Politics

Pandemic Diary 10: Poorly Orchestrated

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Life in quarantine: The Golden Rule, but with more soap.

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At the grocery store today, the ratio of shoppers with face protection to naked faces was roughly fifty-fifty. No one in New York State government or Ulster County government has declared the coronavirus pandemic half-over, but half of the shoppers with whom I congregated acted like they think we are more than halfway through the disaster.

Even if we are in fact more than halfway through the disaster, which would equate to another three weeks of quarantine and face masks and the scrubbing of all surfaces, there are no exemptions from the rules. But because my fellow New Yorkers have ignored rules, which is something I usually celebrate about my fellow New Yorkers, our rejection of some of the more superfluous rules in life, well, today, April 10, New York State announced further restrictions on “social distancing”—that dumb phrase from which I wish I could be socially distant—no one can use golf courses from today until April 29.

Why is this? Because New York State did not declare golf courses “nonessential,” so too many individuals discovered the glories of golf in the last three weeks and started to congregate in large groups, crowd into the pro shops, and too many hands to count have touched flags, bunker rakes, and rental equipment.

The subject of the photo at top is my masked face while at the grocery store, and I apologize. My face was a cute one when I was a child, but whoa. The mask is an improvement.
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Memories of an Iowa Caucus Voter

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The Iowa Caucuses will be held tonight. I was a caucus voter in that state one presidential election, in 2004, so my experience that long-ago January night can perhaps illustrate what we will see unfold.

Certain rules are different this caucus night compared to that one a lifetime ago, but the core principles inside the experience remain the same: 1. A caucus is not a primary, in which one votes with a ballot; it is an hours-long town meeting, and, 2. Caucus night is the climax of a year in which there are more presidential candidates in Iowa than Iowans.

Return with me to 2004, when TV was in black and white, movies cost a nickel, and a Republican president was up for re-election: George W. Bush.

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In 2004, the Democratic Party, my party, offered a buffet of candidates, many of them U.S. senators, like this year. I did not plan to take action or even speak at my caucus, but history forced my hand.
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Pam Bondi: Where Quid Meets Pro Quo

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (pictured above with the president) will join the team tasked with the defense of the president in his upcoming Senate impeachment trial, according to the Wall Street Journal today, January 17. The team will be led by current White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

Bondi’s role in the impeachment trial has not been delineated in public. She joins a team of specialists that includes former Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr; occasional constitutional-law professor Alan Dershowitz; Jay Sekulow, a personal lawyer to the president; and Robert Ray, who succeeded Starr in the Whitewater inquiry.

Before she joined the White House staff in its impeachment preparations in November 2019, Bondi was a registered foreign agent for the government of Qatar and a lobbyist for a Kuwaiti firm. The more famous members of the Trump legal team have long histories as public figures, but Bondi’s history is more entwined with the current president’s public life than theirs are so far.
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