Buttocks, a Puzzlement and News from the Third World

On Buttocks

In some religions, lusting after a woman is as much of a sin as actually committing an act of adultery.  The act committed in one’s mind is little different from the act itself. Fortunately, I do not follow that line of reasoning.

The other day I was standing in a checkout line in a Target store behind a trim woman probably in her thirties.  She might have attended some sort of gymnastics, yoga or aerobics group earlier in the day because she was wearing skin tight work-out pants, accenting a pair of shapely buttocks, which I could not avoid but noticing. Can you blame me for that?   With all the news these days about men taking advantage of women, butt-grasping seems to be a common type of such harassment.  But there is nothing new about it.  Read on.  The ancient Greeks probably indulged in it.

Years ago, I was chased to the dictionary when a review of a Broadway show concluded that “the only appealing thing about the show were its 'callipygian' chorus girls.”  Whoa!  Never saw that word before. And there it was, defined in the Merriam-Webster as coming from the Greek and meaning “having shapely buttocks.”  The Greeks had a word for it!  Stop and think about that for a second.  Buttocks are still just buttocks, the fleshy area behind one’s hips, regardless of what they look like.  There's no functional difference between ugly buttocks and pretty ones.  Either kind provide nice cushions when one sits down. But, as soon as some kind of value judgement is applied to them, however, it’s an entirely different story. 

Calling them “shapely” (running back to the dictionary again), means among other things, being “pleasing.”  Pleasing to whom, I ask?  Well, the pleasure derived from seeing callipygian buttocks (I guess that's a redundancy) would seem to be derived from one’s sexual drive, and the follow up action to being pleased by them, if that drive were not well controlled, would be to attempt to grasp them.   

I have even seen woman’s shorts with hand prints covering their portions fitting over the buttocks, inviting their being grasped.  It may be intended humorously by the wearer, but others might view it differently. 

Among us are some people whose sexual drive is not well controlled, and who are in a position to get away with doing whatever they want.  None other than Donald J. Trump, on live TV, famously said  “And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.  Grab them by the p... " 

                                                                    

And this, my friends, is the core of the problems we are having with men making unwanted, harassing, sexual advances toward women.  They are unable to control their sexual drive and sometimes are in a position to get away with it, that is until now, when finally most men have come to realize that the women they violate are no longer afraid to speak up.

The woman in front of me in the Target check-out line is fortunate that it was well-controlled me standing behind her and not Donald Trump or any of the other miscreants in the headlines lately.

JL

Is a Puzzlement

I am puzzled.  Though they both have (sort of) retracted it, Secretary of State Tillerson called the President a moron and National Security Adviser Masterson called him an idiot.  We know what Senators Flake and Corker think of him and recognize that many, if not most, other Republicans are of like mind, and are only loyal to him because of his appeal to the gullible Republican base, necessary for their re-election. There is other evidence that Donald Trump, while a great pitchman and putter-together of deals, isn’t very bright.  Ask the ghost writer who penned “The Art of the Deal” for him. Listen to Trump when he speaks “off the cuff” or when he sends out his early morning “tweets.”  Last week, he chastised Roy Moore’s opponent as a liberal, soft on crime, weak on the military and not committed to the Second Amendment.  None of this was true, but it was what our nation’s pitchman thought it best to say at the moment, ignoring the fact that his words were lies.  Does anyone really believe he really understands world trade, how our economy works and the art of governance, despite the words he mouths? Listen to how repetitive his words often are, and how he depends on embellishing them with grand-sounding adjectives, attempting to compensate for their lack of substance.

Looking back six decades, I recall that teenagers who went off to military academies did so because they had problems in the regular public schools. Those who could afford it who left the public schools usually chose one of the many fine private “prep” schools around, but not the military academies. These “prep” schools (Phillips Exeter, Groton, Pingry, etc.) were available to him and the public high schools in Queens, where Trump lived, were excellent too, but instead, he was sent off to a military academy for his secondary education.  I wonder why.  Many military academy graduates go on to regular military careers and some even enter West Point or Annapolis. Not Donald. He never even served in the military, repeatedly getting medical deferments.  Trump went on to Fordham University and the University of Pennsylvania for his undergraduate work.  The business courses he took as his major at Pennsylvania were offered by their Wharton School, something in which he takes great pride, since it associates him with one of the nation’s finest Business schools.  But I doubt that he has a Wharton degree.

And here is the puzzle.  With this not particularly distinguished background, Trump entered the real estate development field, working with his millionaire father.  That wasn’t too difficult, and when he went out on his own, it was with a sizable amount of money provided by Fred Trump.   And he succeeded.

The real estate development business, especially in New York City (Fred Trump’s fortune was made in the outer boroughs; Donald chose to operate in Manhattan) is highly competitive and is populated by some of the shrewdest, most clever, and occasionally the most dishonest, businessmen in the world.  This is the arena Donald Trump entered with the stake his father had given him.  By all rights, judging by what we have seen from his performance as President, he should have been an immediate failure.  It would be like a little league team attempting to play against the World Series champs.  But he succeeded.  That is the puzzle.

The way I see it, Trump made sure to connect himself with advisers and politicians far smarter than he was, people like Roy Cohn and others who might operate on the fringes of legitimacy.  His venture into the casino business, in which underworld connections existed until only recently, should have failed sooner than it did.  Depending on the advice and assistance of others, despite repeated corporate bankruptcies, he managed to build a name for himself, which turned out to be the primary product he has spent the last twenty years selling.  And this has proven to be profitable, except that it left his name attached to some less than savory enterprises in terms of domestic and international financing as well as in regard to the people with whom he did business.

Usually, when one's success is hinged to others, there usually is a "quid pro quo" involved.  Trump provided a name for others to use, and got paid for it.  If he developed a project on his own, he shortly sold it, but left his name on it, of course, for a price.  But early in the game, how much was his name worth?  Perhaps his earliest advisers dealt with him on the strength of his father's wealth and reputation.  Certainly, I doubt if Trump, totally on his own, would have been a success.  But he never was, I suspect, totally on his own.  There were always "others," either advising him or using his name on their ventures.  This is part of the puzzle.

His latest sale was his lending his name to the Republican Party.  Not a Republican, nor even really understanding the difference between Republicans and Democrats, he became their Presidential candidate, dragging Republicans into office behind him all over the country.  Looking past his time in office, I am sure he figured it would be good for his family’s business.  After all, his children really don’t know very much about real estate development, and really, he never did either, but he can’t be surpassed as a pitchman, a snake oil salesman and someone to make the gullible believe.   And so long as there are gullible people out there, the will be Donald Trumps to take advantage of them.  Just wait and see the response to whatever pitches he makes once the forty-fifth President is out of office.  They will be huge!  Unbelievably, unimaginably HUUUUGE! Or at least, I suspect, he anticipates they will be.

But as for me, I am still puzzled about how this has happened in the United States of America.  Are you?

Jack Lippman

Knocking Florida

I enjoy living in Florida.  It is a wonderful place for retirement.  But one should not expect it to be like any of the more civilized states elsewhere it the county.   Because most of the majority of its intelligent residents are concentrated in a few South Florida counties (Dade, Monroe, Broward, Palm Beach) and along the I-4 corridor (Tampa and Orlando), they have little impact on what goes on in the State Legislataure, which is dominated by conservative country-bumpkins and dim-witted Republicans, making Florida a third-world kind of place on a level with Mississippi or Alabama.  

Case in point:  A few years back the legislature enacted a law saying that anyone could lodge a protest regarding textbooks used in Florida’s public schools.  If someone felt that a book was objectionable, their complaint was sent to the School District involved where a decision as to its propriety was made by the School Board.  Usually the complaints were about evolution, science, climate change, sexual innuendo, foul language or what might be taken to be pornographic.

But that wasn’t good enough for the current version of Florida’s country-bumpkin legislature!   The law was changed so that instead of the complaint being heard by School Boards, they went into mediation, where the elected Board has far less influence and the complainer, however "far-out," is given the status of legitimacy.  And mind you, one need not have a student in the public schools to lodge a complaint.  Anyone can do it.  And they are doing it.  

They're going after authors with whom they disagree in the same manner the Church, back in 1633, went after Galileo who believed the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa (along with many of the "real" scientists of his day).  Incidentally, and it is a sign of progress, only a small percentage of Floridians still believe the sun revolves around the earth because they see it come up every morning and go down every night.  Some are in the State Legislature.

The latest schoolbook complaint is about Ray Bradbury’s “Farenheit 451” which appeared on a high school reading list and which deals with the danger of the state getting involved with censorship of books.  My, what a coincidence.

But this is Florida, which looks good on the outside but is internally rotten.

JL

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Roy Moore, Our Annual Thanksgiving Short Story and a Vocabulary Addition

Roy Moore's Lapel

What has bothered me the most about the Roy Moore thing is not its sexual harassment aspects, as horrendous as they may be.  That has been going on for years so long as women, consciously or not, try to appeal to men in a manner intended to make them appear attractive or even desirable.  Biologically, they do so because of their inate, basic purpose … the continued propagation of the species, just as that same biologic sexual urge to ultimately reproduce motivates men to be attracted to them, and sometimes make unwelcome, even perverted, advances toward them.  Sadly, this will never end.   In the Western world, the cosmetic and apparel industries are based upon it.  Elsewhere, religious extremists attempt to deal with it by segregating and even masking women, hiding their physical attractiveness.  Their efforts also ultimately fail.  So enough about sexual harassment.  What bothers me about Roy Moore, then?

The man doesn’t understand nor respect the Constitution of the United States.  Its First Amendment specifically precludes Congress from making any laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.   Roy can profess any faith he wishes because our government does not ally itself with any particular religion.  Roy doesn’t understand this. That’s why, as a judge, he was repeated chastised for erecting monuments to the Ten Commandments at his court house.  Americans can respect the religious basis for some of the rights which our government protects, but that religious basis has no place in our laws.  Our Founding Fathers were mostly men of faith, but ultimately they kept that faith out of government, despite the efforts of some to include it in the country’s early years.

Roy doesn’t understand this.  Here is a picture of him.  Notice what is in his lapel.  It’s an American flag hanging from a somewhat larger cross.  

This is different from similar flag pins which show our friendship with other nations by including, for example, a Canadian, Israeli, or Polish flag along with the Stars and Stripes.  He may believe what his pin represents but let him keep it in his heart and house of worship; it does not belong along with the American flag.  Roy doesn’t get this.  Perhaps his devout faith is the reason.  That is the same explanation that the Taliban or ISIS give for their behavior.  And in Iran, where the nation’s chief Ayatollah is automatically the head of State, it works too.  But not here.  

  

Roy can grope and pinch women, regardless of age, all he wants and of course be exposed to legal consequences if what he does violates civil or criminal law, but let him keep his cross in his heart and in his house of worship.  He can even wear it on his lapel, but not entwining the American flag.  His jacket does have two lapels.

This posting would be incomplete if it did not mention that others in government are also playing fast and loose with the First Amendment's guarantees regarding religion. While less conspicuous in their confusion over the separation of church and state than Moore, the Attorney General and the Vice President, both "religious" men, bear watching.

Jack Lippman

Something to Believe In    (Our Annual Thanksgiving Story)

Jack Lippman

Wang looked up in amazement at the gigantic balloons which floated down the avenue above the parade.   

Some were in the shapes of elephants and clowns and characters he recognized from the TV shows he had been watching.  And the music!  There were blaring bands from all over the country interspersed among the floats.

 “But, Mom, what is this parade all about?  Who are we paying homage to?” the thirteen year old asked the middle-aged woman who held his hand tightly.  “I remember parades like this in China, but they were always in honor of the Party or the working man.  I know you have tried to explain Thanksgiving to me, but who are we thanking?  Where are the leaders we should be cheering, like we did in Tiananmen Square on May Day?

  

“Wang,” she answered, “We are giving thanks for having the things which make our life so happy.  You know, the food on our table, our clothes, the nice apartment we live in. Americans give thanks in many ways, some even thank God for what they have, but Wang, God personally won’t be part of the parade.”

 Max, on the boy’s other side, gave Louise a jaundiced look.

 “Oh,” the boy replied.  But it was clear that he was still confused.  “You mean I won’t be seeing Jesus in the parade?  He’s the one I usually thank for that kind of stuff. That’s what Reverend Lee taught us to do.”

  

“No, but if you want to be thankful to him, you can, Wang.”  

When Louise and Max had gotten Wang from the Mission Adoption Society less than a month before, they had been told that the Mission people who had taught him English also converted him to Christianity, once they had gotten him out of China where proselyting was illegal.  One of the things they had agreed to was to raise the boy as a Christian.  Neither Louise nor Max really practiced any religion.  They decorated a tree at Christmastime, but had never set foot in a church in their entire lives.  Max was born Jewish, but he lacked a religious background and was totally non-observant.  Louise came from a family of atheists.  So, when they paid the $25,000 adoption fee to the Mission Society, they didn’t object to agreeing to raise the boy as a Christian.  And the Mission people didn’t really care.  So far as Louise and Max were concerned, decorating a Christmas tree and hanging up a stocking Christmas Eve would suffice for his religious upbringing.  But Wang’s constant questioning was getting to be a bother.

The parade was drawing to a close, and the level of tension was increasing.   Wang felt it and didn’t know why, but suddenly, the final float of the parade came into view.  Mounted on a sleigh pulled by eight animated reindeer, and waving to all, was Santa Claus, resplendent in his white-trimmed bright red outfit, his snow-covered beard cascading down over his chest.  A loudspeaker boomed out his cries of “Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas to All!   Ho, Ho, Ho!”   

 

Wang’s eyes opened as wide as they could, as Santa rolled by their curbside position.  The cheers were deafening. 

“That’s Santa Claus.  I saw him on the TV yesterday.  Is he the one we thank for everything on Thanksgiving?”

This time Max answered him.  “No, Wang.  Santa may bring the gifts, but he isn’t the one who gets them for you in the first place.”

The boy looked puzzled.  “If I shouldn’t be thanking Jesus or Santa for the gifts, should I be thanking you, Mom and Pop?”

“Well, sort of,” Louise replied, but obviously, she wasn’t happy with that answer and the thirteen year old wasn’t either.

“Look,” he said.  “I know you two aren’t Christians, and until last year, I hadn’t even heard of Jesus.  So whether or not I believe in him really doesn’t matter. I can take him or leave him. But now you’re telling me that I shouldn’t be thanking Santa either.  This is sort of like what things were like in China.  Everyone used to thank Mao for everything.  Now, that was before my time, but then they told everybody to thank someone else, and finally, just thank the Communist Party, and that’s what I did in the orphanage, but that was okay since they ran the place.  But who do I thank here in America?  I certainly have a lot to be thankful for, what with you adopting me and all.  I just don’t feel it’s enough to thank just you two for all you’ve done for me.

My God, Louise thought.  Perhaps we should have waited for an infant, not this boy with his inquiring mind.  Maybe he’ll end up being a scientist or something, she mused. 

Later that night, in bed, she turned to Max.  “Max, do you believe in some force that controls the universe, some original cause or something?”

“Like God, you mean?  No … let’s leave it at some kind of power that started it all, and forget the divinity part of it.”

“You’re more of an atheist than my Dad was, Dear,” Louise replied.  “I’m beginning to think, if only for the boy, we have to believe in something.”

Max answered, “Well, Miss Atheist, you’re not going to get me involved with Jesus or back to the smelly old shuls I remember from Brooklyn.  Let’s find something nice and non-religious to credit everything to, and give that to the kid.”

“At least then,” Louise continued, “He’ll have someone … or something … to thank on Thanksgiving.”

And so it was that Louise and Max joined an introspective philosophical group, which met in a professor’s apartment on the Upper West Side on Tuesday evenings, in the hope of learning some answers to the questions the boy was raising.

Wang eventually started accompanying them to the meetings, and perhaps because of his Chinese background, quickly took to what was going on, and understood the discussions in perhaps greater depth than the adults there.   And he never again had to ask about whom to thank for the blessings which he received, but he did give great thought to whether the bounty he shared was indeed a blessing, or perhaps it should be looked at in another light.  He loved to talk about these things with Louise and Max for hours on end after the meetings.

Louise was very happy with the outcome.  Max turned to vodka.

Vocabulary Growth

One of this blog’s followers brought the following word, which I had never heard before, to my attention last week   Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it.  

“A kakistocracy (English pronunciation: /kækɪsˈtɑkɹəsi/) is a system of government which is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens. The word was coined as early as the 17th century. It was also used by English author Thomas Love Peacock in 1829, but gained significant usage in the 21st century.”

Feel free to use this word in writing letters to Congress or to the media.  Its users back in 17th century England were probably opposed to Oliver Cromwell who had overthrown the monarchy and had put Parliament in charge.  If you cannot manage to guess to whom 21st century users of the word might be referring, just CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THE RECENT ATLANTIC ARTICLE which brought this obsolete word back into current usage.  "Kakistocracy!" Go for it!

JL

             

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After Trump, A Bit of Poetry and a Mona Charen Column

The Next Administration (Hopefully)

After the present Republican administration is out of office, and both Houses of Congress are controlled by Democrats, it will be time to look back and survey the damage done to the country by its Trump-fueled adventure into right-wing conservatism.  That day will come, and the task before the nation will be a enormous one.

Ronald Reagan once quipped that the nine most terrifying words in our language were “I’m from the government and I am here to help.”  Ronald Reagan was wrong.  Dead wrong.  The help Americans receive from government programs such as Social Security, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, the various “safety net” programs as well as the benefits Americans derive from the consumer protection work done by agencies overseeing health care, drugs, medicines, the financial marketplace, banking, working conditions, our environment,  the nation’s infrastructure, etc. is irreplaceable.

Reagan didn’t know what he was talking about.  Those who believe that way today do not either. 

The silliness preached by Ayn Rand in her novels (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) also stressed individualism and looked at government involvement as a curse.  Closely allied to her thoughts was the libertarian movement which was about freedom from government.  A lot of its malarkey has infused the Republican Party, whose wheels were greased by the enormous resources of people like the Koch brothers.  They view the cost of government as an intrusion into their wealth and hence, oppose it.  The line between libertarianism (freedom from government) and anarchy (no government) is a fuzzy one.

Americans love to imagine themselves as rugged individuals, able to deal with problems all by themselves (particularly if they are allowed to bear arms, as the Second Amendment permits them to), in the celluloid images of Ronald Reagan, John Wayne and of course, the Marlboro cigarette man, strong and silent, and probably doomed to die of lung cancer.  But that’s not true about real Americans.  The true Americans are hardworking, able to save just a little, and looking to the Government to protect them from the vicissitudes of an economy they cannot themselves control.  Democrats care for these people.  Republicans, who once did, no longer do.

So once back in control, the Democrats must rebuild the government which Trump and his Rasputin-like muse, Steve Bannon, have “deconstructed.”  That will take at least a decade to fully accomplish.   And the way Democrats must start doing that is at the local level, clawing their way back into governorships (N.J. and Virginia are good starts) and more importantly, into control of state legislatures, where congressional district lines are determined.  This will be a tough job, but believe it or not, it will be made easier by the bankruptcy of the Republican Party, which will become evident to more and more Americans.  The party which nominated and stands behind an incompetent, unqualified President will ultimately be deserted by its followers. 

And what will the Republican response to ideas like these be?  I suppose they will blame the ills perpetrated by the Trump administration and the Republican Congress on Barack Obama and that supposed she-devil, Hillary Clinton.  After their Trumpian episode, Republicans do not, and never again will, deserve to govern.  And the people will recognize this and bury them along with the other debris of political history.

Jack Lippman

Where the Flying Fishes Play

One of my favorite poems is Rudyard Kipling’s “Mandalay.”  It succeeds as poetry and it isn’t bad as a song either.  Many, including Sinatra, have sung it under the title of “On the Road to Mandalay.”  But not all six verses, which follow.   That’s a task.  It was written in 1890 back when the sun never set on the British Empire.   Here it is, in full, with some commentary by me (in red.)  I am available to read this in public if any organization is crazy enough to want to sponsor me.

Mandalay

Rudyard Kipling

1.

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward (To view the sea from Moulmein, fourth largest city in Burma, now Myanmar, on must look westward, not eastward!) to the sea,

There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;

For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:

"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"

    Come you back to Mandalay,

    Where the old Flotilla lay:

    Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon (now known as Yangon) to Mandalay?

    On the road to Mandalay, (Mandalay was about 100 miles up the Irrawaddy River in Burma from Rangoon, which was on the sea, as was Moulmein.  The “road” referred to is not a paved road, but a term for the water off of a port, Mandalay in this case, where boats anchored.)

    Where the flyin'-fishes play,

    An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay! (China wasn’t across the Irrawaddy from Mandalay, but it was the general direction of what was known as Indo-China … Siam (Thailand), Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, etc.)

 2.

'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,

An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat -- jes' the same as Theebaw's (Apparently a local politician at that time.) Queen,

An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot, (a cigar?)

An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:

    Bloomin' idol made o'mud --

    Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd --

    Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she stud!

    On the road to Mandalay . . .

    Where the flyin'-fishes play,

    An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

3.

When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' slow,

She'd git 'er little banjo an' she'd sing "Kulla-lo-lo!" (Can’t translate that.)

With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' 'er cheek agin' my cheek

We useter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak.

    Elephints a-pilin' teak  (Kipling bothers to define “hathis” for his audience.)

    In the sludgy, squdgy creek,

    Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to speak!

    On the road to Mandalay . . .

    Where the flyin'-fishes play,

    An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

4.

But that's all shove be'ind me -- long ago an' fur away,

An' there ain't no 'busses runnin' from the Bank (Bank of England) to Mandalay;

An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:

"If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else."

    No! you won't 'eed nothin' else

    But them spicy garlic smells,

    An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an' the tinkly temple-bells;

    On the road to Mandalay . . .

    Where the flyin'-fishes play,

    An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

5.

I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,

An' the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;

Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,

An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?

    Beefy face an' grubby 'and --

    Law! wot do they understand?

    I've a neater, sweeter maiden (Even though she smokes cigars) in a cleaner, greener land!

    On the road to Mandalay . . .

    Where the flyin'-fishes play,

    An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

6.

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, (Bet he wouldn’t say that today.) where the best is like the worst,

Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst;

For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be --

Moulmein Pagoda as it appears today

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;

    On the road to Mandalay,

    Where the old Flotilla lay,

    With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay! (Malaria, dysentery, etc. killed more troops than an enemy did in those days.)

    On the road to Mandalay,

    Where the flyin'-fishes play,

    An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

JL

The Party of Louts and Dunces

I suspect that many of the followers of this blog also read "liberal" columnists in the newspapers, but pass over those coming from the right.  An exception is conservative columnist Mona Charen, with whom I usually disagree, but lately she has demonstrated a degree of intelligence unusual for a conservative these days.  You must read her recent syndicated column about the party of Louts and Dunces, and friends, she ain't talking about Democrats.  Check it out by CLICKING RIGHT HERE.  It ties in nicely with the lead piece on this posting where I hint at defections from the G.O.P. benefiting the Democrats.

JL

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HOW TO VIEW OLDER POSTINGS.                                                

To view older postings on this blog, just click on the appropriate date in the “Blog Archive” midway down the column off to the right, or scroll down until you see the “Older Posts” notation at the very bottom of this posting.  The “Search Box” in the right side of the posting also may be helpful in locating a posting topic for which you are looking.

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Jack Lippman