Top Film Picks: 2020

 

At this time of year it is traditional to present top film lists. My list for 2020 is drawn from the past. Few contemporary films will stand the test of time.

In the past few years, I have become a big fan of a certain kind of American film from the 1940s and 50s. They are primarily black and white dark crime dramas that French film makers and critics called film-noir when they rediscovered American films after the liberation of France in 1945.The term film-noir refers not only to the dark themes of these movies but also to the nighttime settings and the often-startling contrasts between light and dark, black and white. 

Originally, these films were low budget productions often designed to be presented as the second feature on traditional Hollywood double bills. Nevertheless, today many are regarded as ground-breaking classics. They featured great directors, actors, writers, and film craftsmen and craftswomen. To fill the insatiable demand for movies in America, Hollywood even imported talent from abroad. In my opinion, film-noir represents a short-lived American film renaissance that came to an end with the advent of television and technicolor. 

Below find brief descriptions of eight of these films that I have viewed this year.* Not only are they gripping, extremely well-told stories with masterful directing and acting, but also, they bring me back to the days of my childhood. In the background I can see a world that is no more: the dark dingy streets, the small apartments, the old telephones, and the incessant cigarette smoking. 

 

Double Indemnity: Famed director Billy Wilder directed this classic 1944 film noir about an insurance salesman who falls for a client’s wife, and then joins with her in a plot to kill him and collect on his life insurance. Barbara Stanwyck, blond wig and all, stars as the devious wife, and Fred MacMurray plays the salesman. Edward G. Robinson is excellent as the suspicious claims' investigator. 

Phantom Lady: In 1944 Robert Siodmak directed a number of films that would later make critics regard him as one of the great masters of film-noir. Phantom Lady, a little-known thriller, is no exception. After a fight with his wife on their anniversary, a man goes to a bar to drown his sorrows. When he returns home, he finds that police are waiting to arrest him for the murder of his wife. His only alibi depends on a woman he met in the bar, but he doesn’t even know her name. The film stars Alan Curtis, Ella Raines, and Franchot Tone.

I’ll Be Seeing You: This 1944 film is a holiday drama with noir trappings. Two strangers meet on a train, but she is a woman with a past and he is a soldier suffering from war wounds, both physical and mental. The film stars Ginger Rogers, who turned to dramatic roles after the break-up of her famed dancing partnership with Fred Astaire; and Joseph Cotton, who was at the height of his career after appearances in Citizen Kane and the Magnificent Ambersons.  Director William Dieterle not only brings out the chemistry between the two stars, but also gets the most out of a fine supporting cast, including a teen-age Shirley Temple.

Detour: A down on his luck musician hitchhiking to Hollywood finds himself with a dead body on his hands. Things go from bad to worse when he gets entangled with the most vicious femme-fatale in cinema history.  Tom Neal played the musician, and Ann Savage, whose career as a Hollywood starlet was on the wane, became a film icon with her portrayal of the woman he picks up on the road. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, the master of low budget films, this 1945 film took just a couple of weeks to shoot. 

Ann Savage

The Big Heat. Glenn Ford stars as a rogue police detective conducting a vendetta against a crime syndicate in this 1953 film by famed noir director Fritz Lang. Lee Marvin portrays a sadistic gangster and Gloria Grahame is excellent as his unfortunate girlfriend.

I Want To Live: Susan Hayward won an Academy Award for her portrayal of a party girl who gets mixed up with a gang of thieves. When a botched robbery leads to murder, her associates implicate her, and she is convicted and sentenced to death in the gas chamber. Based on a true story, Robert Wise directed this 1958 film in documentary fashion. The film was a big hit and featured background music by legendary Jazz saxophonist Gerry Mulligan.

Touch of Evil: Orson Welles directed this 1958 film about crime and depravity in a Mexican border town.  It is a mangled masterpiece since the studio made drastic cuts and revisions without the director’s permission. The DVD release restores many of the cuts. The opening itself is a film icon. Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh star, and a heavily disguised Welles plays a corrupt police chief. Some critics believe this film to be the last American film-noir.

Orson Welles

Le Samourai: Renowned French director, Jean-Pierre Melville, directed this 1967 mixture of 1940s American gangster movies, 1960s French pop culture, and Japanese lone-warrior mythology. Alain Delon, who looks and acts like the young Clint Eastwood, plays a contract killer with samurai instincts. Shot is subdued color; Melville’s masterpiece defines cool. 

 

Bonus pick. 

Remember the Night: Barbara Stanwyck and Fred Mac Murray co-star in this 1940 holiday romance with touches of film-noir. It is interesting to compare them in this film with their roles in Double Indemnity four years later. They were a great pair. Directed by Preston Sturges this film is full of warmth and charm with fine performances by the supporting cast. 

 

Many of these films can be streamed today but I prefer to use DVDs because they often include excellent commentaries, background information, and subtitles for people like myself who are hearing impaired.

Happy viewing and a Happy New Year.

###

*Eight other noir films were featured earlier this year in a post on The Weekly Bystander.

Christmas Memories

At 81 years of age, I still have wonderful memories of Christmas. For me it is hard to imagine what life would have been like without Christmas. It is true that most of these memories have been blurred together by the passage of time—trimming the tree on Christmas eve, children around the tree opening presents on Christmas day, and sitting down with the whole family for Christmas dinner.


Some memories do stand out. A few years ago I went to Victoria’s Secret to buy a pair of pajamas for my wife only to be told that the sale price included two pairs of panties that I would have to pick out. Going back further, I remember standing in a mall after my first year as a struggling mutual fund and insurance salesman and calling my office (there were no cell phones then) to see if my commission check would be large enough to buy presents for my wife and five small children. It was.


Going back to my own childhood, I remember my grandmother and grandfather making zeppoles and other Italian pastries in their tiny kitchen. Never mind granite countertops, their old kitchen had no countertops at all. The kitchen table and the stove top somehow managed for the task of working the dough before dropping it into the boiling oil to cook the delicious Christmas confections.


However, one memory stands out above all the others. My wife and I had moved to Connecticut so that I could take a teaching position in a small college in Fairfield. My first year's salary was about $6000. With the help of a down payment from my dad, we bought a small house back in 1967 after the birth of our second child. Two years later on Christmas eve both of our boys had an attack of asthmatic bronchitis. This had happened before but our usual remedy of taking them into the bathroom, turning on the hot water in the shower, and making the room into a steam room did not work this time.


With reluctance we called our pediatrician on the night before Christmas. He volunteered to come to the house. House calls were not unusual in those days but it was Christmas eve and he was a young man with a family of his own. Still, he came and stayed and ministered to the boys for what seemed like hours. Finally, he recommended that we take the youngest to the hospital. A wonderful neighbor volunteered to baby sit for us and we drove to the hospital where my wife spent the evening with little Edward.


Next day all was well and mother and child returned home. We can never forget Dr. Cahill for what he did that night. To top it all off, he refused to bill us precisely because it was Christmas.

Happy 55th birthday to Ed and Merry Christmas to all. ###.

President Trump: Concession Speech

 

     

 

Now that the Electoral College has voted, I suspect that President Trump will soon concede. Below is my suggestion of what should be in that concession speech. It is a brief statement that admits defeat in the election battle, while vigorously claiming to carry on the war for America in the next four years.

I am announcing today that I will acknowledge and accept the results of the recent Electoral College vote. Even though I continue to believe that there was massive fraud in the election, I am conceding in the interests of national tranquility, 

However, I intend to be very active as President in my few remaining weeks in office. I will continue to discharge the duties of the office until my successor is inaugurated. I will also remain fully committed in politics, especially in working to elect the two Republican candidates for Senate in the upcoming Georgia run-off election. 

Moreover, when I leave office, I intend to be part of the resistance to the new Democratic regime because I believe that their opposition over the past four years has been offensive, unprincipled, and not in the true interests of our country. Not only have the Democrats failed to learn from their mistakes in the past, but also, they now are preparing to double down on them.

I will also work to continue the efforts to expose what I believe to be massive fraud in the past election. Even Democrats and their allies in the media admit that there was fraud, but just say that there was not enough to change the outcome. Despite innumerable signed affidavits, they continually claim that there is no evidence. 

Fraud in our elections cannot be tolerated for it strikes at the very root of our democracy. I will do all I can as a private citizen in the next four years to expose the fraudulent activities in the past election, and to work to ensure that they can never happen again.

There is precedent for such resistance which, after all, is the right of every American citizen. For the past four years Democrats have complained that my election was stolen by collusion with Russia and that my Presidency was illegitimate. For four years I have been subjected to the most vicious attacks from the Democratic opposition, the governing class in Washington, and their allies in the media. 

The attacks began even before my inauguration and continued even after the Mueller and other investigations turned up no evidence of wrongdoing on my part. My opponents even resorted to a bogus impeachment with virtually no evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The Senate rightly exonerated me. 

Despite an unprecedented level of political opposition and obstruction on the part of the Democrats and their allies, my administration achieved more in the past four years than the previous two administrations did in sixteen.

At home we supported tax reform that brought jobs back to America, and stimulated the economy to new heights. During my tenure we achieved record high employment and earnings in all levels of society, including record employment and job gains for minorities. 

We threw out foreign trade deals that everyone knew were flawed and outmoded, and replaced them with trade deals in which America would no longer play the sucker. Moreover, we discarded treaties that played into the hands of our enemies. We withdrew from the Paris Climate accord when it was clear that China, the world’s greatest polluter, would not comply. We withdrew from the foolish and dangerous nuclear agreement with Iran. During my administration no planeloads of cash were sent to promoters of terrorism. 

Today, we are closer to peace in the Middle East than we have been in the past century. We have eliminated ISIS, the terrorist force that occupied most of Iraq during the Obama Biden administration. During my administration we entered no new wars and have begun to bring our troops home from all parts of the world. We also brokered peace deals between Israel and its Arab neighbors, something my opponents thought could never be done.

Finally, I believe that history will record that the greatest achievement of the Trump administration was the development of a vaccine for the coronavirus in record time through an incredible joint effort on the part of government and our private industry. We have suffered a tragic number of deaths during the pandemic, but because of our joint efforts, our successor will have the tools to overcome Covid. 

The true test of the Trump administration will not be about whether people liked or disliked me personally, but on how much my administration and the American people have accomplished in the past four years. In the next four years I plan to work to ensure that those gains are not lost or frittered away by self-serving politicians, and foolish ideologues.

 

### 

Media Election Aftermath

  

                                             

 

Since the election I have noticed an interesting change in the editorial columns in my local newspaper, the Connecticut Post. The paper, a part of the Hearst chain, had a consistent policy of opposition to President Trump, a policy dutifully followed by all of its columnists.

Not one good word about the President or his Administration was allowed to be published not only during the election campaign, but throughout the past four years. The achievements of his administration were routinely ignored or suppressed. For example, when a huge contract was given to Connecticut’s Electric Boat company to build new submarines, credit was given to a local Democratic congressman but none to President Trump. Of course, not one of the columnists even mentioned this year’s peace accords between Israel and its Moslem neighbors all of which were brokered by the Trump administration.

The paper is a champion of diversity but there has been no diversity of opinion among its columnists or editorial writers. No matter what their race or gender, they were all highly partisan Democratic supporters, even to the point of outright hatred of President Trump. Like many, they refused to recognize the legitimacy of the President’s election in 2016, and consistently refused to even call him President. He could only be referred to as Trump.

After the election, however, some political commentators were apparently left off the leash.  Just the other day, one regular columnist who never could bring himself to even write a good word about the President, or name one of his accomplishments wrote the following in praise of the development of a vaccine to treat the coronavirus. 

We are about to become beneficiaries of one of the most stunning accomplishments in the history of medical science. In the space of a year, we’ve identified a disease, named it, sequenced its genome, learned about treating it and—it seems—made several types of vaccine that work against it.

Earlier in his essay he did refer to the Trump administration and Operation Warp Speed but still could not bring himself to name President Trump or give him any credit for engineering “one of the most stunning accomplishments in the history of medical science.” He could only say that “we” did it, as if the extraordinary combination of government and private industry was a collective effort in which the President played a negligible role. Still, it was a startling admission that something had actually been accomplished by the President and his team in the past four years.

Earlier, a black columnist, who also could not bring himself to say anything good about the President, conveniently waited until after the election to blame Connecticut Democratic multi-millionaire politicians like Senator Richard Blumenthal and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro for their failure to really help black people during their long tenure in office. 

In a similar fashion, another columnist waited until after the election to bemoan the fact that Connecticut had become even more of a one-party state than before. The state, one of the bluest in the country, had become even bluer as the Democrats gained more seats in the legislature. Of course, due to the pandemic, there has been no legislature for months and the Democratic Governor uses emergency powers to rule like a dictator. Where has this columnist been? How come he never complained about one-party rule before?

Finally, in an election post-mortem, a female columnist expressed surprise that even one woman could have voted for the misogynistic Trump. She claimed that she did not know even one woman who voted for the President. To her credit she did invite readers to respond, and when a number of women responded with thoughtful reasons, she had the decency to print some of the replies in her next column.

I wonder what these columnists and others like them all over the country will write about once President Trump leaves office? He has provided an incredible amount of material for them. For four years they have willingly participated in every effort to remove the President from office. Who or what will they dare to criticize and condemn in the Biden administration? Who will even bother to read or listen to their platitudes about the new administration? Recent pre-inaugural press conferences with Joe Biden have demonstrated how easily the media can shift from attack dogs to lap dogs.

###

Coronavirus: Great Barrington Declaration

  

 

 

There has been an obvious spike in coronavirus cases the fall and it seems to be continuing as winter approaches. My home town of Fairfield, CT is no exception. Coronavirus cases practically disappeared from May to September but the weekly reports from our town government show a dramatic spike in October and November.

Interestingly, the spike has occurred mainly in young people of high school and college age. So far of the 2111 cases reported in town, 446 have been between the age of 10 and 19, and 553 between the age of 20 and 29. That is almost half of the town’s total. Fairfield has a population of about 60000 but it does have two large universities.

Significantly, none of these young people have died. In fact, Fairfield University reports that of its 599 cases, 589 have recovered so far. In fact, no one under the age of 40 has died in Fairfield, and only three have died under the age of 60. On the other hand, while there have been only 262 cases reported over the age of 80, 114 of those have resulted in death. Of those seniors who have died, over 90 percent were already in nursing homes or elder care facilities.

I think these figures are representative of what is going on all over the country. I also believe that they lend credence to the Great Barrington Declaration, a proposal put forward in October by three of the world’s leading epidemiologists, Dr. Martin Kuhldorff of Harvard, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford. They argued for a focused approach to dealing with the disease instead of a one size fits all approach. Here is an excerpt from the declaration.

Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.

As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.

Obscured by the heated national election, the Great Barrington Declaration was also derided or ignored by the media, who while claiming always to follow science, can really turn on scientists who disagree with the mainstream narrative. Typically, instead of examining the scientific evidence, the media claimed that the authors of the Declaration had a right-wing political agenda.

The recent upsurge in cases is a sign another approach is needed. In a September 1 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Donald Luskin discussed the statistical research that his firm, TrendMacro, has been doing on the coronavirus since its inception.  He argued that the findings, although counter-intuitive, indicate that lockdowns have had little effect one way or another.

Experts stress the need for masks but only if used properly. How often do you see people touching their masks or wearing them only on their chin? My own observations indicate that 95% of people do not use or handle their masks properly. Most mask tests have been done in hospital settings where the masks are effective when used by trained medical personnel. Just the other day on a visit to my doctor, I asked his assistant how often she changed the mask that she had to wear all day. She said, “every three or four days.” 

It could be that the students at Fairfield and other universities are doing all of us a big favor. They contact the virus and recover. They get symptoms that in 99.9% of the cases range from cold to flu, but then develop an immunity that, according to the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, will protect us all.

###

Anything for Thanksgiving?

 

                                            

 

To say I was born and raised in New York City would be a little misleading because in my memories of New York in the 40s and 50s, the city was a collection of small towns or villages. I was born in Woodside, a section of the borough of Queens, and the skyscrapers and streets of Manhattan were as remote for me as China would be to my grandchildren today.

Because of our insularity I can’t be sure if a Thanksgiving custom we had back then was unique to Woodside or whether it could have been found elsewhere throughout the great metropolis. Anyone else I’ve mentioned it to had never heard of it including my wife who was born a little bit north of the City in White Plains, the hub of Westchester county.

Anyway, on Thanksgiving morning the children in our neighborhood would dress up as bums or hobos. It didn’t take much since back then we would usually wear our clothes until they literally fell apart. We would take our most worn and tattered clothing and rip and tear them a little more. Then, we would blacken a cork over a candle and smear it over our faces to simulate dirt. I remember my grandmother giving me a little pouch with a drawstring, or was it a pillowcase, that we hobos could sling over our shoulders.

Then, we were ready to make the rounds of our neighbors to ask, “anything for thanksgiving.” Inevitably, they would answer our plea with some of the bounty from the meal they were preparing. Usually it would be apples, or walnuts, or sometimes a few pennies. Don’t laugh. Twenty pennies were enough to buy a Spalding (Spaldeen), the elite of bouncing rubber balls used by us in so many street games.

I don’t know where the “anything for thanksgiving” custom came from. We lived in a small neighborhood that seemed to have been mainly Irish with a mixture of Italians. In my nearby Catholic school the majority of the kids seemed to have Irish names. There were Ryans, Regans, Dunphys, Moylans, and Healys. However, A few blocks down busy 69^thStreet were the Napolitanos who ran the grocery store. In the other direction lived the dreaded Gallos whose kids were the toughest in the school. 

But I’m not sure that “anything for thanksgiving”  was an ethnic custom. We were a predominately Catholic neighborhood and the idea of thanksgiving was part of our religious heritage even though none of us knew that the word “Eucharist” meant “Thanksgiving.” On the other hand, it could have been a peculiarly American response to the end of the Great Depression and the Second World War. Nothing had marked the depression so much as homeless men on bread lines or riding the rails. These were the hobos that we children imitated. Even though most of us could be considered poor, at least we and our neighbors would be able to sit down that afternoon in our homes to the best meal of the year. We did have a lot to be thankful for. The Depression was over, the men had returned from the terrible war, and the NY Yankees were on the verge of recovering their past glory.

Over 70 years have passed since those childhood years but I can truly say that my wife and I have much to be thankful for. Our grandparents came to this country from Italy with nothing but their own traditions, customs, and religion. Like most children of immigrants our parent came to love America and worked hard to provide for their children and give them a standard of living that is still the envy of the world. 

Even today, after one of the most divisive political campaigns in U.S. history, there is more reason to hope than to fear. I would just like to end this post with George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789. Thanksgiving did not become a National holiday until after the terrible Civil War, but Washington’s words are as meaningful today as they were in 1789.  

Thanksgiving Proclamation
Issued by President George Washington, at the request of Congress, on October 3, 1789

 


Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and—Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”



Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favor, able interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.



And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.



Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.


 

Go. Washington 

Election 2020: The Women's Vote

 

                                               

Shortly after election day a female columnist in my local newspaper wondered how even one woman could have voted for President Trump despite the fact that millions did. She admitted that she did not personally know any such women.  However, she did ask female Trump supporters to respond.

To her credit, in her next column she printed some very good replies ranging from outright support and admiration of the President to grudging support of his policies despite his behavior. Others expressed disdain of his opponent, and dislike of the progressive policies that he supported.  

Still it seems true that a majority of women voted against the President. If he could have made the same inroads among women voters that he did among Black and Hispanic voters, the election would have been no contest. He would have won in a landslide.

What explains the animosity, often bordering on hatred, of millions of women to President Trump? Commentators routinely claim that it was a character issues that led these women to vote for the 78 year-old Joe Biden who is obviously showing the effects of old age. Trump has been repeatedly called  a liar, a racist, and, worst of all, a misogynist or woman-hater.

I don’t think that is the whole answer. After all, Biden has been called out as a liar throughout his long career, most recently when he claimed that he knew nothing about his family’s business dealings in Ukraine and China.

During the Democratic debates, Kamala Harris, castigated him for supporting and voting with Southern racists while serving in the Senate. Later, she joyfully dropped the charges when he asked her to be his running mate. 

As far as misogyny is concerned Biden was advised early in his campaign to change his normal behavior and pursue a “hands off” policy. Even when one woman dared to come forward and claim that Biden had sexually abused her, Democratic women and commentators departed from their “always believe the woman” mantra, and brushed her off into media oblivion.

I know a number of women who I am sure voted for Biden. Actually, in talking with them, it seemed clear that they did not really like Biden or his stated policies, but they were voting against President Trump. These were intelligent, reasonable women but it was clear that their animosity toward the President was not based on his policies or political positions.

Their animosity toward the President was almost visceral. One called him a “bad” man who could do nothing good. When I asked her if she could think of one accomplishment of his administration, she could not think of any. She and others angrily blamed him for the deaths of over 200000 during the coronavirus pandemic, but they usually had nothing but praise for the Governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut whose states had the highest death rates in the country. 

Actually, it is fair to say that male Democratic politicians made the same charges. Joe Biden said as much in the debates, Governor Cuomo of New York made the same charge. Jim Himes, my congressional representative, recently called the President “incompetent and corrupt.” 

Some people claim that the President would have been better liked if he had just turned his tone down, and come across as less combative and belligerent. I don’t think so. The President was disliked from day one and nothing he did or did not do would have changed people’s minds. Before the pandemic hit, we had the greatest economy in history including virtually full employment and rising incomes. But his detractors still despised him. I have never seen such anger directed at anyone.

I suspect that many women disliked Trump because he personified all the bad men they have known either personally or in fiction. He is a filthy rich white businessman who lived in a gilded apartment in the Trump Tower on Fifth avenue or at his multi-million-dollar resort at Mar a Lago. Trump divorced his first two wives and the beautiful and talented Melania is the epitome of a trophy wife.

Practically every day you can read in the advice column about a boyfriend, husband, or lover who degraded, abused, or deserted the woman who loved him.  I had clients who told me they had slaved to put their husbands through college and make them successful, only to be left stranded when they ran off with the secretary.

For years in the movies or on TV, rich white males have been the number one villain. Just look at the many versions of Law and Order for confirmation. Although our jails are full of young black and Hispanic men, most of the murderers on that show are wealthy white businessmen.

I guess the final straw came when a rich white male defeated Hillary Clinton, the first female to run for President in 2016. Millions of women to this day cannot even acknowledge that Trump is a legitimate President and will not even call him President Trump. It’s the same old story and the President would never be forgiven no matter what he said or did.

### 

Election 2020: Post-Mortem

 

The Democrats were caught napping in 2016 when they went down to a stunning defeat at the hands of the upstart outsider, Donald Trump. They apparently relied on their own polls that were way off the mark in predicting an easy win for Hillary Clinton.  

They did not make the same mistake in 2020 even though the polls were again predicting a Democratic landslide. They pulled out all the stops in the campaign. After complaining for years about the influence of money in elections, they threw record amounts of cash into battleground states where they far outspent the Trump campaign.

In addition, they could count on the continuation of the media assault on the President that began four years ago. By 2020 a large portion of the population has been turned into rabid Trump haters by the media, a phenomenon witnessed in the recent urban riots and protests. 

Finally, it would not surprise me if the President’s claims of ballot fraud in Blue state cities turn out to be true. You would have to be incredibly politically naïve not to at least suspect that urban Democratic political machines are capable of fraud. 

I cast my first Presidential ballot at the age of 21 when I voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960. I was a young college student in New York City, and Kennedy seemed like a breath of fresh air, especially compared to Richard Nixon. Now, most historians agree that the Democrats “stole” the election by winning Illinois through the ballot stuffing tactics of Chicago’s corrupt Mayor Richard Daley of “Vote Early and Often” fame.

Since then, years of experience have shown that if an election is close, urban Democrat politicians will find ways to produce enough ballots to turn the tide. Nearby Bridgeport, Connecticut has been a one party city for years. Nevertheless, although the state of Connecticut is heavily Democratic, recent tight races for Governor have been decided by a Bridgeport Democratic machine noted for its corruption. The mayor is an ex-felon and the Police Chief, the mayor’s former driver, was recently forced to quit for irregularities in his appointment process.

Although newspapers are giving the election to Joe Biden, there will be recounts in key battleground states. Georgia has been given to Biden but he only has a 10000 vote lead out of 5 Million votes cast. In Wisconsin Biden leads by 20000 votes with over 3 Million votes cast. It is the same story in Arizona where Biden only leads by 20000 votes with over 3 Million votes cast. Finally, there is Pennsylvania where Biden holds a 40000 lead with over 6 Million votes cast.

As I said before, you would have to be incredibly politically naïve to believe that the Democratic machines in Atlanta, Milwaukee, Tucson, and Philadelphia would not be capable of voter suppression, and intimidation? Is it a coincidence that riots broke out in the streets of Philadelphia only days before the election?

Pennsylvania went even further and stacked the deck before election day when a state law prohibiting the counting of ballots received after election day, was overthrown by a judge who ruled that even ballots without postmarks should be counted. What an opportunity for fraud. 

If recounts tip the balance for President Trump in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, he will be re-elected.  In that event Democratic politicians, commentators, and fanatical Progressive who are now calling for calm and unity will tear the nation apart. Let me repeat for emphasis. If recounts discover fraud and give the election to President Trump, there will be rioting in the streets spurred on by those who are now calling for peace, calm, and unity.

However, if the recounts confirm the election of Joe Biden, I believe that President Trump will emerge as the real winner in this election. Although he trailed in the popular vote, he received more than 70 Million votes, a tremendous outpouring of popular favor. It is hard to imagine that all of those voters were right-wing extremists. 

In Florida, rated a toss-up in the pre-election polls, the President won by half a million votes despite massive spending by his opponents. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg reportedly spent $100 Million of his own money to gain the state for Biden. It was the same in Texas where the polls indicated that the traditional red state was in play. The President won by over 600,000 votes. 

Actually, the President, despite four years of unrelenting attacks that included bogus Russian collusion claims, a partisan impeachment with no high crimes or misdemeanors, rioting and looting in major cities, and the coronavirus, markedly increased his vote count in the battleground states. Ohio, for example, was a squeaker in 2016 but this year, Trump won easily. The Trump phenomenon worked just as well in Florida.

Almost half of his votes came from women, something liberal female columnists cannot understand. The President also dramatically increased his vote count among blacks and Hispanics. 

In the final weeks of the campaign the President emerged as a true charismatic leader. He foundered in the first debate and then was stricken with the coronavirus himself. Incredibly for a 74-year-old man, he bounced back with a vengeance like the Energizer Bunny. He demolished Biden in the second debate, and then proceeded to take his message to the people in huge rallies all over the country. It was amazing to see him on stage dancing to YMCA while the crowds cheered. Despite the polls he did not quit like Republicans Romney and McCain in prior elections.

Nevertheless, as noted above, the Democrats were ready and threw everything they had at him. I almost hope that President Trump does not prevail in the recounts. He has started a movement and might be able to lead it better outside the White House. He is 74 and he and his family deserve a rest. 

###

Election Issues 2020: Who Can You Trust?

 

                                                 

A neighbor recently told me that he could not trust President Trump. He raised a legitimate issue. Trustworthiness is important in a President. It is part of the “character” issue that Joe Biden has raised in the current campaign. Let’s examine the trustworthiness of the two candidates.

I can certainly understand why people could believe that Donald Trump could not be trusted back in 2016 when he pulled off his stunning upset of front-runner Hillary Clinton. Trump had never held political office before, and his words and deeds as a private citizen were often out of line. Nevertheless, if the President is judged on his actual performance in office, something the media has purposely refused to do, you can see that he has largely been true to his word, even if you disagree with his policies.

He claimed from the start that he was for peace and against the interminable wars that the country has been involved in during the last two administrations. Under his leadership our military defeated ISIS and then the President proceeded to bring back troops from the Middle East. Moreover, he brokered unprecedented deals between Israel and its Arab neighbors, something that was not even discussed in the recent debates. He followed up on his pledge to recognize Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, and the world did not come to an end.

From the beginning the President argued that previous trade deals were bad and not in the Nation’s best interests. Despite much opposition, he scrapped NAFTA, a trade deal that everyone agreed was flawed and his administration negotiated a new one that seems much better. He imposed tariffs and sanctions on foreign countries like China that were not playing by the rules. 

He claimed that other foreign deals were flawed and followed through by withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, and the Iranian nuclear deal. There would be no more planeloads of cash shipped to supporters of terrorism. He also claimed that NATO allies and South Korea were not paying their fair share for their own defense, and got them to pony up billions.

From the first, he argued that the tax code was unfair and overly complicated. He followed through with the tax reform act of 2017. By 2019 Federal tax revenue increased 4% over the pre-reform level and figures indicate that the average taxpayer paid less.

Before his election Donald Trump produced a list of 20 names from which he would fill any Supreme Court vacancies. He followed through on his pledge and so far has chosen three extremely qualified justices, none of whom were party hacks or personal friends.

On the other hand, I have to admit that I find it hard to trust Democratic candidate and former Vice-President Joe Biden. Even before the recent documents appeared I wondered how a man who could work 47 years as a “public servant” could amass a huge fortune, well in excess of most of the people he was supposed to serve. 

I also wondered how his son Hunter, with no qualifications whatsoever, could be on the board of directors of a Ukrainian energy company at a salary in excess of $600,000 per year. Moreover, I wondered how Vice-President Biden, who was in charge of overseeing billions in aid to Ukraine and bragged that he forced the government of Ukraine to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating that company, could not be aware of his son's position. Subsequently, Biden claimed that not only was he  unaware of his son’s activities in the Ukraine, he also knew nothing of his dealings with China even after flying there together on Air Force II.

In the last two weeks my suspicions were confirmed when the NY Post broke the story about the emails on a computer that Hunter Biden dropped off at a repair store but never bothered to retrieve. The emails indicated that the former Vice President not only knew of his son’s activities but that they were part of a whole Biden family enterprise designed to capitalize on the Biden name.

 Incredibly, the story was spiked or censored on most news outlets. Even when a former business partner of Hunter Biden went public with corroborating testimony and evidence, his story was only reported on Fox News. Even the Wall Street Journal, which featured editorials on the subject, did not mention it on its news pages. 

Nevertheless, the story stinks and the silence of the Biden campaign has been deafening.

I also find it difficult to trust Joe Biden because I suspect that he and his campaign are hiding something else. At age 78 Biden is obviously suffering the effects of old age. I won’t speculate on his medical or psychological history but his garbled and confused statements are troubling. Even his handlers keep him away from stressful situations or interviews. 

He won’t, for example, say whether he is for or against his party’s idea of packing the Supreme Court with more judges in order to get favorable outcomes. He claimed that he is the Democratic party but he will not say. Unlike the President, he will not publish names of potential Supreme Court nominees. On other questions, he just says he has plans or will appoint blue-ribbon commissions to investigate and come up with solutions, a typical evasive tactic. 

It seems clear to me that rather than being the Democratic Party, he is just a front man, an old war horse brought out of retirement as the party’s only hope to regain power. The other Democratic candidates looked dangerous or lackluster. There is no enthusiasm for Biden even among Democrats. 

The President was correct in the last debate when he branded Biden as just “a politician.”

### 

Election Issues 2020: Climate Change

 

As election day draws near I have been wondering why some very, very rich people are not only supporting Democratic candidate Joe Biden but contributing record amounts of money to his campaign. After all, he is threatening to raise taxes especially on those making over $400000 per year.

 

Could there be more to his appeal than meets the eye? Billionaires like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates did` not become rich by neglecting to get good returns on their investments or their political contributions. Billionaire Michael Bloomburg, the former mayor of New York City, is investing millions to help Biden carry the pivotal state of Florida. Is it just hatred of President Trump? 

 

As the old saying goes. “Follow the Money.” Could it be that these very rich Democrats see an opportunity to profit even more by supporting Progressive causes? After all, if you can substantially increase your assets by gaining access to government stimulus money, why not pay a little more in Federal income taxes?

 

Michael Schellenberger, a committed environmentalist, describes how billionaires have profited from climate change activism in his new book, Apocalypse Never.  Subtitled, “Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All,” the book offers a balanced assessment on climate change and how to deal with it. However, he also details how well connected politicians and venture capitalists have profited from government environmental spending.  

 

He quotes John Doerr, a venture capitalist, who found an upside in climate change.“Green technology—going green—is bigger than the Internet,” Doerr said. “It could be the biggest economic opportunity of the twenty-first century.”

 

During the administration of President Obama, Shellenberger admits that he was involved in an environmental program that could be regarded as a forerunner of the Green New Deal. But things did not work out as he expected. He writes:

 

Between 2009 and 2015, the U.S. government spent about $150 billion on our Green New Deal, $90 billion of it in stimulus money.

 

Stimulus money wasn’t evenly distributed but rather clustered around donors to President Obama and the Democratic Party. At least ten members of Obama’s finance committee and more than twelve of his fundraising bundlers, who raised a minimum of $100,000 for Obamo, benefitted from $16.4 of the $20.5 billion in stimulus loans.

 

Fisker, which produced some of the world’s first luxury hybrid vehicles, received $529 million in federal loans; Doerr was one of Fisker’s major investors. It eventually went bankrupt, costing taxpayers 132 million. … (217-218)

 

But the loans were just one program among many others that funneled money to well-connected Obama donors without creating many jobs. The most famous of the green investments was when DOE gave $575 million to a solar company called Solyndra, 35 percent of which was owned by a billionaire donor and fundraising bundler for Obama, George Kaiser.

 

Nobody wanted to invest in Solyndra because its panels were too expensive, which independently minded DOE staffers pointed out. They were overruled, however, and the loan was approved.

 

The people who benefitted most from the green stimulus were billionaires, including Musk, Doerr, Kaiser, Khosla, Ted Turner, Pat Stryker, and Paul Tudor Jones. Vinod Khosla led Obama’s “India Policy team” during the 2008 election and was a major financial contributor to Democrats. His companies received more than $399 million.

 

However, few Democratic Party donors outperformed Doerr when it came to receiving federal stimulus loans. More than half of the companies in his Genentech portfolio… received loans or outright grants from the government. “Considering that the acceptance rate in most of the Department of Energy programs was often 10 percent or less, this is a stunning record,” wrote an investigative reporter. (218)

 

Shellenberger’s research led him to conclude that nuclear power is the answer not only to creating a cleaner environment but also to providing for the world’s expanding energy needs. But he documents the efforts of pseudo-scientific activists and self- interested politicians like former Governor Jerry Brown of California to shut down nuclear power in California. Brown and his family were heavily invested in fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.

 

Apocalypse Never does offer solutions to serious environmental problems but it is also a sad story when it details how many have profited by alarming people all over the globe. He cites his own example as typical of many:

 

I was drawn toward the apocalyptic view of climate change twenty years ago. I can see now that my heightened anxiety about climate change reflected underlying anxiety and unhappiness in my own life that had little to do with climate change or the state of the environment.

 

Nothing is sadder that the plight of now-famous teenager Greta Thunberg who, like many other children, has been traumatized by climate alarmists. She claims that her childhood was taken from her by these fears, and truly believes that the human race will be extinct in 15 years. Who taught her that?

 

In Apocalypse Never Michael Shellenberger concludes that there is much more reason for optimism than pessimism. 

 

Conventional air pollution peaked fifty years ago in developed nations and carbon emissions have peaked or will soon peak in most others.

 

The amount of land we use for meat production is declining. Forests are growing back and wildlife is returning.

 

There is no reason poor nations can’t develop and adapt to climate change. Deaths from extreme events should keep declining….

 

None of this means there isn’t work to do. There is plenty. But much if not most of it has to do with accelerating those existing, positive trends, not trying to reverse them in a bid to return to low-energy agrarian societies.

 

The people who use the threat of climate change to make fortunes or gain votes should be ashamed of themselves. 

 

### 

Debate Debacle 2020

  

      

In their second and final debate I gave President Trump a “B+” and Democratic challenger Joe Biden a “D”. I think it was obvious to all that the President won the debate. Even left leaning commentators could find little to blame in his performance. One commentator even said it was the President’s best ever debate performance. Using sports talk, the President was always playing offense while challenger Joe Biden was playing defense. Whether in sports or in politics you will lose if you are always playing defense.

I gave Biden a “D” not because of his politics or policy plans but because of what he did not say or do. Not only was he unable to mount an offense, his defense was weak. At one point in the debate the question had turned to China. Nevertheless, Biden turned to face the camera and the viewing audience and launched into an obviously prepared set piece about ordinary people sitting around their kitchen tables. 

 

The President immediately caught him up and said something like, “What happened to China? How did we get to the kitchen table.?” Then came the stunning and devastating blow: 

 

“You’re just a politician.”

 

It was even more stunning because the President uttered it calmly and matter of factly. He did not raise his voice, there was no malice and maybe even a hint of sadness. “You’re a politician.” It was a slap in the face and Biden just took it.

 

When the discussion turned to the enrichment of the Biden family by deals in the Ukraine and China, the President calmly called Biden a “crooked politician,” and again there was no response. Biden just took it. 

 

Later, the President doubled down. In response to Biden’s repeated claims that there were many things wrong in America and that he had “plans” to fix them, the President said, “Joe, you had eight years to fix them. You did nothing.” And then came the crusher: “Joe, you are the reason I ran four years ago. If you hadn’t done such a bad job, I would never have run for the Presidency.”

 

Slap, slap, slap. Incredibly Biden did not respond. He just stood there and took this damning indictment. He could only bring himself to mutter something like, “I was only Vice-President.” In effect, he threw his old boss, former President Obama, under the bus.  

 

I would have given the President an “A” except for the fact that he failed to capitalize on a great opportunity at the end.

 

For her last question Kristen Welker, the moderator lobbed this softball at both candidates. I paraphrase but she asked, “Assuming you won the election, what would you say in your inaugural address to those who had voted against you?”  It seemed to me that both gave a stock answer and that the President settled for a single when he could have hit the ball out of the park.

 

He should have been prepared to say, when given such an opportunity, “I know that many of you who voted against me do not like me. Many even hate me. I know that you will not believe anything I say. But I am reminded of the conman’s attempt to trick his victim: ‘Who ae you gonna believe, me or your own two eyes?’ I will not ask you to believe me, but in the next four years I will ask you to use your own two eyes in looking at the actual work of my administration.

 

Just look through your own eyes and not through the eyes of the media which no longer brings you straight, unfiltered, no-spin news. Use your own eyes to see how you, your family, your neighbors, and your community are doing.  Are your own sons and daughters fighting in endless foreign wars, or are they coming home at last? Is a vaccine available to all for the coronavirus? Is the air and water in your community clean and healthy? Are your childrens' schools open and safe? Are you financially more secure? How is your 401k and IRA doing? Has your home increased in value? 

 

Is the America that you see every day as bad as my opponents claim? Most of you live in communities that are the envy of the world. That is why so many people want to come here. Etc. etc.

 

I watched the debate until the end when the candidates’ wives joined their husbands on stage. It was really sad to see Joe Biden’s wife join her 78-year-old husband after this long ordeal. What could she have been thinking?

 

###

Election Issues 2020: Coronavirus

 

In recent debates Democratic candidates Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris have made the coronavirus the number one issue in their campaign. They have accused President Trump of being responsible for the 225000 deaths attributable to the coronavirus in this nation. It is clear that millions of ordinary people share this view but what is the scientific evidence for this accusation?

 

Those who hold the President responsible should at least answer some simple questions. First, what explains the different results in the various states? In my home state of Connecticut over 2,000,000 tests have been administered and 64000 people have tested positive. So far 4554 deaths have been attributed to the coronavirus. In Kansas, half way across the country, there have been 74000 positive cases but only 872 have died. Connecticut has 1277 deaths per million, and Kansas only 299 per million. Is there a scientific answer?

 

Similarly, New Jersey and Arizona have had about the same number of positive cases, but New Jersey has had three times as many deaths (16339) as Arizona (5830). New Jersey leads the nation with deaths per million at 1840, while Arizona’s is 801 per million. What can explain this difference? Is it politics or science?

 

What can explain the fact that deaths in New York (33497), New Jersey (16339), and Connecticut (4554) match the totals in California (17001), Texas (17599), and Florida (16025), the three most populous state in the country? Democrats certainly do not blame the ineptitude of governors in those blue states.

 

How can President Trump be blamed for results so disparate? How can a national action or inaction produce such different results? Did the Trump administration somehow manage to do better in some states than others?  If it’s not politics, maybe there is a scientific explanation.

 

The coronavirus recognizes neither state lines nor borders. So far over 8 Million people have tested positive but only 225289 of those infected have died. In other words, about 3% of those who tested positive have died. But wait a minute! Scientists have insisted from the beginning that the actual cases must far exceed the number of confirmed cases. Lately, they have been multiplying the actual cases by ten which means that they believe that about 80 Million people in the USA have been infected with the dreaded disease.  Obviously, since only 225289 have died, almost 80,000,000 have survived. Should President Trump be given credit for that? 

 

Great Britain and Italy, countries with nationalized health systems, and with only a fifth of the population of the USA, have done much worse than the USA. In those countries over 12 percent of those who have tested positive have died. if we had the same fatality rate as those two countries, we would have had over 800000 deaths by now. 

 

Finally, about 85 percent of those who have died in the USA have been over age 75. Most of them had what are called co-morbidities, other health conditions that weakened their immune systems. Many of those seniors were in nursing homes. Studies have shown that for one reason or another the immune systems of these Seniors was compromised. Most actually died from an over-reaction of the immune system that led to pneumonia. Is it scientific to say that President Trump’s policies caused Seniors to die while sparing children? Was it President Trump’s order that sent infected seniors back to nursing homes in New York?

 

Blaming President Trump for 225000 deaths is not only unscientific, but also dishonest and downright despicable. Many people cannot bring themselves to like or vote for the President for things he has said, but nothing he has said has ever been worse than the charge that he is personally responsible for the deaths of over 225000 people during the pandemic. 

 

###