Three No Trump Will Never Be the Same

photo: digitizedchaos

“Three no trump” is a common and popular bid in bridge, but it has not been the same since Donald Trump's improbable presidential campaign got off the ground. Forget about his other Republican rivals, he's according to polls already putting Hilary Clinton, whose election many thought was a shoe in, on the defensive. A flash in the pan could turn out to be one of the great upsets in both political and military history. Think of the Russians defeating Napoleon in 1812.  But getting back to “trump.” It's an interestinng word since as a verb, according to Merriam-Webster, it means "to get the better of" and there is also “trumped-up,” which according to Merriam-Webster means “fraudulently concocted." All of the meanings including that used in bridge would seem to apply to the character of the presidential pretender who by sheer force of will gets the better of his adversaries with often trumped-up bologna that they at the same time don’t have the hot wind to trump. One of the ways that Trump gets power is in laying his stamp everywhere. He is like a male dog whose pee defines his territory. You have Trump Hotel Rio de Janeiro (opening in 2016), the Trump Rink in Central Park and Trump Entertainment Resorts in Atlantic City. His name even appears on properties he hasn’t developed like the Trump International Golf Club in Puerto Rico (“How Donald Trump cashes in even when his name-brand properties fail,” The Washington Post, 7/23/15) As the star of The Apprentice he would not be the first actor to be a president. That’s Ronald Reagan’s claim to fame, but it’s what firmly put Trump in the mythology making business.  In fact, the whole campaign could have qualified as an episode of The Apprentice and maybe constitute the script of a new reality show entitled Donald Trump’s West Wing. If Trump gets elected The White House will likely be renamed, Trump White House like the Fifth Avenue landmark, Trump Tower. Surely Mr. Trump will feel no qualms about exploiting the presidency for all its worth and he’ll undoubtedly have the energy to do it, even as he reviews the specs for his proposed wall between Mexico and the United States. The question is will the author of The Art of the Deal be able to finagle naming rights, if he continues to insist on Mexico paying the freight.

White House Counter intelligence Coup

Overhead View of White House Grounds (US Department of Defense )

The Times reported that the ushers had muted the alarm or “crash box" on the front door of the White House because it was too loud “Armed Intruder at White House Got to East Room,” NYT, 9/29/14) It was further reported that Omar Jose Gonzalez had actually made it all the way to the East Room with a knife in his pocket—something that would have been prevented if the Secret Service had put one of those accordion children’s gates across the entranceway to that wing of the sacred redoubt. Of course, you could dig trenches between the rooms of the White House and create manned battle stations in front of the staircase leading to the presidential family’s living quarters which is one of the places Gonzalez passed in his travels or say on the threshold of the Oval Office. None of the journalistic recountings of the security breach has pointed out that Gonzalez’s possession of a knife, might simply have been indicative of the fact that he could have been looking for a job in the White House kitchen. But what is most significant is that no one in US intelligence has realized that Mr. Gonzalez’s talents could be employed elsewhere. If he could break into the White House, why not parachute him down to the Iraq Syria border or to the Syrian city of Raqqa, which is now the de facto ISIS capital. Let him jump over the fence of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s palace and see if he can penetrate to the equivalent of the East Room, an area usually designated for receptions. This would be a real coup, even though there are some (there are always critics—“those who can do do and those who can’t do criticize” goes the old saw) who would find this simply counter intelligent.

Home Alone Redux

You can run but you cannot hide. No place seems to be safe anymore. The headline on the front page of the Times read “White House Intruder’s Past Raises Concern,” (9/22/14). According to the Times story, Omar Jose Gonzalez,  who "scaled an iron fence and made his way through the front door of the White House" had been apprehended and released after “he carried a hatchet in front of the White House.” Does it seem far flung to imagine an exchange where Mr. Gonzalez scales the fence and goes to the back door of the White House, ringing the bell and  exclaiming “delivery from ISIL!" Then there was the headline two days later, “3 Suspected French Jihadists Give Up After Botched Arrest,” (NYT, 9/24/14). This case demonstrates how difficult security can be in response to the terrorist threat. Apparently Turkish officials put three suspected jihadists on a plane back to France, but French security was waiting for them at Orly while they had already passed through passport control at Marseilles. The Times went on to describe how the three terrorists then tried unsuccessfully "to turn themselves in at a village police station, but the police were away on rounds.” Would it make sense for NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) to hire a private security firm to make sure that there are alarms on the front doors? The democratic way of life touts freedom and transparency, but what happens if ISIL simply walks into the control room and turns our own warheads  on Washington, Chicago, New York and LA? Actually there would be a precedent for this since ISIL are apparently already armed with caches of American weapons, abandoned by the Iraqi army. Charity begins at home runs the old saw and the same might be said of defending the world for democracy. Before Allied forces leave the house for the Middle East, hadn’t they better remember some simple things like closing and locking doors and remembering which airport captured terrorists will be arriving at?