Closing Argument

Tomorrow is Election Day. The Democratic Party has nominated Vice President Kamala Harris, who previously served as U.S. Senator from California, Attorney General of her State, and District Attorney for the County of San Francisco. The Republican Party has nominated former President Donald Trump.

The Vice Presidential nominees: The Democrats have Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, former Congressman, former high school football coach; while the Republicans have J.D. Vance, a  U.S. Senator from Ohio for only 4 years, and before that a corporate stooge-lawyer who wrote a well-known book about how "his people" are hillbillies that liberals don't respect.

In my opinion, the Democrats have nominated Claire Huxtable and Knute Rockne, while the Republicans have nominated Benito Mussolini and Gregory Marmalard. (Marmalard was the leader of the "evil" fraternity in Animal House, played by James Daughton.)

This race seemed like it would come down to 6 States: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. But recent polls have thrown North Carolina and Iowa into question.

To people in those States, here is the closing argument:

* The "Save Democracy" Argument: If Harris wins this time, and you don't like what she does, you can vote against her next time. If Trump wins this time, there may not be a next time.

* The "Rights" Argument: Trump appointed 3 Justices to the Supreme Court, giving it a 6-3 conservative majority, which took the right to an abortion away. If you are a woman who lives in a State that still upholds your right to decide for yourself if and when to have a child, that ends if Trump wins. He will almost certainly keep control of the House of Representatives and drag Republicans into control of the Senate, and he'll sign a bill outlawing all abortions -- except for rich people, who will find a way to get it taken care of for themselves or their wives/girlfriends/mistresses.

And Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have both already said that birth control is next. And if you think gay marriage was forever enshrined in the Constitution of the United States, well, that's what pro-choice activists thought.

* The "Palestinians" Argument: You might think Harris, as part of the Biden Administration, bears some responsibility for what's happened in Gaza. Trump is much more closely allied with Benjamin Netanyahu. Under him, things will absolutely get worse. He might even support Netanyahu in a war against Iran. After all, like Trump, Netanyahu is staying in power so he can stay out of prison.

The only State where a pro-Palestinian vote might make a difference is Michigan, since the Detroit metropolitan area has a large population of Arab descent. Fortunately, Detroit is also a majority-black city, and Michigan is a major union State, which should offset the number of pro-Palestinian voters either switching to Trump, voting third-party, or staying home. But if you're one of them, remember: You've got a better chance at peace with Harris than with Trump.

* The "Border" Argument: This one is just plain stupid. The border issue could have been solved this year. President Biden said he would sign the border security bill that was already set to be voted on by the Republican-controlled house and the Democratic-controlled Senate. It was endorsed by the FBI and every other major law-enforcement organization. But Trump called Speaker Mike Johnson and told him not to hold a vote.

You see, Trump doesn't give a damn about the border. He doesn't want to solve the issue. He only wants to have the issue, because he wants to scare you into voting for him instead of the Democrats. Dumb Donald is so dumb (How dumb is he?), he didn't realize that if Biden had signed a Republican-sponsored bill, he, Trump, could have taken credit for it, and his fans would have believed him. He could have said, "I forced Biden to sign the bill! I'm strong! He's weak!" Instead, he stopped the bill, because he didn't want Biden to get any credit for it.

One more time: Donald Trump does not care about immigrants, legal or otherwise, law-abiding or otherwise, coming over the border. He just wants to scare you about it. As a great President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, taught us, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

* The "Crime" Issue: Crime went up under Trump -- including crimes committed by Trump himself -- and it's gone down under Biden-Harris. When Trump says crime is out of control, he's lying, and the statistics prove it.

Nobody is eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. The town's Mayor, a Republican, said it's not happening.

Minneapolis and Portland were not "burned down." Both cities, with Democratic Mayors and in States with Democratic Governors, are doing better than the cities of Florida under Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, and the cities of Texas under Republican Governor Greg Abbott.

* The "Economy" Issue: The economy was good for the 1st 3 years of the Trump Administration -- because it was still the Obama economy. Then it crashed because of Trump's tax cuts and tariffs, and his mishandling of the COVID pandemic. Inflation was negligible then, because the economy itself was negligible.

Under Biden-Harris, the restoration of the economy led to inflation, but even so, it was lower in American than in any other developed nation. Today, inflation is back to where it was when Biden and Harris took office, unemployment is near an all-time peacetime low, and the stock market is at an all-time high. In other words, every prediction Trump made for the economy if Biden won has been proven wrong.

* Foreign Policy: Trump let the dictators of the world, from Netanyahu to Vladimir Putin of Russia, get away with whatever they wanted. They would love to have him back.

Trump said the war in Ukraine never would have happened with him still in office. Of course not: He wouldn't have aided Ukraine, and Putin would have won the war quickly. Now, he says, he would "let him do whatever the hell he wants."

If Ukraine falls, Poland is next. In those 8 toss-ups States, there are this many Polish-Americans: Michigan, 764,000; Pennsylvania, 737,000; Wisconsin, 474,000; Arizona, 152,000; North Carolina, 149,000; Georgia, 108,000; Nevada, 51,000; and Iowa, 38,000.

* "But I've always voted Republican!" So have many other people who are voting for Harris. Trump's own former Vice President isn't voting for him or endorsing him. Which makes sense: Mike Pence remains the only Vice President whose President tried to have him killed. (Andrew Jackson publicly expressed the wish that he had shot John C. Calhoun, but he never sent a mob chanting that they wanted to hang him, or to shoot the Speaker of the House in the head, as Trump did.)

Nor is the only other living Republican former President, George W. Bush, endorsing Trump. Bush's Vice President, Dick Cheney, has said he's voting for Harris. Cheney's daughter, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, is making campaign appearances with Harris. And while one of the Bush Twins, Jenna Bush Hager, is working in media (for NBC's The Today Show), and must maintain the appearance of neutrality, the other, Barbara Bush (who does not publicly use her married name, Mrs. Coyne), has been going door-to-door in key State Pennsylvania for Harris.

Harris has also been endorsed by Ronald P. Reagan and Patti Davis, children of "The Gipper"; Susan Ford Bales, daughter of Jerry Ford; Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of Ike; and descendants of Theodore Roosevelt. Somehow, Trump's gaining of the endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pales in comparison to all of that -- and would even if RFK Jr. were sane, which he isn't.

Aside from Trump and Bush, the only other living Republican former nominee for President is Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, nominated in 2012. He has endorsed Harris, because he finds Trump immoral. The family of Senator John McCain of Arizona, nominated in 2008, is also supporting Harris, and their support of Biden in 2020 probably cost Trump their State. The only other living Republican former Vice President, Dan Quayle, also hasn't endorsed Trump.

Mark Milley, a 4-star Army General who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for Trump's last year in office and Biden's 1st 3 years, has said that Trump is "fascist to the core" and "the most dangerous person ever."

John F. Kelly, a 4-star Marine General who served as Trump's 1st Secretary of Homeland Security and his 2nd White House Chief of Staff, has called Trump “certainly an authoritarian,” and has said that the former President once told him he wished he behaved more like the “German generals,” and specifically “Hitler’s generals.” Mark Esper, who served as Trump's 2nd Secretary of Defense, says he "has those inclinations."

Jim Mattis, a 4-star Marine General who served as Trump's 1st Secretary of Defense, has said that Trump "used the Presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens."

Rex Tillerson, an energy company executive who served as Secretary of State for the 1st year of the Trump Administration, has called Trump "a fucking moron." He was succeeded at State by Mike Pompeo. He hasn't endorsed Trump, either. Nor have Trump's 2 Attorneys General, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr. Nor has Trump's Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, who tried to get the Cabinet to invoke the Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to remove him from office after the Capitol Insurrection of January 6, 2021.

So Trump can't get the endorsement of his own Vice President, Secretaries of State, Secretaries of Defense, Attorneys General, Secretary of the Treasury, of White House Chiefs of Staff. And he can't get the endorsement of a single living Republican who has ever been nominated for President or Vice President, except his current running mate, Vance -- who, before being chose, called Trump "America's Hitler."

And if those Republicans, some of whom would deck anyone calling them a "liberal," can't bring themselves to vote for Trump, perhaps you should take that into consideration.

Indeed, Harris has supporters from across the political spectrum, from Bernie Sanders on the left to Liz Cheney on the right. Trump couldn't even get Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to speak on his behalf at the Republican Convention.

I mean, look at their supporters. Choose your decade icon:

* 1960s: Harris has Jane Fonda, Trump has Jon Voight.

* 1970s: Harris has Dolly Parton, Trump has Ted Nugent.

* 1980s: Harris has Bruce Springsteen, Trump has Hulk Hogan.

* 1990s: Harris has Jennifer Lopez, Trump has Dr. Phil McGraw.

* 2000s: Harris has Beyoncé, Trump has Kid Rock.

* 2010s and 2020s: Harris has Taylor Swift, Trump has Elon Musk.

That's the closing argument. Trump represents things that should be left in the past: Authoritarianism, toxic masculinity, bigotry in every form. While Harris represents the future that America was always meant to have.

"Make America Great Again"? Trump does not understand what greatness is. America, for all its flaws and missteps, has never stopped being great. Harris is a symbol of America's greatness. Let's make her the caretaker of America's greatness, so she can move America's greatness to a new, higher level.

March 13, 1964: The Murder of Kitty Genovese

March 13, 1964, 60 years ago: A murder is committed, symbolizing the rising crime wave in New York City, and American cities in general. What's worse wasn't the number of people who cared, but the number of people who seemed not to care.

Catherine Susan Genovese was born on July 7, 1935 in Brooklyn, and grew up in the neighborhood of Prospect Heights. As far as has been determined, she was not related to New York's Genovese organized crime family. In 1954, her mother witnessed a murder, and her parents left, moving to New Canaan, Connecticut. But Catherine, known as Kitty, decided to stay in Brooklyn, as she was about to get married. But the marriage was quickly annulled.

She took clerical jobs, but found bartending more to her liking. In 1961, she was arrested for bookmaking, for taking horse racing bets from bar patrons. She pleaded guilty, paid a $50 fine, and was fired from her job.

She soon got another bartending job, at Ev's Eleventh Hour Bar, on Jamaica Avenue and 193rd Street in Hollis, Queens. Soon, she began managing the bar on behalf of its absentee owner. This enabled her to make enough money to get an apartment in the Kew Gardens section of Queens, at 82-70 Austin Street. She shared it with Mary Ann Zielonko. As comedian Bill Maher once said of this period, "Lesbians were called 'roommates.'"

She went to work on March 12, 1964, and left at 2:30 AM on March 13 -- a Friday the 13th. At 3:15, she parked her red Fiat in the Kew Gardens station of the Long Island Rail Road, about 100 feet from her apartment's door, in an alleyway at the back of the building.

She and her Fiat had been seen by Winston Moseley, who was driving a Chevrolet Corvair. He followed, parked his car in a bus stop on Austin Street, and got out, taking a hunting knife with him. He ran after her, caught her, and stabbed her twice in the back.

She yelled out, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!" Some neighbors heard the sound, but only a few of them recognized it as a cry for help. One, Robert Mozer, shouted out, "Let that girl alone!" but did nothing else. Moseley ran away, and Kitty got to the entrance of her apartment.

But she only got as far as a hallway at the back of the building before falling, barely conscious. Moseley went back, found her, stabbed her again, raped her, and stole $49 from her (about $448 in 2022 money), before finally leaving.

Sophia Farrar, a neighbor and friend, found her, called an ambulance, and held her until the ambulance arrived. One witness said his father had called the police after the initial stabbing, saying, a woman was "beat up, but got up and was staggering around." Another witness called friends for advice on what to do, before finally calling the cops. At 4:15 AM, the ambulance got to the scene, but it was no use: Kitty died on route to the hospital, just 28 years old.

The first suspect the police questioned was Zielonko, thinking the gay relationship might have soured and turned violent. She denied knowing anything about it. The neighbors also denied that Zielonko had anything to do with it.

Six days later, on March 19, Moseley was arrested in Ozone Park, Queens, after a stolen television set was found in the trunk of his Corvair. During questioning, Moseley admitted that he killed Kitty. He also confessed to killing Annie Mae Johnson, shot in her apartment in South Ozone Park a few weeks earlier; and Barbara Kralik, only 15, and killed in her family's house in Springfield Gardens in July 1963. He said he preyed on women because "they were easier, and didn't fight back." On June 11, he was convicted, and remained in prison until his death in 2016, at age 82.

The murder of Kitty Genovese would have been a footnote in the history of crime in New York City, if not for Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy meeting A.M. "Abe" Rosenthal, then the metropolitan editor of The New York Times, for lunch and telling him, "That Queens story is one for the books." Rosenthal launched an investigation, and on March 27, 2 weeks after the murder, the Times published a story titled "37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police."

The text of the article raised the number to 38, and subsequent editions printed the number 38 in the headline, but it entered the public consciousness as "37 people saw a murder and did nothing about it." The article quoted one witness as saying, "I didn't want to get involved."

Crime had been on the rise in New York since the end of World War II, and with the Baby Boomers, the largest generation America has ever produced, now beginning to reach adulthood, and illegal drugs becoming more available and more widespread than ever, it was starting to get out of control. The Genovese murder didn't start the crime wave that continued to plague New York until the mid-1990s, but it was a convenient symbol. And the reaction to it was a convenient symbol for the callousness of New Yorkers, making the City look very bad to the rest of the country.

In the years to come, the facts of the case began to emerge. In 2014, on the 50th Anniversary of the murder, a book was published suggesting that the number of 38 witnesses who "did nothing" was misinterpreted. Some witnesses thought they saw, or heard, a minor argument, and had no idea a that murder was taking place until the next morning. She was attacked 3 separate times, and in each of the 1st 2, only 1 witness saw her get stabbed. And the 1st stabbing punctured a lung, rendering her incapable of screaming.

What's more, there was no real way to get in touch with emergency services: The best that could be done at the time was to dial zero for a telephone operator, say, "Get me the police," and go through the NYPD's calling system of the time, and hope that it led to an ambulance getting there in time. This was considered unacceptable, and in 1968, 4 years later, the 911 emergency-call system was put into effect.

Episodes of the CBS legal drama Perry Mason, like the novels that inspired it, were usually titled "The Case of the... " followed by an alliteration. On November 21, 1965, the show aired "The Case of the Silent Six," with 6 residents of a small apartment building failing to help a murder victim. The 1975 ABC film Death Scream was also based on the murder. So were 2 episodes in the NBC Law & Order franchise, one of them titled "41 Witnesses."

In the 1986 comic book miniseries Watchmen, the character of Walter Kovacs recalled reading about the Genovese murder, saying that it inspired him to become the vigilante Rorschach. This was also mentioned in the 2009 film version. What the film version did not include, but the original graphic novel did, was that his mask was made from a dress that Kitty had worn.