By James Moore  

Every time there is a release of a New York Times/Siena poll of the presidential race, the rational mind is confounded in the extreme. And, yes, I know, polls are only snapshots taken of a moment in time and that methodologies are often flawed and we really ought to be looking at trends and there’s a difference of outcomes between “registered voters” and “likely voters.” Who doesn’t get all that by now? Also, who isn’t consistently stunned by Donald Trump leading in any poll? Logic might suggest there is actually something wrong with Americans instead of polling protocols. The latest NYT survey indicates that the former president, who is also a current criminal defendant on trial, has comfortable leads in all the swing states, except for Michigan, where the incumbent president has only a one point edge on the man who lies almost as rapidly as he breathes.

People who despise Trump, and everything he has done and plans to do if he regains the White House, are looking for hope, hell, signs and portents, that he will not again be president. The leading practitioner of finding reasons to be optimistic is Simon Rosenberg, who publishes The Hopium Chronicles on Substack. His most recent dispatch to his subscribers offers a reinforcement of the data proofing up the fine job being performed by President Biden.

“The Wall Street Journal is calling the American economy ‘the envy of the world,’” he writes. “The stock market is in record territory again. Best job market since 1960s. Lowest uninsured rate ever. Most robust recovery in the G7, lowest inflation rate too. Strong wage and real wage growth. Annual deficit trillions less. The 3 big Biden bills are driving hundreds of billions in new investment, accelerating our energy transition, creating jobs and opportunities for American workers for decades to come.”

And yet, Mr. Biden seems to get no credit for any of those dynamics. His staffers, however, say the president is confident numbers in polls are moving in his direction and that he will triumph come November. The only thing for sure about that, though, is that nobody knows for sure. People were equally confident that Hillary Clinton was certain to defeat the failed real estate manipulator of Manhattan, too. But she didn’t. FBI Director James Comey, as history records, probably changed the course of the election by mentioning an ongoing, and, ultimately, supercilious investigation into Ms. Clinton’s email servers. Trump probably would not have won, otherwise. We know even more about him today than in 2016, however, and there is little to recommend him, even for an office like the local hide inspector in Muleshoe, Texas, but he is not lagging in national polls.

The president’s political burdens are presently connected to economics and geopolitics, which tend to be problematic for anyone who holds the office. In the domestic economy, even though there is low unemployment and rising wages, inflation is nibbling mightily at household prosperity. Things are expensive, though gas prices have been attenuated by reduced demand and consistent supply. Israel, of course, has become a curse and Biden has finally stood up to Netanyahu by withholding the 500 and 2000 pound dumb bombs the IDF planned to drop on Rafah as a million refugees flee. The president has not shown sufficient courage to demand an Israeli cease fire and that leaves him subject to attack from the left for allowing a genocide to continue in Gaza and from the right with claims he is not strongly enough backing the Israelis.

There is also the not insignificant matter of his age. Regardless of the poll analyzed, a majority of voters being surveyed believe the president might be too old to hold his office and effectively do the job, and an equally large number say they want a different choice than Biden or Trump. Too few voters seem to be paying attention to the former president’s manifest dementia, his inability to remember proper nouns and his garbled words along with nonsensical statements like, “The late great Hannibal Lecter,” a reference to the cannibal killer in the film “Silence of the Lambs.” Half of Trump’s speeches at his rallies are little more than non sequitur and lack context for an issue or whatever topic he is trying to pursue. None of that, however, seems to matter, nor does sworn testimony proving he was having an affair with an adult film actress while his wife was home nursing their months-old son.

There is a persuasive argument that voters in 2024 know more about Trump than they did in the previous election and that the information is so overwhelmingly negative that he cannot logically be restored to the presidency by the electorate. Would the outcome have been different in 2016 had voters known of Stormy Daniels and the Playboy Playmate? There might be some latency in current polling and the information from the trial has not yet made it into the public consciousness in a meaningful way, but for the moment, the former president’s behavior seems a non-issue for his fervent base. Stormy has not shown the power to turn more votes than did an Access Hollywood tape of misogynistic braggadocio. Biden does have more money and organization and Trump is likely to soon be a convicted felon, but nothing is moving votes significantly in the direction of either candidate. Dreaming of Nikki Haley supporters crossing over to rescue Biden is also fanciful. Democrats are wishing and hoping for polls to change and for voters to see the obvious distinction between the two men.

But what if they don’t?

Isn’t it time for the Democrats, including the president, to set up a Plan B? This wouldn’t be a public admission he plans to not run, but it could be a safety net in the event of a health incident, or if he has an epiphanic moment and realizes he does not have the energy or the will for four more years of endless fighting against attacks on logic. Biden could reach a conclusion that it is time for the next generation of his party to come forward and lead and that he has held the torch up for them with a successful four years. Historians would soon describe Biden as one of history’s most consequential one term presidents and his decision to decline the nomination a noble act of patriotism. His leadership through the pandemic and winning support for major bills like infrastructure and protecting veterans and helping keep Ukraine free will resonate through the ages. Why not have a plan in place to step away, just in case it is needed?

The harder question might be what does such a plan look like? My guess is the infrastructure of the party and flexible thinking do not exist to make such a last minute adjustment in a race of that nature. The Democratic Party has more courage than the late GOP, but how do you go to a man with Mr. Biden’s legislative accomplishments and ask him to demur? This only happens if the president makes such a decision. If he does, what then transpires depends on the timing of his announcement. The simplest thing would be to hold a news conference and give an LBJ speech telling the nation, “If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.” If this were to happen prior to the August convention, it would give potential successors a chance to assess their potential in a presidential race and then make their cases in speeches on the convention floor.

The Democratic Party rules allow for floor nominations and petitions for placing names into consideration for a vote. A majority of delegates is nominally required for a name to be submitted. Brokered conventions can involve multiple votes for candidates with delegates changing sides and coalitions arising to push support in the direction of a single candidate. The process, even handled by an experienced parliamentarian, would appear sloppy and the optics might make the party look divided, which could actually be the case. The last time there was a brokered convention was 1952 when Adlai Stevenson became the Democratic nominee even after he had not submitted his name. You do not, of course, have any historical memory of a President Stevenson.

I doubt any of the party leadership is briefing the president on these possibilities, but it feels to many people like we are sleepwalking into the demise of our republic with no sign that Trump’s support is dramatically eroding. Mr. Biden might still win, and much is likely to change prior to that day in November, but the unknowns are frightening. Americans know more than enough about Trump to not cast their ballots for him or anyone in his party. No one can be oblivious to what he will do to our system of government if he is restored to power. There should be no uninformed voters left in America.

And if we elect Trump, we deserve the destruction that awaits.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA) Media Release

The most significant outcome of the draft International Education and Skills Strategic Framework released by the Australian Government will be job losses across the international education sector. That’s the assessment of the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA), the peak body representing independent skills training, higher education, and international education providers.

Although there are some positive approaches regarding quality that ITECA members supports, the draft framework sets out a policy direction driven by short-term populism over concerns about overseas migration and tenuous links between the cost of housing in urban centres.

Over the past decade, international education in Australia has traditionally been a key contributor to the nation’s economic and social prosperity, facilitating substantial community benefits, strengthening global relationships, and aligning educational outcomes with the nation’s skill needs. However, the Australian Government’s new strategic framework suggests a drastic shift through increased regulation and oversight, which ITECA members argue is excessive.

The Australian Government’s strategy includes tightening regulations on student visas, such as raising English language and financial requirements, and granting the Immigration Minister increased powers to curb recruitment. Here, ITECA members argue that the Australian Government is erroneously targeting international education providers, whereas it would have been better to have improved administration of the migration system.

ITECA members have problems with the government’s command-and-control approach to international education set out in the draft framework. It seeks to tell independent tertiary education institutions what they should and shouldn’t offer international students. For international students, the Australian Government’s approach is even more profound as it suggests that the government tell students what they will study and where.

On balance, ITECA members believe the framework is a collection of ordinary policy options lumped together with a series of bad ones. It reflects a chaotic approach to international education, where there is little relationship between tertiary education reform, the migration strategy, and a non-existent population strategy. The Australian Government’s failure to set out a vision for population growth means it cannot articulate the number of international students in Australia and what relationship, if any, those students have to Australia’s future workforce needs.

The advice from ITECA members is clear. The Australian Government’s proposed strategy will cost jobs across more than one thousand international skills training and higher education providers committed to providing quality student outcomes.

ITECA will work with the Australian Government to seek amendments to the strategy so that it puts students at the heart of an international education system where quality is underpinned by a framework that clearly sets out the relationship between international education to economic growth and a much-needed, but currently non-existent, population strategy.

By James Moore  

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
– Charles Bukowski.

We can never take an accurate measure of what friendships mean to our lives, and even trying can seem futile. Maybe it is not a task designed for humans. How close relationships influence us as individuals and inform our characters, though, tends to shape our personalities, and even principles, as adults. There is usually a friend from our childhoods, too, whose memory lingers even after a personal connection is lost to time.

My youth, in incalculable ways, was partially salvaged and made more whole by my best friend Gary Kern. We grew up in one of those modest, lower income developments that surrounded the car and steel factories in the Upper Midwest. Our parents worked endless hours, struggling to pay tiny mortgages, clothe and feed their children. Most of the families had arrived from the South as part of the post World War II Great Migration, seeking a better life than was offered growing cotton crops and working farms in Dixie.

I am not sure how he managed his perspective, but Gary turned everything about our growing up into humor. The neighborhood where we lived was pitched to homebuyers using their VA loans as “National Estates,” which he frequently pointed out had nothing national in its character, and that referring to the tiny plots on which the 800 square foot homes sat as “estates” was a crime against the English language. He named our oval of houses, hard by an old tank manufacturing plant become a car assembly line, “Mortgage Acres,” and it stuck through the next generations, and adheres still.

Gary’s humor was fearless, and frightening to those of us less emboldened. Because he was diminutive, bookish, and carried a bit more weight than most kids entering their teens, he had no interest in sports. Gym class, however, was mandatory in the era of President Kennedy’s focus on youth physical fitness. Gary, though, despised getting dressed for gym because he lacked hand-to-eye coordination, wore glasses, ran slowly, and had no tolerance for physical competition. His only method of avoidance, however, was a note from a parent, which his refused to write. Eventually, he noticed my penmanship looked polished and he drafted me to write his excuses for gym class.

Usually, he sat in street clothes in front of his locker, reading a book as the basketball coach, Chuck Creasy, made a last pass through the locker room to make certain that everyone had gone upstairs to the gym. Often, Gary did not even look up from the printed page to hand the coach an excuse note I had written. Creasy tended to crumple them up and walk off disgusted. On a day when I was late getting into my gym shorts and tennis shoes, the coach arrived at Gary’s locker with a look of near anger I had never before seen on his face.

“You need to close up that book and get dressed for some exercise, Kern,” he said.

Gary did not look up, but raised his hand with the folded paper. Creasy read it, squeezed it into a ball, and looked back down at the defiant student who took almost no note of the man’s presence.

“After readin’ all your excuses this year, Kern,” Creasy said with his Kentucky drawl, “I’ve decided you must just be the kinda guy who likes to hang around locker rooms.”

“Yeah, well,” Kern said, once more refusing to look away from his book. “I notice you took a full-time job in a locker room.”’

I am not sure how I avoided laughing but I got out of that particular locker room as fast as I could, hoping the coach did not associate me with the burning insult he had just endured. We were only in seventh grade and I do not think anyone in our class, other than Gary, had even contemplated defiance of authority and rules. A few weeks after the confrontation with Creasy, Gary slipped on the concrete steps going down to the locker room and tumbled half their length, landing in front of the coach’s office door. I was right behind him and hurried to make certain he was okay. He lay on the floor, appearing stunned, his forehead bleeding, when Creasy casually walked out of his office and sneered down at Gary trying to get up.

“Well, Kern, have an accident?” he asked.

“No thanks, coach. I just had one.”

Barely a teenager, and not an adult he ever encountered was able to manage his withering wit. My mother, whose life often seemed a series of disappointments that only varied in their degree, always smiled when Gary entered her little house. He tried out his endless stream of jokes on her, and Ma was a happy and receptive audience. In appreciation, when we were finishing high school, he gave her a birthday gift of a Zippo lighter box that contained his senior picture and a Green Hornet ring from Cracker Jacks. Ma kept it for many years, and laughed whenever she came across it in a drawer. I inherited the “present,” and have kept it safe for decades.

After a failed marriage, which produced two daughters, Gary almost surrendered his sense of humor to the practical need of earning a living. He got a job as an orderly at a mental institution and used to suggest he was just “looking for a place to retire and checking out accommodations in advance.” The laughs ended when he was stabbed with a fork by a patient, but it prompted him to pursue his calling of becoming a professional comic, and he hit the road for small town comedy clubs. Nature seemed to have designed my best friend for making people laugh. Nobody was more adept at making fun of themselves as skillfully as he did everything else that passed before his eyes and entered his unique and wondrous brain.

Cutline Written by Gary for Our High School Student Paper

As his reputation spread on the comedy club circuit, Gary opened for people like the late Bill Hicks and actor and comic Richard Belzer. He also indulged in airplane jokes, a sin he had promised to never commit. When he made his first appearance at Austin’s Laugh Stop, he talked about how much he hated flying on commuter planes to the small towns where he usually got booked.

“I mean, it took me a long time to screw up my courage to go up to the counter and check in,” he told the audience. “I was starting to feel confidence until they tagged my luggage, and then my big toe. Then I get on this little plane, and there is no wall between the cockpit and the passengers, and I stopped to watch the two pilots pressing all the buttons and the pilot looked over at the co-pilot and said, ‘Wow, this is gonna be neat!’ And I sure wasn’t reassured by the flight attendant pointing out emergency exits in the event of a crash. Folks, I’ve seen airplane crashes; there are hundreds of exits.”

“Airplane jokes?” I asked after his routine.

“Hey, gotta pay the bills. You have any interest in going downtown to the other place, the Comedy Stop or Shop, not sure what it’s called?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Excellent. Jay Leno is there tonight, and I’ve never seen his standup.”

“Let’s go.”

The joint was jammed with people but Gary used his “fellow professional comic” bit to get us a table. When the waitress arrived, he immediately gave her his card and asked if she might take it back to Leno, which she did in exchange for a generous tip. In just a few minutes, she returned with the message, “Jay asks you to please come back to his dressing room.” Gary asked me to go with him and we were quickly sitting down for a chat with the future host of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

“Gary Kern, Gary Kern, Gary Kern. Oh my god, Gary Kern,” he said after shaking our hands. “Everywhere I go I’m hearing your name.”

“Thanks, man,” Kern said. “It’s great to meet you.”

There was some clever back and forth for about five minutes that I cannot recall in detail but it ended with a monumental moment for Gary.

“Listen, Gary,” Leno said. “Let me get you an audition with Letterman. I’m going to call Dave right now.”

And he did. We heard Letterman’s distinctive voice in the background as Leno pitched Gary, scribbled notes on a nearby pad, thanked his comic friend, and ended the call before handing over a printed name and phone number.

“That’s Dave’s producer and his phone number,” he said. “You need to give him a call and they will book an audition for you to tape in New York and cover your travel expenses. Call him first thing tomorrow, okay?”

“Uh, sure, Jay. Thanks. Didn’t expect that.” Gary was evidently stunned. I could not stop grinning.

Only Known Video Available of a Kern Standup Routine

Gary delayed his taping for Letterman. His bookings began to take off with greater speed than those commuter planes he found so frightening. Leno was probably making recommendations to bookers and my buddy was polishing his act to give him greater confidence before his trip to New York. He had already played the famed venue “Catch a Rising Star” in the city and killed it with the local crowd after he had captured the outsider perception of the city with one joke.

“Ya know, I think I’m finally getting used to this city. My first few trips, when I’d stop people on the street to ask for directions or any advice, they all seemed a little put off by being bothered. But I adjusted. Now I just go up to strangers and say things like, ‘Excuse me, could you tell me how to get to the Statue of Liberty, or should I just go fuck myself?’”

Audiences were already laughing as he walked onto stages because the announcer introduced him as, “The repeat winner of the Tom Selleck look-alike contest…” Gary waited for the crowd to settle down and then claimed, “I told them not to use that. I really look more like a stunt double for the Pillsbury Dough Boy.”

The diners at a Chicago dinner theater were probably still howling over a joke the night in 1989 that he collapsed on the stage. Maybe they thought his quivering and twitching face down on the floor was part of his routine but there were no curtains to close and obscure the scene from their view. The manager reportedly ran to Gary’s side and yelled for someone to call 911. Emergency techs arrived in minutes, and, as people expecting fine food and good laughs watched, they revived my boyhood friend. He was quickly placed on a gurney and immediately became aware of his situation. As he was rolled across the stage, Gary rose on his elbows, looked back out at the crowd and said, “Would you people tell these guys to hurry up? My contractions are coming closer and closer together!”

The last words Gary spoke were a punchline, which, of course, made sense. EMTs kept him alive in the ambulance on the way to the hospital but he died on the operating table during open heart surgery. When someone’s life ends at age 37, the inclination is to suspect drugs or alcohol abuse but I had no indication Gary used narcotics and he was not known by friends and colleagues as a drinker. I do not recall an autopsy but figured the safe assumption was a congenital heart issue, and he famously avoided any type of exercise that might have improved his health and reduced the stress of travel, performance, and indebtedness. I suspect some apocrypha regarding his closing scenes but details were related to me by a fellow comic attending Gary’s funeral up in Michigan.

Lord, have I missed him through the decades, though. I find it amazing that I still wonder what Gary might make of our present politics and the internet and social media. Our mutual high school friend, Douglas, and I speak infrequently but our lost friend is always a subject. We recall his obscure jokes and the underground newspaper Gary published and we helped write, which made fun of the upper middle class that dominated our school district. I cannot remember that administrators ever caught up with the publisher of “The Velvet Ghetto,” but I am doubtful. Everything he did was smarter than the adults he was critiquing.

I am certain Gary Kern would have become a household name and he would have had a network talk show, toured widely, and turned into a character actor. I have never known, however, what to make of his life un-lived. I only know that I was fortunate to have him as a part of my youth and development as a person and that I am pleased to have had those years of friendship and memories.

How many friends, when they depart, leave you laughing?

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

ActionAid Media Release

“We are calling urgently on the international community to act”: Rafah residents plunged into fear and panic as attacks intensify and a full-scale invasion looms.

People in Rafah have been left terrified and panicked as airstrikes on the city intensify, thousands flee, and aid delivery is disrupted. Near continuous shelling in some parts of the city have left dozens dead or injured: medics at the Kuwaiti Hospital, in western Rafah, said they had received the bodies of 35 people killed and 129 wounded in the last 24 hours alone, according to Al Jazeera.

Thousands of people – including some of our colleagues and partners – are fleeing after evacuation orders were issued for the eastern part of the city on Monday, yet there is nowhere safe for them to go, nor do areas which have been designated as ’safe zones’ have the infrastructure or capacity to receive them. Al-Mawasi, for example is already hugely overcrowded with more than 400,000 people living there, according to UNRWA.

In Rafah, fears are growing that the already dire humanitarian situation is about to get a lot worse as aid delivery and distribution is disrupted by the ongoing military activity. No aid entered via Gaza’s two key crossings at all yesterday, according to a joint briefing note by NGOs, and while the Israeli military said the Kerem Shalom had reopened today, the Rafah crossing – which was seized by the military on Monday – remains closed. With much of the population facing catastrophic levels of hunger, any reduction in aid risks pushing people further towards famine. Fuel, which is essential for hospitals and for trucks to be able to distribute aid within Gaza, is already running dangerously low, according to UNOCHA. We call for the Rafah crossing to be reopened immediately.

Amjad Al Shawa, who is based in Rafah, is the director of the Palestinian NGOs Network (PNGO), an umbrella organisation of 30 Palestinian NGOs and a partner of ActionAid Palestine, which works in Gaza. In a voicenote message, he told ActionAid about his fears regarding the situation in Rafah:

“We have serious concerns regarding the military land operation in Rafah and the Israeli control of Rafah crossing…we warn [against] famine and these continuous Israeli [military] attacks on the Palestinian civilians. At the same time the shortage of medication, food items and other needed items, which will lead to [further] deepening of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

“We are calling urgently on the international community to act in order to stop such a military incursion and the Israeli [military’s] massacres on the Palestinian people and to open all the crossings for the passengers and for different humanitarian and commercial items. Also, mainly for the patients and the injured people who are in bad need [of] medical treatment outside the Gaza strip as this will lead to [deteriorating] their health conditions.”

Riham Jafari, Advocacy and Communications Coordinator at ActionAid Palestine said:

“The ongoing military offensive in Rafah is already having a devastating impact on its residents, thousands of whom have been forced to flee for the fourth, fifth, sixth time or more time in seven months. The number of deaths and injuries is rising and the humanitarian situation is worsening as aid delivery is disrupted.

“If the Israeli military continues with a full-scale ground invasion of Rafah, it will be full blown disaster. There is no doubt that an unthinkable number of men, women and children will die. It would be indefensible to order the evacuation of more than a million people from the area when there is nowhere safe for them to go, nor with the capacity to receive them. Any attempt to do so may well amount to forcible transfer – a grave violation of international humanitarian law.

“We call on the Israeli authorities to abandon this catastrophic plan and demand that all states do everything in their power to prevent a military assault in Rafah. The international community has repeatedly warned that this cannot be allowed to take place. Now is the time to act.

“As negotiations resume today, reaching a ceasefire is of the utmost importance: it is the only way to put an end to the killing and ease the horrific humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

By James Moore  

History has a way of knocking humanity over the head with ironies. As Israel and the IDF took control of the Rafah Crossing into Gaza, the world, and especially Israel, was taking note of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The attack by Hamas terrorists on October 7th was the deadliest day for Jews since World War II put an end to the Final Solution, which made consideration of the historic tragedies even more poignant. There is anti-semitism afoot, internationally, as well as verbal attacks on Islamic interests. At the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance, the American President said, “I’m calling on all Americans to stand united against anti-semitism and hate, in all its forms.”

Unveiling a new set of initiatives to combat what is viewed as “rising anti-semitism” in the U.S., the President described what he called the “ancient hatred of Jews” that was “brought to life” by the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel. As the president spoke of the Nazi’s attempted genocide, Israel’s taking of the Rafah Crossing in Southern Gaza signified a new assault in what international critics are increasingly characterizing as an ongoing genocide of Palestinians perpetrated by the Israelis. President Biden had previously said an invasion of Rafah was the crossing of a red line for his administration, but at his commemorative speech, he backed that line up a bit and said securing the location did not violate his conditions regarding Israel’s military in a region where one million Palestinians are said to be living mostly homeless.

There is no denying anti-semitism has arisen as a consequence of Israel’s invasion and the loss of what is now said to be almost 35,000 Palestinian lives in Gaza; 70 percent of which are reportedly women and children. Campus protests around this country are largely focused on loss of civilian life and the absolute destruction of Gaza’s housing and infrastructure. Student protestors are voicing support for the Palestinian people, in most cases, and are not expressing anti-semitic politics, but there has been a conflation of those two messages, which has confused the general public. It should be obvious, but apparently is not, that protesting the IDF’s disproportionate assault on Gaza is not a manifestation of anti-semitism. It is a defense of the rights of Palestinian citizens.

Campus protests are also an effort to get the attention of the presidential administration, just as they were during the Vietnam Era. The President continues to get congressional support for deploying weapons and money to Israel while making gentle demands that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu give more consideration to lives of innocents. There is a circular absurdity that goes beyond irony, however, as Israel invades Rafah to continue what increasingly looks like a genocide on the same day Jews remember the Nazi attempt to wipe them from the face of the Earth, and that happens even as the U.S. President warns Israel against the invasion while he continues to supply weapons and money to support what amounts to a slaughter.

Huh?

Israel’s actions have transcended the rank evil of the Hamas’ attack on October 7th. There seems to be no limit to the number of dead Palestinians it will accept as long as all Hamas fighters are killed. No war in history, though, has ever ended with the enemy’s entire army eliminated from the field. Hamas apparently offered a ceasefire proposal to Israel on the eve of the Rafah invasion but negotiators for the Israelis let it be publicly known they saw it as just an attempt to make Hamas “look good.” Everybody looks good, though, when the killing stops and terms for peace can be defined. Israeli and American diplomats are said to have been surprised by the offer but are willing to continue talks. The IDF, however, will not cease fire in Rafah during any negotiations. Talk and shoot seems to have low odds of success as a peace strategy.

As morally culpable as Mr. Biden might be with his “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s defense, his feared political injury seems not to have materialized among young voters. In a Generation Lab survey for Axios, only 13 percent of college students identified the Israel-Gaza conflict as their most important concern, well below issues like health care, educational funding, economic fairness, climate change, racial justice, gun control, and immigration. The poll of 1250 college students might also reveal an ignorance of Israel’s history and the actual horrors still unfolding in Gaza. Media coverage has been difficult to impossible and videos and photos have been mostly transmitted via social media rather than national outlets.

Part of the reason Americans are more tolerable of Israel’s actions might have a little to do with our own analogous history. Manifest Destiny wiped out this country’s indigenous peoples in order to establish settlements on the lands the natives had historically occupied. Little difference, other than weaponry, exists between U.S. westward expansion and the political and military endeavors of Israel since the state was founded in 1948. In his book, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, author Noam Chomsky quotes Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, during an internal discussion, as acknowledging the political effort to take Palestine away and create the Jewish state, which continues to push borders and Palestinians out of their homelands.

“In our political argument abroad,” Ben-Gurion said, “we minimize Arab opposition to us, but let us not ignore the truth among ourselves. Politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside. Behind the terrorism is a movement, which, though primitive, is not devoid of idealism and self-sacrifice.”

Chomsky adds further context to the Arab perspective that has not changed in three-quarters of a century of strife by explaining how they rejected the idea that they had a moral obligation to sacrifice their land to compensate “for the crimes committed by Europeans against the Jews.” The idea, he notes, had taken hold in the West, but, he writes, Arabs, “perhaps wondered why a more appropriate response would not have been to remove the population of Bavaria and turn it into a Jewish state – or given the self-righteous moralizing they hear from the United States, why the project could not have been carried out in Massachusetts or New York.”

Foreign policy only tends to have an impact on American politics when it relates to a war involving American troops, and the loss of their lives. In the present Mideast conflict, the slaughter has been contained and information controlled. An estimated 140 journalists have been killed, an average of five a week, a number not mentioned by U.S. politicians on World Press Freedom Day, which was only 48 hours before Holocaust Remembrance Day. President Biden made no reference to those lost lives during the White House Correspondents Dinner. He only talks about the importance of ending the war while not pressuring Israel to cease fire. An average of 88 Palestinian children die each day as he equivocates.

And no one seems to care.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

By James Moore

“One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.” – John F. Kennedy

We were flying due north out of Omaha. The old DC-3 had shuddered with effort on takeoff and rose so slowly we thought the treetops would remain just beneath our wingtips for the entire trip. Level much later at around 10,000 feet, the props spun with efficiency and the checker-boarded plains below slipped away to our rear with a mystifying slowness. Small towns speckled the prairie and twinkled at dusk. Long trains ran toward the orange light of the evening west.

After we crossed over the Canadian border and turned northeastward, the roads beneath us narrowed and the earth showed less illumination. Late sun on the flat land revealed the dark pines shrinking in height. Eventually, there were almost none emerging from the tundra because it was too cold and short of a summer to sustain their growth.

The PR man was happy, though. Reporters had cocktails and everyone was friendly in the back of the cabin. There was a false sense of adventure. The power company had arranged the flight to upper Manitoba, Canada, at the western shores of Hudson Bay. A great trading company had once sent animal pelts from these remote reaches to global capitals. There were now moose and bear and the rivers that were still wild and scenic but crossed by snow machines and a few people.

“There’s already a dam down there,” the PR man said. “It’s generating a lot of electricity. Not all of it gets used. Why don’t we use it?”

“Maybe it’s just not needed,” I said.

“Of course, it is. We are growing. America is always growing. And we can’t do that without affordable energy.”

The Ol’ Tail Dragger

He was the only one on the flight wearing a tie. His confidence was not convincing and the trip was growing long. There seemed no lights below to give us any indication of where the outdated passenger plane might alight on the ground. The sky and the world seemed of one eternal piece out the window as the day faded.

The dam we saw the next day was a massive white obelisk that had been laid on its side. A mighty river had been contained behind it by concrete and steel. Trapped water was forced through gates and turned absurdly large turbines. Electricity spun out into 161 kilovolt lines across Canada and ran manufacturing plants in the cities and TV sets in luxury cabins up in the Okanagan.

“Canada produces more power than it can use from this one dam,” the PR man told us. “There’s no reason we should not try to get this very affordable energy down into our country. That’s why we are proposing the Mandan power line from here to Omaha.”

I loved the name of the power company’s project. The Mandan were a small tribe that had lived along the Heart and Knife rivers in the Dakotas. They had their own language, a derivative of the Sioux tongue. They were not given to tribal warfare and had little resistance to offer as the white Manifest Destiny blew through their villages. I decided to call my series of reports on the power project, “Man and the Mandan.” I just liked the sound of the words gathered.

We went up in a helicopter the next day and flew out over Hudson Bay and skimmed the river and marveled at its dark swiftness. The PR man sat in the front seat of the chopper and I took the back but he still spoke to me through the headset.

Hudson Bay, Manitoba, Canada

“You can see the potential here,” he said. “This river and this dam will always be generating power, unless the world runs out of water.”

Back up in the sky in the old tail-dragger a few days later I watched the sectioned land and the dark green splotches of crops. The country had been divided by an ordinance in the late 1800s into mile square sections. Railroads were seduced into building transcontinental lines when the government gave them every other square mile section along the route. Land was money. The history of that law was apparent in the farmland laid a plaid and broadly visible from the air.

The Mandan Power Line was engineered to cut across the high plains of the Dakotas and down into Nebraska. The Omaha power company wanted that cheap energy from Manitoba. Inexpensive electricity would be sold into the Mid American Power Pool and be marked up to profit the shareholders of the Omaha supplier. No one believed the consumer was likely to benefit.

I went back north into the Dakotas to talk to landowners. There had been very few towns visible from the airplane but the power line route went near a few farm communities. In Iroquois, when I asked about the Mandan, I was told to talk to Marlin. He was growing wheat in wide fields out in the northern flatness.

Near Iroquois, South Dakota

“Ain’t nothin’ comin’ between me and that sunset,” Marlin Clendening told me. “I don’t care what the power company says, this isn’t that important. They can find another way to do it.”

A few children moved through his house. Marlin was tall and angular and his limbs were loose and his animation made his perspective more visible to me. His wife stood behind his chair, her hand on his shoulder as he talked, a kind of indoor American gothic image.

“I’ve been a farmer since I was a kid and I’m always going to be a farmer,” he said. “And I don’t need a 161 kilovolt line crossing my property, hanging right there in front of the sun, and maybe even killing my animals.”

There were early studies in the eighties that indicated increasing stillborns during calving season if the mothers grazed beneath power lines. No one understood electrical smog but we were encouraged to take a fluorescent bulb and stand beneath a 161 KV line and watch the emanations cause the light to activate. We did. And it made good video.

“Tell me why their power line is so important,” Marlin said. “Do you really think they are worried about being able to manage growth? Of course not. This is just about making money selling cheap power. Well, they aren’t taking away my prairie and my sunset. We are gonna fight.”

A South Dakota Sunset

Clendenning organized farmers and environmentalists. They went to hearings, wrote letters, called members of congress, cajoled local elected officials, and confronted the Omaha power company. The sunset was in jeopardy.

The power line was never built. Clendening’s singular resistance was too much for the multi-billion dollar project. The cost was never justified. Instead of giant towers stalking the plains and black lines crossing the precious blue horizon, the sunset remained unimpaired.

My reports on the Mandan got some attention and I was invited to New York City to receive an award from Dartmouth College. The National Media Award for Economic Understanding also involved a nice check for a young journalist. I stayed in the Plaza Hotel and was on the same dais with Dan Rather and Peter Jennings. Job offers followed and opportunity rolled out in front of me.

I expect Marlin Clendening stayed on his farm along that dirt road south of Iroquois. My hope is that he has had a full life and the earth has been good to him and given him abundant crops. Maybe there are grandchildren tugging at his pant legs and he and his wife take them to the back porch at the end of the day after dinner. They look west together where the weakening sun still brightens the wheat that appears alive in the wind. There is no power line crossing his horizon, though, only birds and the invisible things that ride in the breeze.

I hope Marlin Clendenning lives a long, long time. He deserves a lot of sunsets.

Youth Will Be Served

The last time I saw the Pawnee National Grasslands I was driving a beat-up old Ford from Burlington to Greeley, Colorado. I was a radio announcer on my way to do the play-by-play of a high school football game on the Western Plains. The native blue stem and buffalo grasses had lost much of their summer green, but the wind moved across their tops and the sky and road seemed like a single piece of creation, and they gave me memories I still cherish.

Pawnee National Grasslands, Colorado

I daydreamed about buffalo herds and indigenous peoples moving through those flatlands, but I also noticed the road. It had not changed since I had first traveled this section of the national park system on a motorcycle when I had been tempted by the throttle and the highway. The asphalt was straight and fresh and there was not a single curve on the horizon nor a vehicle on the road.

My bike was hardly up to any dream of unfettered speed. I was riding a Honda 450 and had cleaned the plugs so many times it seemed impossible for them to deliver spark. I was a college student that summer and did not have the money to buy plugs; my first concerns were gas and food and sometimes a paid campground with a shower.

But I had switched out bikes with my buddy and he had been riding a Kawasaki KZ 1000, which was one of the fastest production bikes on the road when they first came into the marketplace. We had stopped to hear the silence, turned off our engines, listened to them tick, and walked away to where there was no sound but the wind moving through the grass tops.

“You wanna try it?” Bobby asked.

“The KZ?”

“I’m offering.”

There is an unspoken rule among motorcyclists, even those with the most modest of machines, that you do not ride the other person’s bike; you especially do not make the request. But an invitation is a different thing.

“Yeah, I’ll give it a go,” I said. “You sure?”

“I figure you’re staring at the white line and wondering about speed.”

I laughed. Friends understood. I tended to move through the world slowly and with observation of detail, but motorcycles were transformative. If I felt safe, I liked to roll up the power and let the bike perform. The KZ would carry me faster than I had ever ridden.

The Dream Machine

We had come down from Nebraska on Highway 71 and the road had been impossibly straight and true. Rocky buttes rose out of the grass and the late afternoon sun turned them white against the sea of green. Our pace was leisurely and slightly burdened with cheap backpacks with metal frames and heavy cotton sleeping bags increasing our drag coefficient. The sun and clear sky and the churn of the little pistons were comforting and made me feel like I never wanted to get off the bike.

But I have always felt that way.

Bobby and I walked back to the bikes and exchanged keys. We had turned onto Highway 14 and were headed west. The road looked like it might not have a single bend before it reached California.

“It’s faster than its reputation,” Bobby said. “Be careful.”

“Yeah, I will. See ya in Greeley.”

I pulled my helmet with the bubble shield over my head and wondered what my Ma might think when she got the news her son had gone down speeding on a motorcycle not his own out in the middle of America’s big empty. She had taught me to entertain the worst scenarios and I had decided to spend my youth in defiance of fear.

I had never been on a bike with that big of an engine displacement and compared to my little Honda it felt as though I were driving a car. The gears made a solid clunk like what I had heard when riding next to Harleys and I pushed the RPMs upward before shifting. I was at 80 by third gear and the wind was roaring in the ears of my thrift store helmet.

I passed the cutoff for Keota and tore down the asphalt toward Briggsdale, and as the speedometer crossed 100 the only disconcerting feeling was the loudness in my ears.

There was still too much roll left on the throttle and I wanted to see where it might take me. I did not pull it back all at once but eased the RPMs higher and felt the bike easily increase speed.

A bit of buffeting began to change the aerodynamics and I realized Bobby’s backpack had loose flaps that were now being torn to bits in the slipstream of 130 plus miles per hour, but I did not want to stop, and I did not. I took what little turn was left on the throttle and spun it until it would not go further.

I lost my nerve on that long, gleaming straight when the speedo crossed 140 mph and was still climbing. Maybe it was the wind, or I dreamed the ride but when I eased back on the throttle and got back down to 60 mph, I had the sense I could get off the bike and walk next to it as it rolled down the road.

I have never ridden faster since, nor do I expect I ever will. I crossed the Nullarboor in the Australian Outback on a BMW 1200 GSA while staring down the 90-mile straight, which is known as the longest roadbed without a curve in the world. I did not speed. My eyes were out for ‘roos and camels and wombats and sunsets. High-speed riding is not what motorcycling was ever about for me.

But just one time, I wanted to know. I would much rather slow down and think about natives riding the plains or spring winds through the gramma or wildflowers tilting before a summer storm off the Rockies. But I never remove motorcycles from my mind.

They have taken me to those memories and keep me rolling toward new ones. 

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia Media Release  

The decision of the Australian Government to cut student debts has been welcomed by the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA), the peak body representing independent skills training, higher education, and international education providers.

The Australian Government will cap the higher education HELP indexation rate at the lower of either the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or the Wage Price Index (WPI) with effect from 1 June 2023. This relief will be backdated to all HELP, VET Student Loan, Australian Apprenticeship Support Loan, and other student support loan accounts that existed on 1 June last year.

“The Australian Government’s initiative will be most welcome for the millions of people with student debt struggling to deal with cost-of-living pressures,” said Troy Williams, ITECA Chief Executive.

The universal application of the cut to student debt has been welcomed by ITECA.

“ITECA welcomes the fact that this important measure will support students that undertook their studies with independent skills training and higher education providers,” Mr Williams said.

In welcoming the move, ITECA said more could be done to support students studying with independent Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) and higher education institutions. One such measure would be to remove the 20% student loan tax (formally referred to by bureaucrats in Canberra by the more innocuous term ‘loan fee’) that many students taking out an Australian Government loan to study with independent RTOs and higher education providers face.

“It’s abhorrent that the Australian Government whacks a 20% student loan tax on the debts of people investing in study to achieve their life and career goals. It’s time for the Australian Government to end the student loan tax,” Mr Williams said.

ITECA will continue to lobby the Australian Government to end the student loan tax.

Monash University Media Release

The spotlight is yet again shining on the national crisis of violence against women in Australia, and the calls for increased action and improved responses to all forms of domestic, family and sexual violence has intensified over the last three weeks. 

With the need for a perpetrator register or a disclosure scheme emerging as one option to improve women’s safety, Monash University and University of Liverpool researchers have published a study examining whether such schemes actually improve women’s safety.

Domestic violence disclosure schemes (DVDS) provide a mechanism – for victim-survivors, individuals who feel at risk, and/or an individual’s friends and family members – to apply for information about whether a person has a documented history of domestic violence. The schemes can also involve police proactively providing information to protect potential ‘high risk’ victims from harm from their partner. 

Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon, who led this research, said the study revealed significant gaps in terms of both timeliness of data sharing and also the lack of follow-up supports and safety planning provided to applicants. 

“This study represents the first examination of the operation of the domestic violence disclosure scheme in Australia,” said Professor Fitz-Gibbon. “It raises significant questions as to the value of the scheme, and serves as a word of caution for other states and territories that are currently considering this approach.”

The research team, including Professor Sandra Walklate and Dr Ellen Reeves from University of Liverpool, interviewed scheme users, relevant practitioners, academics and policy makers in Australia and New Zealand to generate the evidence required to inform decisions about the introduction of a DVDS. 

Despite the often used political justification for disclosure schemes – that it provides women with the information they require to secure their safety – this study found that of the applicants interviewed, the majority had already experienced abuse and since separated from their partner when they accessed the same. For these applicants, the information disclosed did not necessarily come as a surprise, but rather a confirmation of suspicions they already held. 

“Applicants in this study did not necessarily require the information disclosed to them to support immediate safety planning and relationship decision making, but rather to confirm decisions they had already made about the viability of their intimate partner relationship and their safety in it,” Professor Fitz-Gibbon said. 

Sharing information with no follow up may put the applicant at greater risk of harm and represents a missed opportunity to keep the victim-survivor’s risk in view. 

In Australia, only South Australia has a domestic violence disclosure scheme. NSW piloted a scheme in 2016 but it was discontinued in 2018. No other state or territory has as yet introduced a scheme, although several have considered a scheme. 

Professor Fitz-Gibbon said DVDS carry significant resourcing implications; administrative workload, data sharing, training, support services and access. 

“The specialist domestic, family and sexual violence sector are calling for an urgent increase in funding to ensure they can support the safety needs of victim-survivors across Australia. At a time when funding for services is falling short across the country, it is imperative to critically question what policies are supported. ​​While several practitioners described the value of the scheme – whether it is the best use of resources in a chronically under-funded sector was of paramount consideration,” she said.

With national and state conversations currently underway around implementing reforms to end violence against women and children, this study assists policymakers in understanding not only what works, but also what policy approaches may be less effective. 

This research calls not for the introduction of a DVDS but for evidence-based policies and adequate funding for wraparound specialist support services to support safer outcomes for victim-survivors. 

By James Moore  

“If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.” – Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman.

Dan Rather was twenty years a legend by the time I began to work in Houston television news. Eventually, I was to become an alum of the station where he got his start, KHOU-TV. His rise to prominence began there in 1961 when he was looking at a weather radar screen of Hurricane Carla and its spinning clouds covering the entire expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. The story told is that the young correspondent had his cameraman turn his lens on the image to enable the audience to get a sense of what would soon make historic and devastating landfall. The decision probably saved an untold number of lives because the evacuations of Galveston accelerated and people were compelled to leave the island for inland safety.

Ultimately, I began to think of Rather as destiny’s darling, which is, effectively, an insult to his abilities and preparation as a reporter, though he was not without luck. His career followed American history’s arc, in part, because he was always aware and ready. CBS hired Rather away from KHOU-TV and sent him to run a bureau in Dallas. When the president announced a trip to the city, Rather is said to have asked his editors for additional resources because of the politics manifesting under community leadership in 1963. Texas later became a location for jumping over to Dixie and reporting on the brutality confronting the Civil Rights Movement, which was followed by an assignment covering the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where he was roughed up on live TV. Rather also got sent to report on the War in Vietnam and was later back in Washington covering Watergate before, finally, succeeding Walter Cronkite as anchor of the evening news.

Shortly after the Texan had ascended to the lead role at CBS, I was working at the network’s affiliate in Omaha. I had managed to come across the fact that a group of historic re-enactors were about to commemorate an anniversary of the Pony Express by riding from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, and I was able to prepare a feature report, which had interested editors in New York. My piece was the closing story on the CBS Evening New with Dan Rather that day, a moment of great note for an ambitious young man. I did not encounter Dan Rather in person, though, until August of 1992, when he came back to Houston and anchored his newscast from the city hosting the Republican National Convention. I was a lead political reporter at his early employer’s news department, KHOU-TV, and he briefly introduced himself in the hallway. Our futures, however, were to become entangled in a little more than a decade.

During the 1994 gubernatorial campaign between George W. Bush and Ann Richards, I had asked Bush how he had managed to get into the National Guard in Texas and avoid the draft and combat in Vietnam. My question grew out of the loss of friends who had died in Vietnam and my own anti-war activities as a protestor. I had decided that, short of leaving the country, the only way to avoid the draft was to enlist in the National Guard. Unlike Bush, I was told the waiting list to become a pilot was five years and it was three to join the infantry. Bush, however, simply walked into the Guard headquarters at Ellington Air Force Base outside of Houston and signed up to become a pilot, and told me during that statewide TV broadcast of the debate that his father, a U.S. Congressman, did not exercise influence to get him the slot. His answer was not just disingenuous, it was a lie.

“People,” he claimed, “did not want to spend the amount of time necessary to become a jet pilot. It requires a one year commitment to learn how to fly. It required another six and a half months to learn how to fly the F-102, as you may recall. I decided I want to learn how to fly a jet. And I did fly a jet. It took a year and a half worth of training something that most people did not want to do.” (40:15 below).

Houston, though, had numerous pilots home from Vietnam wanting to keep current on their qualification certificates, and there was no need for Ellington to spend a million dollars training a congressman’s son to be a pilot. Although it took decades for the truth to come out, the Texas House Speaker during that time, Ben Barnes, acknowledged in 2004 that he had gotten Bush into the Texas Guard as a favor to his father.

“I got a young man named George W. Bush into the National Guard when I was lieutenant governor of Texas, and I’m not necessarily proud of that, but I did it,” Barnes said in a brief video. “I became more ashamed of myself than I’ve ever been because the worst thing I did was get a lot of wealthy supporters and a lot of people who had family names of importance into the Guard and I’m very sorry about that and I apologize to you and the voters of Texas.”

Bush never acknowledged the privilege or influence, and still has not. The morning after my debate question in 1994, I got a call from the communications director of Ann Richards’ campaign telling me that I needed to call Barnes and he would give me the full story. Barnes led me along, telling me he had the guy who ran the “political list” for the Guard, and he was willing to give me the full story of Bush’s enlistment. Barnes, however, the ultimate political animal, sniffed the political breezes blowing across Texas and decided Bush was going to be president, and pissing him off would not help his business or fund raising. He made up a story about why the source would not talk.

I spent the next ten years very quietly filing FOIA requests to the military and federal government to get relevant documents on Bush’s time in the service. Responses were incomplete, and clearly missing timelines and relevant documents. Eventually, though, I was able to piece together his history and his disappearance from the Houston air base at Ellington. The eldest son of the future president went to Alabama to work on a U.S. Senate campaign for a friend of his father and claimed he was still on duty at the Alabama National Guard in Montgomery. Records showed, however, he never showed up for duty and was only on base for haircuts and dental work.

After endless calls for interviews and searching for printed evidence, I was referred to a rancher in West Texas. Bill Burkett claimed to have been in the Texas National Guard and witnessed a purging of Bush’s military files by people on the governor’s staff. He told me he and a Guard colleague had retrieved certain pages of the paper files from a waste basket, and had retained them for future reference. No matter how many times I requested the materials, they were never delivered to me even after Burkett insisted they were proof Bush had gone AWOL and never performed his duty. His story was not, however, fanciful, and fit with the timeline I had developed from the files I had received via FOIA.

Dan Rather

Dan Rather’s producer, Mary Mapes, had been in pursuit of the same story regarding Bush and the Texas Guard. Burkett presented her with the documents he had consistently refused to provide me, even though he never wavered in saying he had them available in safekeeping. Mapes took the material to forensic experts whose analyses convinced her she was looking at copies of originals that explained Bush’s Guard absence and various failures while he was serving, including not passing a physical. Rather and her created a report, which I am convinced, was true, even though the documentation was never one hundred percent verified. The Guard materials I published in my second book corroborated the missing info that Rather’s piece had provided.

Rather and Mapes were assaulted online before his half-hour newscast had concluded. The Internet trolls claimed the letters purported to be National Guard documents were fake because they used a superscript type face that was not available at that time. In fact, the Texas Guard was one of the early purchasers of electric typewriters with superscript capitalization. Nobody wanted to hear the contradiction because the noise of the critics was too loud and the political right was ascendant. Mapes contacted me and asked me to go on the air with Rather, which I did, and although I was unable to speak to the veracity of the letters and other documents they had acquired, I affirmed my confidence the story they had reported was true.

A special commission investigated the reporting and concluded it was unsupportable. His own employer, CBS News, appeared to be coming after a correspondent and anchor who had frequently risked his life to serve their advertisers and his journalistic audience. There was, however, no chance of survival. Rather signed off, left the network, and, eventually, his producer Mapes was no longer employed, either. Mapes published a book that laid out the experience in great detail, Truth and Duty, which was later made into a movie with Robert Redford playing Rather. The early script had an Australian reporter in my debate role but the scene ended up on the cutting room floor.

My book on Bush and the Guard was released in early September of 2004 as the president’s reelection campaign was launching. In January, as I began work on a new book for a new publisher, I was catching a flight from Austin to Columbus, Ohio to begin research. While trying to print a boarding pass at a kiosk, I got the “see agent” message, and went to the airline’s ticketing desk. I was told by the agent that I was now on the “No Fly Watch List,” which is a lesser sin than the No Fly List. I demanded an explanation and she was unable to provide one but called Homeland Security and handed me the phone.

“Ma’am, I don’t understand,” I told the anonymous female voice. “How can I be on the No Fly Watch List?”

“I can’t answer that, sir,” she said. “And even if I had that information, I would not be able to give it to you.”

“Is there anything you can tell me?”

“Well, only that there is something in your background that is similar to, or might relate to, someone the government is looking for.”

“Seriously? I’ve never even had a parking ticket and I have the most mundane name in all of the English language. My dad walked across Europe shooting enemies of this country and now his son is getting screwed around by the government he defended?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I wish there were more than I could tell you.”

The No Fly Watch List does not prevent you from flying but it does make travel tedious. There was no checking in online, or using baggage curb check, no printing boarding passes on kiosks, either. I had to always go to a ticketing counter to get cleared and then was given a boarding pass that indicated I required extra attention when I went through security. I talked to an attorney in Washington about suing DHS but was told everyone who attempted was shut down during the discovery process.

“As soon as you get discovery,” I was informed, “The judge gets told that releasing the needed documents to plaintiffs will jeopardize national security, and the case gets dismissed.”

A process was finally developed to allow people to submit materials and information to appeal their status, and DHS would reach a conclusion. Even when a disposition was reached, though, you were unable to know what it was. Your case was assigned a number in the DHS that was recorded in the Traveler’s Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP). Airlines can look at the number when you load it into their reservation system and it will determine if you are worthy to board an airplane. I have suspected from the first time I was informed that I was placed on the NFWL it was a consequence of my reporting on Bush’s military service record.

I am certain Mr. Rather had no such difficulties, though his accomplished career was treated cavalierly by an employer and a nation to whom he had been faithful. His story as a journalist and a Texan is compelling, regardless, and is the subject of a new Netflix documentary premiering tonight (May 1), and I’ll watch with my usual admiration. He was dogged, and unafraid, and at 92 still maintains a relevance with his Substack Steady. Turn on your TV. His story might be the best one he’s ever told.

And he’s told a lot of great ones.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.