Art is 80

Let’s see if I can do this so that it makes sense. I would also like it to be accurate, but perhaps that is less important if it makes sense. The subject is liberalism versus its opposite. Here goes:

When I read Timothy Snyder’s eyeopening book, Bloodlands, about 15 years ago, I learned a bit about the philosophy behind Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. The philosophy was one of extreme nationalism, a view of the world in which national groups occupied particular parcels of land, competing against each other for territory, with stronger groups winning and weaker groups losing and perhaps becoming extinct in the process. As Hitler viewed the German people as ubermenschen, or supermen, they would come out ahead, eventually extinguishing or diminishing the Slavs to the east (the Poles, the Russians, the Ukrainians, and so on). As for the Jews, who had no territory they called their own, they had no place in Hitler’s world at all. They just didn’t fit his model. Not only that, their very existence, at least in Europe, belied his model; they all lived in land rightfully belonging to other national groups, and through their contacts and close ties with each other, irrespective of national boundaries, they were “cosmopolitans”, whose very existence were an extreme danger to Hitler’s view of the world not only as it was, but as it had to be, and as it should be. Hence, the need for their extermination.

Now, of course, there are over 7 million Jews living in Israel, a country that did not exist while Hitler ruled Germany, and one can argue (as some do) that the Zionist view of human society is akin (obviously not identical) to the Hitlerian view of national groups competing against one another for land, in part based on views that some nationalities are superior to others. (I understand that I am exaggerating here, but you know what I mean.) Thus, while you might strongly disagree with a conclusion that Israel is a Fascist or, worse, a Nazi state, you can at least see where the argument might come from.

Now, clearly not all Jews view the world that way, not even in Israel, just as not all Germans, even living in the heart of Germany or Austria during the Hitler years, did not agree with the Nazi’s description of the world. And if the Israel government moves leftward from the right, just as if the Weimar liberals had been able to hang on to Germany in the 1930s, the world’s view of Germans or Israelis would be very different.

American Jews, another 6 million or so, by and large, do not agree with the view of human society as a constant, necessary, and welcome battle between different national groupings, even if they are very supportive of Israel. Hence, for example, the prominence of J Street in the United States, where its equivalent in Israel is not nearly as widely followed. J Street firmly believes that Israel and its neighbors should and can make a long lasting peace with each other. Hitler would view that view as nonsense.

We all know that American society, at least at the political level, is in crisis today. And that is the case even without considering the extreme right (which in places is very extreme) and the left wing of American thinking (which, as the world goes, is really not very far to the left at all). We call the two less extreme visions of American society “conservative” and “liberal”, although neither term is anywhere near accurate. So let’s call them “left” and “right”, keeping the quotation marks, so that we know that these, too, are artificial terms.

The “left” in the United States is the equivalent of the Weimer liberals, the “cosmopolitan” Jews, and other groups that talk about one world and one human race, and who believe that, somehow, as the human world matures, cooperation and interchangeability should become the norm, and wars and ethnic disputes should become a thing of the past. The “right” believes that, even if the vision of the left might be desirable, it is a pipe dream, that humans are humans, that jealousies are jealousies, that power is an aphrodisiac, and that the world will never change.

For this reason, the “right” follows a political philosophy which is centered on American nationalism, and for this reason, many on the “left” might consider the American “right” to be Fascist. After all, in order to keep any country fully nationalist, you need certain rules and standards that must be met, and in every such case a strong leader is required. The American “left”, on the other hand, believes in a cosmopolitan America which requires everyone to have an equal say, and which cannot abide a the type of strong leader welcomed by the “right”.

This brings me to Israeli-American thinker, writer, philosopher, Yoram Hazony, someone that I don’t think I had ever heard of until the day before yesterday when I saw a reference to him in an article in The Atlantic. Hazony is, as it turns out, a very active and respected conservative thinker, influential in the American “right”‘s intellectual movements. He is Israeli born, but raised in the United States and educated at Princeton. He lives in Jerusalem with his American wife and their nine children. He is an Orthodox Jew.

He believes that liberalism, the kind of liberalism promoted by the American “left” and other cosmopolitan movements, which believes that every individual has the right to determine his or her own course in life, with no national standards or enforced limits, (and this is how he defines American liberalism) should not be promoted simply because it can’t exist other than for a very short time. Liberals, he says, will never be satisfied with the extent of freedom granted to individuals, will always press for more, and will always be faced with a backlash, and every so called liberal or “left” society will always be unstable and lead to self destruction. Only a conservative society, based on enforced national principles, can be long lasting.

Thus, in his mind, Israel as an avowed “Jewish” state, is appropriate. I don’t think he ever talks about the superiority of one ethnic group over another, like a Hitler would, but he clearly believes (or at least I think it is clear) that an Israel where non-Jews have a secondary role in society, is appropriate. Religion is clearly a part of Hazony’s definition of nationalism, but it is not the only part; he does not seem to be favoring a purely theocratic society.

In the United States, Hazony discounts any positive role played by the “left”, or the Democrats. This is not surprising. He also divides the Republicans into three categories, only one of which he finds acceptable. He disses the extreme right wingers, but also disses those who he considers liberal Republicans (I don’t consider any of his liberal Republicans liberal). His favored Republicans are the old-line conservatives, who he believes constitute the majority of the Republican party. And he would generally support their views of American nationalism (I assume he would support tight border controls, and extensive deportations, although I don’t really know this), and even their bringing Christian principles into their definition of nationalism.

Where does that leave American Jews? Because his thinking is not based on eugenics, he recognizes that Jews are a part of nationalistic America. And he believes that the most secure future for Jews in America is to align themselves with Republican conservative American nationalists, to ensure that Jews remain part of the mainstream. Aligning themselves with American liberals is a road to destruction (as he believes that liberal thinking in general is a road to destruction), and aligning themselves with either “left” or “right” extremes (as he views them) is simply trying to make make peace with the devil, as he views both “extremes” as necessarily antisemitic.

Okay, you can disagree with Hazony from start to finish, as I do. But, having read about him and read some of his writing yesterday, I have a better understanding of a bunch of things.

The easy answer is “yes”. The Atlantic has long been a first class publication. Founded by such people as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the 1850s, it has in fact been a first class publication for one long time. And now that Jeff Bezos has made it clear that he’d rather spend his money on a seemingly awful film about Melania T than on the Washington Post by firing a third of the Post staff, The Atlantic will obviously become better by increasing its own staff, its coverage and its circulation. So why is this even a question?

Well, first, we have not canceled our Post print subscription at this point and, to tell you the truth (and why not?), so far the Post still looks just like it did before the firings. Second, we also get the print edition of the New York Times every day. Both of these come at great expense, but they also both are much more fun to read on paper than online.

But, the real problem is what comes into my inbox every day. Let’s take a look. Today is Saturday, and it is now about 10 a.m. Some things come in later during the day and a few things, such as the important Jewish Insider post, does not show up on Shabbat.

But here is what I have coming in so far (and of course most of these will never be opened):

1. Robert Reich: a 42 minute video apparently (I won’t repeat the word “apparently”, but as I am only looking at the lead-ins, everything is “apparently”) about Bad Bunny.
2. Timothy Snyder on “The Long Ukrainian Winter”.
3. The Contrarian’s post: “Trump and Cronies’ Top 10 Corruption Scandals”.
4. Haaretz Weekend Brief: “Netanyahu Gives the IDF More Leeway to Attack…..et al”.
5. USA Today daily post
6. Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily Briefing.
7. Major League Baseball Morning Line.
8. The Economist: Plot Twist, a Weekly Conversation about Culture
9. The Forward: The Beauty of Singing in Hebrew, etc., etc.
10. Snopes: Racist video of the Obamas
11. Google Alerts on Lithuanian Jews
12. St. Louis Post Dispatch – daily edition
13. Studio Theatre
14. Round House Theatre
15. Atlas Obscura
16. CNN’s Five Good Things
17. Vanity Fair
18. The Bulwark: Democracy and Election Interference
19. The Wall Street Journal 10 Point
20. The Daily Beast A.M. Digest
21. Steve Vladek: the Fifth Circuit on Immigration
22. The Wall Street Journal Weekend Free Expression post
23. The Daily Quiz
24. The NYT Wordle
25. The Wall Street Journal’s “In Today’s Paper”.

As the day goes on, I will get additional posts from some of these sources – CNN, the St. Louis Post Dispatch and others post at least twice a day. I will also get news breaks from the Washington Post and New York Times and US Today. I will hear from Popville and Urban Turf and Axios and the Washington Business Journal about doings in Washington DC and environs. I will hear about antisemitism from ISGAP, and from Zeteo, I will get several posts from a Progressive perspective. I will get many posts from Bulwark contributors and from Contrarian contributors. I will hear from the Washington Jewish Week and the St. Louis Jewish Light. I will hear from My Jewish Learning, Torah-in-Motion, Moment, and The HUB.

And of course, I will get some promotions, ads and more personal messages.

And I have to add to this that, for much of the day, our TV will be showing the news from, typically, MS NOW or CNN.

So, I go back to my opening question. Should I subscribe to The Atlantic?

(1) A few weeks ago, Edie and I decided to rewatch (my computer says that “rewatch” is not a word; let’s make it one) Homeland, now on Netflix. We had watched it when Homeland was first broadcast on HBO, where it ran for eight years, from 2011 through 2018. In those days, so long ago, HBO released episodes once a week each year for a few months, and then you had to wait with bated breath for eight or nine months for the next season to start.

Now, deciding to rewatch Homeland, whether or not you want to binge it in a week, or slowly watch it over a period of weeks or months, is to commit yourself to a major undertaking. Each episode is a little less than an hour long, but there are eight years of them, twelve episodes per year, or 96 episodes altogether. Last night, we finished Season 4, so we are half way through, 48 episodes watched, and 48 more to go.

Some of what we are watching is very familiar to me, and some I don’t really remember, or remember in detail. In fact, I remember the earlier years the best. I don’t know if you watched Homeland back in the day, but its genre is what I would call “political suspense”. I don’t know if that is an official genre, but that pretty well describes it. The two stars, who stuck with the show from start with end, were Claire Danes, who played Carrie, a bipolar CIA operations agent, and Mandy Patinkin, who played Saul, her boss (and sometime Director of the Agency).

The first three years were devoted to the return of Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, who had been a prisoner of al-Qaeda for 8 years, and who returned a different person than the man who went to fight al-Qaeda years before. Season 4 had a different plot, this time set primarily in Islamabad, Pakistan, where Carrie had been appointed CIA station chief, and which involved not only the Pakistani government, but a Taliban leader from Afghanistan, and ended up with an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and the breaking off of relations between the United States and Pakistan. Was the attack Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Pakistani government, or a combination of all or some? We will watch an episode or two of Season 5 tonight or tomorrow. I frankly couldn’t tell you what comes next.

Now, 2011 is really not that long ago. I was already 69 years old in 2011, for example. But in some ways, it was a very long time ago. I say this because I don’t think that today, in 2026, a program like Homeland would noy be filmed. Today, you find a lot of suspense series and films on Netflix. But they are generally just domestic bad guys, or maybe a foreign lone wolf, facing good guys. They don’t make a major political statement, like Homeland does.

We have so far seen episodes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and (presciently) in Venezuela. Each of these countries is filled with awful people. If there are good people, we don’t see them. And, clearly, except for the episodes in Venezuela (which are, in fact, a bit weird), the bad guys are all Middle Eastern, the women all with head coverings, the men often dressed in traditional, not western, clothing.

There aren’t any series today (are there?) about any of the conflicts in which the country is currently embroiled. And I can’t really imagine a series based on American intelligence services and the challenges that they are facing abroad, where the plot necessarily makes the populations of countries all evil.

I can’t tell you what has changed. Maybe it’s just a question of the public’s taste. Maybe my whole premise is wrong. But, to me, Homeland, as good as it is, seems extraordinarily dated.

(2) Otherwise, I haven’t found any great new series to watch while I am on the treadmill or stationary bicycle. I went through a six part Spanish series called (in English) The Crystal Cuckoo, that I stuck with but don’t really recommend, although it was well acted and nicely photographed. A young woman just out of medical school in Madrid has a serious heart attack and winds up having a heart transplant. In Spain, you are not supposed to learn the identity of the donor, but she figures it out, and decides to go to a very attractive, historic old Spanish mountain town, to meet the donor’s mother, and learn about his life. She gets more than she bargained for. Yes, in effect, she finds a new “family”, but she also finds out that the family is embroiled in a series of mysterious disappearances that have taken place of a long period of time. Her donor’s father, her donor’s aunt, and several others have disappeared without a trace. Her donor himself, who died in a one car accident, was researching all of these disappearances. Did he really die in an accident? Was he the victim of a homicide when he car when over a cliff? Did he commit suicide?

Naturally, our heroine, over a period of less than a week, helps the locals solve the mystery. By the time the series is over, everyone is accounted for, and the criminal is apprehended. And – I don’t think this was necessary – she falls for the brother of her donor (who happens to be a member of the Guardia Civil with whom she works to solve the crimes), and he for her. Okay, here is the question. If a man dies and a woman gets his heart via a transplant, and she strikes up a romantic relationship with the dead man’s brother, is that incest?

Curious minds would like to know.

(3) I just watched thrvfirst of three episodes of another Spanish series, Two Tombs. Another mistake?

(1) I call Jim Coleman Toyota to make an appointment to have my 2019 Prius get its now and then checkup. I push the button for “service”, and Brook answers the phone. I have spoken with Brook before. She is, I must say, delightful. You can see her smile just by hearing her voice. She wants to be helpful and I know she also wants to feel appreciated. When you speak with her, you get the immediate feeling that you are her favorite customer and she wants you to feel that she is your favorite service agent.

Sometimes, you might wonder what Brook looks like. Dark hair or blond. Tall or short. Young or old. But then you realize that such thoughts are an utter waste of time. Because Brook is none of these things. Brook is AI. She is all mind, and no body, and she really doesn’t give a damn about you. In fact, even referring to her as “she” is a mistake.

Brook is also, and always has been, totally incompetent. Her one and only task is to give you a date and time for a service appointment. Sounds like it should not be too hard. But, it is well beyond Brook’s capacity. My conversation went something like this:

B. When do you want to come in?

A. How about next Tuesday?

B. Let me see what appointments I have available for Friday.

A. Not Friday. I said Tuesday.

B. On, Tuesday, I can give you an appointment for 7 a.m. or for 11:45.

A. One of those is too early, and one is too late.

B. Sorry, that is all I have available on that day.

A. Can I talk to a real person?

B. I did not understand that.

A. Can I talk to a real person?

B. I did not understand that.

A. REAL PERSON!!

Finally, I get transferred to a real person. This time it was Darien. The conversation went like this.

D. Hi, this is Darien, how can I help you? This is Arthur, right?

A. Hi, Darien. I was trying to get an appointment for Tuesday, but Brook told me I had to come in at either 7 or 11:45. Is there another time available?

D. What time do you want to come in?

A. How about 9 a.m.?

D. Sounds good. I’ll send you an email to confirm.

(2) The television in my office turns on, but doesn’t show anything but a horizontal rectangle that says: “No Service. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah”

I call Verizon Fios. My call is answered by a Brook sound-alike, who does not even have the politeness to give me her name. But she asks me what my problem is. It goes something like this:

VF: Tell me your problem. You can say: Gobbledygook, or Somethingorother, or Waggleyboot.

A. My TV doesn’t work.

VF. You can say: Gobbledygook, or Somethingorother, or Waggleyboot.

A. My TV doesn’t work.

VF. I didn’t understand what you said. Did you say Waggleyboot?

A. No.

VF. Let me try to help you. Step 1. Turn your TV on. If you see a picture, then we are through. Do you see a picture?

A. No.

VF. Step 2. Make sure your TV is plugged into the wall. Is it plugged in?

A. Yes.

VF. Step 3. Go to the bugglemicordy, and press the button that says ashipokaray, and if you see the words alimoxibeely flotactable on the screen, let me know.

A. What?

VF. Step 4. Shake the griplediarick, kick the antirockifisle, and spit on the polipikkipi. Then tell me if you see a picture.

A. I need to talk to someone

VF. I’m sorry. I don’t understand you.

A. TALK TO SOMEONE!!

Someone comes on the line. Indian accent. Does not tell me his name but tells me he can help me. I decide his name is Pradeesh.

P. I am going to send you a link, so I can access your set and see it through your camera

A. Good

P. Do you see a picture now?

A. Yes, thanks. What did you do?

P. I just reset it. Should be fine now.

A. If this happens again, can I do this myself?

P. Yes. See the little box with the green light behind the TV?

A. Yes.

P. Unplug it, count to 5, and plug it in again.

A. Terrific. Thanks.

Okay, John Henry was a steel driving man. They sing about him all across the land. John Henry was a steel driving man. He beat the steam drill down and then he died. John Henry.

Who needs AI, anyway? It will be the ruin of us yet.

Yesterday’s post about the proposed “renovation” of the Kennedy Center which will in fact be a demolition reminded me of a parallel instance in my law practice.

In order to encourage the renovation of historic buildings into affordable, government subsidized housing, Congress had passed a law providing for accelerated  depreciation for eligible properties (in other words, if an investor owned a share in such a property, the investor could take depreciation losses sooner than normal, and would therefore pay a premium to the developer). Again to simplify, financing for the redevelopment of these properties would come from a combination of government assistance, loan proceeds, and payments from equity investors. Both the buildings and the renovation work had to qualify under federal rules. The renovation requirement included preservation of a certain portion of the historic exterior walls.

The project involved a series of historic rowhouses in Baltimore. We represented the equity investors. I was in Baltimore for other reasons, and decided to drive by the property.

I always liked to see properties I was involved with, and was always surprised that most lawyers who had my type of practice did not feel the need to. They would rely on what they were told by their clients or others.

In this situation, my clients themselves were not monitoring construction. They were relying on the developers doing what they should.

I drove by the property, expecting to see a gutted property with external walls still standing, but what I saw was a block of vacant lots. Nothing at all was standing on the lots except for two or three mountains of bricks piled at one end. I was dumbfounded.

The developer’s position was that he was going to be in compliance because the new external walls were going to be built using many of the old original bricks. But that was not the position of the tax laws, so the deal had to be called off. No one was very happy with me, but everyone did understand. The Baltimore rowhouses, like the Kennedy Center, was being demolished, not renovated.

I never understood a lawyer not visiting properties to ensure legal and contractual compliance before a closing, although again, doing so did not seem to be the norm.

And I remember other instances, as well. A client who was buying two development lots from a city. There was a street bisecting the lots which was to be abandoned by the city and closed. The city took the appropriate legal action, but when I went to look at the site the morning of the closing, the street had not been closed, and traffic was passing over what was in a few hours to be my client’s property. All we needed was an accident or something. Who would bear the responsibility? I made certain the road was barricaded before the closing.

In another city, there was an old hotel which had been closed and was now to be renovated as affordable senior housing. My client was the developer, and he lived in a different state, far from the property. There was a closing set at the office of the State Housing Finance Agency, that was providing the financing. I flew into town the night before the closing. I went to look at the property in my rental car. On the ground floor of the former hotel, a pharmacy and a florist were still operating. What? I hadn’t been given any leases to review. None of the draft documents I had seen mentioned businesses operating on site. My client thought the businesses had closed, and the seller (basically a dormant company) and the lender (believe it or not) seemed to have no clue. Needless to say, there was no closing that day.

But I must say, with these and more experiences like these, and knowing most lawyers did not go to look at properties, I wondered why I didn’t hear about problems like these all the time. I still wonder. I don’t understand.

Fake news does not always originate in right wing media. Or in any media.

There is an old joke we have all heard. An isolated island in the middle of an ocean. One stowaway, and he’s Jewish. He builds two synagogues. He is rescued and asked why he built two synagogues, as he is only one individual. He points to one and says “this is the one I go to”, and to the other and says “and this is the one I would never set foot in”.

I think of that tired, old joke when I think about the Trump [sic] [sick] Kennedy Center, and the determination of the President that he is going to close it for two years, and renovate it. When last year, Trump [sick] fired the director of the center and engineered the resignation of, and replacement of, most of the members of the board of directors that (in theory) govern the center, and when he made himself the chair of that board, I decided that I was not going to attend any performances at the center. I would go to performances at other venues in DC, to be sure, but the Trump [sic] [sick] Kennedy Center would now be “the one I would never set foot in”.

But now, he is going to tear it down sometime next summer. Once he does that, I ask you: what will be the performance center that I will be boycotting?

Now, why is he tearing it down? Well, we can come up with a number of reasons. Like Conan, Trump [sick] is a destroyer. Trump [sick] doesn’t like to see a building with Kennedy’s name on it. Trump [sick] likes monuments to himself. Trump [sick] is a builder. The center, as it stands, was losing both performers and audiences who, like me, decided to boycott it for the rest of his presidency, until it again could be placed in responsible hands.

But nevertheless, the announcement that it was going to be torn down caught everyone as a surprise. You say: wait a minute, Art, you just said it was going to be torn down. In fact, Trump [sick] said it was going to be renovated. Ha ha. You have to listen to his definition of renovation. He said he is going to use the existing steel girders, and save “some of the marble”. That is it. This building is going to be destroyed, and its replacement is going to make architect Edward Durell Stone turn over in his grave.

A digression: Edward Durell Stone was quite a prominent American architect. In DC, he also designed the headquarters of the National Geographic Society. NatGeo is also remodeling their campus now, but they are being careful not to demolish the 10 story Stone building, which will stay in place. Another of Stone’s projects (there were a lot of them, including MOMA in New York City) was the Paducah, Kentucky City Hall, which we visited this summer on our lunch stop in Paducah.

Of course, Trump’s [sick] authority to do any of this is questionable at best, just like his authority to take over and rename the Institute of Peace (the building designed by Moshe Safdie, by the way) for himself and kick everyone who worked there out of the building. Or his authority to tear down the east wing of the White House complex and build his gargantuan ballroom, or his plan to build at 25 story arch commemorating himself (and incidentally the 250th birthday of the country) blocking the view of Arlington Cemetery across the Potomac. Whether or not Trump [sick] has authority to do anything is apparently irrelevant. He is just going to do it because, like Hitler, Stalin and all the others, no one is able to, or willing to, stop him.

In addition to removing an extraordinary venue from public use (remember, the Kennedy Center has an opera house, a symphony hall, a major theater, smaller black box theaters, a film theater, restaurants, rehearsal space, gift shops, studio and classroom space, and more), it employs about 2000 people, who will lose their jobs, another attack on the area’s financial strength.

While the Kennedy Center does not have a resident theater company, it has been, since it opened, the home of both the Washington Opera and the National Symphony. In addition, as to the National Symphony, there is apparently a significant subsidy to the Symphony that comes from the Kennedy Center budget (I do not know the details of this; I just learned about it within the last few days.). The Opera has already at least temporarily relocated to George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, which holds about 1500, as compared the Kennedy Center’s 2300), but the Symphony was caught by surprise.

The Kennedy Center has stated that they will help the Symphony find a new home (I am sure they will be a big help) and that they will continue to support the Symphony financially through the “renovation” process. This seems to assume that Congress will continue to fund the Kennedy Center, at least to some extent, throughout the renovation process, and what steps will be needed to accomplish this are, to me, a mystery.

Trump [sick] has also stated that the cost of renovating the Kennedy Center will be about $200 million. I am certainly not an expert on pricing a rebuilt Kennedy Center, but I will note the following: Trump’s [sick] White House ballroom is now estimated to be a $400 million project, and I just learned when I looked at the National Geographic website, that its DC renovation project is costing $250 million, and the infamous Federal Reserve renovation is scheduled to cost (ready for this?) at least $2.5 billion. So, I doubt the $200 million tag, but note that Trump [sick] has said that this financing has already been arranged.

How has the $200 million been arranged? Seems to be a secret, but anything is possible with Trump [sick], where the process seems to be: “well, prospective government contractor, want a government contract? Then give me $200 million for the renovation of the Trump [sick] Center and, when you give the government your budget for the contract you want, just pad it by, say, about $200 million. And don’t worry about that. It won’t be a competitive contract. It will be sole sourced, and that $200 million will never be noticed.”

Poor USA. On its way to a better future. But now, as I have said before, it has hit a small trump in the road.

Well, yesterday, it was Annie put on by Theatre@CBT, with daughter Michelle aa Grace and son-in-law Josh as Bert Healey and FDR aide Louis Howe. Above, you also see 11 year old Annie and Daddy Warbucks. Sold-out performances, and all did exceptionally well (no surprise there), even though tech week was snowed out and, as Michelle says, the first time she heard the sound effects was opening night.

CBT stands for Congregation B’nai Tzedek. Was it a bit strange to see, on a synagogue stage, an elderly bachelor saying that an 11 year old girl will make his life complete, a con man take out of his pocket the knife he will use to murder 11 year old Annie, a Black Justice Brandeis, and a gala Christmas party? Well, sorta, but the show was done so well that I don’t think anyone noticed the irony.

What to look forward to this week? Well, more talk about the Trump Ballroom, which is now set to dwarf the White House. Yes, it will be taller and bulkier by far.

And talk about the proposed 250th anniversary Victory Arch that Trump wants to put on the Virginia side of the Memorial Bridge.

For those of you who have been to Paris and seen the Arc de Triomphe, please note that the Arc de Trump will be 100 feet taller, the height of a 25 story building.

And now Trump is closing the building formerly known as the Kennedy Center for two years to turn it into the best entertainment center ever. And he is scheduling an IndyCar Grand Prix to be held on the streets of Washington next summer.

Of course, he won’t stop here. And I can’t wait to see what else he has in store for us.

How much damage, in every sphere, can a president inflict in four years? Let me give you a hint. As my cousin Al Jolson used to say:

First, I digress…..Two elections in Texas yesterday shows the strength of Democratic candidates. The GOP can now only lose one House of Representative vote if they want to pass something on party lines, and a Texas state Senate seat went to a Democrat in a district Trump carried, I think, 17 points last year. It is odd that Dems are winning everywhere when the party still polls low, but it is because Trump is losing all of his support because he keeps making moves that are not only wrong, but dangerous.

Okay, to the main subject..

I started a new book last night, one that I have been wanting to read for some time. It’s called The Game of the Foxes, was published in 1971, is by Ladislas Farago, and concerns German spying during World War II. It is a well reviewed book, and there is only one negative: it is 675 pages long. Or maybe two negatives. Each page has more words on it than a readable page should have. So, we will see how this goes. The last book of comparable length that I read was Bill Taubman’s Gorbachev, and I did get through that one, so all is not lost. Yet.

Farago was a Hungarian born journalist, a non-practicing Jew, who wrote a large number of books. I read one of his earliest books, about a trip he took to Palestine in the late 1930s, which was fascinating, and I reported on it to my Thursday morning breakfast group six or seven years ago. I looked at the text of my report on that book before sitting down to this new one, and thought you would like to see the first page, which contains a fair amount of explanatory text. For some reason, I wrote it in the first person. Here goes:

“My name is Ladislas FARago. Or perhaps, it’s Ladislas FaRAgo. I actually don’t know how to pronounce my name. How to find out? I could ask my son John. He has just retired as a law professor at New York University. He would probably know, since he has had the same name for some time now. But I don’t want to bother him. He wouldn’t believe that, after all these years, I don’t know how to pronounce my name.

“So let’s forget that for now. But I do want to tell you a little about me. I was born in 1905 in Hungary, in the town of Csurgo – C S U R G O. Believe it or not, I don’t know how to pronounce that, either. It’s been a long time. Csurgo is on the border between Hungary and Croatia – the south of Hungary. A small town. Maybe 5000 residents.

“Oh, I forgot to say that I am Jewish. There was a long history of Jews in Csurgo, but never great numbers at any one time. Maybe a few hundred when I was living there. There was a Jewish school. There were rabbis. But, to tell you the truth, we were much more interested in being Hungarian than being Jewish when I lived in Csurgo. I really didn’t learn too much about being Jewish.

“I moved to Budapest for school, graduating in 1926. I didn’t really think much about being Jewish when I was there, either. Sometime later, I moved to the United States, and went to work for the U.S. Navy, in Intelligence. After the Navy, I spent all my time writing.

“What else is interesting about me? Well, on January 22, 1957, I was a contestant on the American TV show, To Tell the Truth. And, according to Wikipedia, although I died in 1980, at the age of 75, I was active until 1986. Go figure…….

“Over my career, I wrote a lot of books, some of which you might remember. For one, I wrote a biography of General George Patton. Maybe you didn’t read my book, but I bet you saw the film starring George C. Scott as Patton. The film was based on my book. I also wrote a book about Martin Bormann, the Nazi. This one caused a lot of controversy, because I said that Bormann was alive and well, living in Argentina. Everyone else seemed to think he was dead. I still think I was right.”

Farago’s first book was written about Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. On his way back to the United States from Ethiopia, he met a Palestinian from Jerusalem while in Cairo, who told him about the tensions between Brits, Arabs and Jews in Mandate Palestine. This raised Farago’s curiosity and, as soon as he got back to London, he set off on his next adventure. And an adventure it was. What I remember liking about it so much was the simple picture it set out in portraying what living in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and so many other places in today’s Israel was like in 1937.

In between The Wright Brothers and The Game of the Foxes, I read quickly through a short book, Breaking Cover: My Secret Life in the CIA by Michele Rigby Assad. I read it because, as I mentioned some time over the past week, we are re-watching Homeland, now on Netflix. Last night, we watch Season 4, Episode 3. I thought Breaking Cover might tell me a little more about how the CIA operates, and it did.

But, it is not what I would call a good book, and I am not recommending you read it. The most interesting part of the book was the first part, which told about the application for employment and vetting process the CIA uses, and about the year plus of training. The book also gives you some idea of how the agency is organized, and what the functions of its four main divisions are. The book falls apart when she actually goes into the field for about ten years, all in the Middle East, part of the time in Baghdad, and part in other countries which, for some reason, have been redacted. As to what she did in these cities as a CIA operations officer, I have no idea. She really didn’t tell us, probably was not permitted to. She did, however, talk about why some natives become CIA sources. I had not thought about it, but there are various reasons, often having nothing to do with supporting Americans. Some are sources so they can learn more about us and pass information back to the enemy, some are targeting political rivals back home, some out to make a name for themselves, some for money. I found all of this interesting, but would have liked to have been given a better idea of what she was doing for her country during those ten years.

But the book really falls apart, because it is in fact all about God. God led her to become a CIA agent, God let her pass the various tests to get to the field (she could not have passed them on her own), God failed to keep her out of harm’s way, but this turned out to be okay, and part of God’s plan, because it enabled her to learn so much. God, God, God, with just an occasional Jesus thrown in for good measure throughout the book.

God’s presence becomes even more palpable in the last chapters of the book, after she and her husband (also a CIA agent) resign and go to work as freelance consultants. They get involved in moving 250 Iraqi Chaldean Christians out of Iraq and into, of all places, Slovakia. This was undoubtedly a good thing, assuming her descriptions of how the Christians were being treated in Iraq are accurate. Their lives were literally saved.

So kudos to her for this good work, but please leave God out of it.

We have two more days of sub-freezing temperature here, before the temperature rises into the 30s, still well below the normal high temperature for January in Washington, but warmer than it is now. That means that the many inches of snow will begin to melt, and that means that, while now every place that has been shoveled is dry, it will soon be wet and, at night, potentially icy and dangerous until it is gone. And it won’t be gone if there is any more snow, and although we are scheduled to miss more snow tomorrow (the big storm should all be south and east of us), there is more snow on the calendar for later this coming week. Just not an easy winter.

The news regarding ICE and Iran and Israel and Ukraine and everywhere else is so awful that I don’t really want to talk about it. But if we don’t talk about the news, what is left to discuss?

I know. We can discuss David McCullough’s wonderful book, The Wright Brothers, which I have just finished reading. It wasn’t a book that was on my must-read list, or even my should-read list, but it was at the top of a pile when I was looking for my next book, and it isn’t too long, so…..

First, of course, McCullough was a masterful writer. Second, and equally important, the Wright Brothers proved to be fascinating subjects. All I really knew is that they were from Dayton, they flew their newfangled airplanes in Kitty Hawk and they have been given a lot of credit for what they did. And, if that is all you know, I would suggest you read The Wright Brothers.

The reason is that it is sort of a miraculous story. Wilbur and Orville Wright were the sons of a successful minister. They had two older brothers and one older sister. Neither Wilbur nor Orville graduated from high school, much less attended college. Neither ever married (and it looks like neither ever had any relationship with a woman), and they lived with their father (their mother died young) and their sister, who also never married. They were both obviously bright and very dedicated to whatever they were interested in at various times. They were not alike, Wilbur being the more outgoing and charming, Orville being the more mechanically oriented, and they together set up a shop that at first repaired bicycles and then manufactured them with the help of an assistant or two.

But they got interested in the question of whether man could ever really fly, and that’s where the story really takes off. They decided to build a flying machine, and they worked for hard at it, giving up almost everything else in their lives. It wasn’t enough, for example, to build wings; they needed to build wings that an operator could control – up, down, left, right – and it had to be consistent and reliable; that had never been done before. The plane had to be light enough to get off the ground and they started with gliders (there were a lot of gliders being built), and when it was time to try it motorized, the engine had to be powerful enough to help it get off the ground, but not too heavy. It had to be reusable and safe.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina was chosen as the best site for experimentation because it was relatively flat, there were no large trees, and there was usually a breeze. But this was 1900, and the Outer Banks were not what it is today. It was remote, and virtually no one lived there – just a few fisherman, a general store, and a weather station. Access was by boat only.

When the Wright Bros first went to Kitty Hawk, they really had never been far from Dayton, which, by the way, was quite a prosperous and growing place at the turn of the century. Getting to Kitty Hawk, which meant taking a train to Washington or Norfolk, and the south to Elizabethtown and to the port where a launch to Hatteras could be boarded. It took days. And they did it not only with a suitcase, but with an airplane in pieces, and what was needed to fit out a campsite with a tent. Working at Kitty Hawk was primitive to say the least.

The story of their testing their contraptions – one step forward, one step backwards, some times two steps backward. Weather problems, a minor crash here and there. With each series of tests, their planes went a little farther, a little higher.

Recognizing the potential of air travel for military use, they were disappointed when the United States government did not seem very interested, when the Smithsonian wouldn’t help fund them because they were funding Thomas Langley a man who was trying to do the same thing, but never succeeded.

So the Wright Brothers, who had now been in contact with others across America and Europe who were interested in, and who were trying to develop, flying machines, decided to go to France. Wilbur was the envoy, being helped by an American, Hart Berg, who was living in Paris, and stayed in Paris for about a year, giving demonstrations near Paris and in the south of France, while Orville stayed at home, continuing to work on developing improvements to their design and giving successful demonstrations in Dayton and demonstrations that had mixed success in Washington at Ft. Myers, Virginia.

They flew thousands of times, and became – especially in Europe – the toast of the town, with thousands of curious individuals showing up to watch the flights. Wilbur was always successful. Orville had two crashes, the second of which banged him up pretty good – broken bones took time to heal and he never walked without a limp again, and was unable to continue flying.

Eventually, everything became very successful, the Wright company got orders for planes, and Wilbur began to train a new corps of U.S. military pilots. He, too, though gave up flying because the demands of the business became too time consuming. The Wright Brothers, while never poor, became very wealthy and built a large house in a Dayton suburb.

Then tragedy struck, when Wilbur came down with typhoid fever and died at age 45. Orville lived another 30 or so years.

This is just an outline of what they accomplished. McCullough tells much more, with much more interesting detail. Remembering that these were self educated people makes you wonder about the value of formal education, or at least the value of schooling for someone who is determined to learn on their own.

Even today, so many of the entrepreneurs in today’s cutting edge sciences have not gone to college, or have dropped out of college. Is education all it is cracked up to be?

A few thoughts on the subject. First, I remember looking at the book put together for my 25th high school reunion (over 40 years ago), and being surprised that so many dumb kids seemed to be doing so well, and so many smart kids seemed to be languishing. Then, it was Mark Twain, right, who said that he never let his schooling interfere with his education. And finally, there was Israeli author Edgar Keret, whose mother wouldn’t let him go to school if it was raining, saying that whatever his not so bright teachers were going to try to teach him that day, the results would not be worth getting wet for.

I have often thought that if you pulled a child out of middle or high school one year and spent that year with him/her traveling the world, the student would benefit much more than going to Social Studies class every day. And, with increasing knowledge of how differently children learn, you have to wonder if the rigid curricula being used across the country is really appropriate. And, further, when you see that some of countries in Asia and Europe seem to be much more adept at educating their children, you wonder if rigid American schooling is worth it at all. And that questioning is only increased by the partisan attention being placed on elementary school curricula today, where you can teach the Ten Commandments but not, say, The Grapes of Wrath.

Do I really mean what I am saying here? Do I really doubt the benefits of going to school? To be truthful (as they say), I have no idea. Nor, apparently, does anyone else.

Of all the things you would not expect to happen, this may take the prize. The president sues the government for $10 billion because he alleges that someone leaked his tax information. Ridiculous case, you say? Yes, it is. But Trump controls the DOJ and all he has to do is to tell Bondi not to defend it. Then what?

This is only one of a number of cases that Trump (“in his personal capacity”) has filed recently. Remember the suit against CBS for editing an interview not with him, but with Kamala Harris, for which he received $16 million in settlement? He has also sued, in very recent years, ABC, CNN, Walt Disney, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, The New York Times, Christopher Steele and Bob Woodward for libel or related matters. Some of these cases have been dismissed, others are still pending.

But his $10 billion suit against the IRS hits a new low (and a new high). It isn’t the first time. In the fall of 2025, Trump filed claims against the Department of Justice seeking a measley $230 million for damages arising out of the government’s investigations into the “Russian hoax” and claims he took confidential documents to Mar-a-Lago. I don’t know what happened to those claims. And if the “government” does not vigorously defend against all of this (and how can it?), what is the remedy? If Pam Bondi files something in court saying that the defendant agrees with the plaintiff, and requests dismissal of the case, and the plaintiff agrees, and Trump gets a $10 billion dollar check from the federal government, the courts may be powerless. Once again, Walt Kelley is proven right, as Trump is in effect saying “We have met the enemy and it is us” as he sues himself.

In the meantime, the 2026 elections are under threat, as the Trumpers are filing suits against multiple states, the goal of which is to have the federal government take control of elections from the states, something that once again flies in the face of Constitutional provisions. Trump wants federal control, of course, to  allow the disqualification of voters, voting groups, and voting methods that he believes favor the “enemies within”, i. e., the Democrats. And along with this, he is encouraging right wing gerrymandering to increase red, rather than blue districts.   Remember when the GOP was the “better dead than red” party?

The good news is that it looks like an agreement has been reached to allow the government, with the exception of HHS, to continue to operate. There will then be a 2 week period to see if an ICE funding agreement can be reached. It will be an interesting debate.

On to better things. Anyone else belong to the Facebook Group “St. Louis History and Architecture”? I highly recommend it. Today’s entry involves this house at 16 Westmoreland Place:

This house belonged to the Mallinckrodt family, and the description on Facebook  gives a nice brief history of house and family.

I am spending this morning sitting at Jim Coleman Toyota having my car checked as it hit 60,000 miles.

It is quiet here as many are still not venturing out in the snow. I have been here about an hour. Usually it takes 2 or 3, but I hope a smaller load means quicker service. Yes, hope is eternal.

Update: 3 hours, 40 minutes.

Well, it’s the afternoon already, and I am just now getting down to writing my daily post. The main reason is that I started the day with my annual dermatologist appointment. I find this a weird appointment. You go the office, they take you into a room and tell you to take off all your clothes, two people come in, one looks at you all over and talks to the other one, who is taking notes. Then, they tell you to get dressed and come back next year. I understand that it is important to get looked at for possible malignancies. But that does not stop the appointment from being weird. Once, they come into the room, it takes less than 5 minutes. I don’t know what medicare pays them for those 5 minutes, but it looks like a great business model.

It is so rare to have good news these days, that I must share this with you, even though this is something that affects only a small segment of my audience. As that small segment knows, and as the rest of you don’t, Bob Carpenter retired last year after 20 plus years as the Washington Nationals’ TV announcer. Today, it was announced that the commentator for next year will be Dan Kolko. Kolko has been the guy who conducts interviews with players in the dugouts, and gives little snippets like what the first baseman had for breakfast that morning, and,yes, he weas the guy that typically spelled Carpenter when he was away or off. I think it is good news. I have never met Kolko, but based on his 10 years in his present job, he is either a great guy or a great actor, and both of those are important qualities for his new job.

Yesterday, I watched a little of Marco Rubio’s testimony before the House something committee about Venezuela, and today I watched a little of Tom Homan’s press conference about ICE in Minneapolis. I will say that Trump officials do have a great knack of not really saying very much, but that Rubio has the ability not to say very much very well, and Homan probably would sound like he was saying nothing even if he was saying something.

My impression of Rubio’s performance leads me to think two things: (1) he speaks well enough that he’d make a formidable presidential candidate, and (2) because he speaks well enough to be a formidable presidential candidate, the Republicans will nominate someone else. I don’t know what the members asked him yesterday, but he obviously feels that shooting boats out of the water and killing their crew in order to stop drugs that were never coming into this country from coming into this country is not an act of war and is okay. He also obviously feels that stealing Venezuela’s oil and returning only a part of it to be used for the ‘benefit’ of the Venezuelan people (what “benefit” means, I don’t know), and using the rest as he and Big Don want, is perfectly fine. Whether he mentioned the fact that some of the money is being held in off-shore accounts, and that some of the oil is being transported by companies with very questionable backgrounds (the news has reported these things over the past few days), I don’t know. What he thinks about them, I don’t know. But I will say (and this is a complement), he did look proto-presidential. (Actually, I don’t know if proto-presidential is a term or not; my computer does not think it is. Is it?)

Tom Homan is something else. He looks so tough and mean that you’d be scared when he wished you a happy birthday or Merry Christmas. As I understood him this morning, speaking of his new job as head of ICE activities in Minneapolis, he said: we know there have been some mistakes made, and that we are going to correct those, and the way we are going to correct those is by doing exactly what we have been doing in the past when the mistakes were made. Yes, this is what I think he said. But even if he didn’t say this, he looked like he was saying this, and that is what is important.

To be fair, he did say that they were going after targeted people. This might mean that they are going to stop stopping people on the street based on their racial profile and requiring them to provide identification on pain of otherwise having to spend time first in Louisiana and then in Djibouti or Zanzibar. But in response to one of the two or three questions asked by members of the press who were not agents of nees operations to the right of Newsmax, he refused to say that someone with no criminal record, other than illegally coming into the United States, was not a criminal who could be targeted.

But he said he might be able to tone down the intensity of ICE in Minneapolis, if only the state and local governments would cooperate and give them all the information they needed to arrest people and help them out. He kept calling the people he arrested “threats to public safety”, as if anyone who sneaked across the border is ipso facto such a threat. And he is obviously fixated on the number of arrests: an increase in the number of illegal immigrants in jail means that there will be fewer illegal immigrants on the streets, he said, “It’s simple math.” Yeah.

I don’t think we have seen the end of this yet. Are they going to stop breaking into houses without warrants, in violation of the Fifth Amendment? Are they going to stop raiding churches, schools and workplaces? Are they going to stop detaining children? He certainly did not say that his law enforcement officers were going to show their names or faces, and I see nothing that will limit the amount of advertising that the Trumpistas (a Venezuelan term, perhaps) are doing to recruit more officers. How many of them have criminal records, we don’t know. We don’t know if they (like the folks they say they are chasing) are murderers, rapists, drug dealers, or residents of mental instititions. Or even how many were at the Capitol on January 6. But one thing is clear. That is that they have had some success in recruiting retired dermatologists. You remember that guy (and an American citizen, to boot) that they dragged out in the snow from his house, basically naked in subzero weather? That is an act that could only have been performed by a highly trained retired dermatologist.

In the meantime, will the government be shut down again Saturday morning? The only issue is the inclusion of more ICE funds in the appropriations legislation. These funds, by the way, or not needed by ICE, which has been funded more than sufficiently for some time to come through the Big Beautiful Ugly Bill legislation. So, on both sides, this is a fight for principle, not for practicality. In a normal world, this would make compromise easy as apple pie. But in the non-Panglossian world we live in…..

I digress: The weather news is not all bad. Weather Bug tells me the closest lightning strike is 2335 miles away. That would be, like, California as the crow flies. Of course, there has never been a crow that has flown from DC to California. So, what does that phrase even mean?

Back to today’s main story. Ilhan Omar gets sprayed with a (hopefully harmless) liquid at a town hall last night. This gives Donald the chance to try out his talent as a stand up comedian, saying ” She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.”

This got them rolling in the aisles, I’m sure. But not long ago, Trump gave her another description. He called her a “fake sleazebag”. Now that requires as much parsing as  does “as the crow flies”.

If Washington and Los Angeles are 2335 miles apart as the crow flies, but the crow does not fly between them, have we learned anything about how far apart they are? If Ilhan Omar is a fake sleazebag, can we be certain that she is not in fact a sleazebag, but instead is a non-sleaze bag who (for reasons hard to fathom, to be sure) wants to be viewed as a sleaze bag? And if that is the case, what do we think? Does she succeed? Perhaps, she only succeeds being a fake sleaze bag. Or a fake sleaze bag, as the crow flies.

Then, I began to think that crows, when they fly more than from tree to tree, generally fly in groups, never alone. And, as you may know, a group of crows is known as a “murder” of crows. I looked up the origin of that term, and it seems to come from the deep past when crows were viewed as a bad omen, harbinger of death, lingering over a battlefield.

Whenever, I think of crows, I think of ravens. Other than having the same color, I guess they are very different birds, but do you know what a group of ravens are? They are an “unkindness of ravens”.

That got me thinking even further. What is a group of Omars called? Maybe a target of Omars? How about Trumps? Let’s call it……a crime of Trumps. That’s because murder and unkindness are already taken.

If Trump thinks that Tom Homan is going to de-escalate Minneapolis, he will probably be surprised. By the way, there is, as I understand it, only one Tom Homan. What would a group of Tom Homans be called. Let’s say a “bribe of Homans”. That would do the trick.

Okay, on with my day. A fairly busy one. May even have to dig out my car. We had our snow shoveled yesterday, but after 2.5 hours of hard work, the two shovelers vanished. They did the driveway, but not the two cars in the driveway. And, odd to be sure, they didn’t collect their money. Will they return today? Or are they far away? As the crow flies.

First, I digress. The snow and ice. We have someone coming here this morning at about 11 to give us a path out of the house. Right now, we have 6 or 7 inches of very attractive white something on our lawn and walkways. It looks like snow, but it doesn’t act or feel like snow. You can walk on top of it like you are in, yes, Greenland. Your foot does not dig into it at all. It seems as firm as a hardwood floor. My fear is that our shoveler, when he arrives, will shake his head, tell us he’s sorry, but we need a specialist. The temperature is now 13 degrees, and the first time that it is expected to rise above freezing is next Tuesday, February 2, when Weather Bug says it will reach 35. And, yes, this weekend, there is a 30% chance of more snow, depending on the direction the next storm decides to take.

For those of you wonder how much snow needs to be cleared, I don’t have a firm figure, but I think it is between 200 and 250 feet. A walkway from the front door to the street, a walkway that goes in front of the house to the driveway, the driveway itself, and the sidewalks on both the 32nd Street side of the house, and the Davenport St front. It is quite a task.

While being housebound (there could be worse places to be housebound, to be sure), we are being deluged with TV reporting on what is happening in Minneapolis. And it looks like there is enough pressure on the White House that there we will be some changes to ICE policy.

But whoa! Changes to ICE policy? How can you have changes to a policy, when no one knows what the current policy even is? Is the policy to remove illegals who are dangerous criminals? Is the policy to remove all illegals? Is the policy to stir up trouble so illegals will self deport? Is the policy to deport a certain number of illegals (millions, as has been quoted)? I don’t think anyone knows the answer. But these stated policies (all have been stated) conflict each other.

And then there is the question about the word “illegal”, which I repeatedly used in the preceding paragraph. Who is an illegal? Someone who swims the Rio Grande or sneaks in cowering in the trunk of a car? Someone who overstays their visa? Anyone who came into the country through the southern border during the Biden years, even if permitted to come in and processed? Anyone at all who came through the southern border, no matter when they came?

And what is a criminal? Someone who has been convicted of a crime in the United States? Someone who has been accused, but not convicted of a crime in the United States. Someone who has been convicted of a crime, but already served their sentence? Someone who committed a crime in another country?

And for purpose of all of this, what is a crime? Does it have to be a violent crime? Does it have to be a felony or its equivalent? Can it be a misdemeanor? If so, does the misdemeanor have to involve violence? Or can it be simply a driving violation – speeding or its equivalent? Or…..is the act of crossing the border illegally itself a sufficient crime (if in fact it is a crime)?

No, there are no answers to any of these questions, as far as I know. That is because there seems to be no true policy. At least, if there is, we the people, including potential victims, have not been told what that policy is.

The question of transparency goes beyond not knowing the instructions under which Border Patrol or ICE agents are working. It also goes to the identity and classification of the people that they pick up. Because there appear to be no published lists, we don’t know if there is a priority on dangerous criminals, or if anyone who fits any of these categories are fair and equal game.

Are these immigration enforcement officials acting like the Gestapo? Is that a fair comparison? To some extent it is, based on the procedures (not the policy, but the procedures) that seem to be followed. But one thing I note. I think the Gestapo, chasing Jews, Communists, etc., was more efficient than ICE and the Border Patrol. I haven’t read anything about the Gestapo arresting people outside of the specific categories deemed targets in Germany at the time.

There are other policy questions. Should ICE be allowed to arrest people in churches, in schools, at work? Are children off limits? What about mixed (citizen, non-citizen) families? What about individuals who have lived in this country for 30 years, 20 years, 10 years, without any problems, working, paying taxes, raising families? What about people who having pending asylum cases, or are otherwise in-process regarding their immigration status?

President Trump keeps talking about murderers, rapists, pedophiles, etc., but there are no statistics as to how many of those arrested fit into these categories. Shouldn’t there be such statistics, so that the public can feel that these goals are actually goals, rather than talking points? I assume that these statistics do not exist because no one is keeping these statistics.

And then there are other questions, like the way people are picked up off the street (or its equivalent), how there is no contact with their families, how they are not allowed to make phone calls, how their phones and other valuables are often taken from them, how they can be sent immediately to detention facilities many miles from their homes (many often meaning thousands). And, of course, the condition of the detention facilities themselves. And what about the apparent inability for any of these individuals to be able to mount a defense, to show that they are being wrongfully held? And what about the ability to send them anywhere in the world (you don’t want to back to Honduras, so okay, we will send you to East Timor or maybe Iraq).

In addition, there is a question of coordination with local law enforcement. In many places, there is a prohibition on local law enforcement agents working with ICE or Border Patrol. There are a number of reasons for this: immigration is a federal, not a state or local affair; the police already have too much to do, and can’t divert to immigration enforcement without hurting security in their communities; and of course policy differences. But it seems to me that coordination would be possible on the following basis: ICE targets someone. ICE goes to local authorities and asks for their assistance, giving local authorities information about who is being targeted and why and what assistance is needed. Local enforcement makes a decision as to whether they agree with this particular target. If they do, and have sufficient resources, they help. If not, they don’t, and perhaps if not, they have a process by which they can go to a higher authority to determine whether the individual is being legitimately targeted. A little bureaucratic to be sure, but that’s the price you pay for a democratic society.

One last thing: there is no excuse for ICE or Border Patrol to act in ways that do not provide set Constitutional protections. First amendment rights of free speech, assembly and so forth. Second amendment rights to carry arms. Fourth amendment rights to be free from unconstitutional searches and seizures. Fifth amendment rights of due process. And so forth.

There is talk now about how ICE needs to be restructured, re-imagined, retrained. All that is fine. But in order to do that, you need to have the right policies in place. It seems that, for the most part, ICE’s enforcement activities could be suspended until this important step is accomplished. Say it takes six months. Okay, if the ICE targets have been in this country for ten or thirty years, what’s another six months? The Senate Democrats should vote against further funding of ICE until all of this has been accomplished.

Now you know what I think.

If the “facts” being spread around the Internet are correct, and the Washington Post is going to cut half of its staff and especially hit its foreign offices and sports page (it has already decimated its coverage of local news, and destroyed what was a responsible editorial page), it will mean (a) that a lot of good reporters are going to have to find new jobs during a terrible market for journalism, (b) the Washington DC metropolitan area of about 6,000,000 will no longer have a first class newspaper, (c) the Post will become a domestic political newspaper owned by one man with set opinions, and (d) American journalism will suffer one more horrendous blow.

Dear Jeff Bezos: You are very rich. There is no reason that you have to do this to the newspaper you own and the people who depend on its reporting. The only reasonable conclusion is that you, like most of the other billionaires in the country, believe that your continued success is connected to fealty to Donald Trump and his billionaire agenda. Shame on you.

I got a late start today. Up at the normal time, but I had a Zoom finance committee meeting for the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies and then undertook some followup activities. Our snow event yesterday…..

Digression: I still think that the folks at the former MSNBC made a big mistake when they took the new name MS NOW. Before, I have complained that the word “now” sounded confusing in news reports about what happened yesterday when preceded or followed by MS NOW. I have also thought that the new name could be viewed as a promo for MS magazine, or even support for more Multiple Sclerosis. But today, all I could think of was M SNOW, and that was the last thing I wanted to think of.

Continuing before I was so rudely interrupted….

Our snow event yesterday was weird. We probably have about 6 or 8 inches of snow on our lawn and walkway. But no snow is piled on our backyard table, or on our fence top, or on our railings. Just odd. No ice on tree limbs or power lines. The snow on our front steps would be difficult to shovel. I took a cane to see how light it was and, believe it or not, the cane cannot permeate the ice at all. Even if there is melting from the sun (the temperature itself is now, at 2 p.m., 23 degrees), it will all refreeze. Usually, we have folks knocking on our door offering to shovel our walks and driveway, but not today. As the temperature is forecast not to even reach the 30s for a week, we may be in the house a while. I am under strict instructions not to go out and shovel (that’s what I normally would do) because of both my age and my importance to the world, but I don’t think I would do it even if no one cared.

So what have we been doing?

Well, for one thing, I just finished watching the 3 episode (yes, only 3) Agatha Christie drama, The Seven Dials, on Netflix. It is typical Christie in that it involves large British estates, guests all with one or another title, and people being murdered one at a time. It is delightful because films based on Agatha Christie are always delightful, and because the lead character, a young British actress, Mia McKenna-Bruce, is delightful, as is her mother played by Helena Bonham Carter, and Martin Freeman as the Scotland Yard inspector on the case. And it is helped more because McKenna-Bruce’s character is named Lady Eileen Brent, but she is called by everyone Bundle, and Freeman’s Scotland Yard name is Battle.

THIS PARAGRAPH IS A SPOILER: The ending of the show involves Bundle being invited by Battle (who, when masked, is the Seven, or the boss man, of the secret organization, Seven Dials), to join the Seven Dials, whose purpose is to save humanity and the world from evil doers. My reaction, as I watched the end of Episode 3, is that I wanted an invitation to join. That is exactly the kind of organization I wanted to belong to. And exactly the kind the world now needs.

OK, SPOILER OVER.

We have also been re-watching Homeland. We are now two episodes into Season 3 (of 8). Homeland, which I am sure many/most of you have seen when it was on HBO (it is now on Netflix) was aired from 2011 to 2018, 96 episodes in all. It is interesting to rewatch it 2026, 15 years later, in part because I wonder if it could even be made today. As you might remember, it is basically the story of good Americans against bad Arabs (yes, some Americans are not so good, and a few Arabs aren’t really that bad), and I am not sure that this would pass the politically correct test today. But it is very good entertainment, and watching a second time is a real treat for me. Why? Because I now can understand what is going on in every scene. I think I missed quite a bit the first time through, when you could only watch one episode a week on HBO, and after a 12 week season ended, you had to wait 9 months for the next episode. If you have the time and inclination, I think watching Homeland again is a pretty good use of your time.

Digression: Part of seasons 2 and 3 of Homeland actually is set in Venezuela (how timely), and there is a description of the country’s economic decline. The majority of the Season 3 Caracas episodes take place in a 45 floor building, the “Tower of David”, that was abandoned mid-construction and taken over by squatters. The setting is real. Google: Caracas Tower of David and you will read about it.

Much of Homeland remains timely. Should we give Israel bunker bombs? Should we bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities? What kind of oversight should be given to the CIA? And if a CIA agent lies at a Congressional hearing because an honest answer would compromise American security, is it still perjury?

Finally, over the weekend, I read a book by former Wesleyan professor Philip Pomper titled Lenin’s Brother. It is a short (220 page) biography of Vladimir Lenin’s older brother Alexander (Sasha), who was executed in 1887 for plotting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. Sasha was clearly a brilliant boy who grew up in the middle class Ulyanov family in Simbirsk, wanted to be a biologist, went to the University of St. Petersburg, and got radicalized, become a conspirator who wanted to bring about a total restructuring of Russia and Russian society.

It’s a very interesting book, but what struck me was how different radicalization works today in this country, but how similar it might be, say, in the Arab world. In 19th century Russia, like in today’s Arab world, the radicals by and large came from strong families, were well educated, and were very determined. They studied political philosophers, literature, and how to make weapons. Sure, they had their differences: terror, no terror, or limited terror; what the goals of a restructured society should be; what role do Russian agricultural peasants have; is now the right time, or is the right time still in the future; should there be one massive event or a series of events?

On the day Alexander III was to be killed, his schedule was delayed at the last minutes, explosives did not work, and one member of the conspiracy named names. Three of the 15 or so arrested were condemned to death.

Pomper makes it clear that Sasha’s rebellious acivity did influence Lenin, but that Lenin had a very different mindset – purer Marxism without a touch of peasant populism, working outside the country rather than within, and being patient (he led a ten year preparatory effort).

That’s it for now. I didn’t mention Trump or Minneapolis or Venezuela. Oh, yeah, I did mention Venezuela.

Snow started falling in DC around midnight, and a combination of snow, sleet and freezing rain is to continue through the day, as a massive storm sweeps across much of the country. It does not look like snow depth will be the problem. We may have 4 or 5 inches of very wet snow on the ground now, and its wetness is obvious in that nothing stuck on the top of our backyard table.

The problems aren’t going to be with snow depth, but with the potential of ice bringing down power lines, and very cold temperatures for the next week, where the thermometer won’t exceed 25 degrees. According to the Washington Post, 500,000 customers across the country have already lost power, particularly in southern states.

In the now 56 years I have lived in Washington, I have seen heavy snowfalls probably about once every two or three years. The Snowmageddon, or whatever it was called, 16 years ago, pictured above, was the heaviest snowfall, where we got about two feet of snow throughout the area. But I have no real memories of what happened after the snow fell; I assume it disrupted things a few days, and that it began to melt fairly quickly. You would think I would remember more, but I don’t.

On the other hand, over my life, I do have some snow memories, and I thought this would be a good time to go through them. I am sure that, some time this afternoon, I will remember one or two instances that slip my mind right now, but don’t worry. I am not going to add to this post then.

My first big snow memory comes from when I was in the 6th grade, and a student at Ladue (now Reed) Elementary School in St. Louis County, about a mile and a half from our house. A lot of snow fell during the day, and the roads were obviously jammed. I actually don’t remember how I used to get home from school that year (did my mother pick me up? was I in a carpool? did I take the bus?), but however, I did it, I couldn’t do it that day. So, I think all by myself, I walked home, not dressed for snow, with the snow coming well above my ankles, my feet and pants getting very wet. By the time I walked home, I think that the sun had come out. I felt very grown up. I really liked the walk. I have no idea where my mother thought I was, or how she thought I would get home.

My next snow memory doesn’t come until law school. One winter break (I think) in what must have been 1965 or 1966, my classmate Fran Oates and I decided to drive to Quebec City and Montreal (don’t ask), so we did. I don’t remember the drive up until we got to Levis, Quebec and took the ferry across the St. Lawrence to Quebec City. The river was frozen over, and the ferry was also an ice breaker, which chopped the ice and created ice islands fit for polar bears as we crossed. Very exciting.

After realizing that snow didn’t stop the Quebecois from walking and playing around the city like it was July, we drove the Montreal and went to the old Montreal Forum (I think that is what it was called) to see the Canadiens play (again I think) Detroit. The Forum was full, the atmosphere beyond electric, the cheers all in French, and I don’t remember the score. But our plan, the plan of normal 23 year olds, was to get in our car (our car being my 1964 VW Beetle) and drive back through the night.

The Interstate had not been built yet, so the drive was on a two or four lane road that eventually followed the Hudson River going through one quaint town after another. The problem was that we started the drive with just a few flakes falling on Montreal, but eventually found ourselves in a heavy snow storm as we drove through the night. The good part of that was that there were very few cars on the road, so it was all quite beautiful.

The plan was to cut off where the New York Thruway extension leads into the Mass Pike, to take the Mass Pike through the Berkshires until there was a turn off to go south, or southeast, to New Haven. By the time we got to the entrance to the Mass Pike, the sun had come up and everything looked white. When we got to the toll plaza where you picked up the turnpike ticket (no automation then), it was empty, so we just drove on.

For the 50 (or is it 100) miles we were on the Mass Pike, the following was true. We saw absolutely no other cars, not one. The turnpike had not been plowed, and we had no idea where the road was or where the shoulders were at all. Our assumption was that the Mass Pike had been closed to traffic, and that everyone knew that but us. It was a frightening ride (how fast should you go? 60? 45? 25?) We were all by ourselves.

My next snow memory is one from some time, I would guess, in the 1980s, when the DC area was hit with a unusual Veterans Day snow, about 10 inches on Nov 11. I had been to some sort of meeting in Fairfax City VA, normally about 45 minutes or so from home. When I left the meeting in late afternoon, it had been snowing a bit, but it didn’t seem too daunting to drive. The way home that I chose including driving on Interstate 66. I remember going down the ramp onto the highway, and seeing that traffic was a bit slow, something that happens often on 66, so it didn’t really concern me. I didn’t stop to think that, in late afternoon, the backups on I-66 were not typically on the lanes leading to DC, but on the lanes leading from DC to the Virginia suburbs. I remember being on I-66 for more than 3 hours with no way to communicate to Edie, and with a fear of running out of gas, and of being stuck in non-moving traffic overnight.

The next memory is of a beautiful day, when perhaps in no more than a suit jacket, I got on an airplane to travel to Bluefield, West Virginia. I had never been to Bluefield before. My client was taking an old hotel and converting it to senior housing, and I was there to scope it out, meet the people involved, including city officials, and plan for a real estate closing in the near future. As I sat in an office that afternoon, I glanced out the window and saw that it was no longer a beautiful, sunny day, but that the clouds had taken over and snow began to fall. By the time the meeting was over, and I checked to make sure my plane was leaving on time, I was told that the flight had been canceled due to the weather, and the airport closed.

No problem, I said to myself, I will rent a car and drive home (I thought I could make it by midnight). But it turned out that the only car rental in Bluefield was Hertz, and that Hertz was at the airport, and that the airport, and therefore Hertz, was closed. I could not get a rental car.

So I checked into a motel as snow continued to fall. The motel was across the street from a diner that luckily stayed open, or I would have starved, and I stayed in Bluefield for two nights, as the airport and car rental remained closed. Luckily, it was during the winter Olympics, so I was entertained while I was there, speaking to no one, living in an otherwise empty motel, and eating at an otherwise empty diner.

On the third day with still no airport and no available car, I grew frustrated. I found out that I could take a cab to Roanoke for about $75, and its airport was open. So that’s what I did, and got a flight back. Pretty smart, you say? Not really, when I learned that the Roanoke Airport had never closed and I could have gone there and flown home the night the snow began to fall.

As I close out this post, I now remember a few other times. I remember that long weekend freshman year at college, when friend Larry Gillis suggested to a few of us that we take the weekend and go to his parents’ “cabin” in Derry, New Hampshire, which was beautiful in the snow. We went only to discover that the cabin was a summer cabin, not winterized, no heat, no water, no food, and in a neighborhood where there was nobody else, because every house was a non-winterized summer home. We lasted one night. Larry admitted that he hadn’t thought things out too well. That’s Harvard for you.

I remember the only time I have ever been in London during the winter, when I went about 15 or so years ago to an international meeting of various friends of Ben Gurion University organizations and London (and all of Britain) was hit by a large snow storm. I remember that London, like Quebec City, didn’t shut down during the snow, and people wandered around like it was summer time, and that the entire of England and Wales, as seen from the air, was white. I found that interesting.

I also remember a trip, again during college years, to New Hampshire to see a friend, where a very snowy day led me to think that I should cancel the trip. But I didn’t, and was glad that I didn’t because the next day, with maybe 8 inches of snow on the ground, the temperature soared to the 60s and the sky was as blue as can be. The mountains were just beautiful.

As I said, I know I will think of more snowventures (new word), but I will keep them to myself. As for today, we still stay put and just hope our power does not go out.

This is the second part of my description of items on a random shelf in my office. Yesterday, we saw D. Fisher’s bust of Moses draped in Mardi Gras beads. Today, before we get to some books, we show a hand carved gourd, by Peruvian artist Cesar Aquino Velli.

And then to the books, quite different from those shown yesterday.

The cover of this book is not in good shape, but the book, Edwards’s Great West…..History of St. Louis, is. It is a very detailed history of the City of St. Louis “to the present time”. The “present time” is 1860. St. Louis history starts in 1764. In 1860, it was already a major commercial center, and had a population of about 160,000. Ten years later, after the Civil War, its population had doubled to more than 300,000.

You may know that I have a fairly extensive collection of items related to the St. Louis 1904 World’s Fair. For some reason, two World’s Fair-related books are on this shelf and not with the other 100+ items.

The book pictured above is by (and was signed by) David Francis (1850-1927). Francis occupied several positions over his life, including Mayor of St. Louis, Governor of Missouri, Secretary of the Interior, and U.S. Ambassador to Russia. He was also the head of the first American organizing committee for the Olympics, and the President of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the organization that supported the Fair.

The book pictured above, A Tour of Europe in Nineteen Days, is the story of Francis’ whirlwind trip to Europe to drum up support for the Fair, and to encourage European countries to put together exhibits. It was a very successful trip.

You can see that this copy was given to P. E. Northrup. As best I can tell, Northrup was a publisher of maps, the man who created and printed the official maps of the Fair site.

One of the countries exhibiting was the German Empire, and this elegantly designed book is a catalogue of its exhibit. This is not a brochure, but a hard cover book with over 500 pages of text and illustrations.

William Seward (1801-1872) was another man who held several offices. Governor of New York, Senator from New York, he hoped to be the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1860, but was edged out by Abraham Lincoln. He became Lincoln’s Secretary of State, and was attacked and seriously injured the night Lincoln was assassinated. He remained Secretary of State under Andrew Johnson, negotiating in the purchase of Alaska (Seward’s Folly) in 1867 from the Russians. After his retirement from government, he went on an around-the-world trip, accompanied by his adopted daughter Olive. He wrote the story of his trip for the book pictured above, but he died before it was finished. Olive completed the book and saw to it that it was published.

Just short notes about the final two books on the shelf, pictured above. Alfred Rambaud (1842-1905) was a French historian who, for a time, lived in Russia, studying its language, culture and history, and writing a very detailed history of the country from medieval times onward. I have the two volume American edition (only one volume pictured), the first volume published in 1879 and the second in 1882.

The final book pictured (there are a few more on the shelf that I am not mentioning here) is a bound copy of the National Geographic Magazine from the first half of 1940 (with several large maps folded in a back pocket). Why I have this random volume is unclear, but, as usual, there is something special about it. On the front cover, there is the gold embossed name of the original owner of this bound volume. It was General Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold (1886-1950), one of the founders and commanders of the United States Air Force, and later a founder of both Pan American World Airways and the think tank, the Rand Corporation. That must be why I have kept this volume.

It will be difficult, when the time comes, to know what to do with everything in my office. And I know I should be thinking about that now (no, not just thinking, but doing), but I seem unable to.

I have as much stuff as the average hoarder, but I don’t think I qualify as a hoarder, because virtually everything I have is, to me, of interest.

Take for example one shelf out of many in my office.

Yes, on the shelf you find a bust of a very worried Moses, given to me by my sister decades ago.

It is signed D. Fisher, but I am not sure who that is. It might be David Fisher, who died in 2013, but the signature is not his usual All-CAPS signature. Moses is wearing two Ben Gurion University of the Negev baseball caps, two sets of Mardi Gras beads, and a medal with my name on it demonstrating actual proof that indeed I was on the staff of The Harvard Crimson.

But, as usual, it is the books that interest me most. Not that they are all valuable, just interesting. Somebody would want them, I am sure.

The radical right wing has always been here, in the 1950s, as well as today. If you are near my age, you probably remember these. Ah, nostalgia. It isn’t what it used to be.

Rags to riches. “A Horatio Alger story” was the way many “only in America” stories were told.  Until I found these two books, I thought Horatio Alger was a character, not an author. Alger himself (1832-1899) was not a Horatio Alger story, but the son of a prominent Unitarian minister, and a graduate of Harvard, 110 years or so before me.

Sometimes, you have no choice but to judge books by their cover. Such as these books, written in a Spanish I cannot read. But often the covers get very high marks. And you don’t feel bad if you never get around to opening them up. Ibenez, who died in 1928, was anti-monarchist and wrote at least 40 books. That means, if I am to read them all, I had better get to work.

The Zigzag books were written for teenagers in the 1890s by a man with the unbeatable name of Hezekiah Butterworth. Schoolboy trips through Europe. Travelogues? Adventure stories? I don’t even know.

Maybe Donald Trump would like this one. William Faulkner’s speech accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature. Somewhere else in this room, I have Albert Camus’.

One more for today.

Yes, it is in Russian. This is the official transcript of the Russian trial of Francis Gary Powers, thevAmerican U-2 pilot shot down by the Soviets over Sverdlovsk, shortly after U. S. President Eisenhower assured the Russians that we had no spy planes flying over their country. The rest is history.

Part 2 tomorrow.

I have to praise Lawrence O’Donnell once again. I listen to his 10 p.m. program on MS NOW quite often. I do so in part because he is usually entertaining. And in part because I usually agree with what he is saying.

I don’t look at O’Donnell’s program as a news program. It is more like listening to an editorial page, or listening to a series of op-eds. I say this because O’Donnell does not portray himself as a neutral, as someone being fully objective and putting out both (or all) sides of a story. He is giving you his point of view. And he has very definite opinions on a variety of subjects.

One of those subjects that O’Donnell is passionate, and very opinionated, about is Donald Trump. O’Donnell (this is my interpretation) views Donald Trump as a powerful and dangerous clown, who just happens to be the president of the United States. Clowns, in general, often have two aspects: the comic, and the frightening. Donald Trump, as discussed by Lawrence O’Donnell clearly is comprised of both.

I am not saying this to, in any way, be critical of O’Donnell. Just the opposite. Because I find that Lawrence O’Donnell, in his descriptions of Donald Trump, tends to be quite accurate. He is accurate in reporting of instances from Trump’s history, in reporting the events of the day, and, most importantly perhaps, in reporting what is going to happen in the future.

Believe it or not, there is a Wikipedia entry called “Trump Always Chickens Out”. This first time I heard this phrase, I think, was on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show, and I guessed that he probably coined the phrase. Apparently, not. Apparently, it was coined by Robert Armstrong, who writes for the Financial Times, on May 2, 2025, exactly one month after Trump’s self-declared Liberation Day, the day that Trump issued an executive order describing a large number of tariffs that the country would soon be imposing world-wide in order to counterbalance barriers to American exports. Within two days, the DOW index lost about 4,000 points, and Trump announced that the tariffs declared on April 2 would not be implemented. Trump’s abrupt about face led to the phrase “TACO Trump”, or “Trump Always Chickens Out”.

In late May, on one of his programs, Lawrence O’Donnell used the phrase after saying “Trump, the stupidest and most cowardly president in American history, backed down again”. Yes, O’Donnell does not hide his feelings, but he kept saying that, night after night and week after week, that the world should ignore various Trump threats, and various Trump promises, because he was never going to follow through with them. And, to my knowledge, each time that O’Donnell would make such a statement, he proved to be correct.

Most recently, O’Donnell used the TACO description to explain what was going to happen about Greenland. He told European leaders that they shouldn’t panic; they shouldn’t even be worried. When people talked about a possible military invasion, O’Donnell scoffed: “It is never going to happen”. When the question arose as to how Trump was going to work it that the United States wound up with the possession of Greenland, O’Donnell said not to concern yourself with it: “It is never going to happen”. When journalists from around the world began to alight in Greenland, he thought news outlets were wasting their resources: “It is never going to happen.” When Donald Trump issued his threats to Denmark and the EU and NATO about how determined the U.S. was to take Greenland, and how he would not take no for an answer, and how Greenland, as an island in the western hemisphere, should be off limits to Europeans, O’Donnell said: “It is never going to happen”.

Yesterday, Trump, speaking at Davos, gave his usual bombastic and threatening speech, warning the Europeans that he was going to acquire Greenland, and that in fact Greenland had already been taken by the United States during the second World War, and had been “foolishly” given back to Denmark by this country after the war ended. In this speech, Trump (perhaps surprisingly to most) took military invasion off his agenda (although, with Trump, things can change on a dime), but said that there were other ways to insure that Greenland became American, including of course (since Trump no longer does anything for the first time) a two stage imposition of tariffs, first on February 1 and then in June.

It was only about two or three hours later that Trump on Truth Social (no, I do not look at Truth Social) announced that he and Mark Rutte, the Secretary-General of NATO, had come up with (something like) the framework of a concept of an outline of a possible, potential arrangement for Greenland, and that not only was a possible military intervention off the table, so were the proposed European tariffs.

It was a good, straight-man setup for Lawrence O’Donnell. Not only was he proven right that Trump was not going to launch a military attack on Greenland (and he ruthlessly criticized the rest of the media for paying any attention to the threat in the first place), but Trump was not going to impose the tariffs he declared were on their way (Trump Always Chickens Out), and he was doing this only with the framework of a concept of an outline of a possible, potential arrangement for Greenland, which – to O’Donnell – will never amount to anything significant.

Of course, it is easy (if you have the right staffs or search engines) to come up with instance after instance where Trump has said something like “and you will see what exactly we are proposing within two weeks” and nothing happens. The most obvious example would be in years of talking about a health care plan to succeed Obamacare. Last night, O’Donnell went back ten years, showing Trump on a dais talking about people who had suggested that Melania had come into the country illegally. Trump poo-pooed that suggestion and said, to counter it and put it to bed once and for all, Melania will within the next few days hold a news conference to explain exactly how she entered the country. O’Donnell says that it has been ten years since Trump promised that, and that he is still waiting.

Perhaps we will hear more about Greenland today. Whatever might be said about it, my guess is that tonight Lawrence O’Donnell’s reaction will be, “I told you so”.

Okay. Donald Quixote John Trump, President of the United States, spent a good part of his speech at Davos today tilting at windmills. Some of the windmills were actual windmills, as he made it clear that (1) all they do is kill birds and ruin the landscape, (2) no more will be allowed in the United States, (3) Europe’s energy production is being crippled by windmills and the New Green Scam, and (4) China makes all the world’s windmills but does not have any wind farms itself, other than some Potemkin wind farms that look like wind farms, but that do not farm the wind.

He claimed that American energy production would increase because of coal and Venezuelan oil, and maybe new nuclear plants. But he added another source of electric energy – excess electricity produced by data centers. That’s the first time I have heard that, rather than hearing that data centers are sucking up our energy and that will make electric and other energy more difficult to produce and more expensive for the consumer.

There was little that he said that he hadn’t said before – a lot of questionable (at best) statistics that he has used as recently as yesterday in the speech where he was praising himself for such a wonderful first year. But there were some things he said (or that I think I heard him say) that were interesting.

First, he said that there were no plans to use force to capture Greenland. Yesterday, when he was asked how far he would go to take Greenland for the United States, he said, basically and quite ominously, “wait and see”. So today, there was a bit of backtracking, but of course he could change his mind tomorrow.

Secondly, he said that the United States won World War II. Well, there is some truth to that, although the Russians would have a different opinion, at least as to the war in Europe. And he says that, in World War II, Greenland was not only protected and secured by the United States, but that at the end of the war, Greenland belonged to the United States, but that we “gave it back” to Denmark. Let me restate that: he said that after the war, we “stupidly gave it back” to Denmark.

This, I guess, is the newest fiction being used by Trump to legitimize his imperialistic tendencies. Remember that he said that the oil that we have seized from tankers leaving Venezuela, and the oil that remains under the ground in Venezuela, is actually American oil, and that Venezuela (presumably during its nationalization process) stole it from us, so we are only taking back what is ours.

Both of these claims (Venezuela’s oil belongs to us, and we stupidly gave Greenland back to Denmark) are fictions, of course, but his believers, members of what I have begun to call the Gullible Old Party (GOP) will treat them as gospel.

Besides insulting half of the room (the room being filled with people whom “he loves”, but can not help but insult), and talking about all of the great things happening in America (no crime in Washington, DC, and soon no crime in New Orleans, as well as what great things are now happening in Minneapolis), there were a few items he left out of the talk (at least I think he did).

For one thing, he did not mention his new Board of Peace, which originally was meant to stabilize Gaza (or turn it into a Mediterranean resort, but now seems to be an invite-only replacement for the United Nations. That surprised me.

In fact, he did not mention Gaza, or Gaza’s future in the speech, and that surprised me as well. He also did not mention drugs.

As I listened to Trump, I realized something else that is missing from all of his speeches. As we all know, the basic premise of everything he does, is concentrated on his own magnificent abilities, which he touts as being beyond the abilities of anyone else. You can not name one former president, for example, whom Trump praises. Each of them was stupid in the extreme.

Doesn’t this create a major problem? If every president prior to Trump was a dumb bell, what is to say that presidents who come after Trump won’t equally all be dumb bells? And if all future presidents are dumb bells, how would all the miracles that Trump is bringing to the world today be maintained after he is no longer president? You would think that this would be important to him, and that he would be talking about how to assure continuity, but this does not seem to be anywhere in his mind. Perhaps this is not surprising, and that Trump’s goal is not changing the world for a long period, but creating a legacy that will place Trump as the uniquely perfect president, who strengthened the United States during his terms of office in ways that no preceding and no succeeding president could hope to do.

It will of course be interesting to see what happens in Davos, and outside of Davos. What will the reactions of the Danes and other Europeans be to Trump’s demands? And if the Danes won’t agree to give up sovereignty over Greenland, and Trump will not use military means to take (or apparently in his mind, to take back) Greenland, what can we expect to happen? We see today that the European Union (I think that is the correct body) has suspended its trade agreement with the United States, and that a Danish pension fund has disposed of its US Treasuries. We see that Trump has set tariffs against European countries to rise on Feb 1, and again this summer, and that Europe can retaliate against American products either with comparative tariffs, or with what is being referred to as a trade bazooka, or something like that, which, as I understand it, is simply a prohibition on the export of European products to the United States.

D.Q.J. Trump will have a number of meetings in Davos yet today with European leaders, including President Zelensky, and we will see what comes of them. He talked in his speech about the number of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers being killed month by month, and how well he gets along with President Putin; he did not say that he gets along with Zelensky.

He did praise his relationship with some others. He said he “likes” French President Macron; he did not say that about Canadian Prime Minister Carney, who he thinks is ungrateful. He likes and respects President Xi of China (“everybody likes him”, I think he said). He really dislikes Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who “won’t be there very long”, or something like that, but he likes Gavin Newsom, with whom “he has always gotten along”. He loves the Danish people and the Danish leaders, but what kind of a country is it that allowed Germany to take over its land six hours after the start of an invasion, and how can they be expected to do anything?

The reaction to Trump’s speech at Davos was muted at best. It might be the first time that I ever heard a president give a speech at a world wide forum like that where there was not one instance of applause or laughter until the end, and where the ending applause was what you would describe only as “polite”. I can’t imagine anyone being pleased with the speech, and we will see what courage the various world leaders have in their public reactions to it.

When you have a bad head cold that hangs on for over a week, and you give up all non-essential ventures out of the house, you do have time to do some things that you otherwise might not get around to doing. For example, this week I read two books, and I spent time working on a family tree on the both very helpful and frustrating ancestry.com website.

Some of my readers who are also friends and relatives know that, on my father’s side, I am related to Al Jolson, considered by many to be America’s best entertainer until his death in 1950. Jolson was my father’s first cousin. My grandfather, Abraham Hessel, was the youngest brother of Jolson’s father, Moshe Ruben Yoelson, a rabbi/cantor who started his career in a small village on the Nieman River in Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire) and ended it in Washington DC. He led the old orthodox Talmud Torah Congregation in Southwest DC until it was torn down via urban renewal, and became one of the two synagogues forming today’s Ohev Shalom synagogue on upper 16th Street in Northwest DC.

I was seven when Jolson died, and never met him. I was, I think, two when his father died. In fact, the only Jolson I knew was Al’s younger half brother, George, who was a DC commercial real estate broker, and one of the world’s most affable people. George lived not far from us on Nebraska Ave, and died in 1994. His widow, Adeline, lived to be 100, and I would see her now and then in the neighborhood.

Al Jolson had an older brother, three years older, named Harry, who was also an entertainer, mainly in vaudeville, and who outlived his brother by a few years. He, like Al, lived in Los Angeles, and in 1951 published a book, Mistah Jolson, which was a memoir, and in which Al played a very prominent role. I have had a copy of this book for decades, but I think this is the first time I read it cover to cover.

My father’s and the Jolson brothers’ grandfather was named Meir Hesselson, and he lived (and they were raised) in northern Lithuania, near the Latvian border. The obvious questions are: if Meir was a Hesselson, how did two of his sons become Hessel and Yoelson. And, then, how did a Yoelson have two sons who became Jolsons.

Whether you care about the answer, I don’t know, but some of you do, and others may find it moderately interesting, so here goes:

In the late 19th century in the Russian Empire, all young men were subject to the draft, except for oldest sons. (Now, I am probably oversimplifying, but this is good enough for our purposes.) So my grandfather’s oldest brother, Barnard, could remain a Hesselson, and did, even after moving to America and settling in Elmira, NY. The Hesselson store is still there, although under non-family ownership. But the other four Hesselson boys needed to create fake identities to avoid the draft.

Now, how this was done, I am not really sure, but it must have been sort of an industry, with one branch creating fake identification papers, and another branch knowing what officials to bribe (again, I am sure I am oversimplifying, but who cares?). And it seems that once a young man was set with his new identity, the next thing for him to do was to skip town. And that is what each of Meir Hesselson’s five sons did. And they all eventually made it to America.

So, in this process, Moshe Reuben Hesselson became Moshe Reuben Yoelson, and he became a rabbi in the old country, with a small congregation in the village of Srednik, west of Kovno, in central Lithuania. He had six children in Lithuania and, when Al and Harry were about 6 and 9, he left for America, bringing the rest of the family to join him in Washington DC about three years later. It’s an interesting story and Harry lays it out nicely.

But how to get from Yoelson to Jolson? It was a two step process, both by happenstance, not planning. When Al and Harry started school in southwest DC, not yet knowing much English, they were asked what their name was. They responded “Yoelson”. The teacher nodded and wrote down “Joelson”, and that was that. Yoelson, for the kids, became Joelson; for their parents, it remained Yoelson.

For the second step, you have to move forward about 10 years. Al and Harry, much to their father’s displeasure (to put it mildly) had become obsessed with theater and entertaining, starting by busking on downtown DC street corner. At 15, Harry ran away from home (he had finally found himself with some money, as a prominent man he knew from hotel busking got sick after he came out of a brothel, and Harry helped him get a cab to go home; he gave Harry a $10 gold piece to thank him and to ensure he kept quiet about the affair, and this gave Harry sufficient funds to run away) and went to New York. Al followed not long thereafter (this is another story for another time).

In their early 20s, the two Joelson brothers formed a vaudeville act with a third man, named Joe Palmer. Palmer was an older actor who had become wheelchair bound, and the act was based on three characters, one a patient, one a doctor, and one sort of a go-fer. Yes, tastes were different in those days. One day, at a new venue, the theater operator was preparing the marquee for the front of the building and told them that Joelson-Parker-Joelson had two too many letters for his sign. So, the boys told him just to drop the “e”s in their name, which he did. And from then on, they were each known as Jolson. As simple as that.

The book itself tells not only of the adventures of the Jolson boys, but also the American entertainment scene at the time. This was, of course, before motion pictures, and before the development of musical shows with plots. All entertainment was in the form of revues, with singers, dancers, comedians, one act following another. Jobs were tough, pay was very low and often not available. A hard life.

For a long time, the Jolson brothers shared relatively the same level of fame, although their personalities were obviously different from the start, with Harry being much more settled, and Al being a nervous wreck who was only able to control himself on a stage. Al’s confidence and ambition were also at different levels and soon he outshone is younger brother in fame, so much so that people began to confuse the two, to the detriment of Harry. There were a number of examples where someone would come up to Harry, introduce themselves and tell them that they once performed on stage with Al. They would explain when that was, and Harry would say “No, that was me, not Al”, and they wouldn’t believe him. As Harry says in the book, it turned out that there were two Jolson brothers, and both of them were Al.

It’s an entertaining book, I think, although maybe today for a specialized audience. Harry continued his vaudeville career, both in the U.S. and in the UK, where the music hall tradition remained strong, while Al wound up in the first talkie picture, The Jazz Singer, which kept his career alive. In the late 1930s, though, Al’s career began to wane, and was “saved” by the entry of the United States into World War II, when Al became the first, and probably most active, entertainer to join the USO and perform for American troops around with world tirelessly. After the war, he became the subject of a pseudo-biographic film, The Jolson Story, which became an enormous hit. As Harry (who was left out of the film) said, it was a biographical film for anyone who didn’t know the story of Al’s life. It was more fiction than fact, but was advertised as fact.

When the Korean War began, Al went on the road again, in spite of doctors’ warnings that his health would not permit it. Coming back from a trip, playing cards with friends, Al Jolson had a heart attack and died. He was 64. He left behind his young widow (third wife), and two young adopted children. He never had children of his own. Nor did Harry, whose 40 year marriage ended with his wife’s death in 1947. He married again, a year later, to a woman who had two young teenage children. I assume (I don’t know) that he adopted them, because they both took the Jolson names. I know a little about what happened to them, but not enough to say. I am somewhat curious, of course, but their fate for some reason is just not at the top of my list(s). Some pictures follow:

These are two portaits by Rembrandt, both in the Hermitage Museum, in St. Petersburg. The one on top is known as “Portrait of an old Jew”. The second one is known as “Portrait of an Old Man in Red”. I find them both extraordinary, but that is unimportant because I don’t have any ability to judge art work, and experts can perhaps show me where I am wrong. But I can say that I really like both of them and no one, absolutely no one, can tell me I am wrong.

But this is not my point. My point is that I turned on a short video yesterday on YouTube called something like “Treasures from the Hermitage”, and there was this young, guide-looking Russian woman, pointing out a dozen or so of her Hermitage favorites.

One of the items she had selected was Rembrandt’s Portrait of an Old Jew, the top painting above. But….she identified it as Rembrandt’s famous Portrait of an Old Man in Red.

Two questions arise. First, why did she do this? An honest mistake? Or is there a back story? And if there is a back story, what is it? Something nefarious, or something innocent? Or actually something to with Rembrandt scholarship, with questions about how various of his paintings are, or should be, identified? I have no idea.

The second question is, how did I learn this? No, I did not know (or remember) anything about either of these paintings before yesterday. And I only saw the top one on the video.

The answer is that I was really intrigued by the subject of the painting. I wondered who he was. And perhaps I had this interest because the more I looked at the painting, the more I thought the sitter must be Jewish. And I said this, even though there is nothing Jewish about the painting itself. No six pointed stars, no menorahs, not even a kippah.

I went to my computer and Googled “Rembrandt painting old man red Hermitage” and I got multiple copies of the lower picture, not the upper one. I then Googled “Rembrandt Jew Hermitage” and got the upper one.

Forgetting the question about how the portrait was identified on the video, my question is: how can some one in 21st century America look at a portrait from 17th century Amsterdam and recognize the unidentified subject of the portrait as Jewish.

By the way, in neither painting can the sitter by individually identified.

I got diverted yesterday into a dive into Rembrandt, the Hermitage, and the Old Jew, as you will see if you scroll down a tad to the next post. But I did not want to ignore Rev. King, so I asked CHATGPT to honor him as Rembrandt might have:

Even if Trump’s term in office ends without drama in 2028, the country will face a major dilemma in dealing with all of the government criminality that will have taken place over the past four years.

For one thing, Trump may decide to use his pardon power to pardon his political appointees and his buddies for all crimes they may have committed and for all crimes for which they may be charged not only during his administration, but at any time thereafter. His power to do this would obviously be tested in the courts, and the Supreme Court will remain at least 6-3 Trumpian, so who knows how that will work out. But if the Court upholds the power of a president to pardon individuals for unindicted crimes, future crimes, and indefinite crimes, the Court would create a caste of people who are indeed above the law, so that may give it pause.

But in addition, the new president will be taking over a very divided and polarized country and will have its reunification as an important task. Every indictment of a presumed Trumpian criminal will be a strike against reconciliation, so a balanced approach will be required. It will not be easy.

I am not expert enough to say how much of the activity of ICE is illegal. I can tell you how much I think should be illegal, and how much I think is immoral, but I can’t go beyond that. Or maybe I can, by adding one more category. I can tell you how much I think is just plain unneccessary.

The answer is: most of it. From what I have read again and again, both Eisenhower and Obama led movements to deport people who came into this country illegally in greater numbers than Trump has accomplished. When Eisenhower did this, it was easier for the government to work outside of the public eye, of course, but this was not the case during the Obama years. Yet Obama’s administration was able to deport over 3 million individuals (that is the number I have seen) without anything like this amount of conflict or protest.

What does this mean? Of course, it might mean that the folks running Homeland Security and ICE are, compared to Obama’s crew, incompetent. My guess is that this is the case (based on general observation of virtually everyone Trump has appointed to any position anywhere: competence competes with loyalty, and loyalty is favored), but also that it is a secondary reason for all the turmoil. The primary reason is that turmoil is exactly what Trump wants.

After all, much of his campaign was based on Biden’s immigration failures, so it becomes important not only to correct those failures, but to demonstrate beyond a doubt that those failures are being addressed. The way you do this is by transforming a relatively routine policing activity into something that will grab the media’s attention (collateral damage, be damned) and allow you do say “Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden”.

I am not a fan of how Biden ran the southern border. If you look at early issues of this blog, you will see that, starting in 2022 or 2023, I said that the situation at the southern border was going to lose the 2024 election for the Democrats. And indeed it did. But we are where we are.

Trump has “closed” the southern border. I am not sure exactly what is happening on the Mexican border. I don’t know if anyone is getting in legally, or by sneaking in. But obviously things have changed there, no one is complaining about that as far as I can see, and certainly the media is paying no attention to this. As far as I can tell, this is a Trump success. At least for the time being, until we (the country, we) figure out what our immigration policy is (now, we have none, of course, and that is another big problem).

We have all sorts of immigrants in our country. Most of them are not “illegals”, although that is how Trump describes them and has done so consistently enough that not only MAGA but the media in general seems to fall in line. But the only “illegals” are those who came across the border illegally. (I know this is not fully the case; we have a large number of people who came into the country legally, but have overstayed their visas; this group has only been sporadically targeted by Trump.)

The largest group was admitted into the country on a temporary basis while their applications for asylum, or refugee status, or whatever, are being processed. Of course, we don’t have a sufficient infrastructure to process these applications on anything like a timely basis, and never have had. So, letting them in as Biden did was based on a sort of fiction, but nevertheless, the country did admit them, and, as long as their cases are still pending, they are not “illegal”, although they are now typically referred to as such.

And then there are others: individuals given temporary protection because they are from certain chaotic countries (such temporary protection often is not very temporary, understandably), or green card holders, or others legitimately admitted on various other bases.

As is often said, the vast majority of all of these groups become “good” residents, working (even where legally not permitted to), paying taxes, raising families, etc., and the number of criminals are much lower than the number of criminals in the larger American population. Of course, this means nothing to Trump, who makes it appear that virtually all immigrants are murderers, rapists, or drug dealers.

Trump started by saying that the “criminals” would be kicked out of the country. But that soon became a meaningless category, because suddenly anyone who came into the country during the Biden years was denoted as a “criminal”.

What would make the most sense of course would be to go after the criminals, and perhaps after those who swam across the border illegally and were never processed and are thus not “in the system”, and to do this as much as possible out of the public eye. But this is of course not what Trump is doing. He is doing the opposite.

By having masked, undisciplined ICE officers roam the streets, stopping people at will, asking for identification that they are not required to carry, beating people, handcuffing them, capturing them in schools, churches, and even at government hearings they are required to attend,  taking them away to detention centers without notifying family members or giving them a chance to contact anyone, and so forth, Trump is embarking on a campaign to firm up his base (I guess) and further divide the country, both for political purposes (enabling him to attack Democratic mayors and governors for allowing violence in the streets) or to divert from his other crimes and follies.

Unless the Supreme Court stops it (which it will not), all of this will continue and deepen during the next three years. We have not hit bottom yet. And it will be up to the next president to end it.

I hope that the Democrats can figure out how to respond to this correctly. I hope that they don’t adopt the mantra “ABOLISH ICE”, because this is just what Trump wants them to do. He wants to make ICE so disruptive that the Democrats will call for the abolition of the agency and Trump and the Republicans can then argue that the Democrats want to go back to the Biden era, open the southern border and let everyone in.

The Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2028 will need to establish a firm immigration/deportation policy that will not cater to extremes on either side. It must be inclusive in that it deals with all aspects of immigration, it must be fair to those who came into the country legally, it must be practical, it must be humane. I hope someone is developing this policy as we speak; it is not something that can be accomplished in a week or two.

In the meantime, the Democrats must realize (a) they committed big mistakes during the Biden years and they should admit to them, (b) how important immigration is to the country, (c) how people in the country should be treated fairly and their situations adjudicated fairly, (d) and how criminal activity on part of people in the immigration system will not be tolerated, and (e) how ICE will be reformed to carry out its purposes within the limits of law, and not undertake activities which go beyond those purposes. They should understand that Trump will try to force them into extremist positions for his own political sake, and that they must not swallow that bait.