“AH OH! HERE COMES DA JUDGE!”

By Edwin Cooney 

He’s only been president exactly 59 days (okay two months) today, but the All American Judge (that’s me) has made his assessment of United States of America President Donald John Trump’s character, judgment, and qualifications for office -- and it ain’t pretty!  Now, wait a minute all you Trump lovers before you explode. The judgment ain’t pretty, but that doesn’t mean it has to be permanent -- let alone final!

There are 1,461 days in every presidency.  President Trump has only been in office 59 days as I issue this judgment!  Some presidents such as George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan had established their positive reputations by their 59th day in office.  That was primarily because all three of these presidents symbolized the people’s requirements or possessed such personal charisma which thus enhanced the peoples’ pleasure.  For most presidents, more time and the outcome of events had to occur before they could be at all evaluated.  Before briefly mentioning President Trump’s liabilities -- both personal and official -- I offer his greatest asset, namely, his unpredictability.  Undoubtedly, he’s a free spirit.  No one, not even his fellow Republicans, can count on what he will do in a pinch!  So far he has followed the traditional GOP faith in deregulating business activities, rolling back “Obamacare,” proposing tax cutting legislation, encouraging the return of Americans’ jobs from overseas, opposition to anti-climate change legislation, and the overall decentralization of “big government.”  Additionally, he’s kept his word to nominate a Conservative judge to the Supreme Court, and he’s kept his word to Americans, whose fear he aggravated and benefited from during the late campaign, to protect us from the worse scourges of undocumented aliens.  However, there looms alongside his “GOP faith” his actions and reactions to the world in which he, plus you and I, live.

It’s my judgment that we’re living under government by tantrum!  Whosoever displeases this president must be disgraced, destroyed or both.  Over the last 59 days President Trump has quarreled with four governments, Mexico, Australia, China, and now, our oldest and most traditionally friendly ally, Great Britain. (Strangely enough, so far, the president has been wisely cautious in the face of defiance by both Iran and North Korea!)

Even worse it becomes increasingly clear that President Trump is inclined to cuddle up to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.  Would you have predicted a year ago that the rank and file leadership of the Republican Party would view Putin’s activities with anything less than alarm?  Had John McCain’s campaign in 2008 discovered that candidate Barack Obama was snuggling up to the Russians, do you doubt that there would have been a righteous outcry along with charges of treason emanating from Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin if not from the GOP National Committee?  Additionally, the president has questioned the patriotism of judges who’ve sought to modify his restrictions on travel and immigration.

Finally, President Trump has lessened the integrity of the office he currently holds by charging, without proof, former President Obama with spying on Trump Towers, during the late “sacred” campaign.  (How “sacred” was the campaign when candidate Trump asserted that he might not acknowledge its outcome if Hillary the Bad were elected?)

Look, I know it’s easy to judge!  That’s why I’m the judge this week -- I like “easy” as much as you do!  However, the conclusions one reaches regarding the performance of a public official - perhaps especially if he is the president - is limited in value because it can only evaluate the present. It doesn’t in any way master, let alone evaluate, the future!  Regardless of whether or not I approve the president’s performance, I can’t, so far that is, support any impeachment charges against him and, even more, there is, as I see it, a glittering possibility over the horizon.

With history as my witness, I recall three presidents who unexpectedly shocked their ideological supporters during their presidencies.  As Bill Clinton began his second term in the spring of 1997, liberal Democrats were shocked to see the president supporting GOP efforts to curb traditional welfare benefits to the nation’s poor and disadvantaged.  The result was welfare reform which required welfare recipients to participate in job training programs in order to qualify for benefits.  According to statistics I read at the time, the number of people receiving welfare benefits dropped from 12.1 million to 7.2 million by the close of the Clinton administration.  The liberal “Slick Willie” grasped for credit, but Conservatives countered by insisting that they’d forced the president to go along with the idea of welfare reform.

In the fall of 1983, Conservatives were flabbergasted when President Reagan responded rather mildly to the Soviets shooting down of Korean Airlines flight 007 which resulted in the deaths of 269 passengers including 60 Americans, among them, Conservative Georgia Democratic Congressman Larry McDonald. A censure and a 90-day suspension of Soviet flights into the United States was the only official response by the Reagan administration. It was the type of reprimand that would have done Jimmy Carter proud.

Finally, there was Richard Nixon’s opening to China that shocked traditional Conservatives and eventually saw former President Richard Nixon celebrating, with considerable pride, his “Journey for Peace” to the People’s Republic of China and his appreciation of that “Godless Communist” Mao Tse-tung. Old line Republicans like Tom Dewey, Everett Dirksen, and certainly John Foster Dulles, would have never understood!  Pat Nixon may in fact have worn “…a respectable Republican cloth coat” which would definitely have “played in Peoria.”  However, Richard Nixon’s new friend Mao Tse-tung would never have been even tolerated in Peoria!  It’s this type of possibility that keeps this “judge” of our intrepid president interested in what will come next.

Donald John Trump hasn’t studied government and how it works any more than most GOP Conservatives have objectively studied the benefits of Obamacare!  John Boehner recently asserted that at no time in his 25 years in Congress have Republicans even thought about offering America a healthcare program.  The truth is, they’re just not interested in providing the public with assistance in countering the costs of maintaining their health!  It isn’t relevant to their understanding of national security.  Besides, they can afford their own care and you can’t, so “what of it!”

Okay!  I must confess the following.  Occasionally I get into a conversation with someone whose regard for the president is akin to mine.  Then, quite often my friend will assert that we’d be much better off if Vice President Pence replaced President Trump.  My response is “No thanks. Pence is too ideological, too morally self-righteous, too smooth, too persuasive and too predictable!" I’ll stick with “Donnie Johnny" even if he may throw something dangerous during one of his periodic tantrums! He may be a wrecking ball, but he’s a GOP wrecking ball - as such, he’s not my problem. I’m just watching!

Yes, indeed, I judge President Trump’s first 59 days a huge flop.  Government never has and never will function like a business.  I would hope by now that President Trump has discovered that he can’t just order people and events to do his bidding.  However, if you subtract 59 from 1,461 you get 1,402 and, like it or not, Donald John Trump is the President of the United States of America probably for the duration!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

OH MY! I'VE JUST DISCOVERED MY BIGGEST WORRY!

By Edwin Cooney

When I was growing up, I was a chronic worrier.  It didn’t matter whether I had any control of events in my life —  kids after all seldom do.  Adults largely controlled what occurred or didn’t occur in my personal domain, but I still worried which did me little good.

Over the years, I’ve reached the conclusion that worrying is more destructive than it is instructive.  Hence, for the most part, I’ve tempered my worries by downgrading them to concerns  with the large assistance of perspective — especially historical perspective.  There’s more to this personal analysis, but since it has to do with me more than it does you, I’ll generously give the reader a break and go on to make this week’s point!

Writing in the Washington Post this last week, Dana Milbank demonstrates that what’s ultimately most significant in President Trump’s administration isn’t either the truth or falsity of events or, more importantly, the proper analysis of laws or proposals of future laws, as much as what President Trump believes to be the truth about all matters great and small. Whatever the president believes, Mr. Milbank concludes, encompasses both truth and reality.

Whether or not former President Obama ordered a tap on his phones during “the sacred election campaign,” no matter how large or small the crowd was attending his inauguration, no matter whether it rained or stopped raining, it is what the president believes which must be the supreme factor in Americans’ assessment of our national reality!

Any objective study of history is bedecked with instances in which a willful leader’s personal beliefs have dangerously affected national security.  Here are a few examples:

(1.) King Henry VIII  believed that God was punishing him for marrying his late brother Arthur’s bride, Catherine of Aragon, by not allowing the couple to produce a male heir. This was the basis for Henry’s abandonment of the Catholic faith, the deluge of executions, and  both legal and illegal murders for almost two centuries to come.

(2.) Martin Luther’s anti-Catholicism and anti-Judaism beliefs brought forth on the European continent the same holocaust as King Henry’s personal beliefs and insecurity did in England.

(3.) President Andrew Jackson’s anti-Indian prejudices fueled the “Manifest Destiny” attitude that ultimately resulted in the 1846 war with Mexico and the Civil War fifteen years later. (Note: both Congressman Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant regarded the war with Mexico as immoral even though Congressman Lincoln supported funding for the soldiers of that war and Major Grant fought in the war.)

(4.) Adolf Hitler’s belief that Germany had been “stabbed in the back by a gang of Jewish-led November criminals” of 1918 was the main springboard for Hitler’s political triumph in 1933 and Germany’s defeat in disgrace of 1945.

(5.) President Lyndon B. Johnson’s determination not to be blamed for losing JFK’s Vietnam venture was a large part of the reason that LBJ pursued the Vietnam War throughout the mid 1960s.

(6.) Richard M. Nixon’s personal resentment of the Kennedys along with his belief that antiwar demonstrators, journalists, academicians and politicians were becoming national heroes while breaking the law, justified the illegalities he used thus creating the Watergate scandal and his subsequent resignation as President of the United States of America.

(7.) The fact that President Carter was only elected for a single term, I believe, had more to do with his genuine dislike of congressional politics than it had to do with any single policy failure. I’m convinced that President Carter believed he had to be above politics — especially congressional politics which he saw as driven more by special interests than by genuine principles.

Of course anyone who possesses presidential ambitions must possess a set of beliefs about him or herself, as well as about the political climate at home and abroad.  That’s a given!  What’s disturbing about President Trump’s beliefs and actions is that they’re so parochial, self-serving and even contradictory.  For example:

(1.) During the recent presidential election campaign, candidate Trump openly asserted that he was ready to claim the result invalid depending on the outcome.  The campaign’s legitimacy depended on the fate of Hillary Clinton more than it did anything else. However, in his tweet in which he insisted that Obama had tapped his phone, he characterized the campaign as “sacred.”

(2.) During the interim between election and inauguration, President-elect Trump was openly critical of the intelligence community as it gave credence to concerns regarding his relations and connections with Putin’s Russia. The day after his inauguration, President Trump paid a visit to the CIA building to proudly associate himself with its legitimacy.

(3.) Throughout most of the interim, President-elect Trump was warm in his praise of President Obama for his cooperation in the transfer of power. Now, he’s willing to equate Barack Obama with Richard Nixon.

(4.) President Trump apparently is convinced that Hillary Clinton’s popular vote victory was largely provided by corrupt voting procedures and by illegal voters.

(5.) President Trump believes that a free press is a dishonest press and clearly an enemy of the people.

(6.) Not so long ago, candidate Trump used to contemptuously downgrade the monthly report of the Labor Department --  especially when it reflected downward unemployment figures during the Obama administration. Just last Friday when the Labor Department announced that during the month of February the economy had created 235,000 jobs causing the unemployment figure to drop from 4.8% to 4.7%, both President Trump and the acerbically conservative Drudge Report suddenly found real credibility in Labor Department statistics. Both Trump and Matthew Drudge became real devotees of the Labor Department’s veracity! SURPRISE!!!

(7.) Finally, and this is what lies at the center of my new worry, President Donald John Trump appears to believe in his own personal infallibility. Even more to the point, through the use of "alternative facts” and political dominance over the party of Abraham Lincoln, the president expects to be sustained as a legitimate national leader.

Like the humblest citizen, the president is entitled (and even required) to possess both a healthy ego and a set of principles based on experience and judgment.  It’s in our national interest that he possesses both.  What he hasn’t earned via either the popular or electoral vote is the status of a deity.

Neither you nor I should have to worry about a presidential deification, but it may become  unpatriotic should we fail to worry about exactly that!

Ah! Worrying may, more times than not, be nonproductive. However, the book of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for every purpose under heaven!! Wow, really scary!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - BOTH DYSFUNCTIONAL AND ARBITRARY

By Edwin Cooney

Many years have passed since I favored capital punishment!  Back in the 1960s, when I favored it, it appeared to be going out of favor with the public.  Then came the 1970s and the Supreme Court’s ruling that capital punishment laws in most states lacked both consistency and precision and thus, between 1972 and 1977, there were no executions in the United States.

Capital punishment’s hiatus meant that the killers of Robert  Kennedy, Sharon Tate, and Dr. Martin Luther King — among others — escaped the permanent solution humankind has ever discovered for its many woes, namely, legal murder.  We’ve found workable remedies (varied though they may be) for financial distress, some remedies for combating starvation (namely food distribution), and we’ve got somewhat of a handle on war (although it’s discouragingly illusive), but we’ve yet to master our capacity to control two fundamentally vital human weaknesses: anger and revenge.  Thus legal murder has become almost an institution in the land of plenty and liberty.

What fuels this commentary is the news that Governor Asa Hutchinson of the State of Arkansas, a moderately conservative Republican, recently announced that eight death row inmates will be executed between April 17th and 27th.  The reason for that is that  the effectiveness of  Arkansas’s supply of the drug midazolam, part of the lethal injection process, will be out of date on April 30th.  Almost as significant, the Arkansas Department of Corrections has yet to refill its supply of potassium chloride, the final and fatal drug issued to inmates, although Governor Hutchinson is confident that drug will be available by the time the eight men are executed.  According to the New York Times, the eight inmates scheduled for execution in April are absolutely out of appeals.  There are 34 men on Arkansas’s death row, but apparently the remaining 24 inmates still have a sufficient number of legitimate appeals to make them immediately ineligible for Arkansas’s “big sleep” program. 

Before offering my objections to capital punishment, I must dispel a deliberately misleading myth which is too often boldly asserted by pro capital punishment advocates.  My opposition has nothing whatsoever to do with sympathy for killers.  Killers are, in general, self-possessed and absorbed individuals largely incapable of rising above their own emotional pain or sense of victimhood.  They are further  incapable of receiving or responding to someone's sense of anguish or urgency.  I have little empathy, let alone sympathy, for them.  They deserve ongoing punishment.  It’s their challenge, to the extent they’re capable, to make peace with God and humankind!  Second, I regard it as both insensitive and almost abusive to the victims of crime to encourage or take political advantage of their anguish and pain.  Some victims of crime become committers of crime in their outraged victimhood.  Even more tragic in the assumption that the deaths of crime doers sufficiently eases the pain of the victims of crime lies in the reality that often those who commit mass murders or terrorism plan their own destruction at the same time.  Hence the idea that there resides ease in someone else's downfall or tragedy is absurd.

Capital punishment is nothing more than legal murder.  There is a difference between legality and morality.  Even more, the assumption that the pain of victims of crime is significantly, let alone immediately, alleviated by the death of the doer of crime demonstrates a lack of comprehension of permanent or chronic anguish, pain and struggle.

The root defect of capital punishment is our inability to master our righteous anger.  We’re right to be outraged by injustice.  We’re right to want to give ourselves maximum protection from those who would destroy us!  However, that natural right of protection requires our utilization of mind over matter.

Nor am I advocating absolute passivity or nonviolence.  The only time a life should be taken is in the immediate emergency of preserving an endangered innocent life. Preservation of an immediately innocent and endangered life, as I see it, is not murder.  In fact, it is the highest occasion of courageous bravery.  The fact of the matter however is that few of us are trained and even fewer of us possess the ability and the skill to protect ourselves from the wily marauder.

The older I get, the more I realize how little we really understand each other —especially the roots of one another’s pain and struggle.  Even worse, it often seems that we have deliberately decided not to comprehend what matters to others! Beyond that, the more secure we are in our own sense of values, the less regard we have for the values and priorities of others.

Fear and anger are at the root of most of our social and moral dysfunction which defines for this observer capital punishment.  So long as death is our solution to even our legitimate anger and fear, the more death is surely our fate!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY