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  1. Set stricter standards for use of force by police;











Clients are assessed to determine if they have a drinking problem using a number of psychological screening tests.  The most well known is probably the Michigan Alcohol Screening Test also known as the MAST test.  Clients are give a score based on their answers.  A higher score indicates a likely drinking problem.  Other tests include the Alcohol Use Disorders Test or AUDIT test.

I was born in 1955, ten years after the end of the Holocaust.  Growing up, I was fascinated and terrified by thoughts of it.  What would it have been like to have lived through that period?  What would it have felt like?  I am Jewish.  Would I have survived?  Would I have ended in a death camp, as a slave laborer, hiding in a cellar, or fought in the Resistance?  How would other people who were not Jewish have treated me or my family?  How could normal people let such a thing happen?  Could it happen anywhere else?  Were Germans different than other people or is any group of people capable of perpetrating such horrors? “Never again!” proclaimed the survivors.

In recent posts on Facebook, I have coined the term my “Never again radar.”  It is going off now.  The usual response to comparisons with Nazism and Hitler is that such comparisons are basically an admission of the weakness of the argument.  The misuse of such comparisons runs the risk of trivializing the comparisons, and of not being taken seriously when the comparison is justified.  With Trump however, I believe the comparison is justified for the reasons I argue below.

As I have thought about this blog for a while, I visualized about five similarities.  But then when I started to list them, it became apparent that five was too limited.  My first written list of ten grew quickly to eighteen.  Here is the list, I offer brief descriptions of each below: persistent lying; alternative facts; attacks on the press; promotion of bigotry and racism; loss of civility and respect for government officials; gaslighting opponents; hypocrisy; attacks on judges; nationalism and demanding obedience to the flag; demanding loyalty; mass rallies with exhortations to radicalism; encouragement of violence against opponents; advocating jail for political opponents; support for autocrats and attacks on democratic leaders; Nazi dog whistles; Nazi support; studying Hitler’s speeches, and attacks on the rule of law.  There is some overlap here.  I don’t claim this is an exclusive list, and I have deliberately left out some other equally odious character traits of Trump’s that do not necessarily justify invoking the Nazi comparison, such as his misogynistic treatment of women, nepotism, narcissism, corruption, theft, or the Russia investigation.  And my brief overview can’t possibly do justice to the myriad of ways Trump has attacked our country.




This week, my friend, Brian Karem, editor of the Montgomery Sentinel and writer for Playboy, after months of abuse of the media by Trump, finally fought back. Calling out the President’s lies are not “fake news.”  The press is not the “enemy of the people.”

President Trump, by calling the news media “the enemy of the people” and calling facts “fake news” is attacking all of us. Thursday and Friday he attacked Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.  Today he released a wrestling video, showing him punching and wrestling a person with a CNN logo on his head.  He calls CNN FNN – fake national news.

There is a reason that freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment. The Founders set up an elaborate system of checks and balances that is being tested as never before, at least during our lifetimes.  With a Congress unwilling to restrain the executive, willing to steal Supreme Court seats, an executive that repeatedly lies, insults, and bullies his opponents, an independent counsel that could be fired as soon as Trump thinks he can get a way with it, and a president that is unwilling or unable to defend the country against a Russian cyber attack, the media is our last line of defense.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that the injunctions against enforcement of Trump’s travel ban, that had been upheld by the Fourth and Ninth Circuits would be upheld in part and reversed in part.  Trump claimed this was a victory, but a careful reading of the majority opinion reveals otherwise.  The plaintiffs in the cases argued for a stay because the travel ban would cause irreparable injury to them and by implication, persons who were similarly situated.  The parties who claimed irreparable injury were parties who had family members, friends, and students coming to the US.  Foreign nationals who had no connection with anyone in this country did not bring the lawsuit, and have no constitutional right to come to this country.  In a sense the Supreme Court basically said that anyone that claimed irreparable injury and those similarly situated (“who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States”) could not be barred from entering the country.  To the extent that the lower court’s injunctions covered parties not involved in the lawsuit, in essence, they were overbroad.  Essentially all of the plaintiffs prevailed in the Supreme Court as to their interests.  Trump prevailed against foreign nationals who were not active in the litigation.  In other words, Trump lost to no one initially, and then prevailed over them.  Everyone who sued Trump won at the injunction stage.




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