HL 129 – New York Voters Send a Message to New York Democratic Pols About Andrew Cuomo
There’s 538 and then there is my friend, a classic liberal who last week – well before release of the recent Siena Poll showing broad public/voter support for Andrew Cuomo – had the following back and forth by text with a Congressperson of their acquaintance: […]
HL 128 – Classic Liberals Hear A Who
Unless your attention and hearing are as acute as Horton’s you probably missed it. Katy Tur’s MSNBC LIVE assurance that we are not to worry that Dr. Seuss had been banned or cancelled. Not so says Ms. Tur, because she had read one of Mr. Geisel’s not disappeared books to her son the very night before. Why weren’t we as happy and comfy as Ms. Tur’s child had likely been when soothed by one of the Doctor’s great books. […]
HL 127 – Jamie Raskin – David Remnick – Tommy Raskin – Three Utilitarians
The greatest good for the greatest number, J. Bentham’s formula, further developed by J.S. Mill, was the core of a once in a lifetime interview of Congressman Jamie Raskin by David Remnick of The New Yorker. Only 18 minutes, here it is. Going in, the listener expected that center stage would be Raskin’s extraordinarily comprehensive and skillful prosecution of the [...]
HL 126 – Bill de Blasio Enters the New York Gubernatorial Primary
Political archaeologists will mark 2/18/2021 and Morning Joe on MSNBC as the day and place New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio entered the 2022 New York State gubernatorial primary. Against incumbent Andrew Cuomo, should he seek a fourth term, as his father did unsuccessfully. […]
HL 125 – Tish James’ Nursing Home Blowback on Andrew Cuomo
We like Wikipedia, and regularly donate to the Wikimedia Foundation in gratitude. But recently spotted its (our crowdsourced) error on the derivation of a “blowback” – assigning that to the CIA, when in fact the agency’s 20th Century spies got it from their boilers, that often exploded, spewing gas, liquid and particulate when fuel dangerously accumulated inside a furnace. […]
HL 124 – Juror Misconduct and Incompetence Abounds In Trump Trial Two
The first and abiding reaction to Trump Trial Two is that the only comparable experience in this life was the mid-September 2001 repetitive viewing of the towers collapsing, a place where we had once worked. Having testified numerous times in the House and Senate, the terrorism images from 1/6/2021 are no less painful but scarier than those from 9/11/2001. [...]
HL 123 – 1/6/2021 Was Another Sign That Ending The Draft Was The Gift that Keeps On Giving
Adam Newbold As the FBI led hunt for the 1/6/2021 Capitol insurrectionists proceeds, we daily learn that additional active or retired members of the U.S. military were among the planners, coordinators and rioters. Last Tuesday’s poster child was a 46-year-old retired Navy Seal, Adam Newbold, photographed sitting atop a police motorcycle in front of the Capitol. In late [...]
HL 122- Trumpism Is The Perfection Of The Reagan Playbook
The spate of resignations by high level Trump appointees at 11:59 pm of the administration’s term has been noticed and noted as tardy and hypocritical. But little attention has been paid to a more insidious form of forgetfulness. Trumpism did not spring parthenogenically from Trump’s forehead. It has been brewing and building in the ranks and party Republican since at least Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. […]
HL 121 – Joe Biden, We Need You on the Wall Between Church and State
Lefties like HL are quick to condemn erosion of Jefferson’s strict wall between church and state, enshrined in absolute terminology in the first phrase of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”) and usually assign all blame for that to the right. After all it is Clarence Thomas who consistently writes and votes that any state could establish a religion, such as the Seikh Commonwealth of Virginia. Justice Thomas points out that 1A reads “Congress shall make no law. . .” with no restriction on the states. And it is clear that new Justice Barrett takes the most extreme and most expansive view of the free exercise clause – exempting the faithful from obeying many civil rights, public health and other generally applicable laws if those conflict with religious beliefs or impinge upon their observance. Barret’s vote vetoed New York’s Covid emergency restrictions on the number of worshippers allowed in houses of. . . […]
HL 120 – New Year’s Resolutions: For HL, Never Title Your Book “Plague Year” Unless There’s a Plague, For the USA, Never Again
The January 4 & 11, 2021 New Yorker is almost entirely devoted to a single 40 page article by Lawrence Wright aptly titled “Plague Year.” It brought to mind two other titles, The Boy Who Cried Wolf and HL’s own 2010 and 2012 Journal of The Plague Year that enjoyed Warhol’s 15 seconds, was attacked on the Times page one by Andrew Cuomo but still got a decent review in its Sunday Book Review. […]
