Lines in the sand. Win/lose elections. Win the battle for the lead in the story. Point a finger. Who’s to blame?

Those are the big questions of the day in D.C. Not how to solve the logjam over the budget and the debt ceiling. Well, let’s take it as a straight political problem. On one hand, you have House Republicans saying, this is our budget and
you have to get rid of Obamacare to get it. On other hand, the Democrats in the Senate say, “dead on arrival.” So does the White House.

Here’s where we want to see Tip O’Neill enter stage left and Bob Dole enter stage right. Their ilk tried to do what's best for the country. But Mr. O’Neill is gone. And Mr. Dole is 90 years old and even though in the Senate that qualifies you for a leadership post, he probably isn’t going to help.

What would I do? If I were the president, I’d call John Boehner and say, “Come down to the White House. Don’t tell anyone. We’ll meet. You and me. Alone. We are two of the brightest political minds in the country. We can figure out a way out of this mess.” And then do it. It is a political problem, not a budget problem.

Naïve? Maybe. But I’ve never been accused of being the “glass-half-full-guy.”Ask anyone. But I get into discussion with co-workers and friends and we hit a wall. We can’t agree. Why? Because it gets into this:  

 "Boehner has no guts.”

 “Oh yea, well Obama shows no leadership.”

 “Oh yea, well, the President made a Grand Bargain with Boehner and he reneged.” 
 
“Oh  yea, well, the Democrats screwed Reagan on this three decades ago.” 
 
People, really? That’s what political discourse has devolved into in this country? Break the logjam. Take a stand. Lead. Don't follow.

In the movies, right about now the cavalry rides in, the white knight on his horse arrives, the smart, blonde CIA operative sneaks in….someone comes in to save the day. This movie, unfortunately, seems to have gone with the alternative ending, the one where doom – but not complete doom – hits at midnight. 

This movie has that double-suspense thing going on. The first deadline passes and bad things happen but the second deadline is when Armageddon hits.

Last week I suggested that the Members of Congress “grow up.”A former colleague of mine used the phrase “grow a pair!” And she was more right Last week I was thinking that Speaker John Boehner was trying to do all the right things –
short of losing his Speakership. I worry that without Boehner, the crazies really will be in control. But they seem to be now. And maybe Boehner should go “all in,” as the latest popular saying goes, say “enough is enough” and put on
the floor the kind of legislation that allows our government to continue and puts the debt limit debate – the one that could lead to financial Armageddon –- behind us. That legislation probably can pass with a bunch of Republican AND
Democratic votes. Why does either caucus have to be 100 percent behind something  to pass it?

I am not familiar enough with the rules of the House to understand what happens if folks want to oust Boehner, but I’m guessing even if they want to, the Speaker – and the parliamentarians who do understand those rules – can figure out how to keep him. Yes, keep him. My belief is all that’s been standing between us and worse stuff from the House is John Boehner. Picture the House with Eric Cantor running it. Yes, for some, it’s a choice between worse and worse-er. Well, Isn't all politics? I’ve long believed that Boehner is a good man, an old-style pol who would rather make a deal than witness a disaster.

Maybe, though, it’s time he stop worrying about his future, and worry about the country – and the world’s future – if the USA defaults. You thought the last recession – the one that really isn’t over yet – was bad? Wait and see what happens if the USA defaults. The markets collapse, interest rates zoom up, businesses stop investing -- as if they are really investing now –-  and the dollar crumbles. 
 
My broker advised me last week to hold my position, “where can you put your money where it’s safe?” he asked. I said, “Cash?” He said, “if the USA defaults, cash won’t be worth anything either.”

Who’s going to ride in and save the day? Someone has  to, don't they?


 

There’s an addition to the top of my page/blog – it now says “thoughts from a screaming moderate.”

I shared the blog with a friend, for the first time, and he said – you’re a “screaming moderate.”  I accept the title. I embrace the description. Moderate, for the record, doesn’t mean you lack a belief system. I have a belief system. Part of my belief is that to move down the road in a legislative environment you have to be willing to take steps. Give something to the other side to get something. I have no problem with that on most issues.

When you have the responsibility – as elected officials do – to lead and manage the country, I don’t understand how you can be any other way. You got elected by a majority, but you represent everyone. You can’t ignore anyone. I know that’s a hard task, but it was done for a couple hundred years successfully and I don’t understand why we need to do it differently now.

This is a democracy not a dictatorship.

The whack-a-doos in Washington (on both sides; but I get that the House and Senate Republicans are the most dangerous at the moment) have to change their ways. We are on the verge of an economic default. That is a BIG DEAL, in case no one noticed. Those of us approaching retirement age could lose all our savings – at a time in our lives when we can’t get it back. Hell, at my age, the odds of me finding another good-paying job are nil.  I worked hard, as have millions of others, my entire life to get myself to the point of considering retirement and enjoying the rest of my time. And no Tea Party grandstander is going to take that away. Those younger could lose their houses (does anyone remember the last big economic hit we took – it was a few years ago, people; we still aren't out of that one), their jobs. Those younger than that would have to leave college. It goes on … and on…

So Ted Cruz and his pals need to grow up. This is NOT a game. This is people’s lives. Hell, this is about the world economy, not just the United States’. And at the moment I have no better ideas than to tell these people in Washington: GROW UP! When you are dealing with childish approaches to problems, I guess you have to devolve into parenting techniques.

Is this brinksmanship we are watching? That’s what we’ve witnessed before and Washington always has pulled back from the brink. I get less confident about that each year.

Sincerely, A Screaming Moderate

Former President George Herbert Walker Bush attended a wedding of two old friends the other day. From the pictures I’ve seen, looked like it was a lovely event focused on two upper middle-aged (my age) loved ones getting married up in that beautiful seaport of Kennebunk, Maine. A picturesque spot if there ever was one.

The couple, one 55 years old and the other 60, has been together 12 years, raising two children from a previous marriage, and finally were able to get married. One of those stories you hear more often now and then – long-time together couples marrying at older ages. Sweet.

The President, being the gentleman he is, didn’t make a big thing of attending because the day should be focused on the happy couple. He did bring out a pair of socks – one red, the other blue – continuing his recent leadership role in
the fashion market. 

The couple that got married co-own the general store in Kennebunk and are well known among residents and tourists.   Bush served as an official witness for the wedding and who among us wouldn’t treasure the signature of a former president on our wedding documents?

Continuing his low-key approach, when Bush’s spokesman was asked about the President’s attendance he said, “They
were private citizens attending a private ceremony for two friends.”

George H.W. Bush is a gentleman and typically does the right thing in a low- key way. In the Jewish religion, doing a good deed and not seeking or getting credit for it is called a mitzvah. One of its definitions is “a human kindness.” Serving as a witness at the wedding of old friends is clearly a mitzvah.

Bush didn’t do it because he was trying to reinforce his “brand” or “leverage” the wedding to his benefit or even to make a statement. He attended to honor two old friends making an even stronger commitment to each other. As it should be.

Didn’t matter to him that the couple is two women.  Nor should it to any of us.

I was wrong. Dead wrong.

I thought, logically (there was my mistake), that after 12 innocent people were shot to death the other day in the Washington Navy Yard we would have the standard debate over gun control in this nation and a discussion of how we treat the mentally ill as a couple of ways to avoid such senseless bloodshed.

Wrong. 

There was about a nanosecond of debate, if that. The cable news and morning news shows quickly filled up their time with tales of Brittany Spears and Hiccup Girl and other life-staggering events. The Congress moved on to another issue they can’t decide on. The 12 dead weren’t even identified publically yet and we moved on. So, after Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora and the others, “we” apparently have become so used to such horrific news -- innocent men, women and children gunned down for no reason at all – that we move on. I said the other day that mass inaction was as senseless as these senseless crimes. At least before the Navy Yard we took long enough to think and discuss before we had mass inaction. Now, we don’t even skip a beat.

A friend asked after I wrote the other day, in effect, “what can I do? My representatives don’t support gun control.” Vote against ‘em, is one thing to do. Encourage your friends, relatives and family to elect people who want to do
something, instead of nothing. Speak out.  Don't forget.

After the Holocaust the reminder became “never forget.” But we do. An insane dictator gasses his own people, the United States president calls for military action and “we” sit back and ask “why?” Why? Because we should never forget .We should never forget the 6 million Jews killed. We never should forget the 1400 Syrians killed, we never should forget the 20 children and six adults killed in Sandy Hook, we should never forget the six people killed in  Arizona the day some nut tried to assassinate a Congressman and instead maiming her for life, we never should forget the 24 killed in Columbine  ...  you get the  idea.

Gun control isn’t the only answer. Each of those incidents involved shooters who had some mental incapacity. Some may have been off their meds, like the one this week apparently was. But when someone comes into a medical facility – specially the Veterans Administration – and says he’s hearing voices and getting vibrations, you’d think something would happen where someone would be notified to keep an eye on him. I don’t suggest we have enough law enforcement officials to assign one to each person reported as a potential danger. But there has to be something that can be done to stop some of these senseless incidents.

I hope I’m not wrong again.

Another senseless mass killing, this time at the Washington Navy Yard. More innocent lives lost for no reason. Next up: Another headline-grabbing debate over gun control. After that, no legislative action and we move on to the next story. And await the next tragedy.
                
The above is no surprise to anyone. We have been through this cycle unknown number of times -- Newtown, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Aurora. The gun lobby will mobilize, the right-wingers will pound their chests that this is the fault of a deranged person, not a gun. The left will argue for more background checks, more controls, fewer guns on the street.
                
And then Miley Cyrus will tweek or twerk or tweet – whatever – and we’ll move on. How attention-deficit disordered are we?
                
Will tougher gun control laws eliminate these tragedies? No, but one hopes it will reduce the number – something we never will be able to prove. If we “ban guns,” will that solve the problem? No, just look at Washington, D.C., which has some of the toughest gun laws in the country – and still we read daily of shootings and death by
shootings. And now another mass killing.
                
But we also shouldn’t sit around and do nothing. That is as senseless and deranged an act as these mass shootings.

After the president’s speech last night, Newt Gingrich (former would-be president and now paid talking head on CNN) said the president should not have given it from a strategic point of view. He said since the president was not pursuing the vote in Congress and not bombing, he should have held a daytime press conference. I disagree.

I thought the president did a very good and succinct job of laying out why he feels we need to take military action in Syria, why he was putting it on hold, for now, and that he wasn’t backing off the option, as Russian Peacenik President Putin suggested earlier in the day. Obama’s speech was not of the high rhetorical flourish. It was Zane Grey-like direct, simple and understandable. He laid out his logic, explained why The Right and The Left should reconsider their positions, put, I think, moms and dads at ease that their sons and daughters were not marching into Syria.

It’s the approach many wish was taken before the Holocaust, before the Rwanda Genocide, and many other “let’s turn avert our eyes and that will go away” episodes in human history. (If you haven’t seen video of the results of the chemical warfare, here’s CNN’s report on I, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-WF6rcdI78. It brings some reality into the discussion.).  I liked that the president repeatedly used the word “humanity” because there is no question as there has been in past situations military action would be about oil or some commodity. This is about the moral obligation we have to not turn our heads when innocent people – and no more innocent than children – are killed for no good reason and by their own leaders. 

I know the country is war-weary, as am I. One day of war would weary me. But you can’t wait for an easing of war weariness to do the right thing.  I hope that Putin and Assad are serious about Syria giving up their chemical weapons and destroying them. I have my doubts. I don’t believe that Assad sits back, after killing his own people, and worries about a few days of bombing by the United States. That would show he has compassion and cares about his people. He has clearly NOT demonstrated those attributes.

So, as I mentioned yesterday, the U.S., of course, has to pursue this diplomatic opening that’s magically occurred in the last couple of days. I hope it’s real and it resolves this situation. But, as the president said last night, we cannot
let our guard down.

Along with most of the country, I’m looking forward to President Obama’s address on Syria tonight. It may be even more challenging to craft than before there was an option to avoid the planned military strike. 

On one hand, you have Russian President Vladimir Putin suggesting Syria put its chemical weapons in neutral territory for safe-keeping to avoid a U.S. military strike. On the other you have a president who is not guaranteed winning a vote
in Congress to back up his decision for a strategic strike. Putin has put the president in quite a box: Putin (not exactly a peacenik) is proposing a solution to avoid a volatile situation. He is doing that on behalf of his ally, Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president. (Time out: Could this get Putin the Nobel Peace Prize? Back to our regularly scheduled program.)

I am no fan of Putin. I don’t trust him. I also don’t trust Assad. Combine the two, the trust level decreases even more. Still, when an offer is on the table to neutralize the chemical weapons at issue, you cannot avoid it. If it’s on the level, it resolves a bad situation and may just save Obama’s ability to get anything done in his final years in office.

If I were advising the President, my counsel would be to accept Mr. Putin’s offer (Obama really has no choice) but not abandon the lobbying of Congress to back him on the potential bombing. Everyone will tell you that Putin and Assad may
just be doing this to delay a bombing by the U.S. I don’t think you can cede  that ground to them.

The problem with that counsel is I don't know if the members of Congress would behave properly. If the Congress could give the president a vote supporting a bombing, it would be a great card to be holding so that if Putin/Assad renege, there is no doubt the president has the authority to act without delay. Unfortunately, I don’t think the Congress can be trusted to give him a positive vote. I remember the days when politics stopped at the borders of the country and everyone supported the president in such a situation -- not blindly, but with a prejudice to back him, not cut his knees off.

I just don’t think we should allow the president to be hanging out there with no recourse if Putin/Assad go back on their
commitment.

It’s trite by now to say, but “doveryai, no proveryai” as Ronald Reagan used to say. Trust but verify.


 

A wrong is being corrected in my home town of Waterbury, Conn.

When I was a kid, like every other schoolkid in Waterbury, we toured the local Mattatuck Museum. One of its featured attractions was a centuries-old skeleton with the name “Larry” etched in his skull and hanging in a glass display case. 
 
The skeleton was that of a slave whose mistreatment is a reminder of the North’s role in slavery. The slave’s name was Fortune. He died in 1798 but the circumstances of his death is mostly speculation. Did he drown? Was he escaping and fell, breaking his neck?  Fortune’s master was a bone doctor, Preserved Porter.  After Fortune’s death, Porter, who ran an anatomy school in Waterbury, boiled his bones and used his skeleton as a specimen. "Larry’s" skeleton eventually was discovered in a closet in a Waterbury building. That’s when it went into the museum.

In the 1970s, wiser heads prevailed and the display was taken down. “Larry” stayed boxed up for years until museum folks started looking into the history of African-Americans in the area. A local resident urged them to add "Larry" to their
research. This turned into the Fortune Project, a decades-long program for the museum as scientists studied Fortune’s bones.

At the same time this was going on, others were looking into how to best serve Fortune’s legacy. As Maxine Watts, chair of the African American History Project, which worked with the museum on its Fortune research, said,  “(Fortune’s) living and death were not in vain. Slaves were not considered totally human. Yet Fortune’s bones were used as a teaching tool for human anatomy. Fortune is proof that we are all equal underneath the skin.”

Finally, 215 years after his death, Fortune will be buried a week from today at Riverside Cemetery in Waterbury. The Rev. Amy Welin will preside and she is quoted in The Statesaying, “The service will be for the rest of us…What are we supposed to do with the racial injustice around us now, the ghosts of slavery still haunt us.” She won’t
eulogize Fortune’s life, but will preach about God’s justice, The State reported.

Fortune and his wife, Dinah, had four children. His descendants can’t be found. So, members of the southern Connecticut chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians will escort his casket down the church aisle. 

Fortune,  may you finally rest in peace.

Drawing lines in the sand is tricky business. President Obama is learning that what
sounds good today, can bite you in the backside tomorrow. If he hadn’t drawn that red line with Syria, would he be considering a military strike now? Don’t know, of course. But words do matter.

 “Sending signals” was never one of my favorite things when I was in the government. Say what you’re going to do, that was one of my favorite things. Transparency. People then know where you stand. They don’t have to interpret a signal. 
 
But when the president drew his red line and then Syria used chemical weapons against its own people, that line was crossed. There has to be a consequence not because the president drew the line, but because the world needs to know there are severe consequences for using chemical weapons.  The president today broadened his “red line” to say he didn't draw it, the world drew the red line. Here’s his quote from a year ago:

 "A  red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation."

I don’t say this to point a finger at the president. But if the world was drawing the line, no one had a vote but him
publicly. I agree with a strategic military response to the chemical weapon use. I also have no problem with him drawing a red line. 
 
But he’s trying to rewrite history. Maybe a year ago he should have built, or started building, the coalition he should have for a response to Syria. When George H.W. Bush decided to push Iraq out of Kuwait back in 1991, he did it and had a strategy to get it done quickly. There was a chorus back then that once he pushed them out he should have marched to Baghdad to do more. But, President Bush knew that would crack his coalition apart, so he didn’t do it. He showed strong leadership and the world, and the American people, respected him for it. He said what he was going to do, he did it, and
he didn’t do more or less.

Personally, I would not have gone to the Congress to seek its approval or consent or agreement or whatever he is seeking. My non-legal view: the president has the right to take such an action without the Congress’approval. This will only complicate matters. Assuming the White House and leadership on the Hill can pull together enough votes to back up the president’s line-drawing, he will be stronger for it. If the Congress doesn’t vote in his favor, what then?