Preparing the 2024 Haggadah is not the dilemma I feared

Jack C. Doppelt 

April 2024 

This year’s Haggadah seemed destined to be different in large part because of the complexities of the struggles throbbing in the Middle East. Surprisingly and poignantly, not much changing is needed. The places, the terms (Holy Land, Promised Land, Bible, exodus, desert, plagues), the themes, the introspection, even the jarring lessons of being the oppressed and the oppressors have been in our Haggadah all along. All that’s needed is to listen more intently, be more aware of suffering and of empathy, and truly recognize how the history of humanity and inhumanity keeps resonating. 

In 2014, I was teaching in the West Bank and wrote these reflections: Because We Can? Pondering Oppressor and Oppressed. We incorporated it into our Haggadah. 

The driving force of any Passover is the telling and retelling of stories so memories are more likely to be preserved. Take this one with you, whether you celebrate, respect Jewish traditions or not: 

Elijah the Prophet: A child’s view of plagues, miracles and the open door 

As I was putting this year's updates to bed, a friend discovered a story in Washington Monthly, called "From The Edges of a Broken World: The article Guernica retracted, and the translator who tried to tread the line of empathy." It's worth reading. 

In it, Joanna Chen, the author, quotes from poetry lines that others have written over the years. Many are translated from Hebrew or Arabic. They help bottle the empathy Passover needs to preserve. 

Joanna Chen

"The tree lost its mythical powers, horses huddled at the edge of the earth. The sniping light turned cold, winter came, we continued, faces sealed. Only at night did we sit down with our own names. How can I mourn the distance of years, of waste, of your silence seeping into the earth."

--“The End of Naivete” by Yonatan Berg in Frayed Light 

"You hand me a clean handkerchief, Ripe figs. I have been moving away For years"

--“Remembrance” by Yonatan Berg in Frayed Light 

"By the time the knock at the door came, I was dead. Who’s there? asked the photo in the frame. It is me, I said. I came back to wipe the dust off you." 

--“To My Mother” by Yonatan Berg in Frayed Light 

"Your morning is the morning of others. Your evening is the evening of others And we frequently set traps for birds."

--untitled, by Nasser Rabah, in Arrowsmith (translated collectively by Joanna Chen, Julie Yelle, and Mosab Abu Toha)

"No flag flutters for me, No bird alights upon the window. I am a clock on the wall." 

--“The Evening of Others,” published in Chen's 2017 blog in the Los Angeles Review of Books

"I want to be your foliage, Dense and cool against the heat, But I am dry thorns on a hilltop" 

--“Hebron” in Frayed Light 

"I want to be innocent of every line I ever wrote, I want to cry on every hand that ever hovered over the cover of a book. A flock of vocabulary jostles at my window, hammers at my heart." 

--untitled, by Nasser Rabah, Los Angeles Review of Books 

"The hand still moves across the page and on the balcony plants lean forward, long-necked, into the sun." 

--“Report from a Free City” by Yonatan Berg in Frayed Light 

 #####

Changing the immigrant narrative: A State of the Union postscript

                                                                                                                                    March 8, 2024

Well into President Biden’s State of the Union address, Biden displayed a pin that referred to Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University who was brutally killed a few weeks ago. Biden’s remarks were off the cuff, not part of the official transcript, and prompted by Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, donned in a red MAGA cap, who goaded him from the chamber after buttonholing him as he entered. 

Say her name,” Greene heckled. Her stalking worked. Biden took the bait and got hooked.

In commiserating with the student’s family, Biden conceded that Riley was “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right.” 

Typically little is known about the person accused of crimes for weeks after an arrest until the news media researches the hell out of the person’s background. Here too, what was shared by authorities was the accused’s name - Jose Antonio Ibarra. He lived in an apartment near the Augusta campus, he was caught on video, he’s 26, he didn’t know the victim, he’s from Venezuela, he doesn’t have an “extensive criminal history,” he’s not a U.S. citizen, though authorities didn’t know his immigration status. In the initial reports, the incident was likened to a 2023 rape and killing of a 34-year-old woman, who like Riley had been running on campus (at the University of Memphis). The accused suspect was identified, had been charged in Sept. 2021 with raping another woman, and had served 20 years in prison for kidnapping a prominent Memphis attorney in 2000 when he was 16 years old. He was not an immigrant. 

Since the initial reports, it’s come out that Ibarra crossed the border without authorization or documentation, as did his brother, Diego Ibarra, whom federal authorities believe may be affiliated with the violent Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan gang whose members frequently wear Chicago Bulls garb. He’s charged with having a fake green card and has been arrested three times by Athens officers. 

Diego Ibarra

A few lines after his exchange with Greene, Biden returned to his script. Referring to Trump only as his predecessor, Biden pledged, "I will not demonize immigrants, saying they are poisoning the blood of our country," referring to Trump’s many anti-immigrant vulgarities, including: “It’s true. They’re destroying the blood of our country,” which he said recently live on Fox News while campaigning in Waterloo, Iowa. 

Biden engaged in a feisty, rehearsed challenge to the Republican side of the aisle to act on what he termed a bipartisan border security approach that collapsed last month after Trump told his congressional minions to kill the deal. 

As Republicans started to boo and groan, Biden regained his mojo, “Oh you don’t like that bill, huh? That conservatives got together and said was a good bill? I’ll be darned,” he said and cited the proposal’s supporters, including the Border Patrol union and the Chamber of Commerce. “Unfortunately, politics has derailed this bill so far.” 

As all too many polls are showing, immigration matters. It’s become the third rail of politics and it’s derailing anything and anyone who goes near. For the Republicans, they claim Trump means “illegal” immigrants are the blood poisoners. Thanks for clearing that up. 

For the Democrats and the left, they cringe at the term “illegal.” Many were vocally critical of Biden for using the term in his speech. 

“As a proud immigrant, I’m extremely disappointed to hear President Biden use the word ‘illegal,’”said Cong. Chuy García of Illinois. 

Cong. Pramila Jayapal, chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said to an Associated Press reporter that she wished “he hadn’t engaged with Marjorie Taylor Greene and used the word illegal.” Cong. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, told the Texas Tribune that it was “dangerous rhetoric.” 

Cong. Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House, told CNN that Biden “should have said undocumented, but that’s not a big thing.” She added, “We usually say undocumented, he said illegal, I don’t think it’s a big deal.” To others, glaringly big. 

Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, similarly criticized Biden, saying he “parroted dehumanizing Republican rhetoric about immigrants.” 

“We were shocked to hear the president echo the words of anti-immigrant extremists,” the National Immigrant Justice Center said in a statement. “Manipulating a personal tragedy for political gain in this way is dangerous. Conflating immigration status with criminality is racist and dehumanizing.” 

That’s the Republican-MAGA narrative on immigration and immigrants. It’s vicious, dangerous, divisive, and Trumped-up. The Laken Riley-Jose Antonio Ibarra saga is their gift that will keep on giving. 

It’s often said that in politics, it’s not facts that matter, it’s how the public feels. More on point, it’s how people are told to feel. It’s in the messaging. 

The right - from Fox News to MAGA to Trump - have conjured a pet phrase for the duration of the campaign. “Migrant crime.” 

An analysis in The Washington Post - The birth of Fox News’s ‘migrant crime’ obsession – captured the phenomenon a week ago. “Over the past month, Fox News hosts, guests and video clips have mentioned ‘migrant crime’ nearly 90 times, more than half of those in the past 10 days,” the story cited. “Trump quickly picked up on the idea. Speaking at a National Rifle Association conference earlier this month, he used the term explicitly. “We call it migrant crime,” he said. “It’s unbelievable what’s going on. And now for the first time, you’re seeing migrant crime. These are tough people.” 

“MIGRANT CRIME IS TAKING OVER AMERICA…” Trump said in a video that has attracted more than 20,000 likes on Truth Social. He suggested that Biden had allowed an “invasion of our country,” and “into American communities to prey on our people.” And ultimately full circle to the gift that will keep on giving. He alleged that a “Biden migrant” had committed a murder in Georgia after “Crooked Joe” ordered the immigrant to be released. Cue Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

Is there a counter-message? Democrats and the left need to change the immigration narrative. The message and the reality is that the U.S. needs immigrants as workers. I’m naïve, but not so naïve to think it can be deployed during the campaign. Still, it’s to where the national conversation needs to shift. OK, what national conversation? Then call it messaging, talking points, whatever floats your political boat. 

For starters, listen to Cong. Delia Ramirez, a progressive Illinois Democrat’s take on Biden’s State of the Union address, She told TIME after the address that she wanted to hear Biden emphasize how immigrants are crucial to the American workforce instead of touting a bipartisan bill that would have added restrictions on immigration. “Democrats, in some cases, we are sounding just like the other side,” she said. “What we heard tonight wasn't very different from what we’ve heard from the other side. And I wish I would have heard him with more conviction say no human being is illegal.” 

Cong. Delia Ramirez

For those who are willing to venture beyond messaging and into facts, data, history and trends, stick with me for the sequel.

[Jack Doppelt is the founder and former publisher of Immigrant Connect, an online storytelling network for immigrants, their families and communities]

######

A dying Cub fan’s last bequest

By Margie Schaps and Jack Doppelt          January 31, 2024                                                                                                     

We may be daft, but our bats aren’t in the belfry. 

We met by the shores of old Lake Michigan, where the hawk wind blows so cold, as folksinger Steve Goodman sang. Our first date, our first kiss, was attending an outdoor Steve Goodman concert in Milwaukee in July 1983. 

When Jack had been in college, friends visited, toting his first record player as a birthday gift. Hitchhiking from Champaign to Grinnell College, friends got a ride. The driver asked where they were headed. “Grinnell, Iowa.” Me too, the driver said, “I have a gig there tonight” and drove on at 95 mph. Goodman asked during his performance who’s the fella with a birthday today, and Jack got to request a song. 

Thirteen years later, the year after our first date, in Sept. 1984, Goodman died of leukemia. He was 36. Jack’s job as morning news radio producer allowed him to line up top and bottom of the hour headlines. After Goodman died the night before, Jack pulled out his cache of Goodman’s tunes and plucked some choice musical ditties to spruce up the headline, an unusual embellishment for radio news. After a couple of hours, the morning anchor, apparently thrown by the memorial pageantry, bellowed into the internal mike, “Who the hell is Steve Goodman?” 

A few months ago, at the opening of The Fat Shallot, in our Evanston neighborhood, the owner’s mom asked if we’d heard of Steve Goodman. Came to the right place. She told us she had Steve Goodman’s piano. Do we want it? No charge. We just had to move it out of her garage. It had been there for years and was out of tune. Goodman had given her the piano when he was moving to California to stoke his career. Her dad was his hematalogist, addressing Goodman's leukemia. She had the piano hoisted into her third-floor apartment at 1225 W. Chase in Rogers Park. What? That’s where we lived, on the first floor. She’d long since moved, as have we. 

We now live in a 110-year-old stucco house that has endured basement flooding, mice, squirrels, and a recent 25-page animal control report that pinpointed more than 20 vulnerable openings in our home’s exteriors. Estimate to repair: $8,516. Yikes! 

It took weeks to work out moving arrangements for the upright Thompson piano. We let the arctic chill in early January pass. On Fri., Jan. 19, the movers drove up. They removed an out of tune piano in the living room and replaced it with Goodman’s out of tune piano. It was our first introduction. Yes, it resembled the piano on the album cover of Goodman’s Somebody Else's Troubles. 

Beneath the piano’s dust and web-ridden exterior was a stunning interior view of the hammers and tuning pins above the keyboard.

In every crevice lurked wads of dust, webs, droppings, whatever a loose imagination might conjure from years in a garage. Gloves on, I vacuumed everything the nozzle approached. I emptied the garbage bags. I scoured. It looked less like a prop from the Munsters. A few days later, our housekeeper took over and applied skill to elbow grease. Better yet. 

Our welcome party got waylaid. We woke up Monday morning to an unexpected, and deeply unwelcome visitor, resting in our bathtub on the second floor. A quick, nervous glance convinced us the clump was a bat, not of the Louisville Slugger variety. We consulted a YouTube video, reconnoitered with our neighbor, a naturalist, and devised a plan. Thick gloves on hands and a plastic garbage can in hand, we swooped in, so to speak. We covered it, had it, and brought over some heavy books to weigh down the bat-enriched container. We also covered it with a heavy blanket. We called the animal critter folks, who briefed us on the regs on protected species (read: bats). They aren’t to be killed. The animal critter folks came out, took away the container and retreated to their facilities to test the bat for rabies. Though humans aren’t protected species, we aren’t left unprotected. Per doctor’s orders, and armed with two truths - rabies bites are 100% preventable and 100% fatal - we headed to the closest ER for rabies shots. A battery of five vaccine doses over a two-week period; three initially. 

Returning home spooked and vaccine achy, we cancelled our evening plans and tried to sleep. It was challenging enough until Margie woke at 2 am to go to the bathroom. There on the shower curtain was another clump. Another bat, this one in an inconvenient place to capture. The curtain dangled loosely from a rod. How to capture it? We called the animal critter folks. They would come out in the middle of the night for $550. Worth it, but the guy lived more than an hour away. Were we willing to leave the bat as is, and go back to sleep as the guy drove over? Leave it? No. Sleep? Not likely. Having watched a YouTube video, we felt equipped to capture it ourselves...sorta. We poised ourselves.

Gloves in place, container in hand, we pinned both the clump and the shower curtain to the mosaic tiles. 

The captured package was high up the wall. We could hold it in place against the tiles, but after a while, our arms would tire.

Shower curtain and
rubber gloves

In confining the bat, we’d caught its wing under the edge of the container. If it had been sleeping, as bats do plenty, it wasn’t now as it tried to wriggle out of the container. As it wriggled, flailed and strained to fly, it hissed, squealed and bared its teeth. Scary enough. Our mission was to scoonch the container down, holding it tautly to the tiles until it was tub high so we could hold it longer. Scarier. 

We went at it, as the bat leeched blood down the tiles. Too reminiscent of Hitchcock’s shower scene at the Bates Motel in Psycho for our tastes. 

Janet Leigh

We got it down. Next maneuver. Place the top of the plastic container level with, but behind, the container. Push the container onto the container top, hold it taut, turn it over and tightly secure the container. Did it. Missed a chance to go viral on YouTube. Now, we could wait till morning for the critter control folks to fetch the bat from our renamed batroom on the second floor. We had become suitably spooked about staying in our bat-infested house. The rabies results came back. Negative on both bats. Still, we checked on accommodations with friends. We stuck it out and tried to return to normal, notwithstanding sleep deprivation. 

We brought in a piano tuner. With a look of woe and wonder, he reinforced how out of tune and action-damaged the piano is. But he knew of Steve Goodman, figured there might be Cubs paraphernalia stuck somewhere in the works and volunteered for the piano rescue team. Before he could tune, there were more remnants crammed into interstices. Gloves re-engaged, we vacuumed more and emptied the garbage bags. 

He had a go at step one in the tuning process. He saw hope. He found some pennies. We unearthed the piano’s serial number: 145291. So far, no Cubs paraphernalia. No scribbled notes or chords to Go Cubs Go, to City of New Orleans, to Lincoln Park Pirates, to Men Who Love Women Who Love Men, or to A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request. 

We’ve had an epiphany. We are now operating on the hypothesis that the bats came in the piano, just the right size to host two bats, making the bats the paraphernalia. They are Goodman’s Dying Cub Fan's Last Bequest.

#####

Letters from home freshman year

                                                                                                                                           January 6, 2024 

[Listen here to the Lines n' Lyrix version of My Old Man, Steve Goodman's dedication to his dad]

Our basement flooded recently. As I aired it out, I discovered a filled folder of old letters and cards that I’d saved. Among the water-damaged pages were letters from my college days, circa 1970. Still mostly legible 50+ years later, but needing to be scanned if I want to keep them. I do. 

I say “college days” instead of “college years” because I noticed that almost all the letters were from the first half of freshman year. Regular letters from my parents. They lasted the year. My dad did most of the writing. My mom considered herself a “greenhorn” and wasn’t confident writing in English. Crammed into the rest of the folder were a few hundred letters, no exaggeration, from high school chums, many of whom I don’t recall maintaining a friendship with once I went to Grinnell, 300 miles due west of my Chicago home. No wonder I have such a fond and clear memory of Ernie, the campus post office guy. A few of my friends’ communiques made it through break. They vanished before summer. The letters from friends were of all shapes, sizes, colors and designs, period pieces worthy of a retro exhibit. I learned from a quick once over that I was apparently known by a flurry of pet names in high school, like Black Jack, Mad Dog, Dip-Breath, Cracker, Jacob, Podner, Jackie Poo, Zalman King, Dop, and Dobbs.

It will take me awhile to do memory justice to them, so I decided to read my parents’ for now. My dad’s letters were in the same handwriting, mostly on 6”X 8” paper. I got used to deciphering them. The first letter from my parents was dated Labor Day.

It referenced a package I would be getting with 25 bank checks imprinted with my name. I was now a man. We’d invested in a long-distance call (me reversing the charges of 85 cents) before then in which I told them my hay fever was acting up. Iowa alfalfa? Marijuana? The next letter expressed disappointment that I wasn’t coming home for the Jewish high holidays. My parents planned to accept Grinnell’s offer, as one letter put it, to visit on Parents’ Day Oct. 31. I got a parcel with candies from my mom and a reform high holiday prayer book from my dad, with wishes for continued strength in body and spirit. My dad’s notes became peppered with Hebrew words, as he wrote how proud he was to be asked to do an Aliyah Levi at the Torah during high holiday services. I had wished my dad happy birthday and he told me a friend had gotten my mom and him two tickets to “Butterflies Are Free.” My folks didn’t go the theater much. 

One letter provided addresses of our relatives in Israel so I could write them too. Apparently my high school chums who were in college nearer to home would drop in and visit my folks. 

By Oct. 20, our letters expressed mutual feelings of loneliness. I’d apparently written them that food at Grinnell was “not very palatable,” to which my dad responded with a Hebrew phrase that he translated for me: “Such is the way of the student of learning.” They wrote how much they anticipated my return home for Thanksgiving. Seems I didn’t make it home. My dad repeatedly asked in the letters for me to reflect more on my course subjects. In the Thanksgiving letter, he wrote how pleased he was that I was in the company of such learned writers as Thucydides, “the student of cause and effect in history.” My dad was clearly reveling in vicarious education. He was also noting that he liked my writing style; that my heart was in it and that therefore my heart was in writing to them. That made it easier, he wrote, to not be with me for Thanksgiving. He would look forward to my homecoming “in the near future.” I apparently phoned on Thanksgiving. The next letter – on Dec. 5 – mentioned that I was a student of logic. At some point, probably at the time I received the letter, I highlighted in yellow the next phrase: “It therefore follows logically that upon receipt of this letter, you will call us again and tell us, especially, how you are progressing with your finals.” 

They stuck with me after break and wrote in late January that they’d received my grade report. They were “extremely happy therewith,” as my dad put it. They hoped I’d make it home for my birthday in late Feb. I didn’t. The next letter enclosed a birthday check for $18, which spells out Chai (or life) in Hebrew. Next in line for a visit home was Passover, in early April. My favorite holiday. Didn’t make that one either. Seems as I read over the 1st year correspondences with my parents that college was all consuming for me, and that’s how I wanted it. It reminds me that when my parents drove me to campus to begin college, I couldn’t wait for them to drive off so I could set off on this college/Grinnell thing. My folks and I kept up our correspondence through the school year. Last exchange: May 11, ’71, two days after Mother’s Day. My dad thanked me for having one of my high school buddies deliver flowers to my mom. He called Shel (my oldest friend to this day) my “harbinger of surprises.” 

 #####

Will Republicans change on climate change? An experiment in two parts

                                                                                                                                     Sept. 27, 2023

The GOP as a party has been as comfortable with the term “climate change” as they are with “Democratic socialism.” Can that last? 

New Yorker cartoon By Maddie Dai, Aug. 23, 2023

I set out to conduct an experiment: Will Republicans evolve on climate change in the run up to the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses and the subsequent primaries, and then once a GOP candidate emerges enroute to the Nov. 2024 elections. 

My hypothesis is a curious yes. The experiment is likely to make it curiouser and curiouser, though it’s complicated. The variables are daunting. 

The candidates and Congress count

The positions of individual candidates must be considered. There are a good dozen candidates, eight in the GOP’s first debate Aug. 23, seven in the second Sept. 27. The position of prohibitive favorite Donald Trump, of course, needs to be taken into account. He hasn’t debated, though he left elephant tracks to lead people to his go fund me mug shot. The position, if any, of the GOP as a party is worth gauging. Hard to know how to gauge that since the party doesn’t do platforms. 

One might divine it from how GOP members of Congress vote on climate change issues. By far the most meaningful climate change action to emerge from Congress has been the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that passed in Congress in Aug. 2022. Not a single House GOP member or Senate GOP member voted for it. It would seem case closed at that point. 

A year may matter

But some seismic climate events have transpired in just the past year. Heat waves, floods, wildfires ravaging Maui and disappearing 350 miles of coral reef off the coast of Florida. Is the GOP that tone deaf and heat resistant? 

The GOP media mouthpieces who purport to be journalists and who speak directly to the GOP base must be factored in. Then there’s the base itself. 

Lots to control for. The timing I’ve chosen for the experiment pulsates with promise. GOP candidates have  now held two debates. The third is Nov. 8. The first hosted by Fox News in Milwaukee faced off against the counter-programming spectacle of former Fox News bulldog Tucker Carlson interviewing Trump. 

Polling to ponder

I would have given odds that neither the first debate nor the Carlson-Trump exchange would likely have broached climate change at all. I would have been wrong. 

Because of the vote in Congress on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and the singular message on climate change during the Trump administration, it’s easy to write off the GOP for any prospective voters who care about climate change. Is it really that easy? 

In a recent series on Where the Republican Candidates Stand on Climate Change, the New York Times concluded: “In a shift from past election cycles, many of the Republican candidates acknowledge that climate change is real. But even as heat waves, floods, wildfires and other weather-related disasters become more frequent and severe, few acknowledge the seriousness of climate change, and most of them reject transitioning the United States from fossil fuels to renewable energy.” 

Though climate change is no longer a one denial fits all issue for GOP pols, voters of mostly the Republican base who turn out for the Iowa GOP caucuses and subsequent primaries, show little sign of caring about the issue. Sure, they’re living through, being displaced by, and mobilizing with neighbors to fend off one devastating consequence after another from sea to warming sea and from Maui to the majestic coral reef off Florida. 

A recent series, Climate change in Iowa, published by the Iowa State Ag Decision Maker website concluded: Essentially, we are experiencing what the rest of the planet is experiencing. Wet areas are getting wetter, and dry areas are getting drier.” A followup study on The impact of climate change on world agriculture this summer warned: “Changing precipitation patterns, rising temperatures, and more extreme weather events will negatively impact the world’s ability to produce food.” It went on: “At the same time, demand for food will grow due to an increasing world population and rising incomes in the developing world. Meeting this challenge will depend on agriculture’s ability to adapt to a changing climate while developing and adopting the technologies needed to meet the increase in food demand.” 

Are you listening Iowa, where I went to college, and will you heed the warnings when you host the first GOP caucuses in January? 

Seems not. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, revealed that Democrats and Republicans are deeply divided on extreme weather, with partisans split on climate change contributing to more disasters, and on their weather becoming more extreme. 

This when nearly 150 Americans, including me in Chicago, have been under heat alerts this summer. This when a majority of Iowa's likely GOP caucusgoers believe Trump won in 2020, according to a recent Des Moines Register poll. Those surveyed, in answering, “How likely GOP caucusgoers feel about 7 issues, from abortion to criticizing Trump,” didn’t even include climate change. 

Of the public’s list of the top problems facing the nation in 2023, climate change ranks 11th behind inflation, health care, the ability of the parties to work together, drug addiction, gun violence, violent crime, federal deficit, moral values, illegal immigration, and public schools, with climate change reflecting the widest disparity between Democrats and Republicans, according to Pew Research. 

The Hill, the non-partisan daily politics site based in DC, handicapped the following issues as likelier to surface in the debates than the energy and environment: The economy and taxes, abortion, Ukraine and defense policy, border security and immigration, and budget and entitlement. Not to mention the mugshotster himself-Trump. 

What do the debates tell us?

Though I postulated that neither the first debate nor Trump’s mano-a-mano puff interview would shed much light on how GOP candidates will address climate change during the campaigns, the Fox News hosts pulled a fast one. 

In the night’s second round of questions, the hosts said: “More than a thousand people are still unaccounted for in Maui after the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century. Hawaii’s Governor and White House officials said that climate change amplified the cost of human error. And a tropical storm hit California for the first time in 84 years. The ocean hit 101 degrees off the coast of Florida and in the last month, the heat wave in the Southwest broke records nearly 50 years old.” 

To drive home both the gravity of the issue and the potential voting base that cares most about it, they introduced a young man, Alexander Diaz from Young America’s Foundation, who did their bidding: 

“Polls consistently show that young people’s number one issue is climate change. How will you as both President of the United States and leader of the Republican Party calm their fears that the Republican Party doesn’t care about climate change?” 

Zing. 

The hosts then asked for a show of hands. Do you believe human behavior is causing climate change? Raise your hand if you do. 

Double zing. 

The zingers fizzle

Not so fast. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took charge. “Look, we’re not school children. Let’s have the debate.” He launched his talking point offensive: “One of the reasons our country’s decline is because of the way the corporate media treats Republicans versus Democrats. Biden was on the beach while those people were suffering. He was asked about it and he said, ‘No comment.’ Are you kidding me? As somebody that’s handled disasters in Florida, you got to be activated. You’ve got to be there. You’ve got to be present. You’ve got to be helping people who are doing this.” 

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy tried to steal the ball so he could stake out the one position most closely aligned with Trump. “Can we stop filibustering and answer the question?” That forced DSantis’ hand. He didn’t raise it, he said, meaning he apparently doesn’t believe human behavior is causing climate change. Ramaswamy didn’t see it that way: “I think it was a hand raise for him and my hands are in my pockets because the climate change agenda is a hoax.” A hoax bought and paid for by the “anti-carbon agenda.” 

From there, the issue descended into bluster and bickering that would characterize the rest of the debate. 

A few candidates did manage to signal the nuances that might leave the GOP in free fall on climate change in the era of visibly cataclysmic eruptions that young people seem to have the distance lenses to see. 

A field of drearies: Build nothing and they will come

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley ventured that climate change is real. The way to change the environment is to “start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions.” All President Biden’s green subsidies do is put money in China’s pocket by favoring electric vehicles using batteries made in China. 

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott also sounded the China climate change alarm without falling into the trap of using the term climate change. “If we want the environment to be better and we all do, the best thing to do is to bring our jobs home from China.” 

That’s as far as the first debate got on climate change. The second debate didn't venture there at all.

Fortunately, The New York Times’ series, Where the Republican Candidates Stand on Climate Change, filled in some of the blanks on other candidates, for the little that will be worth in assessing what a Republican presidency might mean for addressing the ravages of climate change. 

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum has supported carbon-capture as governor, which means he’s pushed harder to address climate change than most Republicans by actively identifying carbon neutrality as a goal. 

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has said: “When you have over 90 percent of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role, it’s time to defer to the experts.” A visionary, I tell you. 

In response to questions from The Times, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson acknowledged that climate change is real and that human activities are “a contributing factor.” He said he would lift restrictions on pipelines and drilling — as well as nuclear power, which is carbon-free — and withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which he said hurt “America’s ability to allow for economic growth.” He didn’t make it into the second debate. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence claims “radical environmentalists” are exaggerating the effects of climate change and rejects the scientific consensus that the United States (like the world) must reach net-zero emissions by 2050, calling it “completely unfeasible.” His energy plan instructs federal agencies to “break down barriers to exploration, extraction and production of any source of domestic energy” — including renewable sources but also coal, oil and gas. The plan rejects both mandates and any government incentives for companies or consumers to choose renewables in the energy market. After all, he was Trump’s guy, supported Trump’s environmental policies, which he says didn’t have negative effects on the nation’s progress in reducing emissions. 

Two candidates who didn’t make it into the debates are the most willing in the GOP to acknowledge the importance of prioritizing climate change. 

Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd acknowledges the gravity of climate change. In a 2021 essay on his website, he wrote that rising temperatures worsen hurricanes, floods, wildfires and droughts; threaten water supplies; and, by reducing crop yields and restricting animal habitats, have economic consequences, such as making food more expensive. He voted against many climate measures in the House, where he had a 13 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, an advocacy group that assesses lawmakers’ record on the environment. 

 Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who’s suspended his presidential campaign, has pursued significant emission reductions in Miami. In acknowledging that climate change is a serious threat — one that is already hurting his city, he wrote in 2019 in a New York Times opinion essay with the former United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon, that “climate change is not a distant threat for Miami; it’s a daily presence in people’s lives.” 

Back full circus

Which brings us back full circus (sic) to GOP trendsetter Trump who has mocked climate science, much like he rejected any science on covid, and who champions the production of the fossil fuels chiefly responsible for warming the planet. Trump has given no indication that his approach would be different in a second term and Carlson didn’t broach the subject with him. 

He passed on the second debate too, this time to travel to Michigan to court the vote of striking autoworkers. Unless Trump chooses to ridicule climate change by making the automakers’ plea that the investment in fuel efficient electric cars is what’s holding down workers, Trump isn’t likely to want to or need to address climate change any time soon. 

However, climate change is not out of sight, out of mind for the GOP. 

Climate Power, an environmental advocacy group, is airing a Spanish-language ad set to run before, during and after the GOP 2nd presidential debate. The ads air on Univision in Phoenix, Tucson, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., all markets with significant Latino populations. The ad harkens back to the first GOP debate and asks, “Cuál es su plan climático?” — “What’s their climate plan?” A 2021 Pew Research survey found that more than 80% of Hispanic respondents said global climate change is a top or significant issue, while 67% of non-Hispanic respondents see it that way, according to The Hill. 

They can hide but can they run

The GOP can hide away from climate change for now, but can they run without it? 

Who knows, the GOP may be stirring up so much spit and vinegar on shutting down the federal government and pretending that Trump isn’t their nominee that they’ll lose sight of the youth and Hispanic voters whom they so sorely need. 

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Trump The Unprecedented is missing the global context

                                                                                                                                             June 25, 2023

If there’s one word the news media uses most indiscriminately for Donald Trump, it’s “unprecedented.” 

Trump’s recent indictment for secreting classified documents has been characterized as unprecedented for making him the first current or former president to be indicted by a federal grand jury. Only weeks before, when a Manhattan grand jury indicted him for lying about hush money for Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential bid, the Trump moment was unprecedented by being indicted and seeking re-election. Trump is the first president in US history to be impeached twice – over Ukraine and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Unprecedented. Attempts by GOP Congresswomen Elise Stefanik and Marjorie Taylor Greene to expunge Donald Trump impeachments-unprecedented. “It was unprecedented for a previously unelected politician who had never served a day in the US military or government to become president, ” as is his “political power.” 

It goes on and on. The news media are self-conscious about it. They just can’t help themselves, taking pride in the sacred role to provide context. 

There’s even a three-part TV mini-series documentary called “Trump Unprecedented.” 

Context matters, of course. But what context. Trump lives to be unprecedented. He emerged from his “The Apprentice” reality TV years with what The New York Times in 2015 called “political pundit consensus…His abrasive, celebrity-driven, Don Ricklesian candidacy is unprecedented.” 

Trump flaunts his unprecedented banner wherever he goes. Any time Trump’s experiences are characterized as unprecedented, no matter what they’re about, he struts back into the limelight, microphone and podium at the ready. Unprecedented means no one has achieved that level of notoriety and achievement. It’s typically framed by the left, the Dems and the media as: see how incorrigibly bad he is. If you’re MAGA, it’s framed as: see how singularly special he is. 

Here's a quick test. Trump has now been indicted twice. Trials await. He’s been impeached twice; neither time convicted. From those sentences alone, who triumphs? Trump or his accusers? Trump’s reputation as a martyr to the right is reinforced. 

Trump being charged with crimes adds little to what the public should already know of his mendacity, corruption and con artistry. It needs to be reported, of course, but emblazening it with unprecedented enhances his celeb cred and misses the relevant global context. 

The context needing amplification is his status as one of the corrupt leaders of the world. Nothing unprecedented about it. In fact, it’s all too starkly common, historically and currently. The international legion of dishonor of corrupt leaders who’ve been charged, convicted, sentenced, imprisoned, known to have embezzled money from their people, or been banned from holding office, is long and ignominious. 

Count off to ten: 

1. Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos - President and First Lady of the Philippines (1972-86) 

2. Slobodan Milosevic - President of Serbia/Yugoslavia (1989–2000) 

3. Baby Doc Jean-Claude Duvalier - President of Haiti (1971–86) 

4. Mohamed Suharto - President of Indonesia (1967–1998) 

5. Viktor Yanukovych - President/Prime Minister of Ukraine (2002–14) 

6. Mobutu Sese Seko - President of Zaire (1965–1997) 

7. Sani Abacha - President of Nigeria (1993–98) 

8. Alberto Fujimori - President of Peru (1990–2000) 

9. Nawaz Sharif - Prime Minister of Pakistan (1990-93, 1997-99, 2013-17) 

10. Dilma Rousseff - President of Brazil (2010-16) 

Don’t want to overlook other ignobles, whose iron-fisted leadership has made it hard to document their abuses: 

Vladimir Putin - President of Russia 

Kim Jong Un - President of North Korea 

Viktor Orbán - Prime Minister of Hungary 

Jair Bolsonaro - President of Brazil (2019-22) 

Not only are Trump’s actions not unprecedented. This is the company he keeps. MAGA folk, Trump is nothing special. He is crammed into a long line of corrupt, sociopathic leaders whose legacies are uncanny charismatic powers that mesmerize and abuse their own people. 

I purposely left out Adolf Hitler because mentioning him is a conversation stopper. I bring him up because of the uncanny similarity to where we are with Trump and his prosecutions. Hitler was tried, convicted and sentenced for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch of Nov. 8, 1923. The attempted coup in Munich by right-wing members of the army and the Nazi Party was foiled by the government. Hitler was charged with high treason. Despite his conviction, Hitler was out of jail before the end of the year, with his political position stronger than ever.

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The ease of recruiting ethics-free journalist wannabes

                                                                                                                                                May 23, 2023

Alexa, you intrepid and sensitive reporter, you-- 

Is this a made up story intended solely to stoke the juices of the humiliate transgender youth movement or did you actually deploy some sanctimonious notion of journalistic ethics to justify writing a story that 

• identified by name a transgender student from Sonoma Academy, a high school apparently in Santa Rosa, CA, and 
• published the student’s photo right up there in the #2 spot on the winner’s stand 
• while preserving the anonymity of a mom who found the injustice of a competitor not winning “heartbreaking.” 

Hard to weigh which is more reprehensible - making the story up to stoke your agenda, having huge swaths of unwitting believers spread word that it really happened or claiming to be a journalist only doing your job and being manipulated to let the chips someone’s feeding you fall where they may. 

Have you no shame?

I’ll admit the story got me curious enough to look up your credentials at or near The Daily Caller where the story appeared today. Yes, Alexa Schwerha, you seem to exist on LinkedIn and on Twitter connected to The Daily Caller. 

That heartbroken mom probably figured out that her daughter apparently lost to more than one other athlete. No matter. The humiliate transgender youth movement, the Daily Caller and the vicious politicians who milk humanity dry with this bile must out, embarrass and demean high school kids along the way. Fortunate for them, the’ve found young journalist wannabes to run interference. You did it, Alexa, you scored a byline. Frame it. 

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Wikipedia:  The Daily Caller is a right-wing news and opinion website based in Washington, D.C.^[7] It was founded by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and political pundit Neil Patel in 2010. Launched as a "conservative answer to The Huffington Post", The Daily Caller quadrupled its audience and became profitable by 2012, surpassing several rival websites by 2013. In 2020, the site was described by The New York Times as having been "a pioneer in online conservative journalism".^[8] The Daily Caller is a member of the White House press pool.^[9]