Issues Take a Backseat, States' Rights, Pardons, Patriotism and Asbetos Weavers

A Letter and a Course for Democrats

Here’s a letter I wrote to the Palm Beach Post last week that I doubt they will print.  It commented from a historical viewpoint on what Times columnist Ross Douthat suggested in a recent column (highlighted below in my letter). I now see that Tom Friedman, in a column last week in the Times, is following the same route.  Read Friedman's thoughts by  CLICKING RIGHT HERE.   

                                                         Two Times columnists: Friedman and Douthat

The message is clear.  In 2018 and 2020, issues must take a backseat to instituting damage control against the harm being done to our country by the terrible individual currently occupying the White House.

My Letter to the Post:  Ross Douthat’s column on the course Democrats should follow in 2020, and initiate in this year’s mid-term elections, reminds me of the way the Whig Party defeated the Democrats in 1840, replacing incumbent President Martin Van Buren with General William Henry Harrison (who died shortly after being inaugurated). They just attacked Van Buren at rallies where they screamed out “Van, Van, is a Used-up Man” and which featured a politically inspired hit song of the day, “Tippecanoe (Harrison’s nickname) and Tyler Too.”   And that’s the way they responded when the Democrats vainly attempted to discuss the real issues of the day of which there were many, including a nationwide economic ‘panic’ caused by a collapse of credit in 1838 and the insidious spreading of slavery westward.  The 1840 Whig campaign was almost as shallow as today’s “Make America Great Again” mantra of Trump supporters, but both succeeded in putting their party’s candidate into the White House.  Douthat suggests the Democrats avoid issues now and simply focus on “Trumpian corruption, the sleazy, sordid, self-dealing side of his administration and the obvious reluctance of congressional Republicans to execute more than a cursory oversight.”  This is a sad commentary on American voters today, as well as those who elected Harrison back in 1840, but he is correct.

Sure, health care, the environment, the economy, trade, China, Russia and North Korea, the Middle East, women's rights, jobs, racism, etc. are all important, but they are far overshadowed by the need to put a leash on Trump until 2020 when, as Tom Friedman puts it, "our next presidential election gives us a chance to end this cancer."   I believe (please read the article - Click Right Here ) Friedman even goes so far as to say that "voting for the worst Democrat is preferable to voting for the best Republican."  Obviously that party's reluctance to denounce the President deserves such treatment.

As I have said on this blog innumerable times, Democratic candidates at all levels must challenge their Republican opponents with the question, "Do you support the President or not?"  If they answer in the affirmative, they will lose the votes of many independent voters and Republicans who cannot stomach the President's mishandling of his office.  If they answer in the negative, they will lose the votes of the Trump base.  Either way, the Democratic candidate will benefit.  Nationwide, along with a massive voter registration drive, this is the pathway to Democratic victories in 2018 and 2020.  Douthat and Friedman get it.  Do the Democrats?
Jack Lippman

From Monticello to Guantanamo

WhileThomas Jefferson believed that the nation should follow the leadership of their democratically elected leader, the winner of the majority of votes (in the Electoral College, that is), he also believed that there should be rights reserved to the minority, so that they might be protected from autocratic rule by the majority.  The Bill of Rights spells out some of these rights. There are others.  The problem is that they are individual rights and a member of the losing side in an election, a member of the losing minority, could achieve little by exercising these rights.  

Some however, believed that when these individual rights were combined into a collective mass reflecting a large group with common interests who wanted to exercise them against the democratically elected majority, they could be more effective.  And the logical instrument to use to combine these individual rights turned out to be the individual States.  This is where the idea of “States' Rights” comes in. 

After the Democratic hand-wringing and recriminations resulting from their defeat in 1840, such ideas, frequently voiced by Senator and former Vice President John C. Calhoun, became quite prevalent, and ultimately led to a belief that an individual State had the right to secede from the Union if they were dissatisfied with majority rule.   This resulted in the Civil War.  True, it ended slavery ... which would not have survived very much longer ... but it also resulted in 630,000 American deaths.

So when you look at the present situation, and wonder how the hallowed democratic process in this great country of ours actually voted to put an unqualified real estate wheeler-dealer in the White House, be careful what you wish for.  The remedy might be worse than the malady, as it was in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Okay … That’s enough History for now.

Convicted Arizona Sheriff Joe Arapaio committed crimes of which the President approved ... and was pardoned for that reason, leaving the impression that the Courts were wrong and he was right.

But Trump gets worse and worse with each passing day.  His use of the power to pardon for political reasons, bypassing the usual Department of Justice guidelines for pardons, is horrendous.  In his imbecilic mind, he is not compassionately pardoning guilty people CONVICTED of crimes by our legal system. Rather, he is pardoning those who were convicted by a court, judge and jury with which he DISAGREES! 

He is granting pardons based on his illusion that he is above laws and court actions with which he disagrees.   And most Republicans, including those who went to law school, sit by doing nothing.  

There are those who believe Trump will be impeached.  I don't think that will happen.  There are those who think that sooner or later, the Republicans, whose party he stole from under them, will wise up and desert him and that will force his resignation. That may happen because all Republicans are not gullible and stupid.  But I think he will leave as the result of the 2020 election which the Democrats will win.  Once he is out of office, however that may come about, he will have to pay a price for his dishonesty.  

He doesn't understand that getting away with what the law allows by any means, however unscrupulous and acceptable in the darker parts of the business world, is not the way it is in govenment.  While not totally unaware of the checks and balances naturally established between the Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial Branches of our Government by our Constitution, he is willing, like the unscrupulous businessman he was up until his election, to stretch them to the breaking point!  Look at all of the politicians (Illinois governors for example) who failed to understand the wrongness of such a position and ended up in jail.  That is possibly what is going to happen to ex-President Trump.  Also, it is not inconceivable that his future might end up similar to that of Bill Cosby.  Who knows how much Michael Cohen will reveal?

Rather than incarcerate him, I think the option of "exile" will be offered to him, and when I suggested, a few postings ago, that Guantanamo might be an ideal site for such an exile, I was joking.  I am no longer joking.  Unless he is "evil incarnate," Donald J. Trump is just too dumb to understand what he is doing. Tillerson, Masterson and occasionally even Kelly, who is still around, got it right ... and said so. ("Idiot, Moron," etc.). "Anything to Make a Sale" may work in real estate, but not in government.  That says a lot for New York Military Academy, Fordham University and the University of Pennsylvania where he supposedly was educated.  I am sure his father made generous donations to get him  through these otherwise creditable institutions.    
   

        
  

                                                                  Guantanamo Beach Scene



Were it not for such a possible boost to get him some educational credentials and a million bucks to get him started in business, Donald Trump probably would be sitting in a boiler room somewhere today, making blind phone calls to innocent old ladies threatening that the IRS was about to come knocking on their door unless they immediatey provided him with their credit card and social security numbers.  And he would be very, very good at it. 
JL

Patriotism and Old Glory

In a recent Washington Post column, E. J. Dionne quoted Samuel Johnson's famous description of patriotism as "the last refuge of a scoundrel."  Dionne qualified that by adding that "an honest love of country is a virtue, not a vice."  He went on to say (and this was but a small part of his Memorial Day column) that "Johnson was on to something because patriotism often is manipulated in the name of power, advantage and, in the case of the National Football League's wealthy overseers, money."

Good point. Why do all those Washinton people, in Congress and in the Administration, wear those American Flag pins on their jackets?  Why do some college and pro football teams have the American flag on their helmets?  Why do our local garbage trucks have an American flag emblazoned on them?  

In a marina, one can identify the home port of many of the yachts there by the flag they are flying.  Gee, that one is from the Bahamas, that one is from Jamaica, and so forth.  Why does a Congressman or a quarterback or a garbage truck have to show the flag?  Is the Congressman worried that he might be mistaken for a non-citizen?  Is the quarterback worried that he might be a ringer brought in from overseas (like many of the Russians on our pro hockey teams)?  And is our garbage company worried about their trucks being used for nefarious un-American purposes once they drop their loads?  

I have an American flag pin that I wear on my lapel when I am wearing a suit or sport jacket.  I started wearing it in 2016 and people ask me why I wear the flag "upside down."  I explain why and tell them that after 2020, hopefully, I won't be wearing it that way, if I continue to wear it at all.  I am an American and I do not have to wear a flag to attest to it.  Wearing one does not make me more patriotic.  In fact, those who find it necessary to wear one may be doing so because their real patriotism may not be all that it is cracked up to be.

A word to my critics, and I have a few:  True, there is an American flag displayed in the garden in front of my home.  It is, however, 

the Betsy Ross flag, which George Washington fought under, and I display it as being of historic interest, although any version of the American flag (and "Old Glory" has undergone many modifications over the years) is acceptable as our national emblem.  

(One of the residents of the community, mostly retirees, where I live once asked me why I have a Confederate flag in front of my house.  What can I say?  It is difficult to talk politics to these people.)
JL
 

In Homage to our "Prevaricator-in-Chief"

Unlikely to happen to Donald Trump in the near future because his trousers (and underwear as well) include an asbestos fibre carefully woven into their fabric by his Republican tailors in the Senate and the House.  

The day they no longer provide him with such garments ought to be the day he bursts into flame, for he lies every day.  But that day is not yet on the horizon.  The limit of the blind gullibility of the Republicans was reached by former Speaker Boehner who said "bye, bye" and by current Speaker Paul Ryan who is also leaving.  

Many more will follow, recognizing that whatever accomplishments Trump has enabled the G.O.P to chalk up are far, far, outweighed by his dishonesty, his disrespect for the rule of law and the damage he is doing to our country at home and abroad.  

But this will leave the Republican Party in the hands of the "asbestos weavers" on the far right. That is why Democratic Congressional victories in 2018 are so, so, important for the salvation of American democracy.
 JL

             

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Jack Lippman

Philip Roth's Passing, the Forty Percent, a History Lesson and a Foreign Policy Dream

Thoughts on the Passing of Author Philip Roth

Though I didn’t know Phil Roth personally, a connection existed between us in that we both were graduated from Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ, in 1950 and in that we had several common acquaintances.   Of course, along with many raised in the Weequahic 'Section' (See the map below.  Newark natives use that word, 'section' instead of the word “neighborhood” … it’s sort of a password to one’s Weequahic authenticity), we were very familiar with the setting of many of his novels and were often able to identify similarities with real people we may have known, Swede Mason appearing as Swede Levov in “American Pastoral” as an example.

My graduation was in June of 1950.  Phil’s was in February of that year.  
We ought to have been in the same graduation class (Phil was nine months younger than me), but I suppose somewhere along the line he was in a combined class  

 

composed of ultimate February and June graduates which moved on at its higher level. That occasionally occurred at Peshine Avenue School where I went and I assume the same thing happened at Phil’s elementary school, Chancellor Avenue.

We both entered Newark College of Rutgers University in September of 1950. (At the end of the year, Phil transferred to Bucknell University and I transferred to Rutgers main campus in New Brunswick.)  We both were in the same freshman English class in the building on Washington Place, facing the southern border of Washington Park. Our instructor was a Ms. Weir, as I recall, and I seem to remember her as being a graduate of Smith College.  I don’t remember any hints of Phil’s future accomplishments showing up in that class.

A few years later, after college and military service, I recall having a few beers in a bar on South Orange Avenue in Newark, not far from the campus of Seton Hall University.  Present were Jerry Lechter (whom I have entirely lost touch with) and a friend of his, Bob Heyman, who knew Phil quite well.  I have since become somewhat reacquainted with Bob who has retired to South Florida.  Anyway, “Goodbye, Columbus,” Phil’s first novella (along with a few short stories) was just being published.  I distinctly remember Heyman cautioning us not to reveal the real characters upon which those in “Goodbye, Columbus” were based, since it was supposed to be original fiction. (Of course, all fiction comes out of an author’s experience, so there’s nothing wrong in using real people as patterns for fictional characters.)  The best man at my wedding, now deceased, had identified the girl in “Goodbye, Columbus” (Brenda Patamkin) as a fictionalized version of someone named Mackie, whose last name I don’t recall.

Incidentally, at about that time, I went into a local bookstore in downtown Newark to purchase a copy of “Goodbye, Columbus.”  Apparently, there had been a book signing there a few weeks earlier and the first edition copy I bought carried Phil’s autograph in it.  A few years later I lent the book to someone who never returned it to me.

A few years later, I encountered Phil on a Pennsylvania Railroad (one of the predecessors to Amtrak) train heading to Trenton or Philadelphia.  I cannot recall why I was on the train, but Phil, with whom I had a brief conversation, was heading for Princeton, where he had something to do with the University.

As for Phil’s using local Weequahic names for characters in his book, I do believe there was a very minor character named Jack Lippman in one of his early novels, possibly the very boring “Letting Go.”  I once checked it out but see no need to attempt to do that again.

                                       Back in the old days, I-78 wasn't there, but Hawthorne Avenue was.

Most recently, over the past few years, I have reconnected with a friend from elementary and high school days who has also retired to South Florida, Howard Silver.  Howard was very close with Phil over the years, had maintained that closeness and has passed on information about him to me, particularly articles in the New Yorker which Phil urged be read.

That’s about it.   Phil led his life the way he wanted to and accomplished greatness.  He has left a tremendous heritage to all of us, particularly those who hail from the Weequahic Section of Newark. And I do believe it is a Jewish heritage, because Phil’s works were all about a quest for truth about the human condition, and there is something religious about such a mission.
Jack Lippman

That Forty Percent

There are letters to the Editor of many newspapers.  There are numerous opinions voiced on the internet.  Journalists write about it daily and are interviewed as part of “panels” on TV news shows.  And except for the acknowledged mouthpieces fronting

for the administration and the President on Fox News (and those who get their information exclusively from Fox), most agree about the President’s unfitness for office.

But people like to hear voices and read words reinforcing their thoughts and that is why approximately 40% of the American population support Donald Trump and all that he stands for.  That is the way they believe and his agreement with that reinforces their conviction.  I have referred to such people as being gullible and have lost at least one friend when I implied that in most cases, their gullibility is grounded in stupidity.

  

If one wants to believe that immigrants are taking away jobs from hard-working Americans, that leaving the level of health care in this country to be determined by the free market pressures exerted by insurance companies and health care providers, that the freedoms allowed by reducing regulations on manufacturing, banking, finance and most businesses results in greater benefits for consumers and working people, that providing an economic safety net for those who are unable to climb the ladder of economic success merely serves to keep them permanently downtrodden, they have found a dear friend in Donald J. Trump.

  

If they believe that a woman’s right to an abortion should be determined by those who, in a country whose Constitution forbids laws respecting an establishment of religion, must defer to those whose personal religions frown on abortion, and if they believe that packing a weapon is the best way to avoid gun violence, Trump is their man.  After all, as the song goes … if you are old enough to remember it:

Drinkin' beer in a cabaret, And was I havin’ fun,

Till one night she caught me right,

And now I’m on the run!

Lay that pistol down, babe,

Lay that pistol down,

Pistol packin’ Mama,

Won’t you lay that pistol down!

Yep.  That’s the way real Americans solve problems in the eyes of many of that 40%.  And I don’t want to take away from the gullible and the stupid the right to think this way.  It’s their right.  

  

But once they have sworn their allegiance, their loyalty, to the orange-coiffed one in regard to these traditional right-wing positions, they are highly susceptible to other positions he might take, positions which put the country in great danger. 

  

One is treating relationships with North Korea as if it were negotiations with a used car dealer about the price of a low-mileage four-year old car.  

Another is messing with the fundamental groundings of our legal system, developed over the years through our Constitution and its Anglo-Saxon heritage.  You don’t force law enforcement agencies to reveal how they work up a case in order to prepare a defense for a potential future trial. That’s when the evidence is supposed to come out, at a trial or in pre-trial negotiations, not forced out prematurely thereby weakening it.   That Trump’s lawyers ignore this is an indication of the weakness of any defense they may be thinking of using when Special Counsel Mueller’s sure-to-be-damning report comes out.

  

All of this is made possible by the acquiescence of the Republican Party, the biggest A-holes of all, willing to kiss anyone’s backside for the votes of that 40% of Americans.
JL

Numbskull Quiz and a Foreign Policy Solution Which Won’t Happen

Who of the following is the bigger numbskull when it comes to formulating foreign policy?

1     President Trump

2     Vice President Pence

3     National Security Advisor Bolton

4     Secretary of State Pompeo

The answer depends on what day, or what time of day, you are seeking an answer.  None of them would qualify to formulate a coherent foreign policy for any third world country … such as Mali, for example.  Yet we permit them to do it for us.   Similarly, if any of them wanted to get an academic position teaching foreign policy, they’d be hard pressed to find a real college or university which would hire them on their merits. (On their reputation, maybe, but on their merits, never.)

But here’s a concrete suggestion as to how to remedy this situation.  It is quite obvious that the Republican nitwits in the Executive and Legislative branches of our government are unwilling, incapable or unable (maybe all three) of doing anything to put a stop to foreign governments interfering with our election process through clever manipulation of social media and other aspects of the internet. 

Such actions on the part of Russia influenced the 2016 election, no matter what the Republican nitwits say, and they will also influence the results of the 2018 elections.  Special Counsel Mueller will have more to say about this I am sure.  I am certain that Russian coders and hackers and those acting for them are already working overtime for the 2018 (and 2020) elections on this.  Congressional and executive branch inaction proves that we have no way of stopping them, but how about turning our continuing vulnerability into an asset?

Our present-day allies throughout the world (the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Scandinavian countries, most of the rest of the European community, Australia, South Korea, Japan and most of Latin America to name a few) all know how much more realistic, effective and attainable our foreign policy would be if the Republicans were booted from control of both Houses of Congress later this year.

They can help accomplish this by interfering with our election process in the same manner that the Russians did in 2016 and are doing right now.  Our guard is down.  We are doing nothing to change things from what happened in 2016.  Our real allies and friends throughout the world should step up and use the internet and social media to influence our 2018 election.   It would be in their interest, and ultimately in the interest of the United States, if our friends stepped in and did this. 

It would counterbalance whatever the Russians are doing and honestly, aren’t  Emmanuel Macron, Theresa May and Angela Merkel more capable of formulating  foreign policy objectives more in line with what most Ameicans want than any of the nitwits presently in power in Washington? 

(You might note that I have excluded our friends in the Middle East from this list of countries we should be glad to see trying to influence our election.  Their self-interest, contrary to that of the countries mentioned above, is narrower.)

Of course, the Democratic Party should not be involved in encouraging this foreign interference in our elections as the Republicans are accused of doing, by some, in 2016.  That would be illegal.  Democrats know this.   But if it happens, without their being involved, it would be good for their party, and ultimately the nation.

JL

 
Things Really Do Not Change

A respected New York newspaper editorially posed this rhetorical question: “Who would have believed that in this land of liberty, all the powers of our national government would be usurped by a single man, possessing no one qualification for … trust, and who, like a maniac, or a driveller, should make it his daily pastime to tear our constitutional charter into rags and tatters, and trample the rights of the people under his feet.?”

 

Is this the New York Times writing about Donald Trump?  No way!  It’s the Whig New York American back in 1833 ranting about Andrew Jackson.

The Whigs, who opposed Jackson, cautioned voters that “If by your votes you concede the powers that are claimed, your president has become your monarch!”  But the disparate ideologies which kept the Whigs from being truly united against Jackson’s populist Presidency still couldn’t stop Jackson’s Vice President from succeeding him at the end of his term in 1836.  Hope we do better in 2018 and 2020 than the Whigs did in 1836 in their battle against what they considered a corrupt White House.

 

As an aside, were I around in those days, I would have voted for Jackson in 1832 and for his successor, Van Buren, in 1836.  They more or less would appeal to today’s Democrats.  I am not too sure what I would have done in 1828, when Jackson was first elected. That was the most important election in American history, the first one where a vastly increased number of voters (about 1,155,000) exerted a greater influence than the propertied classes which had dominated prior elections.  (In 1824, four years earlier, the total Presidential vote was less than a third of the 1828 number, about 350,000.)  And it has been fun ever since.

  

Nobody is perfect, and Andrew Jackson’s horrendous persecution of Native Americans cannot be ignored nor forgiven.  Further, his opposition to private banking has been mistakenly associated with anti-Semitism because some bankers were Jews.  Jackson would have opposed the private Bank of the United States, even if it were run by Martians because it enabled the moneyed and propertied classes to dominate the economy, to the detriment of working people and farmers, his populist base.

 

Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump can both be called populists. Yes, there is a similarity between Donald Trump’s core of support and the base upon which Andrew Jackson depended.  Jackson’s base, it appears to me, consisted of workers and small farmers for whom he worked hard by opposing high tariffs and the private Banking system.  Jackson wanted them to have a greater participation in the nation's economic growth.  Trump’s similar base, on the other hand, has been duped into thinking he loves them.  In reality, he serves the business interests and the wealthy part of the Republican Party, the present-day version of those Jackson opposed, private bankers and high tariff-loving domestic manufacturers.

(Historical Note:  If you slept through this in high school, be reminded that the Federalists, the party of the Founding Fathers, were fading into oblivion by the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century.  The opponents of the Federalists, mostly inspired by Thomas Jefferson, called themselves “Democratic Republicans,” but really were not particularly “democratic” and in fact, leaned toward a landowner-based conservatism. From Jackson onward, however, the Party became more democratic and farmer/worker-oriented and even dropped “Republican” from its name. And that is the way it has stayed.  Those "Democratic Republicans" who were more conservative, like Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, smoothed over their very significant differences and became the Whig opposition.  But this mishmash of leadership couldn’t hold their act together and ultimately, some of the political descendants of these Whig opponents of the Jackson Democrats formed what is today’s Republican Party, finally electing a President, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860.)

JL

Bonus Feature

If any of you have any doubts about the depths of rabble-rousing dishonesty to which the low-life individual presently occupying the White House has sunk, CLICK HERE to read Frank Cerabino's column from Sunday's Palm Beach Post.  It should resonate with Floridians as well as those who have lived on New York's Long Island. (If Clicking doesn't work for you, just copy and paste this on your browser line:

https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/cerabino-palm-beach-county-has-immigrant-story-fitting-for-president/tMsSabf3ZsklxOqsfLhMXP/ ) 

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Jack Lippman 

An "Extra" Posting (News Moves Very Fast, Folks)

The "End Game Continues"

How often on a TV show, or in a movie, when a crime is committed in the big city do the cops seek out their contacts in the communities involved, or even in the underworld, to help solve the crime?  Informants are usually available to help, sometimes out of the goodness of their hearts, and sometimes in the hope of, or in gratitude for, lenient treatment for their past  and possible future transgressions or those of close relatives.

And this extends to the national scene as well, where our intelligence and counter-intelligence operations depend upon the confidentiality of similar informants to protect our national security. 

The President of the United States, for reasons unknown but becoming increasingly and suspiciously incredulous, when made fearful by the proximity of such informants, is attempting to demand their identity in order to weaken the efforts of our law enforcement agencies to use them to protect our national security.  It is a case where those fearful of being accused of breaking the law, accuse the law enforcers themselves of breaking the law in doing their duty.  This is the last defense of the guilty.

Just as his gullible followers, he claims, would still be loyal to him if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, they are blind to The President’s disregard and disrespect for the intelligence and law enforcement communities, as personified by the Department of Justice and the FBI, and his profound ignorance of the roles of the institutions of our government.

Listening to our President and his supporters on this issue, we are reminded of a lesson attributed to many great teachers of the law, “When the law is on your side, hammer home the law.  When the facts are on your side, hammer home the facts.  When neither is on your side, hammer the table vigorously.”  The facts and the law will ultimately triumph and this entire disgraceful administration will be long remembered for serving to remind Americans of the continued need to fight for and to protect their government’s institutions.  Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

Appropriate to these thoughts are the concluding words of the second, not often sung, stanza of “America the Beautiful”: “America, America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm they soul with self-control, Thy liberty in law!”

Jack Lippman

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DID YOU KNOW THAT www.jackspotpourri.com IS ALSO AVAILABLE ON YOUR MOBILE DEVICES IN A MODIFIED, EASY-TO-READ, FORMAT?   

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.

HOW TO FORWARD POSTINGS.

To send this posting to a friend, or enemy for that matter, whom you think might be interested in it, just click on the envelope with the arrow on the "Comments" line directly below, enabling you to send them an Email providing a link directly to this posting.  You might also want to let me know their Email address so that they may be alerted to future postings.

Jack Lippman