TRUMP--THE INFAMY THAT NEVER ENDS

TRUMP--THE INFAMY THAT NEVER ENDS

It's happening again . . . another long-buried scandal rising from the muck. As always, the story is about our country’s scariest candidate.    

It was Time Magazine that did the digging: In 1980, Donald Trump did his best to cheat dozens of undocumented Polish workers who labored twelve hours a day preparing the site for his Trump Tower.

The Time Magazine article (September 5, 2016), is titled, “Trump’s Tall Tales: What Donald Trump knew about undocumented workers at his signature tower.”  In three dense pages, Time documents cheating, lies, panic, and lawsuits.

As he grew ever more entangled in labor disputes, (meaning he didn’t want to pay), Trump desperately sought the advice of Labor Consultant Daniel Sullivan. From then on, Sullivan was intimately involved in the Trump affairs and later testified in various lawsuits.  

In a concluding paragraph, extracted from a statement he made to People Magazine in 1990, Daniel Sullivan sums up his opinion about the whole Trump project:   

“It was disgusting how he used people. . . I said, ‘Don’t exploit them like that. Don’t try to f—ck these poor souls over.’ It baffled me then, and it makes me sick even now that he knowingly had these Poles there for the purpose of Trump Tower at starvation wages. He couldn’t give a sh-t because he’s Donald Trump and everybody is here to serve him. Over time he became more and more monstrous and arrogant.  I asked myself, ‘How long is it going to take for all of this to catch up with him?’”

What it took, apparently, was three reporters from Time Magazine, who in 2016 uncovered ugly truths that many of us fear Trump’s supporters will never know—or worse, will refuse to believe.  

Just ask Tony Schwartz, Trump’s ghostwriter, what he thinks of this supposedly-great businessman depicted in The Art of the Deal.   “I put lipstick on a pig,” Schwartz says in The New Yorker article of July 25, 2016.  After many pages, the article concludes, “If elected president, he (Schwartz) warned, ‘the millions of people who voted for him and believe that he represents their interest, will learn what anyone who deals closely with him already knows—that he couldn’t care less about them.’”  Today, Tony Schwartz would call Trump’s book, The Sociopath. 

As if this weren’t enough, the New York Times, in early October, suddenly gained access to  Donald’s 1995 tax return, which shows he reported $916 million in business losses—meaning for the last 18 years he’s probably paid no Federal income taxes.

The man does not respond well to criticism.  Watch for those three a.m. tweets!    

In an unrelated article on the web, a clever writer coined a title that sums up our current Republican candidate:  TRUMPELTHINSKIN.

A TWIST ON JOHN KENNEDY'S ASSASSINATION

A TWIST ON JOHN KENNEDY’S ASSASSINATION

DAN ISHTABI (NOT HIS REAL NAME),  was hunting in a patch of woods in Mississippi, when two official-looking men approached him. The year was 1963, and it was now late Spring, the beginning of May.  To Ishtabi, he’d been found by “The Feds.”   

A lanky man, dressed all wrong for the woods, approached the weathered, native Indian.  Another stood by, not speaking. The taller of the two asked, “You Dan Ishtabi?” 

“Reckon so,” said Ishtabi.  “What you want?”

“Hear you’re pretty good with that rifle,” said the stranger.  “Got a big reputation.”

“Maybe.  When it’s important.”   He touched the rabbit slung over his shoulder. “Sometimes it is, sometimes it ain’t.  Why?”

“We may have a job for you.  In about six months.  A big job.  You interested?”

The Indian eyed him, then cast a suspicious eye on the partner. “What kinda job?”

“We can’t tell you right now.  But the money’s good.  Lotsa money.  Can you use some big money?  Three or four thousand?” 

Ishtabi, with his laconic Indian ways, let them wait, wondered what they were thinking.  Finally.  “What I gotta do?”

“Can’t tell you now.  But if you’re interested, we’ll be in touch.  In a couple of months.  And oh . . . don’t mention this to anybody. Wouldn’t go well for you.  If you’re interested, just nod.  We’ll find you later.”

Curious, Ishtabi nodded, knowing he hadn’t committed to anything.  He soon forgot about the encounter . . .  that is, until the two men found him again in late October. A different woods, but it seemed they knew where he hunted.         

THIS TIME THE TWO Feds weren’t exactly polite.  They brought with them a thousand dollars in large bills,  which they handed over before they got on with their task.  Baffled, Ishtabi fingered the money and waited.  The two neatly-dressed men eyed him strangely. “You still good with that rifle?  Been hunting a lot?” 

“Enough.”  

“We’ll be back, second week in November. You’ll have to come with us.” 

“And do what?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.  Just one job. Then you’re finished.”  The tall man grinned.  “A lot of money for one job.  You’ll be happy you got it.”  More mysterious then ever, the two men disappeared. 

Ishtabi didn’t know what to think.  But to him, unschooled in the sophisticated ways of strangers, the promise of big money smelled fishy.  Meanwhile, his house needed a new ice box.  And he could use more hooch.  He spent the money and tried to ignore his misgivings. 

As promised, in mid-November, the two reappeared, this time outside his crude shanty. “You spent the money we gave you before?”  they asked, and without waiting for a reply, the two ordered him to get ready and go with them. 

Reluctantly, Ishtabi stared them down. “For how long?”

“Couple of weeks.  You’ll be back soon. Now get your gear.” 

Ishtabi didn’t have much to take. Within an hour, the three headed away from Mississippi in a modern, fast-moving  Jeep.  They spent one night in a motel, and soon arrived in Dallas, Texas, where Ishtabi was installed in a cheap motel.  But he wasn’t the only one.  There were several others, and they spent enough days together so he remembered them well. Especially Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. 

THE STORY CAME TO me by a circuitous route.  One day two young men, investigators I’d never met, contacted me by phone, asking if I could help them re-write and polish a manuscript. They promised to pay me—the amount now forgotten, but enough so I said yes.    

The pages were fascinating, and their retrieval of the story even more so.  It seems an  old Choctaw Indian who was dying in prison, with nothing to gain by telling it, wanted his story to live beyond his death.   Still laconic, he told the entire tale to his prison roommate, who contacted one of the investigators, telling the man that he had a story they might care a lot about. 

The Indian had meanwhile died, but his roommate had listened carefully, memorizing everything he heard. The two investigators found the tale so gripping that they took careful notes, checked back for accuracy, and decided that here was a tale history would one day care about. 

After much work and double-checking, they brought their rough-draft manuscript to me, and I did a lengthy polish.  After the two disappeared, they called me back once to report that the investigative assassination committee, still in Dallas at the time, found their tale the most believable of all the conspiracy stories they’d encountered since President Kennedy’s death.  Furthermore, the manuscript contained details from the Indian’s account about The Texas Schoolbook Depository that nobody would know unless he’d been there that day.

As well as I now remember, here is the remainder of the story: 

AFTER SEVERAL DAYS SHARING a motel with Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald, among others, the two known sharpshooters--Ishtabi and Oswald--were taken to The Schoolbook Depository and given their assignments. As he passed nearby in a motorcade, Kennedy would be sitting in an open car. The two men were directed to aim carefully and kill the president.    

Ishtabi, for one, had not guessed what was coming. When he at last learned his assignment, he was horrified and vowed to himself that he wouldn’t do it.  And, in fact, when the president’s car appeared, Ishtabi aimed high and made sure his bullet—or bullets—did no harm.

Oswald, on the other hand, did what he’d been told to do. As we all know, he killed President Kennedy, but days later, at the hands of Jack Ruby, he paid with his life. According to Ishtabi, the assassination, including the subsequent roles of Oswald and Ruby, were all planned months in advance.

The manuscript included details that the two investigators “knew” but I didn’t. (And I’ve been unable to find verification on the Internet).  Supposedly during Lyndon Johnson’s reign as Texas governor, one of his daughters was courted by a man she loved, but of whom her father disapproved. When the daughter seemed disinclined to give up her beloved, some higher-up found a way to have the man killed . . . for which the father escaped blame.

Is this a true story, or an Urban Myth?  In any event, it’s well-documented that Johnson scorned the youthful Kennedy—until he was unexpectedly chosen as vice president.

As well as I remember from years ago, this initial story is accurate in overall scope, though I’m certain many of the smaller details I’ve provided are not. From the day I first read the tale, I’ve been intrigued by subsequent investigations into Kennedy’s death—which now find the original investigation misleading in some respects. 

A recent, thorough assassination story in Nova reminded me that I’ve long been harboring aspects of that awful day that might not be known to a larger audience.  For me, those two investigators and their manuscript from long ago made sense. Whether history will ever validate this incredible tale remains to be seen. 

TWO REMARKABLE OP-EDS: ONE GREAT, THE OTHER TERRIFYING

Blog—TWO REMARKABLE OP-EDS:  ONE GREAT, THE OTHER TERRIFYING

I almost didn’t read them myself.  

A quick scan of the titles made one seem nicey-nice and the other . . . well, obvious. Today, Tuesday the 9^th, I told myself, You can’t spend half the day reading the L.A. Times.

Well, I did it anyway. “TACKLING A RACIAL DIVIDE” was about two students, one white, the other black, who met in a remarkable program at Los Angeles’ Hamilton high school. Designed to encourage mixed-race understanding, even friendships, the school held regular “convocations” (described in detail within the article), which resulted in a life-long friendship between two mixed-race young men.  Eventually the two, “more or less as a unit,” ran for student leadership positions: one was elected senior class president, the other student body president.  

Life after high school thrust them back into a world of racism. “We both give lectures in our respective specialties, usually addressing conferences of our fellow doctors. One of us . . . can have difficulty getting into the conference venues to get his credentials; the other walks in without any credentials at all.”  The jointly-written article notes that one of them is often mistaken “as a member of the serving staff.”

In several paragraphs, the two provide an eloquent summary:  “If we really want to bring people together, then we must do exactly that—bring them together.” At the end you discover that one man is a dermatologist and the other a dentist. To my delight, I never learned which doctor belonged to which race.

                                                                   ******************

The chilling op-ed was titled: DON’T GIVE TRUMP NUCLEAR CODES.

More than half of America would immediately agree. For the other half, this should be the argument that finishes Trump as a presidential candidate.

The author, “Former minuteman III launch officer,” brings up points not universally known . . . Trumpish statements that haven’t been taken seriously. In effect, at different times, Trump has said about nuclear weapons, If we have them, why can’t we use them?

Trump’s words last year should have raised the hair on the backs of our necks. “Somebody hits us within (Islamic State), you wouldn’t fight back with a nuke?”  

A Trump spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, asked on Fox News: What good does it do to have a nuclear triad if you’re afraid to use it?

  

John Noonan explains precisely why we’ve had decades of peace between the major powers . . . because no world leader has yet been fool enough to fall back on nuclear weapons. Only a sociopath like Donald Trump would ever be tempted. In doing so, he could start a nuclear war that would destroy our planet.   

These few paragraphs contain only part of Noonan’s reasoning. The rest should be enough to strike terror in all of us.

P.S.  Trump just said on national television about Hillary Clinton, “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people—maybe there is, I dunno . . . ”

Trump continues making Noonan’s case.     

A TURNING POINT . . . AND TRUMP NEVER SAW IT COMING

A TURNING POINT . . . AND TRUMP NEVER SAW IT COMING

Who would have thought this would finally happen? In such a seemingly innocent way? 

Like most egotists unable to see themselves for what they are, Trump finally made a fatal mistake. In his quest for a new target he chose somebody he perceived as  vulnerable and weak, an individual whose wife he could mock, a foreign victim unlikely to fight back. (Never a Michael Bloomberg or a Leon Panetta, you notice).   

And he chose wrong.

Until Trump zeroed in on him, Khizr Kahn was a relative unknown, a Muslim immigrant with an accent and no national name recognition. Nobody had yet heard from his wife. But in the Democratic convention the couple played a brief role, honored as parents of a Captain in Iraq who died in the act of saving others. In spite of their loss, the parents were so in love with America that Mr. Kahn kept copies of the Constitution in his home for the express purpose of giving it to others.   

The night of his speech, Mr. Kahn’s finding the Constitution in his coat pocket caught him by surprise. He hadn’t intended to bring it. But mid-oratory, he was so caught up in his message that he drew out the tattered booklet and challenged Trump to read it. Khizr Kahn’s unexpected moment turned into a highlight of the convention.

Two days later, Trump unleashed his venom. With the instincts of a jackal, he went for the couple’s weak spot: as a Muslim woman, Mrs. Kahn was forced to remain silent.  Trump said, “Maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say.” In one dumb moment he disparaged both Kahns and all Muslim women.  

This time Donald stepped on a land mine.

Calmly, in elegant prose and with only the slightest rancor, Mr. Kahn fought back. Given a slot on all the major news channels, he explained that Mrs. Kahn was too distressed at the thought of her son to summon a speaker’s composure. Furthermore, Kahn added,  Trump lacked the empathy to be president. The media encouraged him to keep talking, and Kahn did, at times more eloquently than anyone else.               

By then a wise candidate would have offered a brief, sympathetic message and abandoned that line of attack. Not Trump. As usual, he doubled down, making the point that he, too, had “sacrificed”—by creating thousands of jobs. For days, to the media’s delight, Trump kept the fires lit, until it fell to Vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence to make apologies and try to soothe the masses.  But even he couldn’t make up for Trump’s nasty comment in a recent rally, “Get that baby out of here.” 

This was the week the tide turned. Important members of his own party, like Meg Whitman, publicly renounced the man. Unusually blunt, President Obama called on other prominent Republicans to withdraw their backing, saying in effect, You don’t condone what he says. How can you support him? The newspapers added a chorus of harsh comments.

This was the week I stopped worrying. 

Like others, I imagined Trump’s downfall would surely happen, except I thought it would take place before 2016. As far back as last August he reminded me of Hitler. Not anymore. Lately he has lost his menace and is simply an out-of-control buffoon. From now on, my plan is to remain calm and watch the man as he slowly but relentlessly drowns in his own words.     

A MAGICAL NIGHT IN AMERICA

A MAGICAL NIGHT IN AMERICA

The evening promised to be pleasant, but hardly spectacular.  

As she often does, our daughter invited Rob and me for a Sunday night barbecue in her tropical backyard. “And we’ll play games afterward,” she said.  “Oh, and I need a couple of things from Costco.”  On impulse, I bought some extras, like a huge package of already-shucked sweet corn.   

I never take such invitations for granted. For me, a dinner with either of our grown kids-- or grandkids—and their families, is the absolute best way to spend an evening.  Lucky for us, three such families live close.

Late afternoon Tracy called back.  “A Norwegian family just moved in across the street. I’m inviting them over for drinks, so come at six.”    

Great, I thought . . . which is how it turned out. A handsome family, the Norwegian  couple, the Glittenbergs, had four kids, two teen-age girls and two youngish boys, all with faces so lively you’d expect to see them in a magazine.  Just as we were getting acquainted, Tracy invited the couple next door—Andrew and Grace Yen, two charmers who long ago emigrated from Taipei. Rounding out the party, she abruptly phoned her neighbor on the other side. “Come on over, Shannon, and bring the kids.”

Shannon is Hispanic—and her four children variously excel in dancing, gymnastics, and baseball—with the oldest girl a singer. In fact, two years ago, then 13-year-old Elizabeth sang “Love Changes Everything,” at Tracy’s daughter’s wedding.  Mature and composed, she dazzled the 300 guests. (Rob assured everyone that “A star is born.”)         

Considering the way the four teenage girls from two families instantly bonded, crossing every international barrier, you’d think they’d known each other for years. The four girls and oldest Norwegian boy retreated to another part of the yard.

Our drinks and canapés on the patio were hardly underway when Tracy came up with a startling idea. She’d heard, vaguely, that one of the Norwegian girls was also a singer. So she took Mathea-Mari Glittenberg and Shannon’s Elizabeth Bower aside, and said, “Why don’t you girls sing for us?”

The two looked startled, but Tracy persisted.  At our daughter’s urging, the two girls disappeared inside—presumably to practice. Ten minutes later they were back. As it turned out, neither practiced anything.  Instead, the two had run through their individual repertories until they landed on a popular song both of them knew. With a total absence of preparation, the two faced all of us, now hushed, and began singing together . . . their phrasing so polished,  every note so perfectly in sync, it was as if they’d practiced for months.

In two areas, the Norwegian girl added a lilting harmony. The adults all sat there, transfixed. None of us could believe this had happened. “And you didn’t practice?” someone asked, and they both smiled and said no. “We just picked a song.”   

“Drinks” quickly became dinner . . . and thank goodness for the extra corn. To everyone’s delight, Tracy’s Paul barbecued chicken, corn, and asparagus—enough for everyone.  The new Norwegian family had now met three existing neighbors, with the father eventually explaining that they’d chosen this neighborhood specifically for its safety, climate, and proximity to good schools—but also partly because it is fairly close to John Wayne airport.  “Mathea-Mari needs to travel to Europe six times before Christmas.” 

Interesting information, though none of us were sure why.

All I knew was that my evening had been perfect—besides watching the quick friendships springing up between the young people, I’d been sitting next to Andrew Yen, who laughed at every funny thing I said. 

Before the Glittenbergs left, Mathea-Mari played a charming piece on Tracy’s piano. Once more, we were all dazzled. As a last gesture, Tracy’s Dane loaned the oldest sister his guitar.   

After everyone had gone, Dane looked up Mathea-Mari Glittenberg on the Internet and found that at age 13 she’d been the winner of the Norwegian Melody Grand Prix, the equivalent of American Idol.  In fact, she’d personally written one of her songs. Since then she’d become internationally famous. Dane said, “She even has her own Wikipedia Page.” Clearly, the girl’s flights home were for professional appearances. (In fact we’ve just learned from Dane’s sister in Amsterdam that Mathea-Mari sells out arenas all over Europe.)   

Bowled over by this astonishing revelation, all of us were glad that nobody among us knew any of this in advance.  Instead, we appreciated the Norwegian family for their ready graciousness . . . and found the duet from the two girls a wonderful, but wholly unexpected surprise.

LET THE COPS GO TO CONGRESS

LET THE COPS GO TO CONGRESS

When it comes to gun control on a national basis, maybe the right people have never approached Congress.

Clearly, Republicans have chosen to ignore endless grief-stricken citizens: Mothers and Fathers of Newtown children; Relatives of San Bernardino victims; Friends of the gun-downed souls in Orlando; Buddies of Students killed in three Universities—in Oregon, Virginia, and California; Fellow Congregants of parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina; even a wounded ex-Congresswoman . . . the list goes on.

Over and over, ordinary citizens beg Congress for new gun laws, and fully half of our representatives ignore them, simply tune them out. What our desperate citizens get is a “moment of silence,” . . . because the callous half of Congress listens to only one voice: The National Rifle Association.  

While we’re at it, those same representatives seem not to care that the streets of Chicago, rife with guns and ammunition, have become a literal war zone.

How will this ever change? 

Now that a murderer has employed an AR-15 . . . and sprayed enough bullets to kill five innocent police officers and injure a dozen others, perhaps America’s cops can finally make a difference. 

It has to happen.

Representatives from police units across the country need to appear in Congress and tell it like it is. Though I’ve never seen this in print, my guess is,  America’s policemen are aghast that this nation is full of ordinary citizens who possess, and occasionally use, military armament--not to mention armor-piercing bullets.  What chance does a policeman have to restore order when confronted with weaponry that may exceed his own? 

All these citizen buyers of military weapons do NOT constitute “a well-armed militia,” as described by the 2^nd Amendment. Nobody needs an AR-15 for hunting, for personal protection, or for anything—except to kill the greatest number of people in the least amount of time.   

Surely others like me will finally demand this: our cops are needed in Congress.

A final question: Since when does the NRA own more than half of our fifty states in America?   

A STORY WORTH TELLING

A STORY WORTH TELLING

The man came into the ER at St. Joseph Hospital that afternoon with a painful red streak that started at his wrist and was rapidly working its way up his arm.

The staff immediately recognized his problem as necrotizing fasciitis, (commonly called “flesh eating bacteria”), which had started with a small hand wound. Knowing this was a serious condition, the staff understood the patient needed surgery, and he needed it fast. They contacted a doctor who happened to be on call, an orthopedic surgeon,  alerting him to the need for speed.

When Dr. X arrived, the agonizing streak had already reached the patient’s elbow. Joaquin Garcia (not his real name), was in trouble, and the hastily-gathered surgical staff recognized this as well.  Aware that many of Garcia’s relatives had gathered in the waiting room, the hospital sent somebody out to warn next-of-kin that the patient’s prognosis was not good. The relatives were advised to go home and wait, but they wouldn’t. They chose to stay. 

Meanwhile, the operating team began assembling instruments. After giving Garcia an injection of a powerful antibiotic, the team went to work. Because the infection was moving so rapidly up the fascia (connective bands of tissue that surround muscles, nerves, fat, and blood vessels), the anesthesiologist had to get him down fast, and then the surgeon was forced to lay open the man’s entire arm, starting at the wrist and ending at the chest wall. The only way to stop the bacteria’s progress was to get ahead of the bacteria’s onslaught and expose the man’s fascia to the outside, making it available for direct contact with the air. The operating team, collected randomly from professionals on call, worked fast and in perfect harmony.

Even so, the patient clearly hovered near death.  After four or five hours, the surgical team had done all it could, and were forced to leave their patient to the hospital staff, painfully aware that he had a 95% chance against him and might not last the night.

The next morning, to Dr. X’s relief, Joaquin Garcia was still alive. And slowly, making inch-by-inch progress, the man came back to life. At last the surgeon was able to offer an announcement to the still-collected relatives. “We believe Joaquin will now recover and probably be okay.” The entire waiting room, it seemed, burst into applause.

It was only in retrospect that the surgeon, a Caucasian, began thinking about the collection of people who had worked so hard to save Joaquin’s life. Besides their efforts directed toward a Hispanic patient, the anesthesiologist had been African American. The scrub nurse was Arabic, and the circulating nurse was Asian. That day, it seemed, no two people in the operating theater had been from the same ethnic background. 

To the surgeon, the most interesting feature of the event was that nobody seemed to notice their diversity. Even better, had any of them noticed, none would have cared.   

This is a story I’ve always loved, a tale I heard long ago and firsthand from the surgeon. From time to time, in the intervening years, it's come back to me as a moment of pleasure.

But now, with so much inflammatory talk suddenly making headlines, the event seems more relevant than it’s ever been before. I find myself thinking about it often . . . this moment that proves what my grandchildren have demonstrated they already know—that ultimately, for good or for bad, people are just people and race is merely a bit of history.