Monthly Archives: October 2012

George McGovern v. Richard Nixon

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My first vote. Continue reading →

The twenty-sixth amendment to the Constitution, which lowered the voting age to eighteen, was passed in 1971. That was too late for me. I was only twenty in 1968. So, the first ballot that I cast for president was in 1972.

The choice was incredibly easy. One candidate was a war hero with an impeccable record of promoting humanistic causes and peace. That was George McGovern, who died yesterday at the age of ninety.

The other candidate was Richard Milhouse Nixon, a despicable skunk who somehow persuaded millions of naïve people ‒ until they heard his private conversations on tape or his public interview with David Frost ‒ that he was a family man who put his nation’s interest before his own. He died in 1994. One of the major disappointments of my life is that I never took advantage of the fact that my company had some clients in California in order to schedule an excursion to Yorba Linda and dance on his grave.

My late father and I did not argue much. Our favorite topic of dispute was the subject of who was the worst U.S. president ever. I posited that Nixon was the worst; he championed George W. Bush.

I freely admitted that Bush was a horrible president. He started two stupid wars, wiped out the Clinton surplus with a stupid tax cut, and ended up crashing the economy. Bush was also definitely a serial liar. His biggest whopper was probably when he claimed that he did not know why the tax cuts had a ten-year time limit.

I also admitted that I was prejudiced against Nixon. Nixon was the guy who sent National Guard troops into universities to confront people demonstrating against the war (or at least against the draft). The blood of the students who died at Kent State ‒ gunned down by American troops on a college campus! ‒ is on his hands. He also was president when I was drafted in 1970 even though he had promised that he had a “secret plan” to end the war. So, I hold him personally responsible for stealing eighteen months from my life. If I live to be 90, that would be 1.67 percent of my time on earth.

My biggest complaint about Nixon,however, is that he put that reprehensible war-monger, Henry Kissinger, in charge of foreign policy. Together, they presided over the massive expansion of the Vietnam War, the CIA’s secret war in Laos, and the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile in favor of a military dictatorship. God only knows how many people died to promote the realpolitik favored by these two psychopaths. I pass over without mentioning the fact that his administration was full of fascists like Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, and the them. The whole crew made my blood boil.

Would George McGovern have been a better president? I do not know; he might have been a catastrophe. I just know that he was a much better human being, and I would not have been ashamed of my country if he had been its leader.

McG

Ben Franklin approved of the McGovernment ’72 shirts that Sue and I wore at the NABC in Philadelphia.

The fact that Americans could not see this in 1972 depressed me. I stopped participating in elections because I concluded that my ballot was worthless. It took the prospect of Dan Quayle being a heartbeat from the presidency to make me change my mind sixteen years later.

The Self-Tax

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The tax that even billionaires can love does not go far enough. Continue reading →

Chrystia Freeland appeared on the Colbert Report last week and introduced a concept with which I was not previously familiar, the “self-tax.” Evidently some wealthy individuals have developed a new argument that goes like this: they should not pay more taxes because they already donate a lot of money to good causes, and they are more efficient than the government at determining which organizations would use their money wisely for the public good. So, the money that they spend on others should be considered the equivalent of a tax that they impose on themselves. Essentially the rest of us should defer to their judgment and, like Lorenzo de’ Medici, they will drag us kicking and screaming into a new Renaissance. This argument was actually presaged by the “thousand points of light” that the first President Bush liked to emphasize. Most people, however, did not understand that he was talking about rich people making charitable contributions. Maybe they thought that he was talking about Thomas Kinkade’s paintings.

Since it is well known that the super-rich have been amassing wealth at a remarkable rate for the last three decades, some might have wondered why there are any problems left to solve. One might expect that so much self-taxation would have made life for the rest of us a bed of roses by now.

My thoughts went in a different direction. The problem is the deficit, and the biggest item in the budget, after health care and Social Security, is the military. Why not eliminate military spending entirely and leave the defense of the country up to the self-taxers? Who could deny that they would do a better job of it than the politicians and the generals? How would a hedge fund manager react if nineteen Saudis and Egyptians hijacked three of our planes and flew them into buildings? I have never met a hedge fund manager, so I don’t know. Nevertheless, I sincerely doubt that he would consider authorizing attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan. If the rich people did decide to react militarily, do you think that they would think in terms of bombers supporting the marines? If there is a mosquito in the room, do you get your shotgun out of the closet? No, you reach for the Deet.

Turning defense over to the plutocrats would probably have worked well enough in keeping us out of Korea, Vietnam, and these messes that we are still in. The acute observer, however, might have a longer memory. What about the “good war?” Would our rich guys (and gals?) have been able to respond to an attack on Pearl Harbor and rally the country against Tojo and Hitler as well as FDR did?

Astute that observer may be, but not as perspicacious as he thinks. There would have never been an attack on Pearl Harbor! The Japanese fleet attacked Pearl Harbor because we parked our battleships there. With the plutocrats in charge we would not have had any battleships! No single billionaire would have had an incentive to build a battleship. Battleships cost a fortune, and they produce no revenue whatever. It is not much fun to ride around in a battleship anyway. Plutocrats prefer yachts. No battleships means no attack, and that means that we never would have had to go to war.

Governments are inherently inefficient, remember? Eventually the Japanese and German juggernauts would simply have collapsed under the weight of their own bloated bureaucracies. The four and a half years of bloody combat was really a tragic waste of time and human lives. The invisible hand of the market would have tipped the scales in favor of our efficient capitalist system.

You don’t buy that? OK, let’s assume that even the plutocrats need some kind of government to provide defense. The question then becomes one of making sure that the government is run efficiently, sticks to defense, and does not obstruct the market forces that make our country great. Democracy is clearly not the answer. The vast majority of people do not have sufficient appreciation of the way that the American wealth-creation machine works. The fact that after a lifetime of trying they are still not rich provides irrefutable proof of that basic tenet.

The obvious solution would be to weigh each person’s vote on the basis of wealth. Let’s say that each citizen was granted one vote for each $1,000,000 of net worth. Billionaires would then be allotted thousands of votes, and the unwashed masses would get a fraction each. Nobody would be disenfranchised; even those with negative net worth would be allowed .00001 votes. Since over half of the wealth in the country is owned by a few percent of the people, this could theoretically work. Unfortunately, the plan contains one fatal flaw: It requires that everyone be audited. Presumably the results would be made public, and the plutocrats would never stand for it.

So, a more subtle approach is required. I humbly submit the following suggestion. Let all people have unfettered access to the media, and let everyone say anything they want as long as they pay for it. Each rich person could then set aside a few million dollars in the petty cash drawer and either finance his or her own campaigns for office or find someone likeable who would reliably do what he was told. Then use the funds to buy ads to deluge the unsuspecting public with claims that the hapless opponent had done something opprobrious. Just pound the message home on every channel and every network and eventually it will get through the thickest of skulls. To assure that the message gets through, the media should be deregulated so that the market forces can direct their ownership to those most worthy of them, and we know who that is.

One final thing. Someone else’s fingerprints should be on this whole plan. We don’t want any conspiracy nuts suspecting a well-planned takeover. The best approach would be for it to come straight from the constitution, but it is probably not practicable to rewrite that document the way that Napoleon Pig did. On the other hand, the Supreme Court could claim that the idea was already in the constitution. Isn’t this perfect? All that we need to do is convince the right five people to go along with it. America, already such a great country, will then get the kind of government that it deserves.

My Fatal Flaw

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I Depend on the Opponents. Continue reading →

I have played quite a lot of bridge this week. Three times I have suffered a bad result for the same basic reason.

The first hand occurred at the sectional last Saturday. I was sitting North, my partner dealt, and only the opponents were vulnerable. To the best of my recollection the bidding went as follows:

Partner West Me East
P 1NT P 2♣ (Stayman)
2♦ 2♥ P 4NT (RKC)
P 5♥ P 6♥
P P P

So I pondered the following facts before leading against 6♥.

  1. Partner’s bid asked for a diamond lead. I had a doubleton in his suit.
  2. I knew that West had used RKC Blackwood.
  3. The ace of spades was shouting at me to lead it. I knew that aggressive leads are often successful against small slams in suit contracts. Sometimes if you don’t take the ace, it gets discarded on a side suit.

I therefore planned to lead my ace, take a look at the board, and then lead diamonds unless that appeared fruitless.

Unfortunately, the dummy was void in spades and had two small diamonds. My partner had the ace and king, which he tried to tell me when he made his bid. My attention was drawn to that 4NT bid, however, and everyone knows (or so I supposed) that no one uses Blackwood with a void. Furthermore, West knew that her team was missing two key cards — they could have been the ace and king of trump — and she bid a slam anyway.

Well, it worked. We got our worst board of the session. I should have trusted my partner, but I thought that there was a 0 percent chance that he had the ♦A. When I explained my reasoning, he opined that I gave the opponents too much credit.

In last Thursday’s Instant Matchpoint Game I found myself declaring a rather routine-looking 3NT contract. I held:

♠ Q 8 2  ♥ A K 5 2  ♦ A 7 6  ♣ A 10 5
The opening lead was the ♦3, and this was the dummy:

♠ A K J 6  ♥ J 8  ♦ J 8 4  ♣ Q 9 7 2
Four spade tricks, two heart tricks, and one in each minor. Nine should be easy, and ten looked feasible. I made sure that the opponents used standard leads and thought about the diamond suit. If East had the KQ combination with four or five diamonds, he would probably lead the K, especially if he also held the 10 or 9. So, I pictured the high diamond honors as split. On the other hand, he could easily have the 9 and 10 and one high honor. I therefore inserted the 8 from the dummy and was disconcerted when West played the nine and I had to take my ace. I then tried for an overtrick in clubs, and that failed, too. I ended up going down in a cold contract because East actually held the K Q 10 3 2 of diamonds. Evidently he knew to lead fourth from longest and strongest, but he had never learned to lead the top of a broken sequence.

Last Wednesday night was the worst. This was the bidding:

North Me South Partner
1NT P 4♣ P (Gerber)
5♥ P 5♣ P (Gerber for Kings)
6♣ P 6NT P ???
P P

Until the 6♣ bid this auction seemed straightforward. Since North had one ace, South must have three. Otherwise she would not have dared to ask for kings. I held two kings. There was no telling how many North had, but I figured that I had about a 25 percent chance of taking two tricks as long as I did not get endplayed. I chose a passive lead of the ♦6 from my doubleton.

I was surprised to see that dummy had only two aces. Why in the world did she ask for kings when she knew that they were off an ace? Well, this was good news for me. Now I only had to make one of my kings good. Since dummy was missing both black aces, I was certain that we would take two tricks, my ♣K and partner’s ace. Sure enough, the declarer immediately took a club finesse and I grabbed my king.

I thought for a second or two. Dummy had the ace and queen of diamonds. Declarer had played the ace on the first trick, and my partner contributed the 7. I would have expected a low diamond, but I worked out in my head that the 7 could possibly have been the lowest one that she held. So, convinced that the spade lead was a 100 percent play I confidently set a spade on the table. My partner, however, did not play the ace. She played the 10, and the declarer claimed.

Yes, my partner had the ♦K, and yes, the declarer had made a mistake when he bid 4♥. He sheepishly admitted as much, but South never did accept responsibility for the foolish 5♣ bid. My partner was angry at me, and I was angry at the world.

The L Word

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Leadership, exceptionalism, and the Mormons. Continue reading →

One of the two words that really make me nervous has been bandied about quite a bit lately: “leadership.” The other word that gives me the heebie-jeebies is “exceptional.” In foreign policy both words are used to express essentially the same concept: The United States should always play a lead role in international affairs because our country is in some sense exceptional. The president, as the commander-in-chief of our army, should always clearly state our position on any new development immediately and enforce his will with massive military power if necessary. This is called American leadership, and it is the natural order of things. The rest of the world should just get used to it.

So, what makes the United States exceptional? Why should the mantle of leadership fall on our broad shoulders? Well, we certainly have an exceptionally powerful military, but no one seems to be claiming that might makes right. We also have a good constitution that has lasted us for a long time, but other countries have had strong democracies for a long time, too. It cannot be the type of government either; when the Bush administration had a chance to impose a governmental structure in Iraq it first chose to install a benevolent dictatorship and then opted for a democratic structure that more closely resembled Italy’s than the strong states, bicameral legislature, and relatively weak president that our founders favored.

No, the official answer surely must be that America is God’s favorite country, or maybe second favorite after Israel. That is why so many politicians are so fond of singing “God Bless America,” why they wear flags as lapel pins, and why they put God in the pledge of allegiance and on every coin.

Everyone knows that the United States is a Christian country or, when the Jewish vote is being courted, a Judeo-Christian country. The United States may not be mentioned directly in any book of the bible, but some people have interpreted sections of Revelations or the various prophecies to refer to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. For the people who follow these interpretations the country’s role was assigned by God. For others it just seems that God has given us such a great country that it is only fitting and proper that its inhabitants take on the role of world leader. This is essentially the same argument (“Taking up the white man’s burden”) that was used to justify European imperialism.

* * *
When people ask me if I have seen the popular musical The Book of Mormon, I always reply “No, but I read the book.” It was a very strange experience. I found myself pretty much in agreement with Mark Twain’s assessment:

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the ‘elect’ have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so ‘slow,’ so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James’s translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel — half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern — which was about every sentence or two — he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as ‘exceeding sore,’ ‘and it came to pass,’ etc., and made things satisfactory again. ‘And it came to pass’ was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.

The provenance of this book, the centerpiece of one of the world’s fastest growing religions, is instructive. The angel Moroni allegedly led Joseph Smith, a young farm boy in upstate New York, to a set of “golden plates.” For some reason the sacred engravings on the plates were in “ancient Egyptian,” but Smith, who spoke only English, was able to translate them using a “scrying stone” that he held in his hat. He dictated to his cousin Oliver Crowdery or Smith’s (first) wife Emma, and the scribe wrote it down in English. I am not making this up.

The point is that the written Book of Mormon is actually about America. In it a remnant of the lost tribe of Israel crosses both Africa and the Atlantic to arrive in America a century or two before the birth of Jesus. The Nephites, as they are called, suffer travails there, but at one point the newly risen Jesus appears to them and convinces them to follow His Word. Seriously.

This and subsequent visitations form the basis of the Mormon religion. Mormons believe that Jesus himself singled out America as a special place. A central theme of the book is that Jesus protects America as long as the people are faithful.

* * *
So now a Mormon is running for president. If he was running for the school board or for commissioner of roads, his religious beliefs would not bother me. This is different.

I would never vote for anyone who professed that there was something exceptional about America. One of the core principles of Mormonism is that Americans, or at least the believers, are exceptional people. Exceptional people are not held to the same standards as other people. What happens to them is more important than what happens to the unwashed masses in the rest of the world. The Mormons founded their own territory so that they would not have to be subject to the laws of the United States. A lot of blood was shed before they changed their minds so that they could become a state.

All religions ask their adherents to believe in wacky stuff. Not all religions, however, are equally dangerous. The ones that are based on the elevation of a particular group above all others are IMHO the most dangerous. I admit to being bigoted against them. I would never vote for a Mormon for president, and when one of them talks about asserting America’s leadership role, it scares me to death.

Does Mitt Romney really believe in American exceptionalism? I am not sure what he believes in. His core value seems to be that Mitt Romney should be president. Everything else is negotiable. His advisers have probably assured him that the best way to achieve his goal is, without getting too specific, to woo the many people who consider Americans to be superior for one reason or another. And so he criticizes President Obama, who is not a real American anyway, for his failure to assert American leadership. Frankly, I have had enough of American leadership. People and things tend to get blown up when we are leading the way.

Fourth Suit Problem

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FSF; then what? Continue reading →

In the course of five days I twice encountered difficulty in responding to a fourth-suit forcing (FSF) bid by my partner. This bid, at least in the way that we play it, says nothing about the suit being bid, but it forces the partnership to the game level.

Here was the first situation. I held:

♠ 6 5  ♥ 10 9 5  ♦ A K 9 4  ♣ A K 5 4
The bidding went:
1♦  1♥
2♣  2♠ (FSF)
?

The second hand was also a 4-4-3-2 hand. This time my suits were diamonds and spades:

♠ A J 7 3  ♥ 7 2  ♦ A Q J 2  ♣ 10 6 4
Here was the bidding:
1♦  1♥
1♠  2♣ (FSF)
?

The priorities in responding to an FSF bid are well-established:

  1. With a stopper in the fourth suit, bid no-trump.
  2. With three-card support for partner’s suit, bid it.
  3. Bid a suit in which you have extra length.

So, on the first hand, with no stopper in spades, my bid is obviously 3♥. My partner bid 4♦, which left me in a quandary. However, in this case, his FSF bid was a mistake. Here was his hand:

♠ A Q 7 3  ♥ A K Q 2  ♦ J 8 3 2 4  ♣ 7
He envisioned a slam in diamonds, but in fact we belonged in no-trump. He should not have bid 2♠; he should have bid 3NT. He thought that he was too strong for this, but if I had had extras, I would have bid on. Not only would we have achieved a better result, his partner (myself) would have been spared the agony of trying to respond to that 4♦ call.

In the second case I made the wrong bid, and we ended up in a mess. My problem was that my hand did not fit any of the three priorities. I have subsequently learned that in that case the right bid is to repeat the fourth suit. This is a denial bid. It denies a stopper, three-card support for partner’s suit, and extra length. If I had known this, our auction would have been:
1♦  1♥
1♠  2♣ (FSF)
3♣  3♥ (Partner had six)
4♥  ?

We still might have ended up in an unmakeable slam, but at least I would have enjoyed being the dummy a lot more than I enjoyed playing 6♦.