All those loyal Republicans who have sustained themselves at the trough and now jumping ship!!
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This memo will be devoted to three topics:
a) The first will be to report on my visit to Montgomery to receive my father's posthumous award and inclusion in The Alabama Bar Association's Hall of Fame.
b) Though he was not my candidate, I wish to present a defense of Trump and express some personal thoughts about his prospective candidacy.
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=9283
c) Finally, I want to make some personal expressions on why color does not matter to me and never
has but crime does.
I just returned from a full week on the road driving from Savannah to Columbus to stay with dear friends overnight, then on to Montgomery for the award ceremony. Then off to Charlottesville, Va. for a family wedding of our nephew to a wonderful young lady he met some 5 years ago. They will be moving to Colorado to begin their life together.
From Virginia,drove to Athens for a committee meeting of the Ga. Museum of Art, on whose board I have served for more years than allowed and I can remember and finally home late Tuesday evening.
Dick
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a) The award ceremony was held in the Supreme Court Building which is a beautiful marble structure. The ceremony was followed by a lovely luncheon and one of the members of The Alabama Supreme Court and his wife, who knew my father, joined us. He brought with him a book about one of my father's causes and the organization he participated in and asked me to autograph same.
Attending were the current members of The Supreme Court, president of The State Bar Association, members of the Bar Committee that selected the five honorees and family and friends of same.
My father's plaque stated: "Respected lawyer; longtime trustee of the Birmingham Bar Aid Trust; outspoken opponent for equity and fairness under the law;courageously challenged the Klan and other segregationists in Birmingham during the Civil Rights Era; played a significant role in changing Birmingham's municipal government by forming the Citizens for Progress Committee that ousted Bull Connor and other segregationist city leaders.
In accepting the award I made the following comments:
I am Dick Berkowitz, son of Abe Berkowitz.
My father had five grandchildren and 8 great
grandchildren. His grandson, Daniel, who lives in Pittsburgh, is
here today as is his second granddaughter, Amy Trager, who lives in Louisville. Other family members are attending a family wedding in Virginia
where Daniel and I are heading after this event. Amy is returning home in time for Derby!
I want to thank other Montgomery family members and
Birmingham friends and former partners for coming and most particularly, Karl
Friedman, a very dear family friend and superb lawyer who proposed my father be
so honored and Chervis Isom, one of my father’s partners, who wrote the brief
supporting Karl’s proposal.
Most especially, I
want to thank The Alabama Bar Association for bestowing this honor on my father
and particularly Keith Norman and Diane Locke.
My father had many passions.
His love of family, love of the law, love of the members of his firm,
love of our country, love of Birmingham, his love of Israel and his wife’s
cooking.
Dad believed and fought for all citizens, regardless of color and/or
religion to receive equal justice.
Dad never drove a car, smoked incessantly and when people
asked what he did for exercise he replied “cough.” He had a marvelous self-deprecating sense of
humor and loved a good joke.
Finally, I want to extend my congratulations to my father’s
fellow honorees. Dad knew Frank Spain
and held him in the highest regard.
Thank you on behalf of my entire family.
This from Larry Brook editor of SJL:
We're planning an article about the induction in the next issue of Southern Jewish Life. Are there remarks or thoughts you have on the event and on your father's legacy?
I have the bio that the Bar sent out; I will also be adding info on the Sonneborn Institute (what I have!) and more about the 1962 petition drive, which we wrote about in our series "Not Just Black and White," about what was happening in Alabama's Jewish community during the civil rights battles. If you have any additional historical info about his work that should be known, by all means!
On a personal note, I did not have a chance to get to know him; later on I was a summer staffer at Berkowitz-Lefkovits in the late 1980s while in college.
Thanks!
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b) Trump was not my candidate for nominee of The Republican Party. That said I will vote for him over Hillary.
Trump is being confronted by a whole variety of political issues which, as a non politician, he is having to consider. I doubt he has actually formed any deep specific convictions about most of what is being thrown at him. He approaches life, it appears to me, as a practical businessman and responds to political issues accordingly.
I am not overly perturbed by the fact that he currently changes his views. I believe, as a political figure, he remains a work in progress and thus, is learning and listening to a variety of ideas and inputs and is being exposed to a vast array of issues to which he has not given much thought. I do believe he has some core beliefs when it comes to a strong military, law breaking immigration, the threat we face from radical Islamists, the need to alter our course when it comes to the oppressive and stifling impact of government and our sick habit of spending beyond our means, to name a few.
I do not believe him to be a racist nor do I believe he is a rock ribbed conservative. He is a political mixture, much as myself , ie. socially liberal, militarily a hawk and fiscally conservative (though in this regard Trump is more liberal.)
Trump is a pragmatist and fairly down to earth in terms of his ability to see and avoid his way through the political fog that engulfs D.C and the polluted air political machinations cause.
People seem so disheartened about our nation's direction they hunger for the kind of change they thought they would get when Obama was elected. Now they seem willing to accept Trump at his word without much examination. That can lead to more disappointment but I suspect Trump will deliver in time.
No matter what Trump says the press, media and host of Trump haters add their own spin and extend his meanings beyond what he actually says or intended. Trump does not hate Mexicans and/or Hispanics, does not consider all rapists etc. He simply believes, as I do, a nation has a right to protect its borders and expand its population through legal immigration etc.
Trump does not hate women, as Hillary would you believe, but he has made some unworthy comments that will hang like albatrosses around his neck and are of his own doing. I would expect more such blunders from him as the campaign moves forward. Trump reminds me of a northern version of Ted Turner (mouth of the south) in that regard.
I believe Trump stands a very good chance of winning the presidency and those who have benefited from the Republican Party and now are unwilling to support him will live to regret their "pissy fanny" ways and petulant behaviour. Trump, in some ways, probably benefits from lack of support from
establishment types." I find it hysterical when they complain about Trump not being conservative enough. What have they accomplished? Obama walked all over them and as they sat on their thumbs as their "politics as usual" lack of accomplishments helped create the monster they now decry.
Will a Trump presidency take us on a roller coaster? I suspect it will but as he settles into the office, should he win, I also believe he will focus on getting the nation's train back on the tracks and he will do so in a non-political manner based on common sense, a willingness to compromise in a pragmatic manner and the nation and business community will eventually respond.
In the final analysis, I recognize Trump is far from a model candidate but our two parties have given me two choices and, after over 30 years of being jerked around by both Clinton's, I no longer have the stomach for them. As for Hillary, she is is an accomplished liar, she has pledged to follow in Obama's footsteps and her achievements are figments of her supporter's imagination.
Hillary has three basic problems. Bernie keeps winning, The FBI will soon interview her and the voters find her unlikable and boring. (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)
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c) From my early days I was never hung up on color and yet, I was born in Birmingham, one of the most segregationist large cities in the South.
From the honor my father received, it is obvious I did not grow up in a typical southern household but I did grow up in one where respect for the law was total.
Consequently, when I see our borders breached by those who are unwilling to take their place in line, I see criminals.
I have nothing against color but am unalterably opposed to allowing criminals to be treated as entitled.
Many things separate America from other nations, even those that are democratic, but one of the most important is that we are a nation of laws. When we look the other way and allow the breaking of our laws it is only a matter of time before we will become a lawless nation.
When we fail to prosecute those who break our laws and actually bestow benefits upon them, as if they were lawful citizens, we are showing a contempt for the principles upon which our nation was founded and we will soon flounder!
When it comes to lawful citizens of color and they break laws, riot etc. and we fail to treat them as criminals and coddle them because of past mistreatment and bestow upon them favorable status such as we have with "affirmative action" legislation, I am equally opposed.
Theoretically, I know Justice is Blind when, in fact, she sees quite well and all too often conducts herself in a manner I find reprehensible. Human behaviour is far from perfect and yes, America is as guilty as any nation when it places favoritism ahead of laws and their enforcement.
The longer we elect presidents who conduct themselves in a manner professing egalitarianism but are
actually engaged in dividing us for political gain we will also find ourselves doomed. This is why I find Obama contemptible and why I have a basic distrust of Hillary Clinton. Their decks are stacked with race cards. Shame on them and shame on those who respect them.
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1)THE ELECTION DEPENDS ON ONE MAN – AND IT’S NOT TRUMP
A Yonkers, New York native, James Comey graduated from the College of William & Mary and the University of Chicago Law School. Following law school, Comey served as an assistant United States attorney for both the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of Virginia. Comey returned to New York to become the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. In 2003, he became the deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice (DOJ).On September 4, 2013, James B. Comey was sworn in as the seventh Director of the FBI.
Comey left DOJ in 2005 to serve as general counsel and senior vice president at defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Five years later, he joined Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based investment fund, as its general counsel.
He knows how the Department of Justice works.
If he decides that Hillary Clinton committed acts that endangered the security of the United States, he can submit this evidence to the Attorney General.
This places a very hot potato in Loretta Lynch's lap. She will drop it into President Obama's lap within 24 hours.
If Obama does nothing, Comey waits 30 days. Then he calls a press conference. Goodbye, Hillary. Hello . . . ?
This depends on when he does this.
If he does it before the Democrats' convention, Sanders will win the nomination. If he does it after the convention when Hillary was nominated, the Republican will win the election. That means Trump.
Comey knows how the political game is played. He knows that, as of today, he holds all the cards. He is not holding aces over eights. He is holding four aces. All he needs to do is say nothing for 30 days after he hands the file to Lynch -- no threats. Just silence.
If she swears him to secrecy, he can assure her that he will stay silent. Then he breaks his word. After all, it's government. I assume that he will play ball with Lynch. He sounds like an establishment man to me.
Wikipedia reports: "Comey is a registered Republican who donated to U.S. Senator John McCain's campaign in the 2008 presidential election and to Governor Mitt Romney's campaign in 2012 presidential election." He does not sound like a Trump supporter. But what if he thinks she is guilty? What if he faces a cover-up of silence?
He is a lawyer. If he thinks Obama is stiffing the FBI for political reasons, he may decide to do what bureaucrats do: defend his agency's turf.
What if he waits until December, after she is elected, but before she takes the oath of office? That would create the greatest foul-up in American political history.
She would have zero legitimacy from that time forward. She would reject all calls for her to testify. She would claim executive privilege.
Does the word "Watergate" ring a bell?
He has leverage on a scale that no bureaucrat ever had. Hoover had leverage, but not on this scale. The issue is public: the security of her emails. Comey risks nothing if he goes public after about a 30-day delay.
After the press conference, if Obama fires him, Hillary is toast. So is Obama's legacy. If Obama tells Lynch to stall until January 20, Clinton II's presidency is toast. Obama probably escapes intact.
If Comey deep-sixes the findings, the political dance goes on.
Will he deep-six it? I don't know. It depends on his sense of justice.
1a)John Bolton was one of George W. Bush’s top officials and a prominent Donald Trump holdout. However, in an interview with Radio America, the former U.N. ambassador says he’s backing Trump over Hillary Clinton in November because “if the country’s not safe, everything else is secondary.”
“I believe this is a binary choice,” Bolton said. “The next president will either be Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, unless Hillary gets indicted.Talk about a third-party candidate, I think, is badly misplaced. The idea of not voting at all is no better because, functionally, that’s a vote for Hillary. And it may have a really harmful effect on Senate and House races where Republicans are going to be fighting hard to maintain control.”
Bolton said the issue is of utmost importance because Hillary would give us at least another four years of Obama’s defeatist foreign policy.
“Hillary is extremely happy with the Obama foreign policy. It’s almost an urban legend now that somehow she would be tougher, more hawkish (than Obama). I really don’t see that,” Bolton said.
If you didn’t read it, that’s OK — almost nobody did. However, what she said in that ill-starred tome has massive implications for America’s foreign policy, and almost none of them are good.
“It’s very hard, if not impossible, to find any real differences between what Hillary Clinton writes and what the Obama policy was,” Bolton said. “The idea somehow that Hillary would be preferable because she would be an improvement on the Obama foreign policy is badly misguided.”
“The continuing deterioration of the Middle East and all across North Africa as well is going to accelerate, and I think we’re going to see Iran challenge us on a variety of points,” Bolton added.
“I think they’re going to press the outer limits of the Vienna deal on their nuclear weapons program. Recently, the head to the Revolutionary Guards Corps threatened yet again to close the Strait of Hormuz. I think threatening moves against friendly Arab states are all in the offing.”
Bolton, President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, had held out on endorsing anyone during the nomination fight, while saying he would support the Republican nominee. Reports say that he briefly considered running himself, although from his remarks he’s clearly given up that ghost.
He still has reservations about Trump, but says that they’re nowhere near as huge as the doubts he has about Hillary and her continuation of Obama’s foreign policy mistakes.
“It’s also important to demonstrate that Trump can fulfill the most important job of the presidency, which is keeping the country safe,” Bolton said.
“Obviously, the economy’s important. There’s a lot of important issues, but if the country’s not safe, everything else is secondary.”
Bolton is right. America can’t afford another four years of Obama’s foreign policy blunders.
1b) I have stated Bret is a friend, has spoken for me in Savannah, on occasion reads my memos and we agree on most everything he writes in his op eds but when it comes to his fear of and the stance he takes on Trump we part ways.
That said, I still wanted to post the other side from an insider.
Hillary: The Conservative Hope
The right can survive liberal presidents. Trump will kill its best ideas for a generation.
The best hope for what’s left of a serious conservative movement in America is the election in November of a Democratic president, held in check by a Republican Congress. Conservatives can survive liberal administrations, especially those whose predictable failures lead to healthy restorations—think Carter, then Reagan. What isn’t survivable is a Republican president who is part Know Nothing, part Smoot-Hawley and part John Birch. The stain of a Trump administration would cripple the conservative cause for a generation.
This is the reality that wavering Republicans need to understand before casting their lot with a presumptive nominee they abhor only slightly less than his likely opponent. If the next presidency is going to be a disaster, why should the GOP want to own it?
In the 1990s, when another Clinton was president, conservatives became fond of the phrase “character counts.” This was a way of scoring points against Bill Clinton for his sexual predations and rhetorical misdirections, as well as a statement that Americans expected honor and dignity in the Oval Office. I’ll never forget the family friend, circa 1998, who wondered how she was supposed to explain the meaning of a euphemism for oral sex to her then 10-year-old daughter.
Conservatives still play the character card against Hillary Clinton, citing her disdain for other people’s rules, her Marie Antoinette airs and her potential law breaking. It’s a fair card to play, if only the presumptive Republican nominee weren’t himself a serial fabulist, an incorrigible self-mythologizer, a brash vulgarian, and, when it comes to his tax returns, a determined obfuscator. Endorsing Mr. Trump means permanently laying to rest any claim conservatives might ever again make on the character issue.
Conservatives are also supposed to believe that it’s folly to put hope before experience; that leopards never change their spots. So what’s with the magical thinking that, nomination in hand, Mr. Trump will suddenly pivot to magnanimity and statesmanship? Where’s the evidence that, as president, Mr. Trump will endorse conservative ideas on tax, trade, regulation, welfare, social, judicial or foreign policy, much less personal comportment?
On Monday, former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who savaged Mr. Trump during the campaign, published an op-ed in these pages on why he plans to cast his vote for the real-estate developer as “the second-worst thing we could do this November.” Too much is at stake, Mr. Jindal said, on everything from curbing the regulatory excesses of the Obama administration to appointing a conservative judge to the Supreme Court, to risk another Democratic administration.
Mr. Jindal holds out the hope that Mr. Trump, who admires the Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo decision on eminent domain (the one in which Susette Kelo’s little pink house was seized by the city of New London for the intended benefit of private developers), might yet appoint strict constructionists to the bench. Mr. Jindal also seems to think that a man whose preferred style of argument is the threatened lawsuit and the Twittertantrum, can be trusted with the vast investigative apparatus of the federal government.
The deeper mistake that Mr. Jindal and other lukewarm Trump supporters make is to assume that policy counts for more than ideas—that is, that the policy disasters he anticipates from a Clinton administration will be indelible, while Trumpism poses no real threat to the conservative ideas he has spent a political career championing. This belief stems from a failure to take Trumpism seriously, or to realize just how fragile modern conservatism is as a vital political movement.
But Trumpism isn’t just a triumph of marketing or the excrescence of a personality cult. It is a regression to the conservatism of blood and soil, of ethnic polarization and bullying nationalism. Modern conservatives sought to bury this rubbish with a politics that strikes a balance between respect for tradition and faith in the dynamic and culture-shifting possibilities of open markets. When that balance collapses—under a Republican president, no less—it may never again be restored, at least in our lifetimes.
For liberals, all this may seem like so much manna from heaven. Mr. Trump’s nomination not only gives his Democratic opponent the best possible shot at winning the election (with big down-ballot gains, too), but of permanently discrediting the conservative movement as a serious ideological challenger. They should be careful what they wish for. Mr. Trump could yet win, or one of his epigones might in four or eight years. This will lead to its own left-wing counter-reactions, putting America on the road to Weimar.
For conservatives, a Democratic victory in November means the loss of another election, with all the policy reversals that entails. That may be dispiriting, but elections will come again. A Trump presidency means losing the Republican Party. Conservatives need to accept that most conservative of wisdoms—sometimes, losing is winning, especially when it offers an education in the importance of political hygiene.
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