A Thoughful Charles Blow Column, Thoughts on Government Ethics, Behind the North Korean Problem, Hats and More Hip-Hop

This Article Says It All

If you only have time to read one article critical of the President, the opinion piece by Charles Blow (pictured to left) which appeared last week in the New York Times is the one to read.  It says it all.  Check it out by clicking here.  

Your reaction to this article is important. 

1.   After reading it, will you have lost faith in our democratic process which resulted in the President's election?  

2.   If so, what changes, if any, would you suggest? 

3. Critics have accused other presidents such as Jackson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Nixon of having dictatorial ambitions.  Would it be fair to similarly criticize President tRump?  

4.  Do you believe what Blow is writing to be both fair and true ... or is his partisanship getting the best of his pen?  

5.   Now put yourself in the mindset of an ardent supporter of the President (some readers of this blog, not many, fit that description).  What would you think of the column?  

Please read it now.  Please. Click here to do so!
Jack Lippman

Hip-Hop Made Comprehensible

In last week’s posting, the article about “hip-hop” featured a link to “The World Turned Upside Down,” where you saw and heard the original Broadway cast of “Hamilton” performing that number on stage.   I suspect most of you who viewed it missed most of the words, as most of the audience in the theatre did that night probably did too.

Lin Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton

Well, here they are for you to listen to again with the actual words flashing before you on your screen as they are sung.  To hear it, and it is beautiful, click right here, right now!

This is what American popular music is about TODAY and we should at least try to get with it.  Serious music (opera, symphonies, concertos, etc) will always be with us to enjoy as will earlier popular genres (swing, jazz, country, rock and B’way shows), but that doesn’t mean we should bury our heads to what is popular TODAY. Click on the link right here and listen to some hip-hop from the stage of the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York City where Hamilton is now being performed eight times a week to full houses.  
JL

Headwear Department

Baseball caps are for baseball players.  The visor serves to shade their eyes from the sun while playing.  Similarly, archers and those shooting on gun ranges can benefit from wearing baseball caps.  They also enable wearers to identify with favorite teams or schools.  

But any dermatologist will tell you that they are inadequate in protecting one’s ears, a common site for sun-induced neoplasms, from damaging rays.  They recommend hats with broad enough brims to protect the ears.  Actually, in sunny climes, such as deserts, they should also offer protection to the back of the neck as well. Recall what the French Foreign Legionnaires wore in those old Warner Brothers films?

  

JL

Are Business Ethics Applicable to Governance ?

Is the methodology of the present presidency an indictment of the way America does business?   Donald tRump is doing exactly what he did in promoting his real estate, hotels, golf courses, gambling, TV programs and other ventures.  He was successful at it too, sometimes even making lemonade out of lemons. Read about it in his book, “The Art of the Deal.” 

But as for his hyperbole (fancy word for exaggeration at best or sometimes just plain lying), his attacks on those who criticize him, his superficiality which suffices to make him appear knowledgeable to the gullible, his dependence on meaningless adjectives and adverbs in every pronouncement he makes, some or all of these are part of parcel of the way any business sells whatever it has to sell.  Without these tactics, much of which is bought and sold, including financial products, would not exist.

That’s why otherwise legitimate magazines, TV broadcasts, newspapers and of course, now, the internet are filled with advertisements containing similar hyperbole, criticism of competition (usually very subtle), a superficial attempt at facts (the small print on screen for five seconds in some drug ads) and a truckload of adverbs and adjective.  That’s the way America does business.   Caveat Emptor.  That’s the way Donald tRump has always done business.  If it isn’t illegal, and one has good lawyers, why not do it?   And that is an essential part of the free enterprise system.   When one complains about the man in the White House, one is in effect complaining about the ethics of the system which brought him success in business and brought him to the presidency.

Really, we can’t have it two ways.  If such tactics are not acceptable for a president to use, why should they be acceptable in the business world?  If the White House is to be criticized for its use of “alternate facts,” shouldn’t manufacturers be criticized for questionable boasting about their products, tiny print on warranties and other “normal” sales techniques, and investment banks be criticized for highly-recommended financial instruments which fail to perform as they are supposed to, as sometimes illustrated in in slick descriptive literature. 

Letting the man in the White House get away with what he does may be a good thing in that it brings the highest office in the land down to the level where many businesses operate on a daily basis, replacing utopian illusions with life the way it really is. 

I don’t agree with this, but some others do. I think the presidency should include a vision of life as we envision it becoming.   I think the President and others of his party are looking in the opposite direction.  But in doing things "his way," which strangely might be the American way in the eyes of many in this second decade of this Twenty-first century, the security of our nation must not, I repeat, not, be put at risk.  That is a great danger.
JL

Where Do We Go With Korea?

Here are a pair of recent articles from the Bloomberg View website which explain why, ultimately, we will be doing nothing in regard to the North Korean nuclear threat.  Regardless of what we end up calling it, we will acquiesce to what Kim Jong-Un is doing. 

North Korea is developing nuclear weapons and a delivery capacity as a deterrent to our using, or the threat of our using, our considerably greater nuclear capability against his country.  Kim fears unification of the Korean peninsula, which would quickly drown him in a sea of free enterprise and democracy.  But long range nuclear weapons enable him to play a permanent game of “chicken” with us, leaving him free to do whatever he wants in his “Hermit” kingdom, so long as he can deter threat of a response from us.  A traditional military solution to this problem is not available because of the extensive loss of civilian lives in nearby South Korea which would occur.

Economic sanctions will not work in regard to North Korea because it has little international trade other than with China.  China likes it that way because so long as Kim is in power, they will not have a U.S. ally, South Korea, or even a unified Korea on their border, and therefore, they will be of no help to us in dealing with Kim.  The tRump administration ought to have been aware of that from its onset!  

This situation now falls into the area of nuclear gamesmanship which has been played by major (and some not so major) powers for years.  Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, China, Iran and of course the United States have developed considerable skill at this risky game, and thus far, it has worked.  Let’s hope the present administration, as well as the newest player, North Korea, know the unwritten rules of the game. 

To find out more about why China will not pressure Kim Jong-Un, click here.  And to learn about the game of nuclear brinksmanship which has been going on since the middle of the last century, click here as well  .  Read both articles.  They are not lightweight stuff.  But the followers of this blog are not lightweight people.
JL

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