Roy Cohn's Spirit infuses the Trump Campaign

Like Jacob Marley in Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Roy Cohn is dead and gone. Now his ghost is paying us a visit in the context of Donald Trump's candidacy for President. There are some differences. Marley's spirit sought to warn Scrooge to mend his ways; Cohn's spirit, in the form of his protégé Roger Stone, is the apparent advocate of the worst of Trump's rhetoric including his claim that the November election is rigged and threatening a revolution if Trump loses the rigged election. See https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/05/trump-confidante-roger-stone-pushes-clinton-aide-911-conspiracy-claims-trump-views-rnc-chairman/212214

Roy Cohn is immortal. In Angels in America, the 1993 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama, the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg tells us so.

ETHEL ROSENBERG: You're immortal.
 ROY: I'm immortal. Ethel. (He forces himself to stand) 
I have forced my way into history. I ain't never gonna die.

Angels' America is a bleak surreal plain, where lost souls teeter on the brink of apocalypse. Cohn is a metaphor for the seductive, dark side of the American dream. Awash in intransigent denial, the playwright limns Cohn's audacious ego, cunning seductiveness, brutal transcendent power and helplessness against ravages of AIDS. It is a chilling, provocative portrait. 

As black as the playwright's perception may be, the reality of Cohn's life is darker still. His career embodies the confluence of two primeval forces of our day, organized crime and rabid anti-communism, into a single, swift current. Those forces manifested themselves in Las Vegas casinos, Havana gambling palaces, the Bay of Pigs, Dealey Plaza, Watergate and beyond. While Roy Cohn was not solely responsible for these events, or clearly a direct participant in all of them, so much of the current of his life runs through each of them, that the study of his life and power enlightens the causes and effects of many of the most significant events of our times.

There is an excellent posting this week which relate Stone's involvement with Trump's campaign. 
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/08/jacob_weisberg_s_classic_new_republic_profile_of_trump_adviser_roger_stone.html 

Another posting warns of Russian interference in our election process on Trump's behalf.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/07/an_interview_with_anne_applebaum_on_the_russian_hack_of_the_dnc.html

I would also recommend Wayne Barrett's Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention which has been updated and reissued for this campaign year. It's available in E-Book format or paperback on all major internet bookseller pages.

As Bob Dylan sang:

"You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing."

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This is not a promo for my book Quantum Christ but you can find out about it at:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-coming-of-quantum-christ-has-arrived.html

The Plot Against America

There is an old saying among loan sharks: I loan you $10 you owe me $10. I loan you $100,000, I own you.

Donald Trump and his various enterprises are indebted to the Russian oligarchy for millions of dollars. Donald Trump Jr. has remarked that they are disproportionately reliant on Russian money. That's because US banks won't deal with him after all Trump's bankruptcies. There is no question but that Putin is the "boss" of the oligarchs and gets a cut of their profits. The simple point is that Putin owns Trump.

Russian intelligence agencies have hacked into the databases of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. They have released through WikiLeaks items that embarrass the Democrats and Clinton with more to come.

What bothers me is not the embarrassing stuff. Trump can try to take all the advantage he wants from the Russian leaks. It's the potential for election day result tampering that bothers me.

Sometime ago when I was active as a Vice-Chair of NYS New Democratic Coalition (NDC) I ran across Dick Morris who was then a young Democrat Turk who master minded a takeover of the NDC on the Westside of Manhattan. They weren’t all bad and actually some of them were quite good. However, Morris became bipartisan and sold his talents to both Republicans and Democrats. He was a member of the Clinton administration until he became involved in a sex scandal, sharing state secrets with a prostitute.

Among his activities as I recall was helping to monitor the fairness of elections in the Third World. One of the checks they utilized was election day exit polls. If there were significant deviations between the polls and the announced results it was an indicia of fraud.

By the 2000 election, Morris having left the Clinton administration had become a straight Fox News expert. When there was a disparity between the Florida exit polls and the announced results, he attacked the accuracy of exit polls. We later learned that in just one area, West Palm Beach which was strongly liberal there was a butterfly ballot which confused voter and many more votes were counted for Pat Buchanan than might be expected - far more than Bush's margin of victory.

What really bothers me, is given the fact Trump is in Putin's pocket, and given the expertise of Putin's intelligence services in hacking, those areas of the United States where there is electronic voting with no printed ballot in the process, this election may very well be stolen iin those areas.

In NYS, we vote by marking a printed ballot and then having it scanned and the results recorded electronically. The printed ballots are a protection against fraud.

This weekend, Trump has acted very unusually. He made an appearance in Colorado on Friday but then cancelled an event scheduled for Florida on Tuesday. The odd thing about Colorado is that Clinton has scaled back some activities in Colorado, because her internal polls place her 10 points ahead and the resources may be better spent elsewhere. She and Kaine (and Bill and Ann) are busing through through battleground states PA and Ohio,

The Russian oligarchs own Trump. Trump has undercut US policy in the Ukraine and the Baltic states. He favors a virtual break-up of NATO. He has become Putin's puppet. I am afraid. I am very afraid.

On the other hand there is also FDR. "We have nothing to fear but fear itsel" - as long as we have the courage to act,
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This is not a promo for my book Quantum Christ but you can find out about it at:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-coming-of-quantum-christ-has-arrived.html

Empathy and Nice, FR

Events in Nice and Orlando and San Bernadino and …and …and the reaction to them bring to my mind a poem I first read more than six decades ago as a Freshman at Syracuse U. It's not the failure to react that bothers me, it's the cheap shots that some politicians make about terrorism without an ounce of sincere empathy. The Trump reaction: build a wall!, Ban Imigaion. It was the death of a US father and his 11 year old son in Nice that brought to my mind the Auden poem.

Yet, but as bad as some self-serving reaction to the events nothing can compare to the indifference, and even grotesque joy of the ISIS adherents to the suffering they impose on others.

Follow the link to see the painting.

http://poetrypages.lemon8.nl/life/musee/museebeauxarts.htm

About suffering they were never wrong, 
The Old Masters; how well, they understood 
Its human position; how it takes place 
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; 
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting 
For the miraculous birth, there always must be 
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating 
On a pond at the edge of the wood: 
They never forgot 
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course 
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot 
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse 
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. 
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away 
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may 
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, 
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone 
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green 
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen 
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, 
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

The Apocalypse is now!

While there may be some who read this who welcome the results of the BREXIT vote in the tenuously "United" Kingdom and/or support the erratic Presidential campaign of Donald Trump, the concurrence of BREXIT vote and Trump campaign is continuing evidence of the apocalyptic nature of our times where climate change threatens the extinction of humanity. Although he eschews the word "Apocalypse" Pope Francis has recognized the selfish instincts which threaten the survival of our posterity. The drought and fires in the western US and the epic floods in West Virginia are just two examples of what awaits humanities future.

The BREXIT vote in particular has drawn me this Sunday to one poem that has affected me deeply and guided my thoughts for decades: William Butler Yeats The Second Coming"  published in 1919.

"Things fall part" Yeats wrote. "the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world . . . The blood-dimmed tide is loosed … The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

In my book The Coming of the Quantum Christ I wrote of an Apocalypse of Selfishness. Trump is the embodiment of selfishness. When a horrible massacre occurred in Orlando, Florida, Trump's first message did not reflect sympathy and concern for the victims and their families but how everybody was congratulating him for being right about the threat of Islam. He was actually in Scotland the day after the BREXIT vote "trumpeting" the beautiful amenities of his two Scottish golf courses until he was directed to the BREXIT, the results which has embraced. Indeed, Trump remarked that because BREXIT is devaluing the British Pound Sterling, his resorts will do well, The devaluation of the pound makes US dollars more valuable and will attract  more US visitors to Scotland.  He expressed no sympathy for British pensioners whose pensions will be devalued along with the pound.

Is it any wonder that I earlier asked tongue not entirely in cheek whether he was the Anti-Christ? Pope Francis has made it abundantly clear that in his view that selfishness is the driving force of climate change. On May 21, 2014, he lamented “If we destroy creation, creation will destroy us.”

Only by united, unselfish actions can we ameliorate the extreme result of climate change: the extinction of humanity. Trump and the BREXIT vote are material manifestations of selfishness in action. I read the last stanza of Yeats poem to be not an inquiry about Christ but the Anti-Christ:

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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This is not a promo for my book "Quantum Christ" but if you are interested:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

Orlando and the Masque of the Orange Death

It turns out there was another attack on the LBGT community thwarted yesterday in Santa Monica, CA. "20-year-old Wesley Howell reportedly traveled from Indiana to attack the Southern California LGTB event" There is a disturbing resonance with the Orlando attack. In his car were three AR-15 assault rifles with high capacity magazines. Yesterday on my Facebook page, I noted that there seemed to be an emerging pattern in the "lone nut" attacks that indicated inspiration from an ISIS standard operating procedure (SOP) is confirmed by different common threads and in this case far more important and deadly: the AR-15s and the high capacity magazines.

One doesn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to at least suspect that the fact that Howell was carrying three AR-15s may indicate a thwarted meeting with co-conspirators.

My main point is that we are going to hear a lot about what we can do to thwart the ISIS self-motivated terrorists. Frankly we had done something in the wake of the attempted Assassination of Ronald Reagan the Brady Bill. A key feature of the bill was struck by the Supreme Court. Because of the perceived power of the National Rifle Association no progress has been made in protecting the American public from gun violence. Congress even defeated an Obama proposal that gun sales to individuals on the terrorist watch list be banned.

In some states, like New York the sale of high capacity magazines has been banned. But New York is helpless to the importation of AR15s and high capacity  magazines from sister states.

The Orlando massacre will become an issue in the Presidential campaign. Donald Trump has already congratulated himself for his foresight in demanding an end to ANY Muslim entering the United States although the Orlando assassin was a native born American citizen. The problem with ISIS inspired lone wolf attacks is that the supply of disaffected individuals seeking a place in the sun who are native born US citizens while not unlimited is undoubtedly quite large.

It's time to ban high capacity magazines nation wide and adopt reasonable restrictions of assault rifles. Sales to individuals on the terrorist watch list must also be banned although any individual who feels unjustifiable denied a gun ought to have a right to appeal. One candidate for President (and I expect one sitting President) will raise that issue. Another candidate for President having pledged his fealty to the NRA will oppose any remedial gun control legislation. His claim will be that his Mexican wall and barring any Muslim immigration is the answer.

Except that's irrelevant to what happened in Orlando and might have happened in Santa Monica. For a relevant essay on the topic see Edgar Alan Poe and The Masque of the Red Death. Or maybe this time the mask is orange.

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This is not a promo for my book "Quantum Christ" but if you are interested:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

Is Donald Trump the Anti-Christ?

In Chapter 16 of my book "the Coming of the Quantum Christ: The Shroud of Turin and the Apocalypse of Selfishness (Quantum Christ) I wrote:

Among the hymns sung Christmas is the French hymn Canitque Noel (O Holy Night). It captures the mystery of the night and its enduring message of Jesus birth in these words:

“Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
‘til he appeared, and the soul felt its worth.”

Chapter 15 identified the soul with the reflective consciousness described by Teilhard de Chardin. It also identifies “original sin” as selfishness, one of the driving forces of evolution. Before humanity evolved with a reflective consciousness, there was no sin. Metaphorically, the first sin was Cain’s murder of Abel, an angry selfish response to God bestowing favor on his younger brother, an honor that Cain thought should have been his.

The “sin and error” that the caused the world to pine were the bitter fruits of selfishness which, like the paths of glory, lead but to the grave. In Chapter 16, "The Triumph of Love," I opined that Christ was crucified because he preached unselfish love that the devotees of selfishness could not tolerate. In Chapter 17, I wrote that humanity faced possible extinction through an Apocalypse of Selfishness.
If the Apocalypse is upon us, and Christ is coming again, where you might ask is the Anti-Christ? Have we not heard his voice although some of you of conservative bent may object loudly. All I ask is that you choose your words carefully. There is so much at stake.

In Chapter 17, I specifically identified two Apostles of Selfishness. One was Friedrich Nietzsche, the other was Ayn Rand. One of the individuals who worshiped Ayn Rand was Alan Greenspan whose catering to the interest of Wall Street as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board was among the causes of the collapse of the economy circa 2007- 2008. Still, Greenspan is unrepentant about his opposition to regulation of the financial derivatives markets.

In his campaign for President, Donald Trump has exhibited narcissism that borders on the psychotic. He knows more about ISIS than the Generals. He believes he can deal on equal footing with the most despicable tyrants of our CURRENT time in North Korea and Russia. He would abrogate the agreement which is denying nuclear weapons to Iran. He would tear-up the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and would encourage Japan to arm itself with nuclear weapons. His tax plan if you read the fine print would in fact reduce taxes on the top 1% while gutting programs to aid the poor. Can anyone who finds God, in Christ, Moses or Bhudda actually applaud the already executed reductions of food stamps?

Trump is like the Pharisee who stood at the alter thanking God he was not like a tax collector who was in the back of the synagogue begging forgiveness because he was a sinner.
In my recent research I have dealt with the levels of existence. No matter how many ways you slice it, either way it begins and ends with what the scientists call a singularity which is a mathematical equation of infinite value. The easiest way to realize such an equation is one I learned in my high school Algebra class: divide one by zero. You can try it on your computer. Window has calculator that can handle it as much as it can be handled.

Some scientists limn a future Utopia where artificial intelligence surpasses human capacity. Perhaps that is ultimate selfishness. For I foresee that future not as utopian by dystopian. To understand what that means I reference two movies: Blade Runner and The Matrix.

Whatever your religious preference, be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or atheistic humanist, the way to Utopia is not selfishness but unselfishness. When you listen to Trump, you will not hear the voice of Isaiah which defines the Utopian vision for all humanity upon the Second Coming:
And He will judge between the nations, And will render decisions for many peoples; And they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not liftup sword against nation, And never again will they study  war.

Pope Francis has called upon the world to shed its selfish exploitation of the poor and the environment. He is a Pope of All Humanity; Trump's campaign is grounded in selfishness and will lead only to the grave.

Sometime years ago, while riding the subway from Riverdale to Manhattan, I can across an article in the N.Y. Times speculating on gravity and other scientific problems. It appeared that contrary to the standard model, light could vary in speed.

I composed a little couplet, one line too long for a haiku:
Space being curved,
Time varying in speed,
Whom do we heed?
Him.

 As for me: "I ain't gonna study war no more."
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RESOURCES:
I believe but I am not be totally sure that NY Times piece that "inspired" my couplet is this one: "New Directions in Physics: Back in Time," NY Times, August 21, 1990.

I was a consultant on a new video by David Rolfe, producer of the 1978 BAFTA award winning movie about the Shroud of Turin, Silent Witness. The new video is: A Grave Injustice: An investigation into The First Selfie. http://www.shroudenigma.com/ " It's free.

If you are interested in  Quantum Christ, you can read reviews and order a copy (Either E-Book, Kindle or four color hard copy at http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

The most extensive Internet resource which is https://www.shroud.com/
Its editor Barrie Schwortz was documenting photographer of the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project. If you have interest in the Shroud of Turin, it's the best place to start.

The Reichstag fire and Lee Harvey Oswald

I have been asked about my take on the Reichstag fire on Facebook  and I thought I had answered it last night but somehow it didn't load. Now a slightly expanded response. It's not something I have studied extensively but I think I know enough to make the following comment. I analogize it to the JFK assassination so hold on to your hats.

The Reichstag, the Germany's capitol building in Berlin was devastated by a fire in 1933 just when the Nazi's had gained control of the Germany Bundestag and Hitler had formed a government. Wikipedia has an entry on it in case you want some details. It corresponds to what I had read some years ago but goes deeper.

The issue is whether the person accused of setting the fire was an agent of the international communist conspiracy through the Comintern, a loan nut, or a false flag patsy planted by the Nazis. The result redounded to the benefit of the Nazi's who used as an argument for justification of giving dictatorial powers to the newly elected Chancellor, Hitler. From the Nazi's viewpoint it was either a total success of a devious plot or gift from heaven (or hell).

We have a rough analogy in our own time in Lee Harvey Oswald. Was he a lone nut assassin? Was he a Fidel Castro operative? Was he a foil or patsy for hidden (barely) US interests who regarded Kennedy as a traitor for his settling the Cuban Missile crisis without war and indicating that he was prepared to withdraw from Vietnam? To the extent the plotters may have wanted war with Castro, it didn't work. To the extent they wanted continued intervention in Vietnam, it did.

The military-industrial complex profited mightily from the Vietnam War. 56,000 Americans and their families paid dearly (not to mention hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.)

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel called "It Can't Happen Here" which was a satire about a hypothetical  rise of fascism in the United States. Well that didn't happen here. Or did it?

When I look at the Trump message of exclusion and bias and cozing-up to the despot Putin and I realize just how much he is echoing the bias and prejudices of a significant number of Americans, I am concerned. Trump is not anti-Semitic. But his dream of a white restoration to power echo's the Nazi's anti-Semitism. He appeals to our worse impulses.

This is not a promo for my book "Quantum Christ" but if you are interested:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

Rachel Maddow nails it

Obama has always been an eloquent speaker with the ability to explain complex issues. He is a world leader in sounding the alarm on the issue of client change. However, sometimes he talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk. Two examples: Shell giving license to drill in the Arctic and his reticence to bit the bullet on the Keystone Pipeline.

Among the facts about the Keystone are these: It is designed to transmit oil wrenched from tar sands in Canada to refineries in Texas for export internationally. It's a lose lose proposition.

Last week on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow really nailed it and came-up with an alternative job producing program which would solve an enormous environmental crisis, create jobs and make every one safer: upgrade and revitalize existing pipeline and transmission facilities for oil (i.e. railroads) the aged condition of which is currently causing death and pollution.

Win win. We create jobs and ameliorate, if not totally cure, the environmental disaster of current oil transmission whether by railroad or pipeline.

John Klotz

This is not a book promo but is you are interested:

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-coming-of-quantum-christ-has-arrived.html

Riding the Red Horse of War

The opposition expressed by Senator Charles "Chuck" Schumer and Congress Member Eliot Engel to the nuclear accord with Iran evokes memories of the 2002 debate over the Joint Resolution authorizing George W. Bush to commence war in Iraq. The war that was authorized by that vote led to 5,000 military deaths, tens of thousands of wounded veterans and the death of more than a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians. It has cost an estimated three trillion dollars and counting.

Schumer's opposition to the Iranian accord is uniquely challenging. He is the designated successor to Harry Reid as leader of Senate Democrats when Reid retires at the end of his current term.

Among the Democratic Senators who voted for the 2002 war resolution were Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards and Schumer. Engel was one of 81 Democrats in the House of Representatives who supported the war authorization while 126 Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, opposed it.

In the 2004 Presidential Election, the Democratic ticket consisted of war "liberals" Kerry and Edwards. By that time, the antiwar movement had grown geometrically. Barak Obama, an Illinois state legislator who had opposed the war, electrified the 2004 Democratic Convention and went on to win election to the United States Senate. In 2008, his early opposition to the war played a major role in mobilizing his support and in the defeat of his pro-war opponent Hillary Clinton.

The vote for or against the Iranian accord is ultimately another vote for or against war. The same forces that cowed Kerry, Clinton, Edwards, Schumer and Engel into supporting the Iraq war authorization are now at work opposing the Iranian accord. That accord was the result of years of painstaking negotiations. John Kerry was its principal negotiator; Hillary Clinton has announced her tentative support but Chuck Schumer and Eliot Engel have announced their opposition.

The opposition is based upon fantasies spun by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu who also supported the Iraq war. The defeat of the Iranian accord may very well be more devastating, than the Iraq vote. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were a myth swallowed whole. Iran's program to build a nuclear bomb is not. Other than war, the consensual Iranian accord is the only path open to stopping Iran obtaining nuclear weapons short of war.

The international sanctions regime was carefully crafted under the United States' leadership. Included were Germany and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council among them Russia and China. If the the accord is defeated those sanctions, other than the United Sates, will collapse. So will United States pretense to international leadership in the Middle East.

Lined-up in support of the Iranian nuclear deal are an impressive array of three dozen retired Generals and Admirals[1] and 29 scientists including several Nobel Prize winners.[2]

The opposition includes in addition to Tea Party "know nothings" the Republican leadership of the House and Senate who are committed to making Obama fail whatever the cost to the nation. Powerful pro-Israeli and Netanyahu lobbying groups give the appearance of a unified Jewish community but that is hardly the case. According to a national poll of self-identified Jews conducted by LA Jewish Journal in July, more Jews supported the Iranian accords than opposed it.[3]

On August 17th, 340 US Rabbis issued a statement supporting the Iranian accords that was published in the National Catholic Reporter.[4] Among other things they noted that "[w]e've seen many of the leaders of Israel's military and intelligence community declare that this deal is the best path for Israel moving forward.

In 2001, I was Chair of a Sierra Club task force that reported on the relationship of terrorism to the environmental movement in the wake of 9/11. I also was allied with those in the Club who sought to have the Club oppose the 2002 war resolution. When Nancy Pelosi opposed the resolution, the San Francisco Chapter sought to honor her for her decision but was forbidden to do so by the national Club leadership. Ultimately, the Club leadership belatedly opposed the war ‑ but it was too late. Kerry and Clinton had already supported it and in 2004, I believe that Kerry and Edwards paid a price for their early war support. Certainly in 2008, Clinton did.

Schumer and Engel will win only if they lose.

Should the opposition to the Iranian accord fail, whether by senate filibuster or failure to override a threatened Obama veto, it is likely that neither Schumer nor Engel will suffer for their opposition. Already, some Senate supporters of the accord state for the record their support for Schumer apart from his opposition to the Iranian accord. But what if Schumer and Engel stumble to a win for their position? What if their opposition does drag enough Democratic legislators with them to defeat the Iranian accord?

If the Iranian accord is defeated inevitable chaos will ensue in the already chaotic Middle East. The international sanctions regime that brought Iran to the negotiating table will evaporate. The door to Russian and Chinese hegemony in the Middle East will be opened wide.

Israel's only remedy will be to attack Iran. That seems to be Netanyahu's aim, but the blood will be on the hands of Engel and Schumer. Neither of them have any record of military service nor scientific training. That may seem a harsh judgment but that is what is at stake. Eventually, that blood may very well be American as well as Muslim and Israeli.

Listen! Can you hear them? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding; they are just beyond the horizon, but they are fast approaching. Their horses are white, black, pale and red.They embody pestilence, famine, death and war.

The Red Horse symbolizes War. Too many people, often for their own selfish reasons, are eager to follow the rider of the red horse. In another context recall Moby Dick and the crazed decision of crew of the Pequod to follow Captain Ahab to their extinction. Only the narrator Ishmael survived.

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[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/retired-generals-and-admirals-back-iran-nuclear-deal/2015/08/11/bd26f6ae-4045-11e5-bfe3

[2] http://time.com/3990001/29-scientists-obama-iran-nuclear-deal/

[3] http://www.jewishjournal.com/nation/article/new_poll_u.s._jews_support_iran_deal_despite_misgivings

[4] http://ncronline.org/print/news/politics/340-us-rabbis-we-support-historic-nuclear-accord

Winter Rules and Lies

In golf, amateur hackers (such as myself) will often play by winter rules: that means if your ball is lying in a really bad spot you can correct its location to make for an easier shot. The theory is that it’s winter and the course is in bad shape. Of course, sometimes you play winter rules in mid-July.

Two events in the news bring this to mind. One is the intention of the golf grand Pooh-Bahs to punish Tiger Woods because he objected to a functionary hurrying play in his latest tournament so that his opponent who had a one stroke lead rushed into a triple bogie (3 over par) on the sixteenth hole allowing Woods to catch-up and take the lead.

That Tiger objected to his opponent being rushed was a generous display of sportsmanship that is all too rare these days. Forget all his great wins and remarkable record, in my book it is his finest moment because this fierce competitor revealed his respect for his fellow competitors and a refusal to gloat over what he regarded as a tarnished victory.

Would that the participants in the current debate on health care showed some of the same class. Unfortunately we are witnessing a hard truth that we have yet to cope with: that there is a determined right wing in this countrty that is always playing winter rules and lacks a sense of sportsmanship that is a hallmark as politics at its best.

Compare if you will the Clinton, G.W. Bush Administrations and the first seven months of the Obama Administration. The Clinton Administration was hobbled from its outset by a series of investigations and outlandish charges, including that Bill and Hillary murdered one of their closest friend, Vince Foster. The culmination was the Lewinsky affair which paralyzed the Clinton administration for its last two years.

Yet, the country enjoyed great prosperity during his term, and he had some amazing successes, including bringing a semblance of peace to the Balkans which for centuries had been synonymous with ethnic hatred and political instability – the precipitant cause of World War One being an assassination in Serbia.

The press feasted on his travails.

Then came eight years of the utterly incompetent George Bush Administration which ignored pointed warnings about Bin Laden plotting to attack America, let him slip though our fingers in Afghanistan and lied us into war in Iraq.

In the meantime “regulatory reform” laid the ground work for the gravest financial crisis since the time of the Great Depression.

The media essentially gave GWB a free pass. Mendacity and manipulation in the White House was scarcely noted. The Democrats, cowed by the media, more or less played possum until the 2006 election. John Kerry, when faced with outrageous accusations about his combat record in Vietnam, turned turtle.

And now after seven months of the Obama Administration, we have seen the most vicious attacks since the Clinton era and a media which reports gravely on the most atrocious lies and in a fair and balance manner, giving the lies legs.

Tiger Woods, in giving his opponent his due, was a lot like the Democrats: playing the sportsman. But the Obama opposition is beyond sportsmanship and truth. It’s all winter lies, moving the ball for a better position to destroy your opponent.