Letter 152 to friends and familiares: a defense of Senator Franken.

NOTE: this letter was written before I was aware of the emergence into the popular press of clear, if asserted, evidence of a pattern of conduct by Senator Franken. The take is largely the same. Senator Franken continued making text-book amends of apology, atonement and resolution. I regret that he felt compelled to resign. His fellow Democrats might have acted more appropriately by censuring him publicly.
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THIS LETTER WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY NOT BE REPRINTED BY THE MINNEAPOLIS NEWSPAPER TO WHICH I SUBMITTED IT.

PERSONAL BRANDING IS OUT OF CONTROL; ALLEGATIONS SHOULD NOT BE ADVERTISING

Dear Editors and fellow citizens in a great state,

Thank you for publishing this note from someone in Alabama looking from afar on this allegation against your junior Senator. This letter is a reminder, more to me than to you, that we all make mistakes; it is what we do about them that shows the enduring content of our characters. Truthfully, as a conservative Republican, Senator Franken’s often abrasive manner, particularly toward Alabama’s favorite son (i.e., Attorney General J.B. Sessions III), infuriates me.

Nevertheless, y’all in Minnesota are fortunate to have a man of such high character representing you. The reading on 'The View' by Ms Tweeden of the Senator’s private note of apology was distasteful, at best. The good news is that the contents of that note reveal a leader of uncommon maturity, compassion and humility in addressing, with civility, an allegation that could end his career.

Does that note excuse the Senator's behavior, if it actually occurred? No. Senator Franken’s own words, however, provide you with evidence of his ability to face up to mistakes, learn from them and grow into becoming a better man. You are the State that has produced many giants of American liberalism. Please do not turn your backs on that tradition by turning your backs on this Senator.

Oh, if my Party's Senate candidate in my State had half the virtue displayed by Senator Franken, I would be so happy.

Very truly yours,

Ned

Edward J. McDonnell III, CFA PMP
Birmingham, Alabama

Letter 151 to Friends and Familiares: Choice versus Life: ¿whose right is it, anyways?

UPDATE: 15th December 2017

In a recent discussion with a rabbi, my Jewish friend and theologian observed that, in Genesis 2:7, "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." He went on to say that, under Judaic tradition, life begins when a baby draws a first breath (implicitly, from God). The implication for my thinking is staggering.

For my adult life, I have assumed "instinctively" that life begins at conception. Since this was a matter of "straight-forward intuition", I had no reason to question this premise. Fact is that I grew up in an R.C. home, though not a strict one, at least theologically.

Had I grown up in a Jewish home, however, my "instinctive" assumption would be that life started with the first breath. That would make the pro-choice position "intuitively" evident. In no way am I saying that such an argument endorses abortion as birth control. It does not. Additionally, abortion has proven not to have become a form of birth control in the last forty-three years.

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"The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.” --Mother Teresa

"....Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?...She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." --Saint John 8:10 & 11

“Suddenly, I began to wonder: If one in three or four American women had an abortion at some time in her life--a common statistical estimate, even in those days of illegality-- then why, WHY should this single surgical procedure be deemed a criminal act?” --Gloria Steinem

NOTE: table added on 04may22

BLUF (bottom-line, up-front). The current legality of abortion – principally, Roe v. Wade (1973) – should remain in place unless two-thirds of voting age women (67%) consent to its being reversed.

Introduction. I have been fairly constant in my pro-life preference over time, though I believe there has to be compassionate flexibility built into the resolution of the larger issue across American society. These include the following:

• minors notifying parents of an abortion unless to do so would injure them or others;
• notification of the father – and of his anticipated responsibilities should the mother carry the pregnancy to term and not choose to place the baby into an adoption program – except when to do so would injure the mother or the baby;
• unfettered right to an abortion in cases of rape or incest;
• mandatory waiting period for the procedure with exposure to pros and cons of the decision;
• funding for pre-natal care including drug rehabilitation (if necessary), occupational training during the pregnancy and early child-care assistance after the birth of the baby;
• mandatory availability of the surgery across the country and within the states; as well as,
• affirmative adoption tax credits for the adoption of minority children.

Discussion. One point to emphasize is that, of all issues, out there in the political arena, the right to life versus choice is the one that requires the most compassion toward people facing this dilemma. Yet, the very compassion that so many pro-life moral irredentists lack remains, in my mind, inconsistent with their claims to righteousness. In the end, the only judgement publicly cast should be that of the Supreme Court in 1973.

J.C. Himself would never demonize women who terminate pregnancies – so many being poor and feeling abandoned – that many of my fellow conservatives do. One should consider seriously how (s)he might feel if a pregnant daughter or sister were unwed and, perhaps, underfed, chose to end an unwanted and crushing pregnancy. Remember what J.C. said to the adulteress who was not stoned after He said let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.

If one undertakes this exercise in moral fortitude, I find it hard to believe that (s)he would over-rule every impulse toward empathy and compassion. Aside from Xian theology, the over-riding point is that a woman retains an independent moral agency to determine whether the fœtus remains a part of her body or whether it constitutes a separate life. That is to say: as long as this question is unresolved, the moral right belongs to the individual, namely the individual woman.

Our Constitution makes it clear that individual rights in everyday exercise – even implied rights protected by Amendments IX and X – can not be curtailed by the Federal government. The States theoretically can restrict abortions but I can not favor this idea unless two-thirds (67%) of the women should first consent in a concurrent referendum. The idea of a concurrent referendum of women applies Calhoun’s “concurrent majorities” to demographics, not states.

The irony of this conservative pro-life stand. As far out of step as this thinking has often been with my friends, particularly women, in practice my thinking seems to be coincidentally aligned with what the American people think – and have thought consistently since the mid-1970s – with respect to choices by a woman during pregnancy. The extensive Gallup data have, embedded deep inside them, key findings.

Women have the right to choose abortion without restrictions in the first trimester of the pregnancy. This makes sense since other data indicate that many or most unplanned pregnancies are a consequence of failed birth control, either in working or in use by the one or both parents. Of course, that nudges the door open for whether birth control is itself permissible. For me, that door is ajar and – hypocrite that I am – I intend to keep a lid tightly sealed on it.

When the issue of reversing Roe v. Wade is in contention, Americans ramp up their opposition to such a move (i.e., during a conservative presidency). These data indicate, to me at least, that people want Roe v. Wade to remain in place. Its reversal is a theoretical nicety when a pro-choice régime is in power but when the rubber hits the road, the true preferences emerge.

Summary. Women have a right of dominion over their own bodies, whether the rest of us agree or not. Like it or not, a woman’s view of the fœtus as a part of her body rather than an utterly dependent life is intellectually defensible. The American people tend to agree with this idea of free agency early on in the pregnancy, though that support fades in the second and, radically, third trimesters. The consent of women is required for any curtailment of the implied right of privacy with respect to their bodies and lives.

Letter 150: Technocracy and American Foreign Policy; brain-gang OR brain-game OR brain-blame OR brain-bust?

"You know this vision. You have seen it so often at the movies. It is the vision in all those science fiction dystopias. You know, with the gilded masterminds ruling all from their swank towers and conference rooms.
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"It’s a quite contemporary vision. For instance, it is not far at all from the way I think the rulers of China imagine themselves and their future." --Dr Philip D. Zelikow, 5th August 2017.

BLUF (bottom-line, up-front): Dr Philip Zelikow gave a long address -- the speech takes 45 minutes, or more, to read -- at some out-of-tune wonkstock festival. His thoughts superficially remind one of those of Kennan. 

INTRODUCTION

They are not alike, primarily because this scholar is opening up the discussion and not selling its conclusion as Kennan did for SecState Marshall and President Truman. There are certain elements missing in the Zelikow's presentation by order of importance that guarantee us languishing longer in violent decline:

1. a frank recognition of the financial constraints facing the United States to usher in a more traditional exceptionalism as the American Century fades;
2. justification by technocrats of their being entitled to positions of power and privilege by 'degrees' of arrogation;
3. a clear idea by the U.S. of the end-state of a just society (i.e., an intelligibly universal appeal through a 'proposition of values' rather than a Zelikovian value proposition marketing technocracy through, of course, the current brain-gang);
4. exclusion from the 'outside-in' evaluation seeking to clarify how other peoples and governments (or élites) view the U.S. (and not how we think they view us);
5. a serious questioning of the nature of our adversaries and our role in that rivalry;
6. confusing tactics with strategy though that erudition and foot-notes often shroud that mistaken thinking; as well as,
7. a deeper inability, shown from President Reagan's time in office, of reducing the size of an over-wrought and financially unsustainable Federal government as well as the corrupting influence of (in)vested interests like the XXX-industrial complexes.

Of course, my critique is hampered by the same intellectual constraint as Dr Zelikow's far deeper and more nuanced analysis; he is a brainiac, after all. I am using a handy framework -- the recent military model that I learned in Iraq -- which is, of course, rooted in the past; not transcendent into the future; and, quite likely stale by now.

CASE STUDY OF TECHNOCRATIC VACUITY

This juncture is where President George W. Bush gets short-shrift, first by the hawk squawks led by the gang-of-four (Messrs Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld); then by Generals specialized and socialized as engineers; current intellectuals; and, lastly, the Obama Admin. President Bush understood, perhaps on an intuitive level, that, for the current wave of terrorism to be eradicated, an Arab Spring would have to occur.

Iraq was the geopolitical keystone of an arch of dictatorship and repression, resembling a reversed crescent moon from the horn of Africa on up to the 'No-man-stans'. The geopolitical mindset was easy to grasp, perhaps too easy:

• knock Iraq out in favor of a more popular government;
• link that with a far more tenuous experiment in Afghanistan; and, 
• incent the cosmopolitan middle class in Iran to grasp for the same freedoms.

From that arc, at that point primarily a Shi´ite phenomenon, others across that arc would be catalyzed into throwing off their shackles imposed by tottering Sunni dictatorships. Nations and peoples like to play ‘keeping up with the Jones’, too. WHY THEM AND NOT US? This new domino idea almost worked as seen by the 'Arab' Spring in Lebanon (2005), Iran (2009), Tunisia and Egypt (2010), Libya (2010) and Syria (2012) and beyond. 

The vision was simple but the follow-through too difficult, under-cutting the justice of the policy. The two parts that President Bush did not contemplate, due to a sweeping vision short on detail, included:

• making an all-out case for the necessity of this transformation, despite its wave of turmoil and violence; as well as, 
• warning the rest of us just how messy it would be. 

Instead of a three-dimensional thinker like Kennan to sell President Truman’s policy of containment, President Bush relied upon the lesser, if equally self-assured, minds of SecDef Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney. 

When the U.S. gained the tactical advantage in Iraq, the gang-of-four -- and their face-man desk-clerk, Ambassador Bromide -- reverted to type, seeing Iraq as ours and, now, something to lose. That compromised and eventually corrupted the end-state the President had envisioned. The rest is history: what some troops in Iraq referred to as the Texas Cheney Massacre; Texas for Halliburton-KBR, not President Bush.

The key lessons for people to learn and always to hear include, but are not limited to, the moral fortitude that change requires; the narrower than expected limits of any power, particularly fire-power; the challenge of follow through; as well as, the difficulty of keeping hands-off once a cycle of change is initiated (that is, letting history run its admittedly hazardous course). That is to say: be careful what you instigate, for its life will likely be different from yours.

The failure of the Bush policy of an aggressive promotion of democracy in response to 9-11 was not only an example of Dr Zelikow’s astute insight of wasted energy, money and people on areas of lesser importance.  Additionally, it was an ill-thought out strategy that led to a chimerical consensus. The brain-gang failed signally to consider the lowest cost options (i.e., those least deleterious to the lives and livelihoods of peoples in the 'beneficiary' countries). 

COWARDICE CROWNING CONFLICT? Yes AND no.

The failure of President Obama’s policy was an unwillingness to witness the upheaval the Bush vision had counted on during the run-up to invading and occupying Iraq. This changed to a reactive policy perceived as a lack of nerve rather than a widely shared perception of ‘strategic patience’. Many of my fellow conservatives view President Obama as a coward; that is patently untrue and unfair. President Obama was and is a man of peace. 

His appeasement – and, yes, that is what his policy unmistakably was -- may well have forestalled a conflict that could quickly have cascaded into the "systemic crisis" that the dystopian Zelikovian multiverse contemplates and for which the U.S. is anything but prepared. President Obama’s alternate view may have saved a great many lives; sadly, that systemic crisis was more likely deferred than defused. 

President Obama’s alleged but apparent cowardice may have required a quiet courage to fend of the brawny bluster of men who do not have to suffer the consequences of their own rhetoric. If cowardice be assigned at all, it would lie with V.P. Cheney, SecDef Rumsfeld and AMB Bremer -- and their staffs -- for failing to think big, like their President, and, worse, not permitting others (e.g., SecStates Powell and Rice and their competing brain-gangs) to have the floor for alternative views. 

CONCLUSION

Dr Zelikow fails properly to account for this narrative as a teachable moment. Why? Because he was, and has every intention of remaining, a part of it. Now, we labour under a President without vision and inclined toward force as the primary medicine. Fortunately, he is unpopular and being repudiated on several different levels. Otherwise, we might undertake an amputation when only an analgesic is called for.

In the end, however, technocratic élites will fail us; they almost always do. Why again? Because the very notion of technocracy is conservative, more like preservative, of a given status-quo. To expect more from the Dr Zelikows (or the far more numerous and insignificant Ned McDonnells) of the world to anticipate and structure an ex ante strategy for fundamental changes in world orders or global policy paradigms is futile.

THE MORAL OF THE QUARREL
Expecting technocracy to avoid dystopia is as fruitful as tasking mechanical engineers to invent from scratch the impressionism of palette or expressionism in poetry.

Letter #149 to Friends and Familiares: Charlottesville, what might have been

“That differences of opinion should arise among men on politics, on religion and on every other topic of human inquiry, and that these should be freely expressed in a country where all our faculties are free, is to be expected. But these valuable privileges are much perverted when permitted to disturb the harmony of social intercourse, and to lessen the tolerance of opinion.” –President Thomas Jefferson, 1809.

“I must respect the decision of the Supreme Court allowing this group (the Nazis) to express their views, even when those views are despicable and ugly as they are in this case. But if such views must be expressed, I am pleased they will not go unanswered. That is why I want to voice my complete solidarity with those citizens of Skokie and Chicago who will gather Sunday in a peaceful demonstration of their abhorrence of Nazism.” —President Jimmy Carter, 1978.

“I was raised in a household in which the only intolerance I was taught was intolerance of bigotry.” –President Ronald Reagan, 1982.

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BLUF (bottom-line, up-front): We could have made Charlottesville much ado about nothing. Instead we ushered in tragedy.

INTRODUCTION: Sit-Rep. The sight of white supremacists rallying on the grounds of the co-author of the Bill of Rights and the Founder of the University of Virginia, one of the nation’s great learning centers, will remain grimly ironic. Few people – liberal, conservative and moderates alike – really have the time of day for these unsavory human beings.

These ‘Unite-the-Right’ (sic) types openly challenged the sacrosanct ideal of the Freedom of Speech. Yet, sacrosanct that ideal remains. Earlier this week-end, we confronted the real-world, real-time dilemma of Free Speech.

What to do about odious speech, publicly expressed? The First Amendment intends to protect ‘protected speech’ only.

That statement is circular and anyone can see that. But its being circular does not make it specious. What it really says is that there has to be flexibility in setting limits to this precious right since unfettered Free Speech could lead, for example, to the murderous disorder we witnessed in Virginia, directly harming the more peaceable citizenry.

Dealing with Hard-Core and Political Porn. The Supreme Court grappled with this issue in the area of pornography in a case from 43 years ago, deftly deferring to community standards for the definition of obscenity (i.e., in that case, ‘hard-core’ porn). There has been controversy over the subsequent decades on how to apply that vague and federalist wisdom.

During the 1980s, a Republican U.S. Senator sought to withdraw financial support for a sacrilegious photograph and a big-city Democratic Mayor pressured vendors to pull off their newsstands an equally sacrilegious magazine. Generally, these issues revolved around how community standards were, and are, to be identified and enforced.

Something like this idea of local agency applies to what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday 12th August 2017. Can elected officials act as agents of community standards in responding to openly disseminated hate-speech? That is what the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Mayor of Charlottesville were trying to do.

While they were in the right, as any reasonable man or woman could see the right, these leaders mismanaged a situation through political bungling. The idea of local agency to suppress bigotry makes sense. What became very difficult was agreeing upon just how much latitude these local agents should properly have.

Like pornography, one is hard-pressed precisely to define hate-speech, beyond the well known slurs and epithets, but yet any dunce, even Dylan Roof, knows it when he hears it.

That 1970s Show, Again. This current situation reminded me of a similar event in the Summer after my freshman year at W.&L. In that year, neo-Nazis planned a march, in their full dress and wretched regalia, through a Jewish suburb of Chicago. Local elected officials sought to forestall the event. Yet the American Civil Liberties Union – an organization I perceived as ‘Jewish’ (shame on me) – came to the aid of the neo-Nazis so the latter could march.

Like most others whom I knew, I wondered at the time, ‘What in the Hell is the A.C.L.U. doing?’ As the Summer moved along and I listened to interviews of the Jewish attorney taking up the case on behalf of the A.C.L.U., I gained immense respect for him and his organization for standing by the Freedom of Speech, even in this obviously odious expression of it.

After working its way up through various benches to the Supreme Court, the march proceeded without incident a year later as a counter-rally shouted down the handful of hate-meisters.

Back then, however, the country was still held together, with increasing frailty, by what many of today’s self-labelled conservatives (sic) would deride as a ‘leftist consensus’. Truthfully, it was an expectation of public civility. This more liberal consensus of decorum was fraying; its ideology exhausted. The mainstream G.O.P. was dissolving and a Democratic President struggling.

Nevertheless, the Kulturkampf had yet to arrive as a regrettable by-product of President Reagan’s conservative ascendancy. There is little doubt in my mind that President Reagan would not have countenanced today’s rally in Virginia and would have said so, decisively. But we do not have a principled Republican like President Reagan in the White House to remove this blemish publicly and pro-actively.

The Loss of Principle and Purpose in Personalities. Instead our current President is a demagogue, though he deserves some credit for his delayed and piping tepid response, to the bedlam of bigotry in Virginia. Previously, President Trump had created today’s context with slurs uttered against whole segments of the population – call them the 3M post-its written with passwords to revile Mexicans, Muslims and Mixed-genders – in word, deed or tweet.

While General Kelly may finally be imposing adult supervision on this President, it is sadly too little, too late. The cage doors of civil containment have been flung open, like Pandora’s Box, releasing the evils of the ghoulish, bad and ugly. Like Pandora’s Box, however, there is Hope, the last to exit. And what is this Hope? Three elements, at least as I view them from my limited and conservative view: deflection, humor and refutation.

Remember Skokie. And that brings us back to Skokie, 1977. At the time, one caller, apparently a steel-worker, into a radio talk show on the local mainstream station proposed an interesting response. Why not have the Skokie mayor announce that the town would permit the swastika-laden mob to march, opting for a town picnic on other side of Skokie for the residents to celebrate Judaism?

Why not seal off the parade route, requesting the Press not to cover the event? An interesting idea but one that was easier said than done, obviously. Skokie had a population of 70,000 back then, versus an almost equally unmanageable 50,000 in Charlottesville. Picnics were feasible in neither case. Additionally, the Press arguably had a stronger sense of the higher, common good in 1977.

The Press may or may not have shunned the event in Skokie, thereby effectively castrating the Nazis during their hour of provocation, truncating their fame, or infamy, to fifteen minutes. Yet, in this day of an arid yet rabid journalism that often click-baits men’s darker impulses and grievances to chalk up ad revenue, such a higher restraint seems inconceivable.

Furthermore, this year’s hate parade was many, many times the size of the eventual Skokie dud-march in 1978. Nevertheless, minimization-by-deflection may well have proven more effective and less tragic today. Imagine if a state of emergency had NOT been declared, with government leaders instead opting to call on the Press not to cover the event and to ignore Charlottesville?

Hope is a Many Splendoured Thing. Then imagine if Charlottesville’s Mayor had requested that no one from the town attend the march or for outsiders not to participate in counter-demonstrations on site? Yes, there would still be Press coverage but, perhaps, less than complete, especially if the national outlets had decided not to show up (CNN, The NYT, The WSJ, et al.). 

Imagine the optics of vacant streets portraying marchers with police protection…and nobody else around! That would likely have deflated the importance of the event, at least to all onlookers outside the Bannon-bubble. Imagine if Governor McAuliffe or Mayor Signer had not to condemned the speech so stridently, resorting to meeting fire with fire, preferring instead to attend to their routine affairs with Charlottesville and the Lee statue a million miles away? 

Imagine if these leaders – these local agents of community standards against hate speech – had preferred humor that could have fed right into ‘Saturday Night Live’? One such remark might have been, “Boys will be boys. Growing up is oh so hard to do, from the Oval Office on down…”

If this initial quip were not effective, then creative people and comedians -- ¿Senator Franken, anyone? – could surely have come up with something to say to castrate these ‘tough-guys’ publicly and indirectly. Imagine the pre-emptive optics of transforming these bigots, and the President who had unleashed them, into a collective laughing stock.  That would have been Classic Churchill or F.D.R.!

                  

                                                                   

Letter #148 to friends and familiares: the Incompleat Angler

“Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.” 

-- Ernest Hemingway; The Old Man and the Sea; 1952.

"I shall make ye fishers of men..."
"Good because I am starving from the old way..."

-- Anonymous.

Recently I read a great story about the most unexpected success of a casual fisherman. I am something of an obtuse angler, too. As a kid in Sydney, I used to fish by hand and catch little yellow-tails and throw them back in. That was my down-time, often followed by pick-up cricket games. The next time I went fishing was twelve years later off of Palm Beach in 1980 when I was visiting a college bud.

We went out into the ocean in this big cabin cruiser of some apparently wealthy man, the father of my host’s roomie. This boat even had sonar to detect the schools of fish. We zipped around, this way and that, in an endless search for fish; B-O-R-I-N-G. Two highlights of that day, one inane and the other intuitive, were the one catch of the day as well as a ‘sonar’ duel between man and nature.

The rivalling sonars made for the better story. The tech finally came through and the skipper found his school. This older gentleman was anything but genteel, treating his trophy girl-friend like a toy in front of his adult son of the same age as the girl. The score with the sonar disappointed me mightily since we would be marooned for another few hours on that damn boat. B-O-R-I-N-G.

Until two dolphins with a “high sense of porpoise” cruised by, spiraling in the water and squealing. Well, now, school was out; nary a nibble. And I have always wondered whether those dolphins had somehow audibly warned those innocent fish of the peril picked up by their natural sonar. Nature 1, technology 0. We floundered for a couple more fruitless hours amid bickering among the hosts: B-O-R-I-N-G.

Then, in the waning moments, the least equipped nautically (i.e., me) got something. People were rightly floored (or decked) that it was I who snagged the only beast of the day. So, I struggled a bit, trying to keep the fish on the line. The older man was jealous – quickly emphasizing that I had captured small game judging by the negligible arc of my rod. Yes, I suspected as much and I did not care – I just wanted to get off that boat.

Finally, my catch was close enough that it surfaced intermittently, as fish do when they struggle desperately, and almost always without success, to escape back into the deep. One BIG catch about my little catch: it was a plastic bag.  Since I was the first to realize my catch was phony, I tried to ward off the expected flak by exclaiming with a dryly ironic voice, “Oh, wow! I caught a plastic bag, mahhhn!” 

Well, before the rhazzing could start, the trophy girl-friend, with whom I had been chatting as the only one paying any attention to her, laughed hysterically and said I was so cute, etc. Normally, such attention (even if patent non-sense) from a pretty lady would have been welcome. Not that day. That almost led to my being escorted over the gunwale with, “Good riddance, punk,” by you know who -- the gal's surly patron.

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My fishing days were finished, thankfully. Until duty called as a banker in the late 1990s. Calling on non-bank financial institutions – basically, finance and insurance companies – I had encountered my fair share of ethical and accounting sink-holes populated by "snow lizards"; thank you, David Rosenberg of Pittsburgh. Most executives, however, were lovely people and very honest. On the whole, insurers are a decent bunch.

There was one real sinkhole besides sub-prime lenders and that was the bond insurance niche. These guys basically substituted for banks who traditionally provided guaranteed performance (i.e., scheduled payments) under bond indentures. In a long-since saturated segment, these monoline bond insurers were on the hunt for any money they could pick up, no matter how questionable the insured security or transaction was.

In the late 1990s, one bond insurer acquired another. Think of it as in-breeding within the Ponzi family. Well, I had to help ring in the union with a fishing day with the Treasurer of the consolidated insurer. Angling off of a cabin cruiser in Long Island Sound would normally sound like a fun idea. Except that I had to get up at five-thirty in the morning to get to some ungodly suburb in Connecticut in order to launch.

Additionally, the treasurer of the merged bond insurer had come over from the acquired company – a company that I had never touched with a ten-foot pole, no matter how profitable its financial statements had appeared. Some companies just don’t pass the smell test. And then there was this dung heap. The acquiring insurer figured it could make the dung heap into fertilizer for future profits.

Fine, but count me out. Though a leader in bond insurance, that large acquiror had ceased passing my smell test sometime earlier, too. This was not the first time I met the new treasurer. Frankly, he was a well-coiffed grease-ball; anybody who goes out of his way to tell me that l am a “genius” or "really talented" wins no points with me. For one thing, though I would dearly love to be a genius, I simply and surely am not one.

Curious? Yes! Smart? Eh, perhaps. But, a “genius”? Forget about it. Mr Slick was a man whom I did not trust at all. So, I arrived with my fellow bankers with hair dishevelled, cow-licks prominent and overall expression pouty; clearly neither a morning person though, perhaps, a person in mourning. (And yes, that sink-hole cratered a few years later, just as I figured it would; no retirement plan for the world's oldest profession!) We finally set off into Long Island Sound after Mr Slick had finished kissing my ass since I was the guy with the bank’s checkbook….B-A-R-F.

Of the six people on that cruiser, I was absolutely the most out of place, not only in terms of zero enthusiasm and unkempt appearance but also my fishing experience and ability.  Long Island Sound apparently has many blue fish – allegedly difficult to catch – and ‘stripers’, or ocean bass. When I got ‘spoke to’ by the senior manager in our delegation, I reluctantly picked up a rod and gave fishing a go along-side the slick.

Et voilà! Before I knew or understood what I was doing, I was hauling in many fish, perhaps the most. My haul included an apparently elusive blue-fish; that claim about the blueys, however, may have simply been more ass-kissing. Truthfully, I have no idea. To cap the day off, I even caught the largest striper of the day. That fish was one heavy BASStard; I swear it was fifteen pounds, maybe more.

Soon enough I received a photo in the mail of me holding that big dude with a putrid smile on my face and the (by then drunk) slick with his arm around my shoulder. So much for all those Dale Carnegie sales courses I had laboured through as a young and incorrigible misanthrope. At least somebody hosted a big dinner that week-end with that striped creature, duly stripped, as the guest of honor.

Needless to say, I was never sent from Central ‘Casting’. Yet life runs in a full circle. These days, when I spend some time in the Adirondaks thanks to the generosity of my sister and her family, I will cast a little here and even less there in the quiet end of Long Lake. As it was for me fifty years ago in Sydney, my down-time is not goal oriented; it is simply restful and the fish are lucky that I am the one with the rod.

Letter 147 to friends and familiares: letter to Hillary Clinton.

"I would rather play against a sore loser than any kind of winner I know...." -- ¿who knows?

''If the election had been on October 27th, I'd be your president'' -- Hillary Clinton; May 2017

Dear Senator / Secretary Clinton,

In November, I voted for you after some thought and hesitation, but with relative ease since Mr Trump was, and remains, unacceptable as a Presidential candidate or incumbent; in essence, I had progressed from being a Never-Trump Republican to a Must-Stop-Trump Republican. Yes, I was dismayed though not altogether surprised by President Trump’s victory in the Electoral College; were that election held today, I would likely vote for you again.

Fortunately, my fears of President Trump’s authoritarian tendencies – while quite real today and going forward – implied an under-estimation of the strength of the institutional constraints in place. While allegations of the conduct of Mr Trump and his inner circle during the President’s campaign and afterward remain rife, if yet unproven, the accountability is now in motion.

Your behavior since November, however, has often been regrettable. Your recent appearance at a Book Expo shows that side of you that attracted us who voted for you. Too many times, in the months since the election, however, you have blamed several parties as being instrumental to your unexpected – and, implicitly by your reckoning, undeserved – defeat six months ago. Comments refuting each point follow the factor identified.

FIRST, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Director Comey acted to protect the independence of the FBI, without which the integrity of a central pillar of the rule-of-law would have been hopelessly compromised during its investigation of your e-mail practices. Director Comey did make a surprise announcement on October 28th, per a pledge he had previously made to a Congressional Committee, and affirmed the conclusions he had reached in July forty-eight hours before the election. 

Forty-eight hours was more than sufficient time to undo any damage to you or your electability. Throughout the July-to-October time-frame, it is clear that the Director was fully aware of the consequences of his actions, including a high probability of his dismissal; that is, he owned his choices. Additionally, by mid-October, people already knew enough to decide their votes. The Director's actions may have reinforced the preferences of certain voters; l have to doubt that they changed more than a tiny and inconsequential number of minds.

SECOND, the Russians, with or without Wikileaks. From what I can see, the majority of Russian meddling – outside of possible collaboration with the Trump campaign – seems to have been dissemination of Russia Today. While RT’s objectivity is not up to the standard of the Voice of America, this is a highly visible activity by a relatively low-rated television and news outlet. Wikileaks and fake news, however, pose more serious questions, one worth investigating for obvious, perhaps ominous, reasons.

Nevertheless, the contents of those e-mails disseminated by Wikileaks – not the alleged hack itself – influenced voters. Responses by Party surrogates of stating that the e-mails were "stolen" without addressing their contents fooled no one. The loudly proclaimed fake news argument was more likely to be a subset of biassed and parsed reporting against, and calculated to hurt, both campaigns.

THIRD, the Democratic National Committee. Your assertion of your receiving too few funds from the DNC and the Party leadership giving you nothing is difficult to understand, let alone to analyze or comment upon. To me, Mrs Clinton, your assertion is difficult to accept since there are allegations that the very same organization (the DNC) had fixed the nomination in your favor. As far as the argument that the DNC's data were poor, it is difficult to sympathize too terribly much with you. Mrs Clinton, you had three years to build your own reserve of data.

FOURTH, the "deplorables". White supremacists may have voted for President Trump but they did not elect him. Implicit in your ill-advised remark was a suspicion that you were the rightfully qualified candidate and that some dark anti-social underbelly was seeking to deny you of what was rightfully yours: the presidency. True, you won the popular vote. Nonetheless, a modest review of the results refute your sense of entitlement. True, you gained 2.9 million more votes than Mr Trump (i.e., 65,844,610 versus 62,979,636). 

Nevertheless, you were the establishment candidate – your résumé apparently made your claim to the Oval Office incontestable, at least in your mind – while Mr Trump was a candidate of (¿chump?) change. When one adds in the 7.8 million votes cast for third-party candidates – by definition candidates for change – to Mr Trump’s tally, your establishment credentials were repudiated by 4.9 million votes (i.e., 70,783,849 versus 65,844,610).

FOURTH, the main-stream press. You have argued that the fourth estate undermined your candidacy by dwelling on the private e-mail server you used as Secretary of State by magnifying it to the level of a "Pearl Harbor". This excuse is, perhaps, the most exasperating of all for three reasons.

• You argued during the campaign that the 22 million 'lost' emails on RNC servers by Karl Rove and other political functionaries in 2007 negated any appearance or instance of wrong-doing by you for use of a private server as the Secretary of State in President Obama's first Administration. By 2009, however, that practice of the Bush Administration was fully exposed and disseminated, being held to account and deemed improper, perhaps illegal. It was clear that diverting e-mails through private servers should not be permissible going forward -- especially seven years later. 

• It is a pity, ma'am, that you have forgotten a basic lesson from your Sunday-school class: two wrongs do not make a right. This argument is rather reminiscent of the 'enfant terrible' of my Party, President Nixon.

• On a pragmatic level, I question your ability to learn from past mistakes or experience. Your allegedly secretive approach to the 1993 national health-care initiative (i.e., managed competition) was never proven to have occurred; the practice was neither illegal nor unethical in any case. But it surely looked bad, contributing to the plan's eventual demise. What surprises me today remains your insensitivity toward the 'political optics' of such a seemingly covert information management practice during your tenure as the fifth most senior official of the Republic under the Constitution.

Mrs Clinton, here are seven reasons why you may have lost this election.

• A previously ignored constituency consolidated behind Mr Trump.
• Prior actions and the contents of ‘hacked’ e-mails sowed seeds of distrust. People simply refused to equate your character with President Obama's.
• Your remarks about "deplorables", etc. lent the impression that you felt entitled to the office. Americans do not warm up to attitudes that smack of landed nobility.
• Your vice presidential candidate lost his debate, badly, which had an important implication. Many voters may have disliked you and Mr Trump sufficiently to look toward their feelings about Senator Kaine or Governor Pence as a tie-breaker.
• A poorly run campaign that overlooked key battleground states.
• The Clinton dynasty, if ever extant, had ended in 1999. You were elected in one of two or three states that would support your Senatorial candidacy. While your tenure as Senator encouraged me to vote for you, it did not represent a national base.
• You were the weakest Democratic candidate of my life-time. With the possible exception of Senator McGovern (though I do not think so) or Vice President Gore (more likely), every candidate from President Johnson on (i.e., Messrs Humphrey, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry and Obama) would have defeated Mr Trump. Senator Sanders certainly would have, had he been permitted to run.

Secretary / Senator Clinton, again, I believe you should have been elected because you are honest, at least on balance, and for other reasons. Your unwillingness to own up to your role in losing the 2016 election makes you come across as a poor sport, as believing you were denied of a privilege justly due to you. No one is entitled to the presidency. At least 70 million of your fellow citizens disagree with your sense of entitlement that has a whiff of arrogance.

Your role now?

Help lead your Party in passing the torch to a new generation of Americans since the Democrats have the opportunity for a political transformation as conclusive as that of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Your Party is frittering away this once-in-a-century opportunity through a level of whining and vitriol toward President Trump that will sate your appetite for vindication and feed your resentment. The key question for you, Mrs Clinton, remains whether such self-indulgence will assist your Party or the principles it stands for.