Bob Lord

Bob has mostly wound down his 39-year career as a tax and business lawyer (with a 1-year interruption to run for Congress in 2008 (CD3), when he tried to unseat John Shadegg. Bob now serves as the senior advisor on tax policy for the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy Americans who believe the light taxation of America's rich is destabilizing our democracy, and as an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Bob has been writing for Blog For Arizona since late 2011, concentrating mostly on federal issues, with an occasional foray into Arizona state politics.

Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 6)

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[Last in a Six-Part Series]

[Previous parts in series: Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 1); Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 2); Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 3); Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 4); Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 5)]

THE OUTING

Well, all good things must come to an end, as they say. I knew my “special relationship” with ole Thuck was over once I let others in on the secret, but couldn’t decide on when, or how. In the meantime, I’d discovered that accusing the Thuckster of lying was virtually certain to rankle him.

So, leading up to the outing, I put up a few delightful posts with “Thucky” (or some derivative thereof) and “lying” in the title, or some words to that effect. There was Thucky on Double Secret Probation, Lies, Damned Lies, and Thucky’s Statistics, Did Thucky Lie Again?, and Is Thucky Lying (again)?

One of Thucky’s most ridiculous moments came when he thought he could drive a wedge between me and the BlueMeanie by posting this comment denigrating me and complimenting the BlueMeanie.

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Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 5)

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[Fifth in a six-part series]

[Previous parts in series: Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 1); Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 2); Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 3); Thucky and Me, Our Magical Year (Part 4)]

Thucky’s Racism, Elitism, and Psychopathology

With full knowledge of who Thucky was, I decided to engage in some amateur psychoanalysis with him. For the most part, he was quite a willing patient, generally willing to engage in the comment section of each post. He also was commenting like a madman on all my tax and inequality related posts. Those comments often helped with the “research.”

At this point, there was a complete disconnect between me and our readers. I felt bad, but I didn’t see a way around it. The readers, quite understandably, were thinking “why is he spending so much time writing about some moron blog troll?” Their comments are starting to reflect this annoyance. At the same time, I’m thinking “Wow, I’m going one-on-one with one of the highest elected officials in the state, and he’s an absolute mental midget. How long can I keep this going and how far off the rails will he go?” In the featured post below, I tried to justify my focus on Thucky without revealing his identity, but I doubt many of our readers were buying it. Eventually, the disconnect came to a head, in a friendly way, and actually added some levity to the outing process (not that the process was short on levity, but I was happy to have more). More on that in the next installment.

The psychoanalysis plays out primarily in three posts, Thing Two About Thucky; Thucky: Textbook Case of a Neo-Religious Conservative; and Things Three Through Thirty-Three About Thucky.

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A Comment on Comments

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My buddy Thucky recently went on the radio to complain that we had deleted many of his comments, including his most scholarly ones. At the same time, I’ve noticed a few things related to comments that bear mention. I speak only for myself, although my fellow writers may be in about the same place. Regarding … Read more

If I’m Wrong, Where Are My Palestinian Counterparts?

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If you spoke to me seven years ago about Israel – Palestine, my view would have been a lot closer to those of the commenters who oppose me than the one I espouse today. I would not have been as bombastic as they. But, on balance, I believed that Israel should exist as a Jewish homeland and that its military actions were largely defensive in nature.

Obviously, my views have changed. How that occurred is a story for perhaps another post, and certainly a topic for my talk to the East Valley PDA this coming Thursday. But the fact is that my views have changed in a huge, huge way.

I’m not alone. Although I consider myself an Atheist religiously, my heritage is 100% Jewish. Many, many of the pro-Palestinian voices you hear these days are actually Jewish: Noam Chomsky, Philip Weiss, Gideon Levy, Norman Finkelstein, Henry Siegman, and Miko Peled, to name a few. Jewish Voice for Peace has over 100,000 on its mailing list.

So, I and all these other Jews support the Palestinian cause, but precious few Palestinians support the Zionist point of view. Why is that? Mind you, I’m not saying there are zero Palestinians who oppose the Palestinian cause. We actually have a Muslim here in Arizona who the conservatives trot out on a regular basis to justify their Muslim bashing. My guess is there may be a Palestinian or two somewhere shilling for Israel. But there are precious few of them compared to the number of Jews who support the Palestinian cause.

Why is that the case? If the Israeli position is as righteous as the Zionists claim it is, why are there nowhere near the number of Palestinians speaking for Israel as there are Jews speaking for Palestinians?

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Book Review: The General’s Son

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Regardless of your view, if you’re immersed in the Israel – Palestine situation, as I have been, I’d highly recommend The General’s Son, by Miko Peled. I just finished it a few days ago. Peled is not a professional writer, so his style is only average. Overall, however, the information he conveys is compelling, and … Read more