Some Assassination Issues

The attempted assassination of Trump this past Saturday raises a number of vexing issues. I will explore some of them.

Secret Service failures. Information continues to leak out daily about the extent of the failures of the Secret Service. It turns out that the shooter was known as a suspicious person a full hour before the shooting, when he attmepted to enter the "inner perimeter" with a rangefinder. And yet he was not tracked. Why?

Another failure was that the SS did not have the roof under surveillance, given that it was within easy rifle range of the rally site. It was a flat roof, easily identifiable as a danger point.

The feckless comments of the head of the SS are cringeworthy. First she said that is was the responsibility of local law enforcement to monitor the "outer perimeter". Now she says it in fact WAS the responsibility of the SS, but she is obviously only mouthing words she doesn't believe. It is obvious she neeeds to be fired, but I'm not holding my breath on this.

Another SS failure being talked about in recent days is the SS allowing Trump to stand back up after they had him down on the ground. Commentators say that at this point it was unknown whether there was a second shooter, and the SS agents should have insisted that he stay down for his own protection.

Will this experience humanize Trump? It was well-known that Trump was rewriting his accpetance speech to make it less polemic and more unifying, and at this point there seemed to be some possibility that Trump actually had become more human. Indeed, his speech started out in this vein, but then he went off-script and rambled on with his standard stump speech about the 2020 election being stolen, immigrants ruining the nation, Biden being the worst president ever, and so forth. He is obviously the same old Trump, and the 92-minute speech, the longest in convention history, did his candidacy no good. His base ate it up, but the job of an acceptance speech is to appeal to the nationa as a whole, not just your most rabid supporters.

Historians have been talking about the past experince of politicians following failed assassination attmept. After getting shot in 1912, Teddy Roosevelt had a change of heart and apologized for his past racism. Same with George Wallace in 1972. When he later ran for governor, Wallace actively courted the Black vote, admitting his past advocacy for segregation had been wrong, asnd after the election he went into the black community and thanked them for their support (he got 90% of the black vote). And Reagan is said to have become more sympathetic to others' shortcomings and hardships following his 1981 assassinaton attempt.

Did God save Trump? Trump has mentioned "God" more often in the past week than he has in his entire life before last Saturday. The idea that God intervened to save Trump is, to me, a repugnant idea based on totally false theology. To believe this you would have to believe that everything that happens is happening in accordance with God's will. (Hence the statement from a Senatorial candidate some years ago that if a rape victim gets pregnant, it must be God's will that she have the baby.) I think a better theology is that God does not intervene to prevent bad things from happening to us, but that God will be with us as we navigate our way through the tough times, and this is what we should pray for.

"The Day Huey Long Was Shot", by David Zinman

This book was first published in 1963, casting serious doubt on the official version of how Huey Long was assassinated back in 1935. Then, in the early '90s, the author re-opened his investigation. and in 1993 re-published his book with much additional material.

The official version is that a young doctor, Carl Weiss, came up to Long in the state capital building and shot him, and was himself then riddled with dozens of shots from Long's bodyguards. Why Weiss, a young doctor who was devoted to his family and his church and his medical practice, would suddenly do something so out of character has never been satisfactorily explained.

To make a long story short, what probably happened was that Weiss approached Long, Long uttered a racial slur at him, Weiss responded by punching Long, and Long's six bodyguards then unloaed a flurry of bullets, with Long being hit in the crossfire. This version is supported by the fact that Long had a cut on his mouth which was never satisfactorily explained, and by the fact that, when a nurse asked Long in the hospital about the cut, Long told her that "That's where he hit me". That the actions of the bodyguards caused Long's death is supported by the fact that his bodyguards refused to cooperate with the Coroner's Inquest. Weiss could not very well have first hit Long and then shot him, given that Long was surrounded by bodyguards.

There is a wealth of detail presented. This detail includes the result of a forensic examination of Weiss's body when it was exhumed in 1992. The forensic scientists concluded that there were serious doubts that the doctor had fired the fatal shot which killed Long.

Can We Learn from the Brits?

Joe Biden and his supporters have been saying that he had a "bad night" at the debate. But look at what George Clooney wrote in the NY Times: “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate." This refutes the idea that it was just a bad night. The unfortunate truth is that Biden has deteriorated badly.

I envy the British for their ability to replace Prime Ministers who have worn out their welcome. Just look at the Tories during their 14-year run, which ended just a week ago. There was David Cameron for six years, then Theresa May for three years, followed by Boris Johnson for three years, Liz Truss for seven weeks, and finally, Rishi Sunak for 20 months. In each case it was not the general electorate which made the change, but the Tory party itself, showing an openness to change which the U.S. Democratic party needs now.

Review of "Your Honor"

This is a 20-episode series that aired on Showtime, and is now available on Netflix. I watched it recently in only two days, so I'd have to say it is fairly captivating.

Bryan Cranston stars as a respected judge who falls on hard times, goes to prison, and then comes out of prison early to cooperate with the feds to clean up New Orleans crime. The mob family in the series is headed by a guy who is totally unbelievable as a mob boss, and isn't even Italian. His dull, mousy, hateful wife is just totally disgusting. In the second season this is explained, when the wife's father comes into the picture, and it turns out he is an old-time Italian mob boss, and the wife's husband basically was set up in the mob by his father-in-law.

By the end of the second season, the wife's husband has been shot dead by his father-in-law, and the wife succeeds to the position of new boss which she has always coveted. I suppose this leaves it open for a third season, but having this woman in the lead would render the series totally uninteresting.

The other women in the series are quite good. The young teacher who is the teacher of the judge's son is quite endearing. And the mob couple's daughter who the judge's son rejects the teacher for is also awesome. And the mother of the judge's deceased wife is a really compelling character, reminiscent of the Kathy Bates character in "A Family Affair".

The atmosphere of post-Katrina New Orleans is heavily featured in the series. The interplay between the white mob family and the black family of drug dealers (headed by a strong woman) is interesting.

This doesn't rise to the level of "Breaking Bad" or "Ozark" or "Outer Banks", but it is worth a watch.

Should Biden Bow Out?

In considering this question, I have looked at it from a number of directions.

A. Is a second term the norm? By all measures Biden has done a decent job as president. Is it the norm that such presidents are granted a second term? To examine this, I reviewed all past presidencies. There are sixteen examples of two-term presidents. However, there are also seventeen examples of presidents who were elected but served only one term. The reasons for this fall into three categories.

Rejected by the voters in the general election. There are nine in this catogory: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Van Buren, Cleveland, Benjamin Harriswon, Taft, Hoover, Bush Sr., and Trump.

Denied renomination by their party: Polk, Pierce, Buchanan, and Hayes.

Volntarily withdrew from consideraton for a second term: Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, and LBJ.

So, we can see that the second term for a president is far from being the norm. Hardly encouraging for Biden's re-election chances.

B. Is Biden a fit candidate? This question has to do with whether Biden can handle himself away from the teleprompter. His miserable debate performance suggests otherwise. It is up to Biden to disprove the narrative which has arisen folowing the debate.

I have looked at how many unsscripted news conferences he has held, compared to other presidents, and the results are not encouraging for Biden. Biden has held an average of only 11 news conferences a year, the third-lowest since the 1920s, after only Reagan (6) and Nixon (7). Even George W. Bush, who was similar to Biden in his propensity for verbal gaffes, held 26 news conferences a year, well more than double Biden's number.

In an attempt to re-establish himaself as a viable candidate, Biden held a much-ballyhooed 22-minute interview on July 5th, eight days after the debate, with ABC newsman George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos asked no questions about policy, instead asking essentially the same question over and over for the whole interview, that being whether he is going to get out of the race. For the most part Biden dealt with these questions OK, but one answer really stands out as reeking of cognitive decline. George asked him whether he had watched the debate, and Biden answered, "I don't think I did." Huh? It's a yes-no question, either you watched it or you didn't. How can you answer that question so inarticulately?

C. What are the experts saying? The two most astute analysts in the Democratic camp are James Carville, who successfully managed Clinton's two races, and David Axelrod, who successfully managed Obama's two races. Both of them say emphatically that Biden needs to drop out.

Change is always hard, but the Democratic party needs to realize that it is time to pass the torch to a new generation. The Republican party is in the process of self-destructing, and the issue now is whether the Democratic party will follow the GOP into oblivion.

Review of "A Family Affair"

I was in the mood for a lighthearted movie recently, and I came across an article on this movie in "People" magazine, so I decided to give it a try, despite its abysmally low 5.4 IMDB rating.

I ended up watching the whole thing, and I found it to be an entertaining romantic comedy. Even though I have never liked Nicole Kidman, she was endearing in this movie and I liked her character. Her daughter was also played very well, by the delightful Joey King. And Kathy Bates, as Joey's grandmother, was awesome. The love interest, Zac Efron, was less interesting, but not dull enough to spoil the movie for me.