Band of Brothers No More?

Take a good look. The three freshmen senators, all of whom

think they could be the next president of the United States.

 

On Friday, in the early hours of the morning, when all normal people were in their beds or in bars, the senate was voting on the budget. The Republicans in the senate passed their budget, and the Republicans in the House passed theirs. And in the coming days they will be meeting to try to get the two things together, so that they can send a budget to the president.

 But the story of the present is three freshmen senators who were there that morning. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. All are part of a political party that does not actually exist, except in ideology. The Tea Party, and all are on the far right, and might be running for president in the coming months. Cruz has already announced he is, and is off and running. Paul has a special announcement on the 7th of next month, and it is a pretty sure bet he will be announcing a presidential bid. And Rubio is “still thinking about it.” He has an announcement on the 13th, himself. In his book American Son, he mentions more than once that his wife does want him to be in politics forever, and this could be the reason he had not made anything final yet.

 But these three, who seem to agree with each other on most issues, if not how to tackle immigration and how much money to give defense, have always seemed to work well together, or at least, “done no harm” and, although they will willingly rip apart just about anybody anywhere at any time, they don’t usually rip each other’s faces off.

 But with the presidential campaign coming up, this could change, drastically. In Republican Primaries, (make that just about any primary, even primary school) things get nasty. Sometimes out of desperation to win, sometimes out of a feeling your opponent is evil, sometimes out of almost petty slight, mud is slung, names destroyed, attacks ads aired, and war breaks loose across the party.

And here is the thing: Of these three, assuming all do end up running, only one, or possibly none of them, will be president come election night, and the losers will have to go back to the senate and work with the one that is, or work with each other with someone else who becomes president.
And during the budget battles, this was on display, just a little bit, with Paul and Rubio both putting up amendments to the budget, and each voting against the others one’s. Both amendments failed, but Cruz backed Rubio.

 Paul attacked those who didn’t vote with him, including of course, Rubio and Cruz, saying they had been “reckless” and “irresponsible,” saying they “courage” and conviction to lower the deficit and debt. He ended with saying there are two groups in the Republican party, those who care about lowering the debt, (presumably himself) and those who don’t.

 Paul, Cruz, and Rubio need to be careful. Very, very careful. Of course they have to debate, they have to speak their minds, they have to say what they think on the campaign trail, and let the issues out, but they can’t become enemies. They cannot come out of the elections hating each other with a passion, and unable to work together. If they do, they’re sunk, the three titans of the Tea Party and the far right are dead in the water, and like a scattered navy of old, when the ships of the line were separated, they were picked off by the enemy, one by single one.

Andrew C. Abbott

Losing hold on sanity

 

State Senator Ernie Chambers is the type of fellow the phrase “one small fry short of a happy meal” was invented for, or any of the others phrase you please to designate someone as having an elevator that doesn’t go to the top level-basically, as being nuts.

This 77 year old state senator from Omaha Nebraska said just recently that if he had a gun, he might shoot a cop. He went on to say that members of the police are like members of ISIS. As if all those remarks, which he refuses to apologize for, and has been duly condemned by his fellow legislatures for, who have asked him to resign, were not bad enough, he followed it up by saying the police are a threat to free speech.

Now, the constitution protects free speech, even disgusting forms of it, such as this, and bad old Ernie has automatic protection anyway for things he says on the floor of the legislature. But this man seems to have forgotten one little thing about the freedom to say he wants to kill cops, and that is that the only reason he has the right to say that is because of the cops, who keep people like him who do have a gun from overrunning the rest of us.

The very people he seems to want to shoot are the very reason he has the right to say he wants to do it. Today, if you are enjoying being safe, thank a cop.

Andrew C. Abbott

Palestine: Blowing up

 

He is a guy you’ve probably never heard of; Dr. Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of Palestine to the U.N. He was on NBC’s Meet the Press with Chuck Todd on Sunday, for an interview. Recently Palestine, or rather the lack of the existence of Palestine, has been in the news, with the comments by Netanyahu, about the fact that he may not be behind a two state solution there.

The idea of a two state solution in the Israel Region, with one being for Jews, the other for Arabs, is a sticky situation. Americans are, according to Gallup earlier this year, pretty evenly split about it. Obama supports it, as do many others, but there are fears that it could become a Terror State if allowed to exist.

And this brings us to Dr. Riyad Mansour. Who, on Meet the Press proved why so many are concerned about giving people like him a state of their own. When Chuck Todd asked this man who is the permanent observer to the UN of the state that does not yet exist him why he was not pushing forward talks with Israel and America, but rather going to the International Criminal Court, and possibly after that the UN, to get what he wants, Mansour had this to say: “Listen, you know, people should appreciate what we are doing, we are refusing to seek violent ways to try to resolve this conflict.”

Completely unbelievable. We should respect the fact that he’s not blowing people up.

No, that is not how society works. Normal people don’t blow people up. I have never heard yet, in Western Culture, someone lauded because they don’t blow people up. “You know, that guy sure is a bad football player, but at least he doesn’t blow people up.” Or, “you really should marry him, honey, I know he can’t hold a job, can’t do anything, but at least he is not blowing people up.”

It is such a simple thing, such a basic thing, and somehow we are supposed to think that they have made a great accomplishment. “You know man, I don’t like that news anchor, but at least he finally learned how to speak, when he was in his 20s he was still all goo, goo gaga.”

This is almost a sort of inferiority complex from this man, that thinks his region has sunk so low, when they are not killing people, it deserves a party. A two state solution will probably be reached in years to come, although of course it will be very difficult. But no matter which side of this you are on, we can all agree that people like Dr. Riyad Mansour only make things worse. He is not helping anything. I am glad he is not blowing people up, but I’m glad like a mother is glad her high school graduate knows how to dress himself, we kind of expect it, and it doesn’t mean you’re a grown up now.

Until we can not only expect nonviolent solution coming from the Middle East, but can also expect that Arab and European can sit down and talk things out like European and European Nations talk things out, we have a long way to go. “The battle isn’t won yet, Mr. Frodo.”

Andrew C. Abbott

Hobos: The Knights of the Road

Hopping the train.

Today, most people who have a business card, as I do, which says they keep a blog on politics are probably planning on writing about Ted Cruz, the man who just announced he is running for president. Or maybe about Rand Paul, the man who is about to announce. Or perhaps they are writing about Iran and its coming atomic bomb, or maybe take another look at Hillary Clinton. But not today, we’ll save Cruz and the politics for later. The story today is about a man named Chuck.

I met him yesterday, and he is a man well into his old age. And somehow he started talking about Hobos, the men who started jumping trains during the Great Depression.

The Hobos have a storied history. They were men out of work at a time when it wasn’t possible to find it, and so the only they could do was hop an illegal ride on freight train boxcars to a city that might have work. Some cities might have it, others might not, and some might have it for a while, but often, they ended up keeping on going.

Riding the train, hopefully to a job

On the places that they stopped, they would knock on doors, “work for a meal, ma’am?” Of course some people were kinder than others. Some had work, some just had angry words. And so, if they were not wanted, the Hobos would put a certain mark by the house which said to their fellow brothers “don’t stop here.” And on the house that had work and food, there was another mark, the “stop here” sign.

In Chuck’s town, the cars came in on Friday, and left on Monday, so the Hobos were there for a couple of days, and his home had the “Stop here” sign. The Hobos would come, his father would have them mow the lawn, clean up the alley way, whatever, and give them what he could. That is, until he died. When he did, knocking on the door was a small army of men, down on their luck with ragged hats, come to pay their respects to the man who had been kind to them. And they came much more often after that, to see if Chuck’s widowed mother needed anything done.

For a long time they had just been an oddity, Chuck told me, people who visited his house. But then, as he became an older teenager, and things didn’t improve, and he got bored in town, he started hopping boxcars himself. He had a problem though; his uncle was a Railroad Detective, the man who was supposed to keep the boxcars free of people. But he also had a solution-without telling his uncle he was turning Hobo, he asked him at what times the Detectives did their sweeps, and so he knew when to jump the cars and hide, to stay out of a night in jail for vagrancy and trespassing.

Chuck, unlike many, was never caught. And today he has lived a good life, has a home, and it’s been decades since he jumped a car, of course.

But since this is a political blog, I have a thought about these hard working, industries men, and how they were always willing to work, and get the job done. And to solve their problems. Maybe we should elect some men like them to congress. Anyway, they were gentlemen, or at least tried to be, with their own rules of conduct. They even called themselves the Knights of the Road.

Andrew C. Abbott