Politix Update: Foes Try To Get A Grip On Donald Trump's Greased Pole

If you look at the whole Republican Party, from libertarians to evangelicals to the Tea Party, you have a group of people who’ve been lied to for 35 years. Republican [presidential candidates] have said, "Elect us and we’ll do these things." Well, they haven't. And that frustration is manifesting itself in Trump. ~ MICHAEL STEELE

Now that the republic has survived the first presidential debate, it's time to move on and focus on the big question: Will the Republican Party survive Donald Trump?

After all, it has been three weeks since the celebrity gadzillionaire slandered John McCain, and he has not only withstood the predicted blowback, but has actually gained support in most polls.  This is because, to beat a by-now very dead horse, the blowback came from blowhards masquerading as Republican presidential candidates, and Trump's supporters have a lot bigger axes to grind than caring about the dissing of an old war hero.

Meanwhile, Trump's performance in the Fox News debacle . . . er, debate was just that -- a blustering performance that frustrated competitors trying to get a grip on the greased pole that he sits so preeningly atop while blithely vowing to not rule out a third-party run that almost certainly would doom the Republican nominee.  And although a primary debate record 24 million people watched the slugfest, this ratings bonanza was cancelled out for hankie-wringing Republican bigs by the reality that the Grand Old Party had again been grifted, cast in a far less than flattering light because of their very own Frankenstein, who yet again confounded the punditocracy by sweeping the post-debate instapolls. Today -- four days after the debate -- All Things Trump is still hogging the story line with other candidates not getting a peep in  edgewise. 

In a post-debate thumbsucker over the weekend, Reuters rushed to declare that Trump's campaign seemed poised to unravel as his rivals piled on.  Never mind that he continues to maintain a commanding lead in the latest polls.  "Enough already with Mr. Trump," wah-wahed Lindsay Graham, who is barely registering in the polls.  "As a party, we are better to risk losing without Donald Trump than trying to win with him."

In fact, at this point the media and punditocracy are utterly befuddled in trying to explain why Trump has not yet fallen from that pole and onto his face.

"[C]ount me as surprised that there has been little evidence of decline in his support -- and even more surprised if he has managed to pick up additional support," writes Nate Cohn, the New York Times polling guru and chief tea-leaf reader. "The likeliest scenario is still that party and media scrutiny erodes his position. But the fact remains that he has faced this scrutiny . . . with little effect, at least raising the possibility that he will stick around for longer than I would have guessed."

To beat another dead horse, and we may be further stinking up the joint with a bunch of them before long, Trump's remarks about McCain and subsequent non-apologies laid bare an uncomfortable truth that Cohn and his cohorts are having an itty-bitty problem understanding: The Republican Party's xenophobic and racist white male base is not policy oriented nor ideologically inclined, and is a lot more concerned about illegal immigrants, income disparity, the power of the elites, and the demographic tide running out on them than disparaging veterans, let alone hewing to GOP orthodoxy.  Which I have now noted, oh, about a half dozen times.

Cohn, trying to clamber onto a horse still showing signs of life, imagines "three basic ways" that Trump could fall on his face:

* Implosion, or being irreparably damaged by having done something really bad.

* Relentless criticism from those party elites and that ever vigilant news media.

* Unfavorables, or having too few voters who view him favorably to get the nomination.

It is hard to imagine something worse than all the really bad things that Trump has said and done over the years, not the least of which is his racially charged past and misogynistic bona fides, so that's a non-starter, while relentless criticism slides off that greased pole like so much water off a duck's back.  But the unfavorables will eventually shimmy up that pole and bite Trump on the keister, as Ronald Reagan was fond of terming the backside, if nothing else does first.  The only question is not whether that will happen, but when. 

(Whenever the eventual does happen, there has been one refreshing thing about Trump: Unlike the toadies in the race whose views change to suit the political season, he makes no apologies about refusing to worship at the altar of the ideological orthodoxy that is crushing the Republican Party. When asked during the debate about his past support for a Canadian-style single-payer health system, Trump didn’t back down: "As far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland. It could have worked in a different age, which is the age you’re talking about here.")

The big reason for that eventuality -- the lead-pipe cinch certainty that Trump will not be allowed to get the nomination even if it somehow were to be within his reach as the party convention neared -- is that the Republican field will narrow from its present 17 candidate overload (where's the fire marshal when you need him?) and then narrow some more.   And then even more.  As it does so, it will become increasingly difficult for Trump to continue running a mouth-driven campaign, which was so glaringly obvious during the Fox debate, with waffling and on-the-fly improvisation substituting for substance.

"I don’t think they like me very much," Trump pouted with seemingly wounded pride every time the debate moderators or peanut gallery signaled their disapproval of one of his responses.

Looking at it another way, how will Trump be able to remain politically incorrect -- more bombastic reality TV star than committed candidate -- if he's in the race for the long haul?  Or how about looking at it this way? The debate was not the beginning of the end for Trump, it was the end of the beginning. 

NEVER WRESTLE WITH A PIG

By almost any measure, Jeb Bush didn't do so hot in the Fox debate.  He is still struggling to come up with a coherent answer about the Iraq war, and he was outperformed by his top competitors not named Donald Trump, notably fellow Floridian Marco Rubio.  It's damning with faint praise to suggest that while Bush may not have won the debate, at least he didn't lose it.

But Jeb! did get one thing right: He wisely ignored Trump, and when Trump didn't ignore him, he laughed him off.  And while Bush threw no punches in Trump's direction, the candidates who did failed to land any.

WE'D SHO WOULD 'PRECIATE YER VOTE, LITTLE LADY

While Jeb Bush blew a pretty good opportunity to show that he was the grown-up in the room (dark horse John Kasich won that contest hands down), the debate was a reminder of how freaking reactionary the Republican Party has become -- establishment conservatives duking it out with Tea Party conservatives.  It was a debate with moderators but not moderation, Kasich excepted.  And if you're a voter of the knuckle-dragging persuasion, what's not to like? 

Then there's Donald Trump.  He's a fundamentally unserious candidate, but when taken as a whole, virtually all of the candidates are unserious, as well, it's just that they try to clothe their right-of-center flapdoodle in lofty Sunday Go To Meeting prose.  A damned good example is the party's view that women are second-class citizens.

Trump is a sexist by any definition, something that Fox anchor Megyn Kelly helpfully reminded viewers of in asking Trump whether he had the temperament to be president because of his offensive remarks about women, citing his descriptions of them as "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals."  Trump, not missing an opportunity to pile on, not only refused to apologize, but later asserted Kelly was aggressive in questioning him because she was menstruating.

But can it honestly be said that the other candidates are any better when it comes to women even if their language is less over the top?  No candidate, after all, has even hinted at opposing the party line on women: Limit reproductive choices, restrict access to health care, limit exceptions for rape victims seeking abortions, and oppose pay equity, family leave and helping with daycare costs.

Women came up in three contexts in the course of the debate: Defunding Planned Parenthood, which meets the health needs of three million women, making the federal government they otherwise want off our backs to force impregnated rape and incest victims to give birth, and making the federal government they otherwise want off our to let a high-risk woman die rather than permit her to have an abortion.

But we sho would 'preciate yer vote, little lady.

POT CALLS KETTLE BLACK

Trump's suggestion that Megyn Kelly's aggressive questioning was because of That Time of the Month got him disinvited as keynote speaker at RedState Gathering on Saturday by Erick Erickson, the unreconstructed right-wing troglodyte who organized the event.

Erickson, who is an influential radio host, commentator and champion for conservatives who oppose the Republican national leadership, asserted that Trump's remarks were "a bridge too far," which is a hoot considering that he has long said inflammatory things about women, including this response to the controversy over a Super Bowl ad: "That's what the feminazis were enraged over? Seriously?!? Wow. That's what being too ugly to get a date does to your brain." 

Or this: "Good thing I didn't suggest the feminists . . . you know . . . shave. They'd be at my house trying a post-birth abortion on me."

Sounds an awful lot like Trump over the years, no?

Erickson is a big reason the GOP has tacked deeply into right-wing extremism, but he realizes that Trump's bloviations will be a huge turnoff to those all-important woman swing voters, who baring a miracle (calling all Evangelicals!) will not be voting Republican.

"We will not gain the White House,’" Erickson fumed, "if we’re screaming at people, calling them whores and queer and the N-word." 

Never one to turn the other cheek and ever insecure despite his tough-guy blustering, Trump responded that Erickson was a "weak and pathetic leader" and his decision was "another example of weakness through being politically correct. . . . Not only is Erick a total loser, he has a history of supporting establishment losers in failed campaigns so it is an honor to be uninvited from his event." 

GRAHAM CRACKERS -- PART I

Silly of me to think that Lindsay Graham is made of better stuff, because he's not.

Speaking at a New Hampshire candidate forum, the South Carolina senator signaled his desperation (he's in a dead heat for last with George Pataki in many polls) by attacking Hillary Clinton not for her stand on one issue or another, but for her husband's past indiscretions.

"I am fluent in Clinton-speak," Graham said, then added: "When Bill says he didn't have sex with that woman, he did. When she tells us 'Trust me, you have all the emails you need,' we haven't even scratched the surface."

GRAHAM CRACKERS -- PART II

Meanwhile, Graham continues to shamelessly peddle the fiction in a campaign video and elsewhere that he served in Iraq and Afghanistan as an Air Force Reserve officer.

The Washington Post sets the record straight in revealing that Graham did next to squat in the Reserve, yet rose to the rank of colonel, entitling him to a monthly $2,773 pension, while those war zone trips were specially arranged stints that lasted a few days and coincided with trips he made as part of congressional delegations.

TRUMP IS THE VERY PINEAPPLE OF GREATNESS

Why are we not surprised that Carly Fiorina's fans have the best grammar, spelling and punctuation among the Republican presidential candidates and Donald Trump's have the worst?

That's based on an analysis from Grammarly, an automated proofreading company, which evaluated the supporters of the GOP candidates.  Fiorina's fans had 6.3 errors per hundred words in their Facebook comments, while Trump's backers had 12.6 errors per 100 words.  Only comments of 15 words or more were analyzed, and Grammarly ignored common slang words and stylistic variations (for instance, the use of serial commas, using numerals instead of spelling out numbers, using contractions). In total, roughly 9,000 words were evaluated for each candidate.

In ascending order of misteaks . . . er, mistakes per 100 words, Ben Carson's supporters were second with 6.6, Lindsay Graham and George Pataki with 7.2 each, Ted Cruz 7.7, John Kasich 7.7, Jeb Bush 7.9, Mike Huckabee 8.0, Bobby Jindal 8.2, Chris Christie 8.3, Rand Paul 8.4, Marco Rubio 8.8, Scott Walker 10.6, Ric Santorum 11.5, and Rick Perry second-to-last with 12.5.

Politix Update is an irregular compendium written by veteran journalist Shaun Mullen, for whom the 2016 presidential campaign is his (gasp!) 12th since 1968.  Click here  for an index of previous Politix Updates.

IMAGE FROM DONKEYHOTEY/FLICKR.  USED WITH PERMISSION.

Patricia Crone (1945-2015)

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PHOTOGRAPH BY SABINE SCMIDKE/INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY

An Alien Spacecraft Or What? Decayed Relics Of The Communist Regime

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PHOTOGRAPH © DAVID D. RUEDA

Politix Update: Empty Rhetoric About An American Middle Class In Crisis

If there is a single issue on which candidates for president agree regardless of party affiliation or political persuasion, it is that America's middle class is in deep doo-doo and with a wave of their magic wand they will ride to the rescue.  But while that mantra has great appeal, it obscures a dirty secret: No one is going to be able to help the middle class in ways that count.

There are two big problems here: Defining what the middle class is, and no matter how you define what it is, how to help the middle class where it most matters, which is to say pump more money into their paychecks and piggy banks.

Americans tend to define the middle class by who they are, which has given the social stratum an elasticity that distorts it well beyond the traditional definition of a family with two and a half children, a white picket fence around a modest suburban ranch house and an income of about 40 grand.  

And so you have the specter of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton pledging during the 2008 presidential primary campaign not to raise the taxes of any middle class family with an annual household income of $250,000 or less.  CNNMoney pegs the income range at between $46,960 and $140,900, while families making a mere $30,000 a year may consider themselves to be middle class. 

But that's only where the trouble begins, because neither Republican nor Democratic presidential candidates are proffering proposals that would result in the kind income hikes that would make a difference between sending a child to a community college or full-blown university, or keeping the family's clunker of a minivan on the road for yet another year or trading up to a new ride that won't break down on the way to Parent-Teacher Night.

* * * * *

Republicans trot out the Economic Big Three with numbing regularity: They’re going to fix the economy, lower taxes and create jobs -- all at the same time, of course.  (This means that the Rapture can't be far behind, right?) Their proposals as a group would reward the wealthy and the middle class would benefit because the tax breaks bestowed on the wealthy would magically percolate through the economy to the white picket fence crowd.  This is what is known as "trickle-down" economics, a frayed conservative security blanket that Republicans have been sucking on for years that is so widely discredited by most economists that House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (remember him?) rebadged it as "income mobility" at the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement (remember that?). 

Republicans still worship the legacy of Ronald Reagan, and cast themselves as the Great Conservative God's heirs, and his name is bound to be intoned with reverence in the first presidential debate tonight.  But Reaganism -- with its core principles of small government and lower taxes -- is beyond obsolete.  Come to think of it, the Republicans really haven't had a coherent economic message since before the Great Crash of 1929 when it was All Prosperity All the Time, just as they haven't had a coherent foreign-policy message since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Anyhow, Reaganism didn't work in the 1980s, it's sure gonna work now, and it's sure not gonna work for Millennials who are shaping up to be less prosperous than their forebears because of wage stagnation and the crushing debt of student loans.  Meanwhile, Baby Boomers like myself let the federal debt spiral out of control while increasing spending on Social Security and Medicare, all of which threaten Millennials' own promised retirement benefits.

While the Republican proposals are a covert form of government intervention, something that Republican candidates would vehemently deny since any kind of help from Washington for ordinary folks is a violation of the party's Hypocritical Oath, the Democratic proposals as a group are unashamedly interventionist and include various iterations of income redistribution, but Michael Kinsley and I are here to tell you that these cure-alls won't make much difference. 

Kinsley, a political policy wonk and onetime Crossfire co-host, argues in a recent Vanity Fair commentary that there simply aren't enough rich people to provide windfalls to the middle class, whoever they are, let alone the poor:

"Is a politician talking about taking from someone else and giving to me, or taking from me and giving to someone else? And if the answer is 'Neither—I’m talking about economic growth for everyone,' then what does that have to do with the specific problems of the middle class?

"The average household income in this country is about $50,000. To play Robin Hood, or Mario Cuomo, you've got to raise taxes on incomes down to close to that level. That's way below the point where people have started to believe that helping the middle class means more money for them, when in fact it would mean less."

What might make a difference is to goose the economy into overdrive, which Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders advocate.  But that would require doing three things that won't pass muster in a Congress controlled by Republicans, which will likely be the case for at least the next few years.  The things that would correct the problem of paying less to government than what we get for it are a renewed emphasis on education, robust infrastructure development, and political poison personified -- raising taxes.

* * * * *

This is the part of the movie where we come to the biggest villain of our story -- income disparity -- a consequence of rampant capitalism as practiced by the Vampire Elite, the people who are sucking the middle class dry from their big corner offices in skyscrapers across America and, in my view, represent a far greater threat to our security than domestic terrorists or even Al Qaeda or ISIS.  Yet Republicans are in their thrall and most Democrats too cowardly to face them down although nothing less than the future of the tattered remnants of the American Dream is at stake.  

Median per capita income was $18,700 in the United States in 2010 (which translates to about $75,000 for a family of four after taxes), up 20 percent since 1980 but virtually unchanged since 2000, after adjusting for inflation, while the middle classes in many other industrialized countries are doing much better.  Several factors in addition to the reach of the Vampire Elite make this so, including educational attainment in the U.S. rising much more slowly, governments in other countries taking more aggressive steps to raise the take-home pay of middle class households by redistributing income, rich Americans pay lower taxes, U.S. companies distribute a smaller share of their profits to workers, and the minimum wage is lower.

Kinsley:

"Conservatives are right about one thing: the only real way income inequality will be reduced is to create more income -- that is, to expand the economy. The one way out is to grow our way out. This only works, though, if the poor and the middle class actually get the money, a small problem that the Republicans tend to overlook. . . .

"Be skeptical of any proposal defended in the name of creating jobs in order to help the middle class. Most likely it will in practice take from one group of the middle class and give it to another. In reality, there’s nowhere else to get the money."

Further exacerbating the problem is that although the economy has pretty much recovered, thanks to President Obama and no thanks to Republicans, most of the middle class is being passed by while white-collar professionals with specialized skills in technology, finance, engineering and software are able to negotiate hefty raises -- or move to better paying jobs.

Despite the steady addition of more than 200,000 jobs a month and a decline in the official jobless rate to a post-Bush Recession low of 5.3 percent, most American workers still face lukewarm wage growth at best and very limited bargaining power with their bosses.  This is true even for college graduates, who make up 32 percent of the work force.  Since the beginning of 2014, median wages for all holders of a bachelor’s degree or more have risen only 2.7 percent, compared with about 2 percent for all workers.

(It should be noted that more businesses, in lieu of the traditional annual raise, are providing increased benefits such as one-time bonuses, health care and paid time off, as well as perks such as free gym memberships and commuting subsidies, but no one would mistake this trend as a stampede.)

Meanwhile, starting salaries for important traditional middle-class jobs requiring college degrees are taking it on the chin.  Starting salaries for nurses -- the very glue that makes the health-care system work -- are up a measly 1 percent since 2007 and are down 3 percent for social workers and an astounding 16 percent for special education teachers.

* * * * *

You have to give the Republicans credit.  They're much more savvy in this presidential campaign when they talk about the middle class than four years ago when Mitt Romney became a punching bag for having a car elevator and a bunch of Cadillacs, let alone that unfortunate slip about 47 Percenters.

All this yakking from Republicans about "the two Americas" in stump speeches is giving Democrats a bad case of agita because while the GOP's tone has changed, its policies have not.

The campaign of Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will be centered on raising middle class incomes, and she is fighting the Republican rhetoric with an assist from the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank that has conveniently just issued a report titled "The Middle Class At Risk."

The report slams Republican candidates for their records on paid family leave, the minimum wage, tax breaks for the wealthy and education cuts.

"Should a Republican hold the presidency for two terms after President Obama and continue to block minimum wage hikes," the report warns, "by the end of the second term, the real value of the minimum wage would fall to below $6 an hour in today's dollars, its lowest level in 70 years."

Long story short, no matter how you look at it, and whether the next president is a Clinton or a Trump (just kidding), the middle class is screwed.

Politix Update is an irregular compendium written by veteran journalist Shaun Mullen, for whom the 2016 presidential campaign is his (gasp!) 12th since 1968.  Click here  for an index of previous Politix Updates.

IMAGE COPYRIGHT © 2001, BETH YARNELLE EDWARDS.  USED WITH PERMISSION

Has It Really Been 70 Years? Shinichi's Trike & The Lessons Of War

(PORTIONS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN AUGUST 2007)

Shinichi Tetsutani loved to ride his beloved tricycle outside his house in Higashi-Hakushima-Cho, a neighborhood in the Japanese port city of Hiroshima.

Shin-chan, as his family affectionately called the three-year-old, was doing just that on the morning of August 6, 1945 when there was a brilliant flash in the sky.

The boy was about a quarter mile from the hypocenter of the detonation of the first nuclear weapon to be used in anger, the consequence of a frightening new technology that its creators were all too aware would change warfare -- and civilization -- forever by the omnipresent threat of unimaginable death and destruction.

Shin died that night, one of about 140,000 people to perish in the atomic bomb explosion and from associated effects, principally radiation poisoning. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, taking about 74,000 lives. Kyoto, the original target of the first bomb, was spared because the U.S. officials and generals who were so desperate to end the war remained sensitive of its cultural significance.

A third atomic bomb was being readied, but by August 15 the conciliators in the Japanese government had won out over hard-line militarists who had had the tacit backing of Emperor Hirohito, who was not the pitifully manipulated figurehead the Japanese claim, and is the villain of this story. In any event, Japan capitulated and World War II finally was over after some 234,874 Americans had lost their lives in the Pacific theater alone.

* * * * *

There is no military-political action in modern history laden with as much baggage as President Truman's decision to twice use the atomic bomb.

Those who have approved of Truman's decision offer these arguments:

* The bombs ended the war months sooner and saved an estimated half million American lives that could have been lost in an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

* Millions of people under Japanese occupation in the Philippines, New Guinea, Borneo and elsewhere who faced starvation, including hundreds of thousands of POWs from the U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, were freed.

* The hard-line militarists had adamantly refused to surrender although it was obvious that the war was lost. It was the Soviet entry into the Pacific war, combined with the bombs, that forced the emperor to capitulate.

Those who have disapproved of Truman's decision offer these arguments:

* The bombings were immoral, a crime against humanity and constituted genocide.

* In a contemporary context, they were an act of terrorism.

* They were militarily unnecessary because Japan was essentially defeated and ready to surrender.

* * * * *

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is situated at one end of a park. At the other end is Ground Zero and the so-called A-Bomb Dome, the concrete and wire framework of a government building that was destroyed by the blast. I saw Shin's trike on my first visit to the museum and it is seared in my memory much like the frozen hands on a pocket watch in an adjoining exhibit that will forever read 8:15, the moment that the atomic bomb exploded.

My second visit to Hiroshima included an extensive tour of the hospital and laboratories of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, which was established and funded by the U.S. in 1948 in an act both altruistic and a reflection of the need to better understand the horrors visited upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

For the next 36 years, the commission studied the latent effects of radiation among the bomb survivors, including the outcome of pregnancies one and two generations later. As sobering as the tour was, the trip ended on a delightfully memorable note: A side trip to an island in Hiroshima Bay where the famed oysters of the region -- the most delicious that I have ever eaten -- had just been declared safe to consume for the first time since the end of the war.

I would have been unprepared for the gracious reception that I received in Hiroshima had I not befriended Hiroshi, a native of that city who ran a small bar near my apartment in Tokyo. On some nights I would stay after the bar closed, leaving from a secret door that led to a narrow back alley after she would regale me with stories about being a teenager during the war whose military family had been evacuated to the country.

It was Hiroshi's view that few Japanese felt enmity toward the U.S. for the atomic bombings, as well as the firebombings that incinerated Tokyo and so many other cities that there were relatively few unscathed targets to drop atomic bombs on by August 1945.

While I did experience hostility, usually in small villages well off the beaten track, Hiroshi was right. Although they would never admit it to a gaijin (foreigner), most Japanese were will aware that their government, in the thrall of those hard-liners, had started a war that brought out the worst in them. The payback was a bitch, of course, but the Japanese who have toiled to remember the bombings -- from putting Shin's trike on display to working to try to insure that there are no more Hiroshimas and Nagasakis -- have brought out the best in them.

* * * * *

The question of whether it will ever be justified to visit the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki upon a sworn enemy of the U.S. raged anew during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign following Barack Obama's declaration that he would not use such weapons to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I happen to think that was a no-brainer response. Even using tactical nukes against terrorists is insane and should never be part of the counterinsurgency playbook, although it was briefly considered by the Eisenhower administration in Vietnam. Hillary Clinton's rejoinder that Obama should not rule out the so-called doomsday option was even sillier given the context.

But that is not the point.

The point is that Truman made the right decision in 1945 under circumstances so extraordinary that it is difficult to imagine them being replicated in the future.

I pray that I am not wrong.

PHOTOGRAPHS (From top to bottom):

The Hiroshima A-bomb cloud, Hiroshima in ruins, Emperor
Hirohito, President Truman, Hiroshima watch, Hiroshima
dome; Hiroshima survivor, Barack Obama.

Ah, The Mysteries Of Love: Phernomes, Hormones & Moans In The Night

 

A NEW STUDY THAT CONCLUDES KISSING HELPS YOU FIND THE RIGHT PARTNER AND LIVE LONGER, AS WELL, RECALLS TO MIND THIS KIKO'S HOUSE POST FROM APRIL 2010 WHICH, LIKE THE RELATIONSHIP IT CELEBRATES, SEEMS TO HAVE HELD UP PRETTY WELL.

Scientists are hard at work belaboring the obvious: We live longer and lead more productive lives when we're in good relationships. I do not begrudge their belaboring. Indeed, it's kind of nice scientifically quantifying the benefits of a stable relationship based on love and the companionship it provides. Oh yes, and that sex thing. But unlocking the mysteries of love is a fool's mission in that scientists will never fully understand what makes us tick no matter how hard they try.

I was long lucky in lust, but that love thing eluded me until some 13 years ago today when a long-time friend and I hit the linoleum one night. Figuratively speaking, we haven't gotten back on our feet since.

This obviously wasn't love at first sight but rather . . . uh, positive vibrations accumulated over decades of occasional phone calls, postcards sent from ports of call on our respective travels, conversations in the presence of mutual friends, and for me on one particular evening the loin-stirring sight of her coming through a doorway, her lower torso and legs silhouetted under a diaphanous ankle-length skirt back lit by a setting sun. Most scientists, however, would poo poo our long journey to love. A big part of the explanation, they say, is simple: We smelled right to each other. Those smells can attract us in powerful ways, and we're talking less Chanel No. 5 and Calvin Klein Eternity for Men than the more subtle aromas that emanate from the mouth, skin, scalp and other places that will be left to the imagination since this is a family blog. The way that a potential partner looks and sounds is, of course, also important.

Scientists tell us that men view a woman's body as an indicator of their ability to bear and nurse children while women see a broad chest and shoulders as a sign that a man can keep food on the table. Testosterone is very big player in either case. Well, we're past even thinking about having kids, although I will admit to having the requisite food-providing bod if you overlook my paunch. I'm not a big breast guy, but boy am I into shoulders, and my mate's are magnificent. Then there are the aforementioned torso and legs.

My mate's voice is somewhat deep, which is to say seductive, with a hint of the antipodes, while mine starts deep and goes deeper as the situation warrants, further signs of that testosterone thingie.

This brings us to kissing, MHC and the previously alluded to linoleum floor.

MHC is a bunch of genes known as the major histocompatibility complex, which most commonly influences tissue rejection but was on board when we took that first kiss. And since we liked that first kiss, a second deeper kiss and then much more as MHC pulled our tactile trip wires and we became aroused.

So how did we figure out that we were in love and not merely lust? Because our brains told us so in what scientists have found is a three-step process.

In the first step, our ventral tegmentals got on board. These are a tissue mass in the brain's lower regions where dopamine is made. Dopamine, it turns out, regulates reward and results in the thrill we feel when we do something really neat, get a big raise or feel ecstatic -- like when we fall in love.

Well, as many of us know, that falling-in-love feeling fades with time, but in the second step our brains' nucleus accumbens, a few floors above the ventral tegamental, pump out not just dopamine but also serotonin and oxytocin, the latter being the cerebral tie that binds. New mothers are awash in oxytocin during labor and when they nurse, forming an unbreakable bond with their babies.

The third step emanates from the caudate nuclei, a pair of wee structures on either side of the head where the patterns that help run our lives -- like knowing how to drive a car or use a computer mouse -- are stored for safekeeping. Same for parlaying that first kiss into falling in love and then committing to a permanent love.

Not all love is permanent, of course, and it figures that scientists believe that falling out of love also have neural and chemical components.

All this talk of testosterone, MHC and ugly lumps in the noggin kind of demystifies, which is to say unromancifies, love. But methinks that no matter how hard scientists try, they will never completely unlock all of the mysteries of love.  I hope not.

IMAGES (From top): "The Promenade" (1917-18) by Marc Chagall; "Romeo and Juliet (1884) by Frank Dicksee; "Tristan and Isolde (1911) by John William Waterhouse; "The Fainting of Layla and Majnum (ca. 1550), artist unknown;"Orpheus and Eurydice" (1922) by Charles de Sousy Ricketts; Porgy and Bess.

Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet? Are We There . . .

MORE ABOUT HIGHWAY REST STOPS THAN YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW.

PHOTOGRAPH © ANDREY BAYDA/SHUTTERSTOCK

Politix Update: Cruz Has GOP Hooker's Clients. What About Other Voters?

Politicians lie all the time.  They lie about big stuff and small stuff.  They lie when they don't have to lie.  Voters expect no less.  But when Ted Cruz recently called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar -- very publicly, in fact, and twice lest anyone had missed him the first time -- it was less a breach of some kind of honor-among-thieves code than further confirmation that the power struggle between the Republicans' restive right-wing base and its more establishmentarian elements had reached the highest echelons of a political party that is doing a pretty good imitation of coming apart at the seams.

The story of why the Grand Old Party finds itself in such straits on the eve of a presidential election year that seemed to hold so much promise after its successes in 2014 but now looms as yet another quadrennial embarrassment is by now oft told, at least by me and the relatively few other pundits who aren't blinded by the light.  A healthy political party thrives on and grows stronger from vigorous discourse among its ideological factions, but the GOP is terminally ill as a national political force because it has worked tirelessly to alienate anyone calling themselves Republican who believes in good governance, advocates vigorous intra-party discourse and does not march to reactionary drummer.   

The Republican Party has become, to use an admittedly crude but accurate analogy, a streetwalker who turned her last big trick years ago and now bends over for anyone with the price of admission -- racists and white supremacists, creationists, gun nuts, misogynists and anti-abortion wackos, immigrant haters, birthers, homophobes and anti-intellectuals.  This is why the ascendancy of a vile paleoconservative piece of work by the name of Raphael Edward "Ted" Cruz, who is making a well financed run for the party's presidential nomination as the darling of the Republican doxy's gutter clientele, so unsurprising as to be inevitable.  And you thought Donald Trump was the big problem.

Well, Trump is a big problem, but the worst kept secret in politics is that this bombastic bloviator is unserious and has no interest in actually becoming president.  Cruz, who has been the lone wolf among the many Republican wannabes in not calling out the celebrity gadzillionaire for his racist rambling and slanders, is very serious about becoming president and believes he can. 

Cruz is a demagogue and bully who demands ideological purity, and like demagogues through history, he uses lying like a deadly weapon.

Among Cruz's biggest lies are that Chuck Hagel was in the pay of Iran and other foreign adversaries to the U.S. during the future defense secretary's confirmation hearings.  That science does not back up human-caused global warming.  That Democrats threatened to shut down Catholic hospitals and charities if they didn't change their beliefs.  That jurisdictions with the toughest gun laws have the highest crime and murder rates.  That net neutrality will lead to government tyranny.  That President Obama was foreign born, never mind that Cruz actually was.

This Tea Party darling doesn't just relish confrontation, he demands it, a scary prospect for someone aiming to becoming commander in chief.  Immediately after his initial attack on McConnell, Cruz called in to the talk-radio shows of conservative icons Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin to bait Republican leaders over their defense of McConnell.  Cruz's cage match with the feckless McConnell has the Inside the Beltway punditocracy clucking ("Will he try to rebuild his alliance with the majority leader?" asked one), but they miss the larger point: He is positioning himself as the true anti-entrenched establishment leader in the GOP field and doesn't need McConnell or other party leaders, whom he has taken to calling "girly men" and "the Washington Cartel."  At least he doesn't need them now, and judging from the cold shoulder he's getting on Capitol Hill, they don't need him either, which will be an interesting sidelight to the forthcoming Cruz-led effort to defund Planned Parenthood even if it means shutting down the government.

Significantly, Cruz began his presidential campaign, the first major Republican to enter the race, at Liberty University-- founded by the late Reverend Jerry Falwell-- in an effort to broaden his base by asking evangelical conservatives to consolidate their support behind him. "Today, roughly half of born-again Christians aren’t voting," he told them in yet another lie. "They’re staying home." 

Cruz's strategy is to cherry pick supporters from other candidates in the crowded field while concentrating on the racist voter-rich Southern states early on, with Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson at the top of his hit list.  As a result, Mean Cruz seems to be rubbing off on Nice Huckabee, who in a play to the cheap seats now says if elected he wouldn't rule out deploying federal troops or the FBI to stop abortions. It doesn't really matter how well Cruz does in the first presidential debate on Thursday; after all, who's going to be able to get in a word edge wise with so many wannabes clamoring for face time while cowering in fear of The Donald.  Besides which, Cruz's supporters display the same kind of blind zealotry to him as do Trump's, as did the supporters of a certain supreme leader of a big country in Europe from 1933 to 1945.  And a memo to Scott Walker: You'd better watch your back, pal.

Does Cruz really have a shot at the nomination?  By most measures, he does not, but even in its early stages the 2016 campaign keeps throwing up surprises while defying the by now tired conventional wisdom, and it cannot be emphasized enough that Cruz's pro-nativism, anti-Washington rhetoric has tremendous appeal.  Cruz also has a staying power that Trump does not, witness those oleaginous Koch Brothers inviting him to strut his stuff at their Freedom Brothers conference for high rollers with big checkbooks this past weekend. (Trump was not invited.)

Things have gotten so bad in the Republican Party -- the streetwalker's mascara is so runny and her lipstick is so smeared, never mind the torn stockings and broken high heels -- that with the election still a distant 15 months away, there have been a flurry of commentaries by party insiders to the effect that the best thing that could happen to the GOP would be to get its ass kicked.  Typical is "The Moderate's Case For Trump: Only Trump Can Make the GOP Sane Again by Losing in a Landslide to Hillary Clinton" by Bruce Bartlett in Politico.  But isn't that kind of the same thing insiders were saying after first John McCain and then Mitt Romney got rolled by the Democrats in in 2008 and again in 2012?

IS RAND'S STAR SETTING?

Rand Paul is either a man bursting with fresh ideas who can expand the Republican Party's shrinking demographic reach by attracting younger voters or a man with nutty ideas that will marginalize his appeal as a presidential candidate.  Whatever Paul may be, he is not a prodigious fundraiser, and that's a big problem because the campaign is all about money.

The super PAC set up by the Kentucky senator's allies raised a paltry $6 million in the first half of the year, a far cry from the likes of Jeb Bush ($103 million), Ted Cruz ($37 million) and  Marco Rubio ($32 million).

WHAM BAM POW!

The gloves are coming off early in the campaign and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Hilary Clinton blindsided Jeb Bush late last week before a sympathetic audience of black movers and shakers at the annual National Urban League convention, labeling him as a hypocrite who had set back the cause of African-Americans in a biting attack that was greeted by enthusiastic applause.

Playing off of Right to Rise, the name of Bush's super PAC, Clinton said that "People can’t rise if they can't afford health care," a reference to Bush's opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

"They can’t rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on," she said, a reference to his opposition to raising the federal minimum wage.

"They can’t rise if their governor makes it harder for them to get a college education," she said, a reference to Bush's decision as Florida governor to eliminate affirmative action in college admissions.

When it finally was Bush's turn at the lectern and he lamely declared "I believe in the right to rise in this country,” the scent of political gunpowder was still in the air, as one reporter put it.

SPEAKING OF HILLARY

New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan seems less than persuaded when Times editors from Dean Baquet on down tell her that the paper doesn't have it in for Hillary Clinton.  Sullivan took the unusual step of writing a second column on The Times' debacle late last month in reporting exclusively -- and incorrectly -- that Clinton was the subject of a criminal investigation into her use of a private email account while secretary of state. 

Sullivan's opening paragraph perfectly captures her skepticism:

"The history of the Clintons and The New York Times over the decades is like an airport baggage carousel -- with a difference. New pieces keep barreling down the chute, but none of it ever seems to get removed."  

SMOKE 'EM IF YOU GOT 'EM

Marijuana advocates are on a roll.  (Ouch!)

In a little noticed action last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted 16-14 on an amendment to allow marijuana businesses access to federal banking services, a big deal that will help states like Colorado, where marijuana is legal, to fully integrate the evil weed into their economy.

SAY IT AIN'T SO, JOE

​Is Vice President Joe​ Biden actively exploring a possible presidential campaign or merely listening to close friends who are trying to prop him up as he continues to mourn the death of his beloved son, Beau, in May?

"He was so close to Beau and it was so heartbreaking that, frankly, I thought initially he wouldn’t have the heart," Michael Thornton, a Boston lawyer who is a Biden supporter, told the New York Times in a not-so-subtle effort to spin what might be nothing much at all into a stalking horse the feckless media is gladly riding. "But I've had indications that maybe he does want to-- and 'that’s what Beau would have wanted me to do.' " 

My own view is in the unlikely event Biden decided to run, that almost certainly would be predicated on Clinton having to withdraw from the race for, say, health reasons.  If Biden was then nominated -- and the possibility that he would beat whomever the Republicans threw at him -- he would be 77 at the end of a first term, making him the oldest of any president in history.  That alone would seem to rule against run.  Meanwhile, Biden has been in Washington for 42 years and, one would think, is pretty damned tired of life in the public eye.

Politix Update is an irregular compendium written by veteran journalist Shaun Mullen, for whom the 2016 presidential campaign is his (gasp!) 12th since 1968.  Click here  for an index of previous Politix Updates.

IMAGE FROM DONKEYHOTEY/FLICKR.  USED WITH PERMISSION.