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Before I visited Pearl Harbor during a trip to Honolulu a year and a half ago most of my mental pictures of that place had been created by the World War II movies I'd seen, such as Tora! Tora! Tora!,
   And though some of the images in those books used to scare the bejeepers out of me,   ...I not only couldn't resist continuing to pull them off the shelf on a regular basis, but when I grew up and had a home and bookshelf of my own I asked my parents if I could take them,
It must have been all those years of looking at those fear-provoking pictures of World War II that caused me to wonder from time to time: did the leaders of Japan back then really believe their country would get away with bombing Pearl Harbor?
...though even if it had, who among them who could have imagined what the finale of that vengeance would be?   But today when I think of Pearl Harbor, I recall the images of that memorial as it looked when I saw it in the spring of 2015,
And I think of what a different day today will be at Pearl Harbor from that terrible day 75 years ago. 
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According to today's news President-Elect Donald Trump is taking the time between stops on his victory tour to continue his audition of candidates for the critical Cabinet position of Secretary of State. But it's becoming clearer by the day that the most crucial Cabinet position in the Trump administration, one that should supersede all other appointments and that needs to be filled toot sweet - or should I say toot tweet - is the position of Secretary of Tweets. True, the position hasn't yet been officially established,
...which, as a Cabinet position, would involve the most important responsibility in the Trump administration: translating and explaining to our nation and the world what the President really means in the incessant, oft times outre tweets which are his preferred form of official communication. Of course, Kellyanne Conway is the hands-down shoe-in for the position of Secretary of Tweets. Who else possesses this woman's potential for expanding a 140-character missive into a 140,000-word explication de texte? As Secretary of Tweets, Kellyanne would head the newly formed Tweets Department, which would have multiple divisions, one for handling the President's out-going tweets, and another equally important division with the mission of compacting all important communications to President Trump into 140-characer tweets which he will be able to absorb.
...who will be kept busy each day with such important tasks as tweeting the President his daily security briefing, which, as President-elect, Donald Trump has been neglecting to receive, obviously because nobody's thought to tweet it to him.
...with the creation of twembassies in all the countries with whom we'll establish twiplomatic relations, with appointments of twambassadors and twemmissaries.
What a great job-creation initiative this will be. The recount of the Presidential election ballots began on Thursday in Wisconsin and may or may not soon be underway in Michigan and Pennsylvania, depending on how the judges in those states rule on the objection to the recounts filed by Donald Trump and his backers. I for one hope the judges in those states rule in favor of the recounts. Because I for one want the recounts to happen. I need them to happen.
And it's also not because I'm suddenly possessed of some re-ignited hope that Hillary Clinton might end up winning the states in question, but then again one never knows. And that is, in truth, the reason why I feel like I, like Jill Stein and and probably a good many other of my fellow Americans, need to see the results of the recount: because if the recount doesn't happen, we'll be vexed by the thought of never really knowing. It was my daughter who best verbalized this in a conversation I had with her yesterday. The problem, said my daughter, is that we tend to look at life through a lens of logic. We expect things make sense. Two plus two equals four. For many of us the results of this election felt like two plus two inexplicably ended up equaling nine. And it's not a matter of people being unhappy because their candidate lost - I mean, of course we were unhappy, but that isn't what I'm talking about here; it's that, having one's sense of the election's logical outcome shaped by all the scientifically calculated pre-election polls, by all the polls that calculated Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania as solidly, unquestionably Blue territory right up to election day, by all the predictions that gave Hillary anywhere from a 70% to a 90% chance of winning, by all the logical never-fail prognostications that pointed to a Hillary win, it's been hard to wrap one's head around what actually came to pass. So while some woke up on November 9 blindsided by pure joy, some by pure grief, others of us, me included, were hit with a weird sense of disorientation. As if things that everybody knows don't happen,
....might suddenly be within the realm of possibility. But it wasn't a grassroots movement of disbelieving Hillary supporters who first called for the recount. It was several top computer scientists who surmised that something looked amiss in the results calculated by electronic machines in the three states where Trump's victory made the least sense. And though our government officials are generally now assuring us that it's practically impossible for the election machines to have been hacked or tampered with, was the opposite not proved true when our election was tampered with by Russian agents who hacked the computers of the Democratic National Committee?* And in fact was not the possibility of election machines being hacked one that was addressed during the election? Finally, there's the matter of the provisional and absentee ballots - which generally align with the votes tallied on election day - this time soaring wildly off election day results: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost 2.5 million votes. All of the above have left a mess of loose ends in my mind and in the minds of many that can only be tied off with a double-check of the ballots,
We'll see if the Michigan and Pennsylvania recounts happen or if Donald Trump and his supporters will succeed in having the recount effort blocked. They must be afraid of what the recounters might find. *On this subject, why was no action taken by our government over the attempted manipulation in our election by a foreign power? Why was this not considered on the level of an act of war? The answer is probably that the Republicans didn't protest because it suited their purpose and the Democrats mostly let it slide because the information leaked was an embarrassment to them.
References: http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-challenge-results/ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/us/vote-recounts-wisconsin-michigan-pennsylvania.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/us/trump-recounts-wisconsin-michigan-pennsylvania.html
The Vice President-Elect is currently renting a $6,000-a-month house in an upscale Chevy Chase neighborhood where he'll live until he moves into his official D.C. digs after he takes office. But rather than bringing over cookies, home-made meals or gift baskets, a number Pence's neighbors - including the ones who live directly across the street from him - are instead bringing him a message:   
 And the neighbors have promised that more flags are on the way. As everyone knows, before Mike Pence became Donald Trump's running mate his claim to fame was that he was among the most bigoted anti-LGBTQ governors in the country: He is rabidly against same-sex marriage. He wanted to send federal funds allocated for treatment of HIV and AIDS patients to gay-conversion therapy centers instead. He signed his "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" which made discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community legal in Indiana until he was forced by public outrage and the threat of economic sanctions to deep six the part of the law that allowed anti-LGBTQ discrimination. And now this man is going to be Vice President and I, like millions of other mothers of gay and transgender children, have to worry about the welfare of my child. But reading about Mike Pence's neighbors brought tears to my eyes. It lifted my heart with the hope that even if our country's civil rights laws will soon be at the mercy of bigots, racists, white supremists and xenophobes,
...there will be brave moral citizens with generous spirits who will rise up to be advocates for the vulnerable and stand up to those in power against injustice and inhumanity. To the good people in Mike Pence's neighborhood, I thank you from my heart.  References:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/01/politics/mike-pence-rainbow-flags/index.html http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/12/mike-pences-neighbors-put-up-pride-flags-when-he-moved-in.html |
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October 2026
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