November 3rd: A Day of Infamy? / A Repeat Corona Crisis in NY?.

November 3rd: A Day of Infamy?... Just a few years ago, American Presidents behaved publicly, for the most part, in a dignified manner: in a word, ‘Presidential.’  In their well-tailored Brooks Brothers suits, Presidents spoke in intelligent [to a degree] and complete sentences, and dealt with their peers around the world in a respectful, civil and judicious manner, as their positions warranted. Oh sure, we’ve had Presidents who were not particularly suitable for the job, i.e., Ford, Carter, but they did fulfill their Presidential duties as guardians of the nation as best they could.

Our fragile democracy was not threatened by demagogic and deranged individuals. 

Not anymore.  The current President is dismissive of the principles of our democracy, including a cruel disrespect for our basic humanity, no belief in oppositional fair play, and absolutely no regard for our constitutional-mandated freedoms. He’s only interested in amassing as much money as he can, regardless of legality, along with promises to obliteraate his enemies: he comports himself like one of those  marauding Russian soldiers entering Berlin at the end of World War II: he’s essentially out of control.

Mr. Gripes’ long-held belief that this the stable political culture of this country, at the very least, would keep us safe from all the turmoil  and kleptocracy of the rest of the world no longer is viable.

The reason? Trump may take us all down.

It’s obvious, I think, to anyone paying attention for the past year that there’s a Republican plan to keep Mr. Trump in office, whatever the result of the November election may be.  Let’s start about a year ago when President Trump ‘kidded’ that if he loses the 2020 election, he’s not leaving office. At first, I think, Americans thought the idea was just another of Trump’s ‘throw-away’ lines, meant to be chatted among the media for a few days, but nothing for us to be worried about.

Donald Trump repeatedly has asserted it’s going to be a ‘rigged’ election, if he loses. ‘Rigged’ is Trumpian code for what exactly? That no matter if Mr. Trump gets trounced and beaten badly in the election, popular-vote-wise or electorally, he’s going to mount a no-holds-barred, exhausting campaign through the courts and God-knows-where-else to overthrow the verdict. ‘Rigged’, to Trump, means the election results coming up will change nothing – Mr. Trump is staying. And, even if he ‘loses’ in the courts, he’ll still resist: He’ll have to be carried out of the White House.

There’s a recent precedent for a disruptive election process. Mr. Gripes, who sadly possesses an elephantine memory when it comes to political chicanery, recalls an incident during the 2000 Florida ‘hanging chad’ recount imbroglio: in a county-government office in Broward County, a few days after the voting, ballot-counting inspectors, maybe a dozen seated around a large table, were beginning to take on the task of assessing the validity of some of those questionable ‘chad’ ballots. 

Suddenly, there was a pounding on the glass doors and windows surrounding the room. Screaming Republican operatives, just outside the room, and certainly under a directive of the Bush campaign, made such a racket and created such consternation and fear that the task at hand was suspended, never to be resumed. That insurrectional action was the initial phase of Republican state officials’ push to award Florida’s electoral votes to George Bush weeks later. Intimidation worked to perfection. Dare I say it? ‘Anarchy’ won the day.

Is it possible the election coming up will be ‘fair ‘, according to the President? No way. Donald Trump has a foolproof strategy that’s worked so many times for him in the past: undermine the legitimate processes, throw a million charges at his opponents, denigrate them, confuse the public, and, above all, create a lot of chaos. And if that doesn’t work, create even more chaos. 

Just imagine what the Republicans have in store for us the day after the election: a demand for recounts in every state that’s close; a demand to validate every ballot one-by-one; a rush to the courts for rulings, whether justified or not; a million accusations of a rigged election, further gumming up and delaying the process, even replacing state electors of the Electoral College with new ones who will then back Trump;  and at the end of this insanity, as Trump gets legal backing from his sycophantic, boot-licking Attorney General Bill Barr, calling in the military to deny a Biden victory, citing ‘a national emergency.’

The overall strategy is real simple:  Legally, illegally, justified or unjustified, just keep the plates spinning until the other side gives in, and gives up.

Batten down the hatches, Americans: we’re in for one hell of a ride.

A Repeat Corona Crisis in NY?.....New York, regrettably, appears to be descending into another perilous corona-virus crisis akin to the grim days of March and April in which, you remember, shortages of hospital beds, personal protection equipment, and ventilators were the most urgent issues, and the threat of hospitals being overwhelmed very real.

Somehow, through a confluence of missteps by politicians’ timidity and religious leadership, blind ignorance, pig-headed stupidity, or authoritarian willfulness, we’re heading down that road again. And, this time, the winter and flu seasons will be here soon.

Dissecting this developing calamity, the largest fault, despite their vehement denials, lies with a particular segment of the population: the ultra-Orthodox who are concentrated in some areas of New York, and comprise a very significant percentage of citizens who live there. In those zones, during the last month or so, the positivity rates for contracting the virus have jumped [from a little over 1% to as high as 16% in some areas]. 

The conclusion as to the direct cause of the startling rise has to be the ultra-Orthodox citizenry and the disregard for basic virus safeguards and rules.  As they say, ‘Just look at the data.’ It’s impossible, looking at that data, that it could be anything else.

But the inhabitants of the areas with rising infection rates are not solely to blame. In fact, I think it’s the political and religious leadership, who know better, that are especially at fault.  But in the affected communities that’s not the prevalent sentiment. In fact, the rabbinate in areas like Williamsburg, Borough Park and in mid-Hudson Valley asserts that the ultra-Orthodox groups, among all the putative culprits, are being ‘singled-out’. Come on, man.  Don’t BS me. You know what that statement represents? Denial. 

The most vexing problem in these communities is the leadership: it has been pitiful. Instead of acknowledging that face-covering mandates are being ignored, despite warnings from doctors and medical authorities, and that large congregants of adults attending religious services or weddings are probably ‘superspreaders’ of the virus, these elderly religious leaders, whose numbers incidentally have been decimated in this corona period, encouraged the dissemination of the misinformation, which accelerated the virus spread.

But blame for this impending disaster is not only limited to religious leadership.  Timid politicians here in New York State and the city are at fault, too.

After all, it’s a fact that the rabbinical hierarchy can deliver virtually a 100% bloc of votes for a candidate they favor in an election; their congregations look to them to make that decision for them. 

Breaking that down, that means if we posit a rabbi supports a particular candidate, and there are, let’s suppose, 2,000 members in his synagogue, that’s 2,000-to-zero votes in the bag for that candidate. You can imagine what a mother lode that represents for avaricious politicians like Cuomo and de Blasio [any politician, probably.] That’s got to be the reason why during the past few weeks, there’s been no police enforcement of a mask policy or a crowd-limitations mandate. We can’t offend anyone, is the calculus of de Blasio and Cuomo; those unanimous voting blocs are too precious. 

Oh, yes, the cops tell people to put on masks, maybe, but no arrests or fines. Warnings and slaps on the wrist, that’s it. There’s only one policy that would work: fat fines of $500 per individual, $25,000 for institutions. Only a few days ago, Mr. Big Shot, Andrew Cuomo, very late in the game, made the point that enforcement with fines and even imprisonment will now occur. That’s like shutting the barn door after the horses have run out. The move is much too late. Corona virus now runs amok in neighborhoods. It’s the same story once again, isn’t it? The politicians always disappoint, don’t they?

Mr. Gripes
October 14, 2020 
By Jim Israel

Always an Enemy / Blue States, Stick a Fork in Them / My Childhood Pandemic

Always an Enemy – The shortages were breathtaking: surgical masks, medical gowns, ventilators, tests, reagents needed for making the tests, swabs, and, yes, even epidemiologists who might have been able to foresee this calamity – The United States got caught, again, with its pants down. And, guess where we have to purchase all these products we now need to confront this pandemic? Somehow, through negligence, a collective attention span of about 10 minutes, no foresight or planning, complacency, and only meager stockpiles available, America found itself in the extraordinary position of pleading with our archenemy China for emergency support and aid.

And, how does our overmatched, overwhelmed and frankly idiotic President handle this national emergency at its height? He insults China, and accuses them of starting the pandemic in a Wuhan laboratory; he begins to refer to the virus as the ‘Chinese virus.’ Instead of attempting to tone down the rhetoric a little, and curry a little bit of good will, Mr. Trump chooses to go full bore with his accusations. 

Whatever the truth is about the origins of the COVID, and we certainly cannot prove right now if China intentionally started this horror, America needs desperately the products that China possesses or can manufacture to fight this virus. So, Donald Trump, for once just hold your tongue and shut up. Pick up the fight much later, please, if you must.

But he won’t. Mr. Trump needs enemies. That’s the life force that propels him, I think, every waking moment. His very troubled psyche cannot tolerate equanimity; he’s always been a disrupter, a destroyer. And, to our peril, he’s the current President of the United States, as his own internal wars have metastasized. I think it’s becoming so apparent lately: he no longer is in control of his destructive impulses, and he’s leading America down a very frightening and ominous path.  God help us.



Blue States, Stick a Fork in Them…Mr. Gripes is going to disappoint his lockstep, Democratic  friends with this item, but I think Mitch McConnell’s right regarding his stance on, as he puts it, the ‘blue’ states’ calamitous waste of federal money. 
 
One has to acknowledge he’s spot-on that these states and cities, with their hugely populous urban centers, have squandered for many years billions and billions – trillions of dollars, actually – not, as they profess, to actually ameliorate the economic and residential conditions of the urban poor, but to perpetuate the incredibly corrupt, profligate, and unaccountable Democratic power bases that have ruled, with essentially no opposition, for decades – since the end of World War II, in fact. The proof is in the pudding: the urban under classes, even as they vote in overwhelming numbers for Democratic candidates in every election, have less earning power now than 30 years ago. Nothing’s changed. Except for those trillions of dollars down the drain.

Let’s look at New York as an example: Mr. Gripes has lived in and around New York for a good part of his life, and the out-of-control spending with the sole purpose of maintaining political control and power has been and continues to be appalling. 

A perfect example: our present mayor, Bill de Blasio, ignoring valid charges of nepotism, placed his hapless wife in charge of some spurious ‘mental health’ initiative four years ago. It’s been a colossal failure from its onset. For one thing, its mission was never fully explained. And, proving that it’s been nothing but a shell organization, there has been no progress report as to its aim or its ensuing effectiveness, and whether any goals were reached. As one critic asserted, the initiative – named ThriveNYC – mainly is an exercise in ‘pamphlets’, i.e. a raft of flyers distributed at public libraries to be picked up and read by library patrons [no one reads them, of course].
 
And with the multitude of pressing mental health issues – domestic violence, suicide, depression, feelings of isolation, loss of jobs, et alia-- emerging now with so many people in need of urgent attention, we hear not a thing from Thrive. Not one word as to its contributions, which probably do not exist.  In a just world, it’d be an egregious scandal. And, what a waste of money: the program has burned through $1 BILLION[!] over its four years’ existence. 

[In reality, Mr. Gripes, who can sniff out political chicanery and venality from ten miles down the road, knows the sole reason for Thrive’s creation: it’s to raise the profile of Mr. de Blasio’s wife, to be followed up by her running for some worthless office in 2021, keeping Bill’s name in the news; then the plan is for him to run for President again in 2024.]

Tales of criminality like this make Mr. Gripes’ blood boil. And there are so many examples of the squandering of billions of dollars over the years, on the part of our urban mayors.

Well, finally it all has caught up with blue state cities. Having wasted so much of their federal largesse and at the moment left with nothing but humongous debts, these states have no political currency any more: they’re broke and are going to have to beg. An angry Mr. McConnell is correct: why should more federal aid be forthcoming for these bankrupt cities, when we all know that they’ll misuse that money again? I understand his resistance to throwing more billions at these money pits.

What’s going to happen? The states will eventually receive federal financial aid they desperately need to pay for teachers, cops, firemen, public hospital workers, and the like. That’s a given. But, Mr. McConnell and his Republican allies are no longer, I think, going to simply sign off on additional funding for the urban politicians to spend as they see fit, to feather their own political nests. Strict conditions will be imposed on any federally funded program for a city: no more gazillions to spend on propping up corrupt, unaccountable Democratic urban administrations and their phony, slush-fund non-profits and fraudulent ‘programs.’  Finally, a politician says, ‘Enough is enough.’



My Childhood Pandemic – From the early days of this viral pandemic we’re all experiencing right now,  I felt in my bones I had been through this before.

What that earlier experience was, I just couldn’t pin it down. Mysterious, yet the emotions seemed very familiar. Indeed, a sense of déjà vu: absolute dread and fear about what lay ahead of us, and a firm, paralyzing belief that I was going to be powerless to fight the coming storm. This was a repetition of a suppressed memory.

Well, ten days ago, I finally recalled the earlier pandemic that so affected me: almost 70 years ago, in 1954, a polio ‘scourge’ grabbed the United States by the throat. 

The back story: as a child, I was obsessed over current events – I followed world developments closely as a young kid.  I didn’t really understand or absorb much of what I was reading, but just enough to sometimes scare the hell of me [Russians dropping the atom bomb on us, for instance]. During that 1954 summer, as I recall it, the heat never let up day after day. And, of course, I linked up the intense heat wave to a rising incidence of polio. In this child’s mind, that meant that polio, and its attendant horrors, would inevitably get me.
 
I perused the newspaper every morning, and noticed that the number of polio infections was increasing daily and, even more worrisome, coursing its way up the East Coast. One day, there were, say, 14 new cases in Georgia, then a couple of days later, 20 cases in North Carolina, then 30 more polio victims in Virginia, etc. And it was overwhelmingly kids who were afflicted. This pattern went on for weeks; I was certain polio would soon get to Long Island, and kill or paralyze me, my brothers and sister, and my friends. I just couldn’t shake that nightmare scenario.
 
[Let’s remember that the medical term for polio is, in part, infantile paralysis—it disproportionally struck children.] That fear of losing the use of my arms or legs, or being shackled to an iron lung for the rest of my life was horrifying to me. Death, in fact, would have been preferable.

Then, everything changed.

Sometime early in July, out of the blue, I and my siblings were abruptly sent to a summer camp for six weeks. It was located in Massachusetts, in some remote corner of Cape Cod. I loved it there, and in the face of a glittering Atlantic Ocean nearby and a summer of playing baseball with new friends, the polio fears abated a bit. I didn’t read newspapers either. I just felt much safer in the Camp Chappa Chala alternate universe, arguing incessantly and annoyingly I’m sure, with New England kids about who was better, Ted Williams or Mickey Mantle.

A miracle then followed: camp ended in late August, and, not long afterwards, Dr. Jonas Salk invented a vaccination for polio. I don’t remember when we got our initial vaccines for polio, but I do recall climbing up stairs at an elementary-school auditorium stage, lined up with all my classmates in a long procession, and receiving a shot. Everyone in my school was given an injection, hundreds of kids. Then a month or so later, getting another one, ‘the booster shot.’ Polio had been eradicated in America, just like that.

From the certitude that I was going to either die or end up immobile in a hospital bed for the rest of my life, I had survived unscathed. A question remains to this day, however: did my parents by design send myself and my siblings up to that camp on Cape Cod to insulate us from that scourge ‘pandemic’ racing up the coast? I’ve often wondered about that lately. I’ll never get an answer.

By Jim Israel                                                                                                
May 7, 2020
‘Mr. Gripes’

 

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