Will Democracy End If Trump Wins?

May 22, 2016

Can it happen here? Can our democracy end if we elect Donald Trump?

Many Most people will say no, if they have even considered the issue. For many, that’s because we got through eight years of George W. Bush and, as a friend noted recently, “GOP voters survived Obama.” For more, perhaps, it’s about American Exceptionalism, the notion that we’re special, somehow. We may be failing on education, health care, income and wealth inequality, etc., but we are simply better because, well, just because! (Make no mistake about it, Donald Trump thinks America is the best country, past, present, and future, no what you here coming out of his mouth.)

The obvious answer is, of course, yes. Our democracy can

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Trump and Those Tax Returns

May 14, 2016

Timothy L. O’Brien wrote I Saw Trump’s Tax Returns. You Should, Too for Bloomberg News on May 12. Mr. O’Brien knows something about the Donald and his tax returns. He called Mr. Trump a millionaire in his book, TrumpNation, which prompted Mr. Trump to sue him for libeling him by understating his wealth.* Details are in What Really Gets under Trump’s Skin? A Reporter Questioning His Net Worth, written by Paul Farhi for the Washington Post. (The case was dismissed, but not before Mr. O’Brien got to see returns, subject to a confidentiality order.)

Mr. O’Brien does provide a succession of comments from Mr. Trump about the returns. (Aside: Can anyone truly fathom how irritating another four-plus years

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Trump and the Id

May 12, 2016

I read Dear Liberals, Stop Panicking over Trump, written by Michael A. Cohen for the Boston Globe, this morning. Then I read Congress to America: Drop Dead, Nicholas Kristof’s piece for the New York Times. Still panicked,a nd it’s all about the Id for me.

I think it’s unlikely that Donald Trump will ever be the President of the United States of America. Truly, and Mr. Cohen provides a decent amount of assurance! But what we have here—I’m going back almost 30 years to experiences in the world of risk management—is a low frequency / high severity event.

Again, I don’t think President Trump happens, but if it does, it’s President Trump for almost 1500 days. (A second

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Oy Ve Iz Mir, Donald Trump

May 6, 2016

Oy ve iz mir, it looks like the Republican Party has selected Donald Trump as its nominee for President of the United States of America. Unbelievable, truly, but only if we can ignore the fact that we have been watching this train wreck in slow-motion for month after endless month.

There is so, so, so much material when you want to write about Donald Trump. I had some of my piece written last night, and worked on it again this morning. And what part of what I wrote are you seeing? Just the first paragraph, unchanged.

Binyamin Appelbaum’s story in the New York Times today, Donald Trump’s Idea to Cut National Debt: Get Creditors to Accept Less, caught

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Extra: More on Trump!

April 24, 2016

I have a good friend, Robert Fleming. He’s a modest, humble, B-F-D elder law attorney—with serious national credentials—who still tolerates my wandering into his office without advance notice—he works next door to me—to share work and this and that. (We are reaching our limits with Max, who semi-hangs with Robert’s Corgi, Odin, and latches onto lots and lots of chew toys. GF LB did observe, at the Seder on the 15th of Nisan aka April 23, that if I bought some toys for the boy, maybe he’d stop latching onto toys belong to Odin, as well as Doug, the black Lab rescue who hangs, downtown, upstairs. On it, LB and RF.)

So here’s Robert’s comment to It’s the Stupid,

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It’s the Stupid, Stupid!

April 24, 2016

It’s the stupid, stupid! Way back when, when a scandalous campaign involved things like whether a candidate had had an affair or not, along about 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid!” became the watchword for a presidential campaign. (For younger readers—and forgetful older ones—James Carville coined the phrase, working for then Governor Bill Clinton (D-Ark.) in his successful campaign to unseat President George H.W. Bush. And yes, the affair stuff also involved that Clinton fellow.)

I thought about Mr. Carville’s phrase when I saw the Trump: Can We Ask Kasich To Change ‘Ridiculous’ Spelling Of His Name? at TalkingPointsMemo.com. The link will give you audio and video. Here are the words:

I don’t know how to pronounce his

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It’s Complicated

March 25, 2016

It’s complicated, this sh*t show we’re calling the 2016 Presidential Election for months! If we were all Jews we’d be calling this a shanda fur die goyim. For non-clickers, the term refers to doing something which, as a Jew, will embarrass all of us in front of non-Jews. It fits for Americans, too, and I wonder whether there’s any shame at all about how poorly we look in a world that looks up to us.

With that thought shared, I need to credit Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) for crystalizing an issue that has been scattered in my mind for a while. (Everybody—he has very few supporters left—calm down; I’m not supporting my senator, it’s time for him to take

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Ideological Purity is an Indulgence – Part 2

March 19, 2016

Warren Burger (Earl Warren). Harry Blackmun (Abe Fortas). Lewis Powell (Hugo Black). William Rehnquist (John Harlan; Warren Burger). John Paul Stevens (William O. Douglas). Sandra Day O’Connor (Potter Stewart). Antonin Scalia (William Rehnquist). Anthony Kennedy (Lewis Powell). David Souter (William Brennan). Clarence Thomas (Thurgood Marshall). John Roberts (William Rehnquist). Samuel Alito (Sandra Day O’Connor). These are the Nixon/Ford, Reagan, and Bushes, père et fils, justices, along with those whom they replaced.

Justice John Paul Stevens got almost everything right during his 30+ years at the Court. Others—Justices Harry Blackmun and Sandra Day O’Connor—are responsible for much that is good. Justice Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts have also had their important and worthy moments. Nonetheless, this group of

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My Donald Trump Epiphany

March 17, 2016

I had a minor epiphany yesterday morning. It related to Donald Trump and his supporters. That’s no surprise, for Mr. Trump is on my mind during most waking minutes. He’s hard to ignore, and I don’t mean that in a good way!

Many explanations have been offered for the Trump phenomenon. This week the Curator shared the “this has been 50 years in the making” idea. FiveThirtyEight—that’s guru Nate Silver’s shop—offered up Three Theories of Donald Trump’s Rise back on January 8. (The theories? Populist revolt, Republican Party power vacuum, and a media bubble, and the site favored the latter two. Two months and more than 30 states later, one wonders what 538 thinks now.) Then there is Matthew MacWilliams

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We Have Met the Enemy … [Not Trump]

February 27, 2016

My friend S.G. noted Members of Golf Resort Say Trump Didn’t Honor the Deal by Joe Nocera in Sports Business for the New York Times. Mr. Nocera—a great business writer who moved to sports recently—nails a terrific story about Donald Trump, businessman extraordinaire. How does he do it? Looks like he cheats.

The golf story is about rich people who put up a refundable $200K to belong to a Ritz Carlton golf club. The deal failed. Trump bought the club and agreed to assume responsibility for about 150 deposits. (That’s $30M.) And what did he do when he took over? Within days, he changed the rules to avoid paying the refundable deposits. (The story is more nuanced, and for

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