The outrageous Manhattan trial of Donald Trump, commonly known as “the Hush Money trial” has been dragging on for about three weeks.  Outrageous because it condemns Trump for conduct which: 1) isn’t criminal; 2) should have been barred by the statute of limitations; and 3) is taking place in the jurisdiction least likely to provide the former president with a fair trial.  Clearly I like nothing about this kangaroo court farce, and that includes the name.  Every media outlet keeps reporting that Trump is being tried because of “hush money” payments.  What’s being called “hush money” are non-disclosure agreements, which were negotiated between Donald Trump and two women and a Trump Tower doorman, all of whom either were threatening or were in a position to make allegations of marital infidelity against Trump as he was running for president in to 2016.  All three executed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), in which they received money in return for promising not to disclose potentially damaging information.   That’s not a crime.  But don’t take it from me.  The following is from Bloomberg Legal, a service that boasts it is used by 96% of law firms and 100% of U.S. Federal Circuit Courts –

“Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and confidentiality agreements are both legal contracts between two or more parties that specify the criteria for maintaining the confidentiality of certain information. Whereas NDAs are often used in business and legal settings to protect trade secrets, client lists, and financial data, confidentiality agreements are typically devised in employment or personal situations to protect sensitive information.”

So if paying the money ( including $150,000 to Karen McDougal and $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels) isn’t a crime, what’s Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg talking about?  Try to follow the bouncing ball.  Alvin, who was elected on a pledge to prosecute Trump, revived an investigation that had been abandoned by the federal U.S. Attorney and by the former Manhattan D.A.  The indictment alleges that Trump’s payments to former attorney, and now convicted perjurer, Michael Cohen, reimbursing him for his making the payments to the two women and the doorman, are crimes because they were listed by Trump as “legal expenses.”  Alvin says this is illegal because instead of legal expenses, they were campaign expenses, which should have been paid for with campaign money from donors.  Although the other prosecutors investigated this and rejected prosecution, Alvin, with the help of a Biden Justice Dept. official, and in league with the Biden Administration, returned 34 felony counts.  Now a false business record isn’t a felony in New York, it’s a misdemeanor.  The payments to Cohen took place in 2017, and the misdemeanor statute of limitations is 2 years.  But wait!  Alvin claims that the false records were made to commit or hide another crime, making them felonies.  Only, when the indictment was returned last year, it failed to mention what other crime.  When the trial began last month we finally learned.  Get this.  Alvin says Trump listed the payments as legal expenses in an attempt to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.  How could payments in 2017 affect an election that was over in 2016?  You got me.  And what about the pesky 5 year statute of limitations on the felony counts, which ran out before the indictment was returned?  No problem.  A provision of New York law allows the extension of the statute if a defendant was “continually out of the State.”  Of course, Trump wasn’t continually out of New York, and the exception was designed for fugitives, and not to capture a President of the United States, who is sitting in the Oval Office and is openly and notoriously on TV every day, but no matter.  The prick judge who’s trying the case brushed off his kangaroo skin robes and allowed this farce to continue.  Along the way, the judge has held Trump in contempt 9 times, and threatened him with jail for violating an unconstitutional gag order, which prevents him from speaking, while permitting State witnesses Stormy Daniels and convicted liar, and disbarred attorney Cohen, to attack Trump to their hearts content.  The trial has, so far, been pretty boring, probably because it’s hard to make exciting testimony which is designed to prove that things were done that every business does every day of the week, not to mention every politician.  Remember Bill Clinton’s War Room employee Betsy Wright, who was in charge of hushing up Slick Willie’s former and current girlfriends?  She did that by calling the incidents “bimbo eruptions,” and by threatening and slandering the women involved.  Bill Clinton used defamation and got away with it.  Trump used legal agreements based on consideration (money) paid, and they want him in prison for life.  By the way, just yesterday, Daniels’ lawyer, testifying for the State, told Alvin that the money “was not hush money, but consideration” for a legal agreement.  I think I just pointed that out.  The Manhattan indictment smells, and the smell is coming from several directions.  First, if you pay your lawyer to prepare and finance legal agreements (NDAs), how are the expenses not legal fees?  Bragg claims they were really campaign expenses, should have been logged that way, and paid for with campaign funds.  The Federal Election Commission, which is in charge of such things, disagrees, saying that payments which would have been made regardless of an election, are not campaign expenses.  So, if Trump used campaign money, the Feds would charge him with a violation and fine him.  Because he used personal funds, Alvin charged him with 34 felonies.  I guess that’s Manhattan justice for you.  Alvin says it was a conspiracy.   A conspiracy to do what?  To defraud the public, by not letting the bimbos reveal embarrassing information before the election, thus permitting Trump to win in 2016.  As I have written before, if trying to bury embarrassing information was a crime, both Hillary and Bill Clinton would be walking the Green Mile.  But Trump’s trial continues, and all media outlets continue to repeat “hush money, hush money” over and over again.  Malcolm X had it right.  “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth.  They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power, because they control the minds of the masses.”  We keep being told, by Trump himself, among others, that he can never get a fair trial in Manhattan.   I’m afraid that may be so, but Trump has two lawyers on his jury, and I keep hoping at least one juror will see this mockery of justice for what it is and at least hang the jury.  Time will tell.  Meanwhile Trump is locked up in the courtroom and forbidden to leave it, while Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden is free to stagger, limp, and wander about, spewing lies that he knows the media will thereupon swear to.  I cling to the hope that this jury will say, “Hush, hush, sweet Alvin, your case is a load of shit – Not Guilty.  Well, I can hope anyway.

As this is written we’ve seen a week of continual violent  anti-Israel protests on college campuses.  College protests are certainly no novelty, but these are alarmingly different.  The most famous college protests were the 1960’s-1970’s anti-war protests.  Then there have been the obligatory college protests to support every manner of leftist cause which happens to be the flavor of the month.  Save the Whales.  Save the Earth.  Protect abortion rights.  Black Lives Matter.  You know the drill.  The thing that separates these previous protests from the current anti-Israel demonstrations is that before, the students (and their wacky professors, a/k/a enablers) were protesting real or imagined injustices.  Being against police brutality, even where the particular brutality they’re protesting never happened (e.g., Hands Up, Don’t Shoot), is at least a sentiment with which nearly all agree.  That’s not the case this time.  Instead of protesting injustice, this time, with the announced purpose of ending a genocide, the protesters are supporting the very people, Hamas, who are advocating genocide.  Simply put, instead of injustice, these over-privileged, highly pampered, ill-educated punks are demonstrating in favor of a gross injustice; ant-Semitic, Palestinian threats to kill every Jew in Israel, or anyplace else one might turn up.  On October 7, Palestinian terrorists swept out of their Gaza Strip hellhole, entered Israel, and perpetrated terrorist attacks that murdered more than 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children.  Women were raped and killed.  Babies were brutalized by unspeakable acts rivaling the most perverted atrocities that took place in Nazi Germany.  More than a thousand hostages were taken.  Not surprisingly, the Israeli government responded by seeking out and killing as many of the murdering Hamas terrorist bastards as they could pry from their hiding holes.  Palestinians righteously condemned what they called an Israeli genocide of their people.  In truth, Israel has gone and is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, but this task is hampered by the fact that the Hamas bastards typically secret themselves in places like hospitals, using the innocent population as human shields.  There have been continual calls for a cease fire, the only benefit of which would be to permit terrorists to either escape or reload.  Naturally, our weak sister President, Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden, has joined the chorus condemning Israel for defending herself.  There are calls for “a two State solution.”  I suppose this means direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian authorities, but there’s a problem no one’s mentioning.  They’re a State short.  Israel is a sovereign State, created by a 1947 U.N. resolution, but there’s really no “State” of Palestine.  Despite all the marching, protesting, and chanting being done by pro-Palestinian demonstrators today, the fact is that, every time a Palestinian State has been proposed, Arab countries have rejected the proposal.  That same 1947 U.N. resolution would have created a State of Palestine.  Arab nations voted against it.  In 2000, after extensive negotiations, culminating with the Camp David Accords, Israel agreed to the establishment of a State of Palestine.  Yasser Arafat, representing the Palestinians, rejected it, preferring continued warfare.  He got the Nobel Peace Prize anyway, showing what that’s really worth.  Then again, in 2008, Israel agreed to a Palestinian State.  The Palestinians again walked away from the negotiations.  In 2005, the Palestinians voted to permit Hamas to “govern” Gaza.  The only problem is, Hamas isn’t a government, it’s a cabal of murdering scum.  According to the 1933 Montevideo Convention, in order to be a “State” an entity must have a defined territory, a permanent population, and the capacity to enter into relations with other States.  Some countries recognize a Palestinian State, and some don’t, including the U.S.  The U.N. doesn’t recognize Palestine as a State either.  And the Palestinian territory in Gaza has proven itself incapable of governing itself.  The Israelis, whom the Palestinians hate and want to kill, are the ones who provide electricity and fresh water to Gaza.  Biden’s interest in siding with the Palestinians and against our ally Israel is purely selfish.  He wants to be reelected.  For Biden, it’s not a two State solution he’s worried about, it’s really three States.  In addition to Israel and Palestine, Biden is worried about Michigan, a swing State with 270,000 Muslim residents.  In the February Primary, 17% of Democrats voted against Biden, and instead for “Uncommitted.”  This is the land of Rashida Tlaib.  If Muslim voters desert Biden in November, Michigan could go to Trump, and with it, the election.  But Biden is caught between two solid Democrat voting blocs, Jews and Muslims, and since they’ve been at war for thousands of years, the dispute is unlikely to be resolved by this November.  Add to this, Biden’s already daunting deficits due to his utter failures on the economy and foreign policy, and his obvious senility, and he’s got a real problem.  In any case, Biden’s electoral problems, have put him in the position of having to appear to support Palestinian murderers.  As a result, he’s unwilling to condemn the campus protesters, chanting “Death to America,” which have resulted in schools like Columbia sending Jewish students home, rather than taking action to protect them on campus.  This is disgraceful.  The colleges are permitting student protesters to advocate for the mass killing of Jews.  The New York Police Department refuses to take action.  The New York Governor could send the National Guard in to stop the insanity, but she’s missing in action.  Meanwhile, our incompetent President is paralyzed for the reasons discussed above.  When confronted with an Arkansas Governor who refused to protect black students on college campuses, President Eisenhower knew what to do.  He sent in the 101st Airborne Division, and they escorted the students to class until the danger subsided.  Biden won’t take any action, nor will he even comment on the anti-Semitic protests raging in his nation.  Which brings us to the fourth State – Chaos.  Only chaos is far from  a solution.  By refusing to try to stop protesters from calling for a new genocide of the Jews, which is precisely what, “From the River to the Sea” means, Biden is playing with fire.  Encouraging people to advocate for the elimination of a minority group for political gain cannot end well, as Germans found out in the 1940’s.  No matter what happens in November, Biden may not be around much longer, but the rest of us will have to clean up the mess.  There’s no two, three, or four state solution to this problem.  There’s simply the choice between good and evil.  Biden can’t make up his mind.

Next week the great unwashed Left, unburdened as it is by facts or reason, will celebrate the 54th annual bacchanal known as Earth Day.  They will meet, mingle, march and chant their slogans, as part of the endless pursuit of their Holy Grail – worldwide despotism.  The great philosopher Pogo once observed, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”  That’s applicable here.  The message of every Earth Day project is the message common to all Leftist schemes.  “You’re living much too well.  Your comfort is harming the planet.  You don’t deserve what you’ve got, and it’s time for you to make sacrifices.”  Of course, the pseudo-celebrities who champion this pablum are not about to make sacrifices themselves.  They will continue to live on their private estates, consuming millions of gallons of water that they want to deny to you, and flying their private jets all over the world, while lecturing you about carbon footprints.  As I’ve noted before, the Eco-activist, Green agenda is fundamentally Marxist-Socialist.  Practically the day after the Berlin Wall came down, the former Reds all became Greens.  Only the name was changed, because the goals remained the same.  De-industrialization, and iron-fisted restrictions designed to control the populace by cancelling personal freedom.  The Greens want to reduce industrial production in order to reduce consumption. They pay lip service to favoring well-paying jobs, but like all good Marxist comrades, they hate the industries that create the jobs, failing to grasp that they can’t have one without the other.  I took a look at the website for the Earth Day cult, EarthDay.org.  The eco-extremists brag that their Earth Day minions will mobilize more than one billion people.  Of course, big numbers do not necessarily translate to positive outcomes.  McDonald’s has sold more than 99 billion hamburgers, and the Greens are opposed to that, as well as to the consumption of all meat.  Too much carbon you know.  Reduce cow farts and save the Earth.  The Greenie website also proclaims, “It’s not just a day, it’s a movement.”  A good dump every morning is also a movement, and both create the same result. A load of  sh- , wait, it’s Earth Day, so let’s call it compost.  The Greens are obsessed with the notion of climate change.  They conveniently ignore the fact that drastic climate changes have occurred throughout the Earth’s history, which cannot be attributed to industrialization.  From about A.D. 900 to 1350 or so, the Earth experienced what was called the Medieval Warm Period.  Temperatures rose about 2.5 degrees, in other words, more than the current climate change alarmists are crowing about today.  The results were positive.  Much of the population relied on subsistence farming.  Agricultural production soared, permitting the expansion of non-farm  populations in cities like London and Paris.  The sudden warming supported grape vineyards in places like Norway and England, to the extent that English wines were exported to France.  The population of Europe rose to 80 million, and just in time too, because after 1347, the black plague killed more than 25 million Europeans.  The warming came to an end, and a new, colder period naturally appeared, 500 years from the 14th to the 19th centuries, which came to be called the Little Ice Age.  The point of all this is not to deny that the climate changes, that is evident.  And it’s not to deny that industry may have some effect on the climate.  The problem is, we just don’t know whether industry is fueling warmer temperatures, or whether the Earth is naturally warming once again as it did in Medieval times.  And before we listen to the climate nuts, shut down industries, put people out of jobs, and destroy people’s lives, wouldn’t it be a good idea to be sure?  I know Il Duce Obama bragged he was going to lower the level of the oceans, but if the warming is a natural part of the climate cycle of the Earth, the actions of a mere Man, or even of a supposed Messiah, won’t change it.  For that matter, it’s not even clear that the Earth is warming.  Don’t take my word for it.  Dr. Ivar Giaever won a Nobel Prize for physics in 1973.  He’s not buying the man-made global warming claims.  In 2015, Dr. Giaever announced, “I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem.”  “The facts are that in the last 100 years we have measured the temperatures it has gone up .8 degrees and everything in the world has gotten better.  So how can they say it’s going to get worse when we have the evidence?  It must be politics.” “When you have a theory and the theory does not agree with the experiment then you have to cut out the theory.  You were wrong with the theory.” Giaever’s own climate research was eye opening.  “I was horrified by what I found.”  “Global warming really has become a new religion.  Because you cannot discuss it.  It’s not proper. It is like the Catholic Church.”  Amen brother.  And therein lies the problem with the Earth Day crowd.  They’re driven, not by science, but by a religious fervor.  EarthDay.org initiatives include ending plastics.  They’re made from oil, and discarded plastic is polluting the oceans.  Rather than just prevent the dumping, the goal is to end the use of all plastics.  Of course, without plastics, the world we know cannot exist.  Even the electric cars the climate nuts crave cannot be manufactured without plastic components.  Medical equipment that saves and prolongs lives are plastics.  Food freshness, safety, and availability depends on plastic packaging.  No matter, climate cultists are willing to sacrifice your quality of life to maintain their purity, and if it kills you, they’re good with that.  Climate Uber Alles.  All you need to know about Earth Day is that it was the creation of Ira Einhorn and Paul Erlich, two different men with the same agenda.  Einhorn, an associate of Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, cared more about climate than human life.  He murdered his girlfriend, hid her body in a trunk, and later absconded to France to escape justice.  Erlich, wrote, The Population Bomb, in 1968, which predicted worldwide starvation if the world’s population continued to grow.  Since he wrote the book, the population doubled, and obesity is a worldwide problem.  Simply put, he was wrong about that, and just about every other thing he and his cult are trying to sell the world.  The bottom line is that the eco-nuts are blinded by their ideological purity.  Like all Leftists, they can’t see that the perfect is the enemy of the good.  No one opposes initiatives that would improve the environment, but that’s not enough for them.  Gluing yourself to the road, and shouting, “Do what we say, or the world ends Tuesday,” isn’t an effective way to convince people that you’re serious.  I’d say, “Happy Earth Day,” but it’s proponents are never happy.

In case you’ve been in a sensory deprivation chamber, or hiding under a rock since last Friday, you may not have heard the news.  On April 5, at about 10:23 am, we had a magnitude 4.8 earthquake here in New Jersey.  Ever since that time, we have heard of little else (other than the April 8 solar eclipse, which has engendered almost as much hype and hysteria).  Now, I’m certainly not downplaying the potential damage that an earthquake may cause.  Major earthquakes can be devastating.  The 2010 7.0 earthquake in Haiti killed more than 300,000 people.  By far the place in the US which experiences the strongest earthquakes is Alaska, which lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire.  A 1964 9.2 quake there killed more than 100 people.  The 1906, 7.9, San Francisco quake was our most deadly, taking more than 3,000 lives.  Property damage can be extensive.  The 1989 Northern California 6.9 quake took down part of the Oakland Bay Bridge.  Then again, one wayward container ship just took down all of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and there was no earthquake.  But back to last Friday’s apocalyptic natural disaster.  The 4.8 quake, centered near White House Station, was the third strongest recorded NJ quake.  There was a 5.3 in Rockaway in 1783, and a 5.2 in Weehauken in 1737.  The problem I have with all the hype about this latest quake is that there’s never been even one fatality caused by an earthquake in New Jersey.  Even way back in 1783, when building standards didn’t exist, the most damage caused was that a few chimneys toppled over.  But I guess last Friday was a slow news day, because that’s all we’ve heard about ever since.  Sure, the shaking can be scary.  I learned of it from my daughters, who texted “did you feel that?”  We didn’t.  Although reports are that the quake was felt from Maine to Virginia, we were in Monmouth County and didn’t feel a thing.  And so far as I can tell, the only report of damage that’s been made is from Newark (New Jersey’s own Haiti), over 40 miles from the epicenter of the quake, where some residents reported that the quake caused their homes to shift and lean.  No offense, but I saw the houses on the news, and they looked like they began leaning when FDR was in the White House.  I guess if you don’t have a student loan to forgive, you have to find another way to get some federal money.  I get that earthquakes in New Jersey are pretty rare, so that may account for the hysteria.  But that being said, earthquakes aren’t rare.  In 2023, there were more than 500,000 earthquakes worldwide.  Most were minor magnitude quakes but there were 16,000 quakes over 4.0 magnitude, that’s better than 4 a day.  Why all the earthquakes?  Well, it’s not the reason given by a Green Party candidate for Senate here in New Jersey.  Kristina Amira Khalil, who based on her photo appears to be an amiable idiot, contributed this to the dumbing down of America, “I experienced my first earthquake in NJ.  We never get earthquakes.  The climate crisis is real.  The weirdest experience ever.”  And she wants to replace Robert Menendez in the Senate.  Then again, maybe she’s an upgrade.  For the record, climate change is not the cause of earthquakes, any more than it’s the reason we had a solar eclipse on April 8; and yes, I heard Leftist idiots propose that too.  Let’s take the second one first.  We have solar eclipses because, purely by chance, the Sun happens to be 400 times bigger than the Moon, and the Moon also happens to be 400 times further from the Sun than it is from the Earth.  The result is that, when the Moon and Sun pass before one another, from our perspective on the Earth, they appear to be the same size.  Earthquakes occur for another reason, which also has nothing to do with climate change.  I’ll make this simple enough for even a Senate candidate to understand.  The Earth has a molten iron center, which is under great pressure, and our landmasses lay on tectonic plates which are separated by cracks we call fault lines.  When the plates rub together mountains arise, and the sliding of plates and fault lines sometimes causes earthquakes, as the pressure is released.  This process has been ongoing for more than 4 billion years.  The process is driven by what’s under the Earth, and not by an atmosphere surrounding the Earth.  Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes have been happening since the Earth was born, including for the billions of years before there was any life on Earth and before there was any CO2 or oxygen in the atmosphere.  Simply put, there were earthquakes before there was a climate.  Case closed.  So on the next rare occasion when we in New Jersey experience the Earth shake, rattle, and roll, don’t feel guilty about your carbon footprint.  It’s just Mother Earth showing us who’s the boss.

This week, I note with sorrow the passing of former Senator Joseph Lieberman, who represented Connecticut in the Senate from 1989 to 2013.  At a time when our politics has become more divisive than at any time save the years before the Civil War, Joe Lieberman was the voice of reason, and in truth, he may have been the last reasonable Democrat.  At age 82, Lieberman died suddenly on March 27, reportedly after a fall at home.  An obituary in The Wall Street Journal referred to Lieberman as a “Party gadfly.”  That label trivializes the man’s accomplishments.  A gadfly is an irritating critic, or a nuisance.  What Joe Lieberman was was the conscience of a Democrat Party which had become increasingly intolerant to dissent of any kind.  Joe Lieberman was the embodiment of the American dream.  Born to Jewish immigrants, he attended Yale University, where he became the editor of the Yale Daily News.  He went on to Yale Law School, and served as Attorney General of Connecticut before his election to the Senate in 1988.  When first elected, Connecticut was split between Democrats and Republicans.  During his tenure in the Senate, things changed.  Connecticut went to the Left.  The Parties moved farther and farther apart.  Politics became more and more divisive.  But Joe Lieberman never changed.  He was from a different, more reasonable time.  Unquestionably liberal on social issues, Joe Lieberman was no ideologue.  He was less concerned with what the Democrat Party line demanded, and more concerned with doing what was right.  He angered Democrats by supporting the war in Iraq.  It cost him dearly.  In 2006, he was defeated in the Democrat primary by Leftist Ned Lamont.  Instead of just going away, Lieberman ran as an Independent and won, getting 70% of the Republican vote.  It is one of the persistent ironies of the Democrat Party, which blathers constantly about bipartisanship, that a candidate who truly is able to reach across the aisle, is reviled rather than being embraced.  For Democrats, bipartisanship means they tell Republicans what to do, and they just do it.  Lieberman later supported the candidacy of John McCain in 2008, angering Il Duce Obama.  He incurred the wrath of the Almighty again in 2010, when he blocked a Democrat scheme to impose a Socialist single-payer healthcare system, during the debate on what became known as Obamacare (the Unaffordable Care Act).  After retiring from the Senate in 2012, Lieberman refused to endorse Il Duce Obama for reelection.  He later became the head of the No Labels Party, which every four years threatens to run an Independent candidate for president.  This year is no exception.  In his last days, Lieberman lashed out at the detestable Chuck Schumer, who had called for the replacement of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, labeling his criticism, “meaningless, gratutitous, and and offensive.”  As you will remeber, it was the detestable Chuck Schumer who famously warned Donald Trump that, “If you criticize the intelligence establishment, they can get back at you six ways to Sunday.”  That may turn out to be the only thing Schumer ever said that was true.  The intelligence establishment tormented Trump for 6 years.  In any case, a week after his criticism of Schumer, Lieberman was dead, and with him went the last voice of reason in the Democrat Party.  Ronald Reagan was fond of reminding people that he once was a Democrat, quipping, “I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, it left me.”  Sadly, that is the truth.  While the Republican Party is plagued by a few of its own unmovable ideologues to be sure, what has become of the Democrat Party in the past 40 to 50 years is shocking.  For those whose political information is limited to lies from MSNBC, half-truths from CNN, and fantasies from The New York Times, let me set the record straight.  Democrats may still pay homage to John F. Kennedy, but he would be unwelcome in today’s Democrat Party.  He was elected by being perceived as stronger on national defense than Richard Nixon.  He was succeeded by LBJ, who engineered the enactment of Medicare, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act, and who launched the War on Poverty.  Despite these liberal programs, LBJ was considered a conservative by mainstream Democrats in the 1960’s, and he’s never mentioned by today’s crop of nuts.  LBJ’s Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey was to the Left of LBJ, so much so, the LBJ referred to him as “a bomb thrower.”  However liberal Humphrey was, he would not be insane enough to fit in with today’s Democrat Party.  In the Broadway show Evita, there’s a song with the lyric, “Politics, the art of the possible.”  It once was just that.  Consensus was not only a positive, it was an imperative.  Our politics has moved from the art of the possible to the enforcement of purity.  The result is stalemate at a time when the problems of the world cry out for action.  They used to say you don’t want to see how sausage or laws are made.  Right now, legislative gridlock has reached the point where nothing is being made, while we fall deeper into debt, and become ever more vulnerable to our enemies.  Joe Lieberman represented a time when finding the middle ground meant you were a Statesman, and not a traitor.  His voice will be sorely missed.