October, 2023

 I haven't posted much on this blog lately. I used to write about all the places I visited, one or two a month, and post lots of pictures, mostly of historic places. It took hours, and at most 20 people would read what I wrote. Lately, I've been putting a few pictures on Facebook, without much commentary, and 75 or 80 people give me a "like" or make a comment. 

I've also gotten a lot more private about how I'm feeling and what I'm doing. I was diagnosed, long ago, with "mild, chronic depression," whatever that means, But turning 74 last week really hurt. I know I'm in better shape than most men my age, the ones who haven' t died yet, anyway, and when I look in the mirror, I think I look better than most my age. Still, I've had two cancer diagnoses since the summer, one a skin cancer thing that was ugly, but is fixed except for a scar. I'm scheduled for an operation to remove my thyroid gland this Friday, November 3, and that is stressing me out. The doctors thought they saw something on my pancreas this summer, but after an endoscopy, said it wasn't a big deal, "come back in six months" and have it rechecked. Then they called two weeks later to tell me they wanted to take another look. My mother lived with pancreatic cancer for fifteen months. She was diagnosed at the age I was in August. She said at the time "How long was I going to live anyway?" I think about that a lot. She and I too, don't want to end up in a nursing home, like her mother, my grandmother, with no memory of anything. And I feel like my time has come and gone. The world is not what it was and, while at one time I had some power in it, now I don't think I do.

I ran for Congress last year against a MAGA-Republican hack who had not done anything in several terms of office, who beat a more rational Republican in a primary with signs that had his name over Trump's. He never appeared in this area, which was new to him, refused to debate, and didn't run a campaign. We did an interview together with the Morgantown Dominion-Post where we could only answer questions, not debate. I didn't think he had anything to say, and the paper endorsed me. I won only in this county. The race wasn't close, only closer than predicted. He's now running for Senate against our Governor, Jim Justice, a shameless liar, deadbeat and grifter, originally elected as a Democrat, who switched to the Republican Party in short order. I was at the state convention where he was nominated, and almost no one at the convention liked him, in fact, most of us there walked out of his speech. Joe Manchin wanted him, so that's who we got. He has a high popularity rating in the state. Don't ask me how that is possible.

It's not just this state. The Republicans, who have a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, just elected a speaker, without Democratic support. He has railed against same-gender marriage and abortion rights, which one might expect from a radical Christofascist, but he also is open to cutting Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, against aid to Ukraine, and wrote many of Trump's lawsuits arguing, falsely, that he won the 2020 election. This is what the United States has come to. 

Meanwhile, there is a war in Israel-Gaza-Palestine. My friends on the right blame Obama and Biden and say Trump would have taken care of this. My friends on the left think Israel is totally the villain here, that the country is a "colonial power," engages in "apartheid" and "genocide." I grew up in an apartheid state called "Maryland" and as to genocide and "colonialism" if you're an American of European origin, you need to tread carefully, given our history on this continent. Yes, Israel could conform to international law and not risk murdering innocent civilians, But Hamas has to go. There should have been a reckoning a long time ago among the nations about Palestine, but no one wants to touch it. Israel took in Jewish refugees from Iraq, Iran, Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, yet Palestinians cling to the false hope that they will be able to turn back the clock, and they've lived in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt for 75 years. The Jewish homeland is in Israel/Palestine. There is nowhere else. I've seen signs that say "Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism." It's a thin line. Jewish students at Cornell are afraid to leave their rooms, and in a former Soviet republic, protestors attacked a plane from Tel Aviv, looking for Jews to beat up. It's scary now for all of us. When I was in high school, a speaker came to my Jewish youth group. He was a Holocaust survivor from Poland, and had been in college in Poland in the 1930s. He was probably only 45 at the time he spoke to us, but he told us that Jews were treated badly by other Polish students and faculty at his campus. I am reminded of that by the events today.

I'm out of patience with everyone. While on City Council, I was called a "centrist" which was a high insult to the person who lobbed that word at me. I still consider myself on the left, but I don't really fit in that community anymore. The Republican Party would love to reach out to me and profess how they "Love Israel." It's American Jews they don't much care for, especially those of us in same-gender marriages who also think corporations have too much power.

You might notice that I'm not relaxed. I'm working on it. Tonight is Halloween, and I'll give out candy to the goblins and ghouls who come to our door. Tomorrow, November 1, is the 15th anniversary of my marriage to Joe Hample, and we'll celebrate that milestone. Friday is my operation, and I'm told that the prognosis is good. 

I still want to live, I'm just not sure I want to continue to interact with the rest of the world. Maybe I'll just fade away as I continue to age. I'll update this when/if I recover.

The Election and What I'm Doing About It

This is one of those election years where no one really knows what will happen. The "Brexit" vote in England went against all predictions. Politicians there borrowed from Donald Trump's playbook here: bash immigrants, "The Elite" and prey on the legitimate fears of working class Caucasians that they are being left out of this so-called "recovery." They have a point, except that immigrants, gays, and women having abortions are clearly not the problem.

I have never voted for a Republican, and I don't plan to start now. In my campaign for West Virginia Delegate, I aligned myself with the Bernie Sanders people. This was not political calculation on my part (although Sanders won in every county in West Virginia). I am thrilled that a candidate came up who was willing to talk about economic inequality, breaking up the big banks, and being inclusive of everyone in our country. Although Sanders is not traditionally religious, he embraces core Jewish values, whether he knows it or not.

I don't believe Hillary Clinton is a crook or even a bad person. She would have been a great candidate in 2000 or 2004. She lost to a brash outsider in 2008, and I believe she deserves to lose now. Only the system is rigged in her favor. Sanders pointed out in an interview in Rolling Stone that despite winning in every county in West Virginia, six of our eight superdelegates are pledged to Clinton.

Things are worse than that in West Virginia. Our Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, did not appear at the state's Democratic convention, except at a lunch he sponsored in honor of the Democratic Party's West Virginia chair, Belinda Biafore. There was an election for a new state chair, and Chris Regan, a hero to progressives in this state, was defeated for the position of state chair. Still, we passed a progressive platform from the floor of the convention. I'm sure the platform will be ignored. That's how things roll here.

There's hostility in this state  from Democrats toward their anointed leaders. Jim Justice, a coal mogul, Republican until last year, and the wealthiest person in West Virginia, has not taken positions on most issues. Our Attorney General candidate, Doug Reynolds, has an anti-gay, anti-choice and pro-gun voting record. Ugh. And Hillary Clinton's record of being the Senator from Wall Street has not helped her with working people here.

I've been fending off people on Facebook who post horrible anti-Clinton stuff. Not Republicans, because I have "unfollowed" them, but Democrats. At this point, I'm hoping for a convention miracle that will give Bernie the nomination, or at least that the platform will accept his ideas, for what that's worth. Still, if Clinton gets the nomination, I will support her.

On the Republican side, there is shock and outrage every time Trump opens his mouth. Republican stalwarts are abandoning ship for fear they will be tarred with his legacy and shamed forever. To me, the Republican Party has pandered to racists and gay-haters for decades. Trump only says what they've been thinking all along, only with his Outer Borough lack of manners and WASP "tastefulness." They deserve him.

This year, we will have to eat shit (to put it delicately) and vote for the Democrats. For the future, I would hope progressives and unionists will form a new, more open party, pro-union, pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-diversity, and pro-environment. We can start by electing local leaders who can reach everyone , uniting anti-corporate, pro-worker, inclusive people of good will to overturn the status quo in West Virginia and in the United States. We have our work cut out for us.

Coal, The Iran Deal, and The Republican Debate

Part One: Coal

There was an opinion piece yesterday, August 5, in The Gazette-Mail, Charleston's daily newspaper from Kevin Crutchfield, CEO of Alpha Natural Resources, a coal-mining company, crying about how the bankrupt company can't be sold to a company in Kentucky unless it stops paying pensions and providing health insurance to retirees. According to Chris Regan's blog (homeyesterday.com), in a post from August 3, Crutchfield received a two million dollar bonus this year, and six million total in 2011 and 2012.

Meanwhile, President Obama came out this week with new guidelines for carbon pollution to combat global warming, air pollution and the high incidence of asthma, particularly among young people who live near coal-burning facilities.

According to our local politicians, particularly our Republican Congressman David McKinley and our newly-elected Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito, but also our Democratic Senator Joe Manchin III, Obama is the villain. The health of people in the United States, and particularly in West Virginia, comes second to the lining the pockets of coal company executives. Meanwhile the bankrupt companies want to back out of their contracts to provide for retirees, and want to sell out their union workforce to non-union companies. This year, they convinced our Republican-dominated legislature to ease safety regulations for the mines.

Educated people and anyone wanting a chance for a real life have been leaving West Virginia for decades. Whole neighborhoods in northwest Baltimore, near where I grew up, were inhabited by "hillbillies," as we called them in our ignorance when I was a teen. In the 2010 census, forty of our fifty-five counties had lost population over the previous ten years. And yet coal millionaires ask for tax cuts and buy Republican officeholders (and many Democrats) to make sure the health of the planet, and the well-being of workers and their communities are not considered. Everything is the fault of Obama and the EPA.

President Obama has offered to help retrain workers and bring new industry to the coalfields. He has been so demonized here that no one will listen. When we came here in 2012, there were signs everywhere that said "Stop Obama's War On Coal." I understand fear of change and economic insecurity. I wish someone could reach out to people who are pro-coal - and I see lots of "Friend of Coal" decals on cars- and explain to them how they are being used, in a way they might understand. Once in a while I see a sticker that says "Friend of Coal Miners," and I think that is something that needs to be emphasized.

Part Two: The Iran Deal

There has been a split in the Jewish community about the Iran deal. Again, Obama is blamed by many traditional Jewish organizations, and certainly by Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel, of caving in to Iran and not stopping a deal. Of course, the deal is not just the United States and Iran, but includes Britain, France, Germany, the European Union, Russia and China. People opposed to the deal want the United States to take unilateral action, maybe even to go to war against the regime in Iran. President Obama warned that these are the same people who pushed for war in Iraq.

I get that Iran has a terrible government. But I also understand that the United States does not, at this time, have the power to effectively engage Iran in war, even if we wanted to. Our allies in Europe would not support us. It is time to acknowledge that we must work with other countries, our allies particularly, but even Iran. Killing off a bunch of people we think are different from us is an American tradition, going back to Colonial days, but I've known people from Iran- yes, mostly Jews who fled, but others, too- and I don't see them as different from us. As we approach the anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, I know that war should be absolutely off the table. Is everything 100% verifiable in this treaty? I don't know. But I have to trust that a consortium of nations came up with a workable deal.

Part Three: The Republican Debate

So the Republicans are debating tonight. We don't have a television, but if we did, I wouldn't watch Fox. Not one Republican of the Top Ten has had anything positive to say about the rights of LGBT people or is in favor of my marriage. That alone is reason enough to not watch them. As far as threatening to shut down the government for funding Planned Parenthood, they should be tried for treason.

I cleaned up my political act for my spouse, Rabbi Joe, when he was applying for pulpit positions in 2012. He doesn't take a public stand on political issues, although some wish he would. He and I don't agree about everything political. If you look at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, you will find that my positions follow those of our religious movement. I'm less diplomatic in my verbiage.