Pots and Kettles

I took some time to listen to the audio version of the whistleblower complaint about President Trump’s phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, which is currently fueling the rapidly advancing impeachment inquiry into the alleged pressuring of Zelensky for help to advance Mr. Trump’s re-election prospects.

The complaint is no crazy cry in the wilderness. It is a carefully structured presentation of the information gathered by this individual, who said that while he didn’t hear the phone call himself, the accounts given by those who did were consistent. There was particular concern over the use of a separate server designed for highly classified material in an apparent effort to hide what the President was doing, and that it has been used on similar occasions.

To me, it seems crystal clear that President Trump was seeking foreign dirt on the man he believes will be his Democratic opponent in the upcoming election, former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden’s son Hunter was named to the board of a gas company in Ukraine whose founder was said to be a less-than-savory oligarch. Joe Biden, meanwhile,  actively sought the removal of a controversial Ukranian prosecutor. Defenders of the Bidens say they did nothing illegal there, though one wonders how the younger Biden got his job with limited knowledge of either Ukraine or the local gas business. A recent piece in The Atlantic on all this reminds us that it’s not new, or against the law, for those with a famous last name or a high connection to trade on that relationship. But there may be something of an optics problem now for the Bidens here.

That said, Joe Biden is not yet a presidential nominee. Will the party choose someone else with less baggage, or did President Trump simply make Biden a victim?

As for impeachment, what’s going on reminds me of the old days, when I had a refrigerator that didn’t automatically defrost. I had to heat up a pot of boiling water and put it in the freezer to thaw out the ice. I kept opening the freeze door to see if it was working, but that only slowed things down, and it took a long time for progress to be visible. After the first crack appeared, though, the ice melted quickly.

Angry Democrats would do well to be patient, taking their cue from that careful and methodical whistleblower in crafting an effective impeachment case. They may only have one chance before the election to get it right.

Beyond Sharpie

Hurricane Dorian has come and gone, but has also left lessons behind. The most obvious one is about climate change, suggesting that it is to blame for the increasing potency of such storms. But there’s another one. Computers are great forecasting tools, but just because we see a path on a map doesn’t mean a storm is going to follow it.

The President soooo wanted that Sharpie-assisted cone on his  map to include Alabama so that he could be right. But as we look now at the path Dorian actually followed, being right was not easy.

Dorian started in the eastern Caribbean as a tropical storm and originally wasn’t supposed to amount to much, as I recall. Then it grew and threatened Puerto Rico, but struck only a glancing blow, compared to what was to come. It continued to grow and seemed to be heading straight for a major impact on Florida, on the way inflicting Biblical-level damage on two Bahamian islands. There, it put on the brakes, changed direction enough to curve away from Florida, then headed up the Southeast coast, following its curvature with unusual precision, close enough to mess up one coastal city after another, only making landfall on the extreme eastern end of North Carolina, But it wasn’t done yet as it raced northeast. Even Atlantic Canada, was hit with Category 2 winds.

If we like, we can fault the weather scientists for not doing a better job with all their spaghetti-line projections. But those same scientists are the first to remind us that while forecasting has made tremendous strides over the years through satellite and computer technology, it’s far from perfect. They do get the path right most of the time, but then there’s a Dorian. Maybe it’s God trying to remind us who’s in charge.

Many years ago I was an intern at a major-market television station that included a weather segment in its evening news. No fancy graphics then: the TV weatherman drew lines on a regional map with a black Magic Marker (Sharpies had not been invented yet). During the 6 o’clock news, the weather guy would draw a big circle around our city, saying “Let’s get oriented,” then did his forecast.

After the show, he went out  to dinner, a meal at which he was known to consume more than a few adult beverages. But he still had an 11 p.m. show to do. When the time came, he again said, “Let’s get oriented,” and drew on the map. By then, it was not always a circle, and not always around our city. We were lucky if he was even in the ballpark. So let’s cut our current weather folks a little slack. We have indeed come a long way, baby.

It's Stability, Stupid

I’m sorry I never took up day-trading on the stock market. It looks like Vegas to me, or playing the horses, and I don’t have the emotional constitution for it. Even so, with all the twists and turns of this administration’s financial and trade policies, often communicated by tweet, the market has spent long periods in wild swings up and down, and it’s via these changes that sharp traders can really make money.

For most investors, though, it makes for a queasy stomach. They have enjoyed a decade of watching their 401(k)s and similar instruments grow, not without periodic setbacks, but the long-term trend has been upward. These days, however, the R word (for recession) is heard more and more frequently, and the media are trumpeting the indicators that point to it.

Clearly, bull markets don’t last forever. They really aren’t supposed to. The economy simply can’t grow at the same rate all the time. Big windfalls, a sudden killing on the market, or even the “sugar high” of tax breaks, aren’t enough to produce a real feeling of prosperity. That comes from a prolonged period of trust in the ability to weather the storms - the EGBOK thing, as the L.A. radio hosts used to say: Everything’s Gonna Be OK. That’s an elusive state of mind right now.

The President may enjoy keeping the international competition guessing. It may have worked in business for him as a negotiation tactic – though not always, apparently. But when it comes to the current trade wars and constant switching of direction, he’s playing with the house’s money - meaning ours. He seems incapable of thinking in any terms other than winning and losing.

The modern economy has enough pressures as it is. Climate change is one. Automation is another. Those are just two that are visible. The sea is rocky enough, we don’t need to be rocking the boat too.

Wars, military, economic and otherwise, are not usually the end of the story. More often, they end at negotiating tables, with the opposing parities forced by circumstances to make compromises. We eventually find we all can get along, because…well, we just have to.