a president who never seemed to have to pay for the various terrible and corrupt things going on around him.  That certainly seemed true, as Trump shrugged off sexual assault and rape charges from twenty six women, ignored the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and was impeached by the House of Representatives, all while saying and tweeting utterly offensive ("Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the co founders of Isis") or downright stupid (the sound from windmills can give you cancer) things that should have ended his political career but didn't.

And now, after seventy five years of always getting what he wants, Trump may finally face some level of retribution:  on July first, the Manhattan district attorney’s office announced charges against the Trump Organization and its chief financial executive, Allen H. Weisselberg.  This could possibly lead to charges being leveled against Trump himself.  Like a mob boss, Trump has always demanded complete loyalty from those around him, and lives in fear of someone turning on him, which Weisselberg may do. That said, given all the various accusations made about Trump and his organization over the years, these do not seem to be particularly strong accusations;  they allege that over the past fifteen years the Trump organization  gifted Weisselberg things like a free apartment, a car, or school tuition, adding up to millions of dollars, without declaring any of these things on his taxes.  The good news is that this may be just the beginning of the investigation, with more serious charges in the offing, depending on whether Weisselberg flips on Trump in order to reduce his own sentence or not.

So, will Weisselberg flip?  That's a big question: on the one hand, his former daughter in law Jennifer Weisselberg recently told the New Yorker that, concerning Allen Weisselberg, "His whole worth is 'Does Donald like me today?' It's his whole life, his core being. He's obsessed. He has more feelings and adoration for Donald than for his wife."  On the other hand, she also remembers Trump coming to visit Alan Weisselberg's home and blurting out "This is where my C.F.O. lives? It's embarrassing!", he then showed off naked pictures of women he had claimed to have slept with and hit on Jennifer Weisselberg.  The fact that all of this was done while the family was mourning the death of a loved one makes it all the more repulsive (and par for the course for Trump).  Could such boorish behavior come back to bite Trump now that his former C. F. O. is in the legal crosshairs?  Let's hope it does.

One crazy thing is Trump and his son Donald Jr. have both publicly admitted to the crimes by shrugging them off, implying that somehow they were just being nice to Weisselberg, not seeming to realize that millions of dollars in gifts are still taxable no matter how well meaning their intention.  One thing is sadly true, these charges will not change the unshakeable faith of the core Republican voters who have stood by Trump ever since he first announced his candidacy and who want him to run again in twenty twenty four.  Heck, he may be the first American politician to run for the presidency while in jail.  All bets are off with this guy.

ALMOST SACRED

 

Yesterday, the Republicans in the Senate shot down both versions of the voting rights bills that the Democrats were trying to pass to counter the literally hundreds of voter suppression laws that Republican state governments have passed recently.  Although the death of the bills were always inevitable (no one expected Republicans not to filibuster bills that would stop them from having an electoral advantage), it's still heartbreaking to see how one political party has no problem in trying to prevent people, especially people of color, from exercising their right to vote.  

The late John Lewis, a congressmen and early civil rights protester, one described the right to vote in America as "almost sacred".  He was right.  Sadly, extending that right to African Americans has been a serious problem since the end of slavery.  It's hard to believe, but in the post war civil reconstruction era, thousands of former slaves were elected to public offices.  Sadly, this ended when federal troops enforcing civil rights laws were withdraw from the South and the Jim Crow era of segregation and lack of voting rights began in the South.  It wouldn't  end until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Voting Act into law in nineteen sixty five.   After signing the bill, according to Johnson aide Bill Moyers, Johnson sadly admitted that "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come."

It is amazing to think that, decades later, Johnson's words still ring true.  Oh sure, courting libertarians and fundamentalist Christians has been a big part of the Republican party's appeal in the decades since that bill was signed, at the end of the day, their  plan of using racially coded words ("war on crime", "war on drugs") in political speeches,  a plan developed during the ninety sixty eight Nixon presidential campaign (and named "The Southern Strategy"), has been a part of every Republican presidential campaign since.  (Although to be fair, Mitt Romney's and John McCain's campaigns mostly avoided it).  

Donald Trump, of course, just threw out the coding and openly made racist remarks in his twenty sixteen campaign.  Even worse, since his public refusal to accept his loss in twenty twenty has lead a majority of Republican voters to believe that that election was stolen, Republican state legislators have passed laws making it harder to vote by claiming that their constituents were concerned about "voter fraud".  Of course they don't mention the fact that the only reasons  they have those concerns is because of Trump's lies.  And these laws are targeted at making it harder for African American voters to vote, by shutting down polling places and limiting early voting.  A twenty twenty article in The Washington Post pointed out that African American voters already are seventy four percent more likely to have to wait half and hour or more to vote than white voters.  Somehow this obvious  impediment to voting isn't enough for the Republicans.

And if that weren't bad enough, conservatives on the Supreme Court have also helped out the Republican cause: in the contested two thousand election they stepped in and handed the White House to George W Bush.  In two thousand and nine, after Barack Obama set records for small donations from supporters, they decided that money equaled speech in the Citizen's United decision, opening the floodgates for the rich to donate to campaigns, a clear advantage for Republicans.  And  then, after Barack Obama won reecletion in twenty twelve, one year later the court gutted the Civil Rights Voting Act which had forced Southern states to get federal approval for any changes in voting laws.  This, of course, lead to the flood of voter suppression laws being passed right now. 

It really is a sign of just how gutless the Republican Party is that they killed the voting rights bills without even allowing them to be debated; they knew full well that one Democratic Senator after another would give examples of how the voting suppression laws were openly targeted at African American voters, and that their counter arguments were weak.  When it comes to the modern Southern Strategy, most Republicans like to just pretend that it doesn't exist even as they pass laws proving that it does.

GOOD NEWS IS NO NEWS

    

 There is a truism that says that much of the way that the media covers politics is not unlike how it covers sports; there are winners and losers, and polls showing who's up and who's down, with analysts often asking which political side scored a victory with each new development.  It's understandable that the media would use this quickly digestible style of coverage, but it leaves out all sense of nuance.  Obviously, there has never been a sports team where certain members of one team decide to play for the other side "for the good of the country."

    But bipartisanship is dead, right?  If you listen to the media, it sure is; the country is deeply divided, both sides are dug in, Biden will get no Republican help for his agenda, etc.  And yet, a recent bill to make it easier to investigate and prosecute hate crimes against Asians sailed through congress, passing with ninety four votes in the Senate and three hundred and sixty four votes in the House.  Ok, you might say that voting for a bill against the terrible spate of crimes being carried out against Asian Americans is a no brainer.  No sane person could possibly be opposed to such a thing.  But another recent bill was also passed with overwhelming (sixty eight votes) support in the Senate, and it's the kind of big spending bill that you would think the Republican party would never go for, but they were willing to cross the aisle for this one.  Designed as a counterbalance to China's growing influence in scientific research, it would spend nearly a quarter-trillion dollars over the next five years on research into things like superconductors.  While the bill has yet to pass the house, given its popularity (heck, even Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell voted for it!) and Joe Biden's willingness to sign it, its passage is assured.

    So a bipartisan bill designed to help the country in the future will soon be passed.  This would seem to be a good news story, which may explain why there has so little media coverage of it.  Our competition driven media, so obsessed with winners and losers, barely seemed to have time for something that drew the two parties together.  No they'd rather talk about how gridlocked congress is, and how much Senator Joe Manchin's refusal to end the filibuster is killing Biden's agenda.

    Look, I complain about the filibuster and our divided nation as much as anybody, but as these two bill show, bipartisanship for the good of the country is not always an impossible dream.  Hopefully, there will be more of it in the future.