Art is 80

In sort of a hurry this morning, wondering about how much snow we will get tomorrow in Washington. The estimates (the “first calls”) seem to range between 1″ and 20″. Can we put it up to a vote?

Before we get to tariffs, let’s talk about Black History Month. That would be this month, and the federal government’s initial thought on the matter seemed to be to ignore it all together. But then, under some pressure, Mr. Trump…..

A digression: “Tariff” is Trump’s favorite word, as we all know. But none of you know what my least favorite word is. It is “trump”. And not only when used to name our president. Even when used as an uncapitalized, standard English word. I have banned it from my vocabulary.

……..did mention Black History Month and even talked about some of the wonderful Black people in our history…..

Another digression: Marco Rubio (i.e., the Cuban) spoke to the Europeans about how central to the continuation of civilization are the Europeans with their history, and of course, for this purpose we Americans are Europeans – white folks who came from Europe before we came to this continent. He talked about how we shared those great musicians Mozart and the Rolling Stones, and he ignored the many Americans of either Western Hemisphere indigenous backgrounds, or the many Americans of African backgrounds, and he pretended that all Europeans were good guys, who never fought, knew how to share, and really loved each other.

……, including that wonderful guy Herschel Walker. Remember him? Former football player, who wanted to be U.S. Senator from Georgia, while he lived in Texas? That’s the guy. And Trump appointed him to be the United States Ambassador to The Bahamas. Well, when mentioning him this week at a Black Month event, he described him as the Ambassador to The Bahamas, or Bermuda. “One of those places. Nice place.”

And then, of course, yesterday, Trump, when asked about his two Supreme Court appointees who voted against his tariffs, he said he thought it was an “embarrassment for their families”. This remark is even odder than his failure to know the difference between The Bahamas and Bermuda. What could he have been thinking when he said that their families would be embarrassed? I guess we will have to wait and see. I hope that some news service follows up and asks their kids how embarrassed they are.

I bet they are not nearly embarrassed as the children of former Prince Andrew (and how embarrassed his grandchildren would be, if his children are not able to shield them from this information). And here is where embarrassment will come into play. As the Epstein investigations continue and deepen, and the alleged perpetrators of or witnesses to Epstein’s sexual crimes are made public, it is their families who will become embarrassed. Maybe that is what was in the recesses of Trump’s mind as he stood there and projected that embarrassment on the families of Justices Barrett and Gorsuch. Maybe that it what was looming somewhere in his mind as Howard Lutnick was standing right behind his left shoulder. Who knows?

And then of course he said that the Justices of the Supreme Court were (all?) influenced by foreign powers in making their decision on tariffs (and maybe on everything else). Like Carrie Mathison on Homeland, a lifetime of service to one’s country cannot stop presumably intelligent people from deciding that, all along, she was working for the Russians. Maybe the Justices of the Supreme Court are really assets of Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu. Maybe they are involved with deals with Arabs to pour money into their children’s ventures, to buy their crypto currency, to invest in their outside business interests, to give them a jet plane, to give them permits to build skyscrapers in their major cities. Perhaps that is why Justice Barrett voted the way she did.

And then there was our Federal Communications Commission chief, who spoke this week and suggested that, at least from now until July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the country, all American broadcast stations should start their day with the Pledge of Allegiance. And should have programs of music by American composers, and stories about the wonderful events in American history (there may be fewer of those than he thinks).

And the Secretary of the Treasury, who parroted his boss, Mr. Trump, in saying that the tariff decision of the Court was in fact a victory. A victory not only for the president, and for the American people, but a victory for the use of tariffs, and a victory for the use of presidential power. He said this, by the way, in the same speech where he compared Olympic gold medal skier Eileen Gu to George Soros. Now I ask you. Did you ever see George Soros ski?

Yes, the United States government, like the old, gray mare, is not what she used to be. And the spillover effect continues. I read this morning that Harvard (yes, the same Harvard that seems to be fighting the Trump administration in court) has cancelled its annual Women’s Research Symposium, because speakers would be selected by gender. Think about that for a minute. Harvard, which some would criticize because of support for trans-gender individuals, is now cancelling programs that support a clear male-female divide. What is next? Hillel must allow in Christians? You never know these days.

Okay, I gotta go now. You see my mind is a bit scattered these days. And you see why.

What was my favorite Wall Street Journal headline yesterday? 

“Top Lawyers’ Fees Have Skyrocketed. Be Prepared to Spend $3,400 per Hour.”

It reminds me of a cartoon I saw years ago, which I will now update: A man opens an envelope from his lawyer and looks at the invoice, which reads, “Saw you on the street, crossed to say ‘hello’, realized it wasn’t you, re-crossed the street. $1,700.00.”

When I stopped practicing law in 2012, I think I was charging $500 or $600 an hour. That seemed outrageously high to me. But then, in many cases, when you looked at what the clients would gain from the transaction or from a positive end to a dispute, you realized that, compared to the client’s gain, your fee was small potatoes.

Many of my clients were developers and managers of government subsidized housing projects. The programs designed by Congress provided for several groups to benefit. One group of course were the residents, who were able to get good rental housing at rates they could afford. Three other groups were those who provided funding for the construction of the properties. One of these groups was comprised of the mortgage lenders, who made market interest rate loans without any real risk, because their loans were insured by the federal government. Then there were the investors who provided equity money in return for federal tax write-offs. And then there were the various middlemen, who received large, industry-standard fees for putting the deals together.

If you were one of these middlemen, collecting syndication fees, asset management fees and what-have-you, you could maybe do well if you did one deal, although that one deal would take some effort and risk because you were doing it for the first time. But if you then did a second deal, and a third, and maybe a thirtieth, the transactions would become easier and more routine, and you would become richer and richer.

After construction was finished, the biggest jobs were maintenance, renting and rent collection, and property management. Many subsidized properties were managed by companies affiliated with the developer through common ownership. Other properties, particularly those owned by non-profit entities, were managed by companies who specialized in these types of properties. Subsidized housing management can be a very difficult business, and takes a degree of dedication, as you might imagine, and this should not be ignored. But management of subsidized housing can be very, very lucrative.

The management fees for these properties are not negotiated (you can’t negotiate fees between affiliated owners and managers, anyway), but are set by government regulators. This means that, if you manage only one property, you will likely go broke. The cost of the equipment you need, the expertise to comply with all of the arcane government rules, and so forth, make management of these properties a specialized business.

But your management fee is not related to the number of properties you manage, so that once you have three or four under your belt, and the necessary personnel and skills to ensure complance, every penny you collect as a management fee is gravy. And there are companies with 100 or more subsidized properties under management. You can imagine how much the owners of these companies earn every year.

Of course, the governmental mortgage insurance for the lenders and the tax write-offs for the investors are not enough to keep these projects going, especially if they are designed to serve very low income (and sometimes, no income) residents. So you have to add monthly government rental subsidies, which normally equate to the difference between 30% of tenant income, and a rent approved by the government based on a set formula for fair market rents.

You see what this means. It means that for larger operators of government assisted housing, taxpayer dollars, often in excessive amounts, go directly into the pockets of increasingly wealthy developers and owners of subsidized housing.

Maybe, there is a better way, but no one has found it.

We started this post with excessive legal fees. And now we see it is not only the lawyers. And all of these people are members of the top 1%, or close to it. They are all beneficiaries of the system I described, as are the very low income residents of these properties. As to the largest segment of Americans, who are neither one bor the other and who work to develop and manage these properties, what about them? By and large, their salaries are not in the least reflective of what their bosses are making, and like many today, they struggle with the increasing cost of living.

So what else is new?

It’s Thursday morning, and that means that I started off my day listening to one of my friends make a presentation at our morning breakfast meeting. Today, Ken Glazer spoke about “Theseus’ Boat”. Ken is a retired lawyer, who has been studying philosophy at the University of Maryland for the past six or seven years, and now teaches a course on “philosophy and the law”.

And what is Theseus’ Boat? I couldn’t have told you 90 minutes ago, but now I can. Imagine an old wooden ship. A plank needs replacing. Then another, then another, then another. Pretty soon, while the boat looks just as it did before the first plank rotted, each and every plank has been replaced over time. The question is: is this the same boat? It is still Theseus’ boat, if he still owns it, but is it the same boat?

Take Abraham Lincoln’s axe. Made of two pieces, a handle and a blade. The blade gets too old and worn to sharpen, so it is replaced. Is this still Lincoln’s axe? If so, and the handle is replaced  later, so that neither the handle nor the blade is the same as those that Lincoln held in his hand, is it still Lincoln’s axe?

Take a river (this is more common example). The water in the river keeps flowing. When you look at a river at the same place, you never see the same thing. Is it still the same river?

You may not (okay, I am sure you do not) remember when I talked about the historic renovation low income housing project in Baltimore that, in accordance with various federal rules, was to retain a certain portion of the existing, historic external walls. The developer/builder knocks the walls down in their entirety. But he preserves the bricks and stacks them up, concluding (incorrectly under federal rules) that if he uses the original, old bricks in constructing the (new) walls, he will have retained the historic walls. Putting aside the federal rules, as a matter of philosophy, if not law, is he correct?

And then there is a question of animals. The most prominent example? A caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Is it the same animal?

And what of human beings, who grow, shed cells continuously and so forth? Is an 80 year old the same person as he/she was when they were 8? If you measure this by the cells that make up the body, maybe not. If you measure this psychologically, that might be a more difficult question. But it comes into play when you think about someone who, as a teenager, murders someone else and is sentenced to life in prison without parole. Forty years later, after four decades in prison, he seems like a “new man”. He shows no trace of violence, he is kind to all, he has earned university degrees, he writes, he counsels, he certainly does not get involved in threats or violence in any way. Is he the same person as the teenager who was sentenced for murder? Does it make sense to keep him incarcerated for life? What does society get out of this, other than the expense of his imprisonment?

That reminded me of something else. You may have guessed it already. It’s the Epstein situation. The crimes alleged in the Epstein case took place 20 to 40 years ago. All sorts of individuals were presumably involved, many of whom have presumably led honorable lives (you know what I mean) over the past few decades. Are these people the same people who committed crimes 30 years ago? Does it make sense to “cancel” them or to arrest and try them in 2026 for things that happened in, say, 1996? And what about the victims, the survivors? Are they, in their 40s or 50s, the same people they were when they were 16 or so? Does dredging up things that happened so long ago constitute justice or retribution? Is it fair to the alleged perpetrators as they are today (or to their families), and does it do anything for the survivors, other than bringing up their old trauma again and again? Are the legal answers and the philosophical (or moral) answers to these questions the same, or different?

To me, these are all very provocative questions and thoughts, and worth pondering. So I thank Ken for my morning wake-up.

But, as usual, something said at the session got me wondering about far away places. Such as El-jem, Tunisia. Two thousand years ago or so, it had a different name, Thysdrus, and was a city of the Roman Empire, Africa province. There was an ampitheater there at the time. It is still there.

Are Thyrsus and El-jem the same city?

You do not have to answer this last question.

I am happy to say that we are only 13 episodes from the end of Homeland. Elizabeth Keane, the first female president of the United States, has just been kicked out of office through the use of Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. Arizona Senator Sam Paley has convinced the majority of her Cabinet members, and the Vice President, to sign a certification that she is unfit for office. This determination was based on her failure as a politician to convince others (and sometimes herself) that her policy of compromise with bad foreign actors is best for the country, her reaction to a pre-inauguration assassination attempt, when she rounded up 200 high level officials of the CIA and other security agencies and jailed them (without trial, apparently) as co-conspirators who wanted her dead, and a series of bizarre occurrences that she blamed on Russian operatives, but that her opponents blamed on her.

Because Section 4 of the 25th Amendment has not yet been used to remove a President, and because the Supreme Court has not ruled on any cases involving this section of the Amendment, there is some uncertainty as to how it would actually be used. In Homeland, it worked as follows: (1) a majority of President Keane’s Cabinet members and the Vice President signed a document certifying to her inability to “discharge the powers and duties of [her] office” (the language of the Amendment uses “his”), (2) the Vice President told the President that he was now in charge, and she was no longer the President, and (3)  President Keane announced the document had no effect because she had fired most of her Cabinet, and that she  had gone directly to the Supreme Court to argue that those who signed the declaration had no basis to claim that she was “unable” to perform her duties, that they simply did not like the way she was performing her duties, and that the 25th Amendment was not written to be used for such blatantly political purposes (and, of course, that in any event, she had fired her Cabinet before they had fired her).

The Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision, quickly ruled against the President, although we (mere viewers of a TV series) do not know the basis of the Court’s ruling.

In real life, where there is now some talk about the eventual use of the 25th Amendment to end the presidency of Donald Trump, things probably would not play out as they did in Homeland.

We would have the real life question of what “inability” means and, assuming that it doesn’t mean what it meant in Homeland where it was a question of whether the President was simply acting in a way that was politically not acceptable to the signers of the declaration, there would have to be some determination (presumably a judicial determination) of what “inability” does mean, and there would have to be evidence that the President did indeed suffer from the form of inability to carry out his or her duties that would be acceptable to the Supreme Court (the Supreme Court we have today, conservative as it is).

Secondly, we would have the question of who is entitled to sign such a declaration. The Amendment itself does not use the word “Cabinet”. It uses “the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide”. There is legislative history from the debates leading to the ratification of the amendment that this refers to the President’s Cabinet, but clearly we have something else here that the Supreme Court could focus on. As Congress has not designated any other body by law, we are left to determine what the “executive departments” are and who are their “principal officers”.

There are 17 government departments whose leaders have the title Secretary and whose appointment must be ratified by the Senate. Traditionally, these individuals have comprised a President’s Cabinet. But is, say, the Secretary of State the only “principal officer” of the Department of State? Another question to be answered.

And, if you look at President Trump’s listing of his Cabinet members, you find 24 names, not 17. The others are the heads of the EPA, OMB, SBA, CIA, the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. Trade Representative, and the President’s Chief of Staff. Each of these appointments, with the exception of the Chief of Staff, has also been ratified by the Senate.

So here the Court would have a number of questions posed to it. Do the 17 members of the Cabinet constitute the “principal officers of the executive departments”, does the President have the right to appoint anyone he or she wants to the Cabinet, and so on, and so on.

In addition, the Amendment does not mention anything about the authority of the Supreme Court to review any of this, so the Court’s jurisdiction may also be in question. The Court found itself in trouble after ruling in Bush v. Gore as to what was required in Florida to determine the certifiable result of the election, a result which would in fact (and did) decide that election. It would have led to a true constitutional crisis had not Al Gore conceded the election just to avoid such a crisis.

Since then, in some instances, the Court has carefully (and in my mind unfortunately) tried to avoid some political questions, namely most visibly in its determination not to get involved in decisions where gerrymandering has been alleged. Perhaps the Court would simply say: we have no jurisdiction. This is for the other two branches of government to straighten out.

What the Amendment does say is that if the President disputes the decision of her or his Cabinet and refuses to leave office, it becomes a question for Congress to decide. And, in order for the Vice President to replace the President, a “two thirds vote of both Houses” is required to remove the President. As we know, in the case of a presidential impeachment, two thirds of the Senate must vote to convict and this super majority has never been achieved (although it came very close to be achieved in the Andrew Johnson trial). Here, you need a “two third vote of both Houses”. [I am not going to assume that there is a difference between the language of the Amendment and an alternative phrase “a two thirds vote of each House”, although it does set itself up for another potential argument.

My conclusion? Don’t think that it would be easy to remove King Donald from his throne, even in the unlikely event that the votes of his Cabinet (however defined) would be there. Do not unbuckle your seat belts. Do not take you eyes off the road.

I woke up this morning with the news that Jesse Jackson had passed away.  He had been ill for almost ten years with what was originally diagnosed as Parkinson’s Disease, but later described as a different and rarer neurodegenerative disease. His last decade was pretty rough.

I liked Jesse Jackson and felt sorry for him when he became, in my opinion, one of the first victims of a social media disinformation campaign. As an activist civil rights leader, Jackson obviously attracted a significant number of enemies. His enemies, today, would of course largely be supporters of Donald Trump, although President Trump issued a surprisingly warm and accurate message of condolence today.

Forty-two years ago, in a conversation with a Washington Post reporter, Jackson referred to Jews in New York as Hymies, as New York City as Hymietown. When added to some previous incidents where Jackson expressed some solidarity with occupied Palestinians, this was enough to create a strong reaction from much of the Jewish community. Jackson apologized for his use of the term (which may or may not have been purposely disparaging), but the damage was done. He could never live it down.

For about a decade, in the 1980s and early 1990s, I spent a fair amount of time representing a Southern California organization which was heavily involved with the acquisition, renovation, and management of affordable housing properties across the country. Virtually everyone involved in the company was Jewish. Bring together the officers, directors, lawyers and accountants, and you would easily have a minyan. Even if a bunch of the invitees were absent. Jesse Jackson acted as an informal advisor to the company, and, yes, some of the principals gave him financial support for his political and social  endeavors. Their relationship was close.

One of the properties redeveloped by my clients was a large (50 building, 575 unit), federally subsidized, garden apartment community in Prince George’s County, Maryland, which had quite a checkered history and reputation. It was conveniently located just at an entrance to the Washington Beltway. This made it convenient not only for the residents, but for drug dealers who liked to hang out in the parking areas. Ending the location as a drug market, as well as rehabilitating the basically attractive apartments, was my clients’ focus.

It was a lengthy process, especially, as I remember, because the attempt was to kerp residents in place, so as to avoid as much disruption as possible. When the work was finally completed, there was a celebration, primarily for the residents (who included a large number of children), with food, a moon bounce or two, balloons, and…..Jesse Jackson.

Jackson actually arrived via a helicopter. You can imagine the excitement, the adults excited by Jackson, the children by the helicopter.

Jackson was warm, friendly, and engaging. His speech was memorable. I recall 40 plus years later that he talked about the renovation work, and how nice everything looked. But then he put the responsibility on the residents, probably all African-American. He told them, very matter-of-factly, that a family can turn a palace into a slum, just as they can live in a slum and make it a palace.

Again, as I recall, my clients held on to the property for a number of years. 10? 15? They kept it well maintained and then sold it. Affordable housing can be a tough business. The property did not do well under new ownership. The old problems returned. Eventually, HUD foreclosed on its mortgage and the entire property was  demolished in 2014.

From my one brief connection with Jesse Jackson, and hearing about him over the years from my client, I became convinced that he was falsely deemed antisemitic, but that the charge once made could never be fully erased. I am far from alone thinking this.

May his memory be a blessing.

I just watched the first episode of a Turkish series, The Museum of Innocence, on Netflix. It’s based on a novel by Orhan Pamuk. Pamuk, who is still writing, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. He published The Museum of Innocence in 2008. The book, or at least the first part of it, is set in Istanbul in the early 1970s.

Until its defeat in World War I, Istanbul was the heart of the Ottoman Empire, and the center of the Ottoman Caliphate, presumed to be the most important part of the Muslim world. Its political and spiritual center. All that ended after the war, when the Ottoman Empire was no more, and a smaller geographic area, today’s Turkiye, came under the control of Kemal Ataturk, a strong secularist, who ended any Muslim influence over the government and who tried to eradicate it as much as he could as an influence over Turkish society, largely replacing religious control by the authority of the military.

In the 1970s, when The Museum of Innocence‘s story line began, Turkiye, and especially Istanbul and its suburbs (no longer the capital, but still the cultural center of the country), remained a secular metropolis. In 2008, when the book was written, things were beginning to change, and it was unclear how far the changes would extend. Current Turkish president Recep Erdogan was then the country’s prime minister and the former mayor of Istanbul (he was to become president in 2014, a position he still holds). Erdogan was not a secularist, although in order to advance politically in secularist Turkiye, he had to keep much of his opinion to himself.

2008 was an important year in Turkiye not only because of the publication of Pamuk’s book, but also because it was the year that Edie and I visited the country, spending about a week in Istanbul, and a week exploring the western, formerly Greek, coast. For reasons that would take too long to outline here, I loved Turkiye and I loved Istanbul. I wasn’t expecting to, but I did.

What we saw in Turkiye was a country divided between religious Muslims, and anti-religious secularists. I remember having long discussions with our guide, an atheist, and I remember her snide remarks about women who were hiding their hair or wearing various types of religious garb. I also remember that we saw few obviously religious women in Istanbul, which looked very up to date and cosmopolitan, but many more as we explored the countryside. And I remember being surprised when we visited the Grand Green Mosque in Bursa, a large, industrial city of several million on the south side of the Sea of Marmara, to see that it appeared that the majority of that city’s residents seemed observant. I also remember, as we went through small villages, each had its new mosque (some still under construction), all of similar design, clearly evidence of a change in the attitude of the government.

After Erdogan became president in 2014, the religious aspect of the country began to dramatically increase and the secularists, the focus of every policy of Ataturk and his military government, began to see their power shrinking away.

The Turkiye of 1970 was not the Turkiye of 2008, and the Turkiye of 2008 is not the Turkiye of 2026. What seemed like an unchangeable advance from a religious to a modern, Western society, was reversed, and the life of Turks changed.

Of course, this has happened not only in Turkiye. When I was driving older residents to their medical appointments for Northwest Neighborhood Village, one of my regulars was a very nice and elegant woman who had grown up in Christian Beirut, but now lived in Washington with her German born diplomat/husband. Her tale of a secular childhood and adolescence in the Lebanon after World War II and through the early 1960s was a tale of a city undoubtedly very different from today’s Beirut. Similar stories can be told by a friend of mine who served in the Peace Corps in the 1960s in Kabul, a friend who grew up in the 1950s in Baghdad, and by any number of people who were raised in Tehran.

So you don’t have to go back to Hitler’s Germany to see a society turned inside-out and upside-down as a liberal government gives way to something else.

Places can change, and they can change slowly, or they can change rapidly. And sometimes, they can change slowly until they change rapidly. We all know that intellectually. And we all (and probably everyone else everywhere in the world) really doubt that such drastic changes can happen where we live, and where we have grown up and been educated.

We saw a very weird and, to us, a totally unnsatisfying play yesterday at DC’s Woolly Mammmoth Theatre. Called The World to Come, it told the story of four residents of a senior facility in a world in the process of being destroyed. The residents were kept isolated from a world wracked by war and deprivation, where people reaching 65 are forced to stop working and, at 75, rounded up and placed in senior homes, without contact with anyone on the outside, except for those who work at the facility but are not allowed to communicate. One nurse who did communicate a little was shot by the authorities.

Okay, this was a bit over the top. And I hope the play does not turn out to be memorable, as I would like to forget it. But point taken. Things can change.

I will say this. The play ended at 5:30. We walked the block up 7th Street, past several trendy restaurants, each of which were packed. We went into Jose Andres’ Jaleo. It looked like maybe there were two empty tables and a few empty bar seats in the entire place. The mood was festive, the food delicious. Some things have not really changed at all. Yet.

FOR THOSE INTERESTED, PAGE A4 OF TODAY’S NEW YORK TIMES HAS A FULL PAGE STORY ABOUT THE PAMUK SERIES. THEY MUST HAVE READ MY POST.

(1) Several years ago, Edie made a chicken and vegetable dish that looked so good that I took a picture.

Then I sent that picture to a company that turns photos into 500 piece jigsaw puzzles. The puzzle arrived a few weeks later and I set the box aside, not being ready to put the puzzle together. I just let the box sit there…..until Friday.

Friday, with help of Hannah and with one spot missing we put together the perimeter of the puzzle.

Yesterday, I set the pieces on the table next to the puzzle, not yet assorting them in any way.

We are now at the stage where the puzzle clearly looks unmanageable.

We may never get beyond this stage.

(2) I had another memorable dream last night. I was a lawyer on a business trip with two clients. We were in New York City, staying an adjoining two floor suites in a midtown hotel. My suite had shabby furniture. My clients’ was the height of luxury. We had killed someone. I don’t know what we did with the body, but there were yellow stains on a throw rug (why yellow, I am not sure) that we were afraid would give us away. We rolled the rug up and hid it behind the refrigerator, hoping it would never be found. Then, we went out and had a nice dinner.

(3) SPOILER ALERT. We finished Season 6 of Homeland. That means we have watched 72 episodes, with 24 to go. The United States now has its first woman president, Elizabeth Keane, and things are getting nasty. The premise is simple. The plot is complicated.

The United States and Iran are several years into a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear bomb research, and whether Iran is cheating is a big question. The new president won on a campaign promise to open up friendlier relations with Iran. The CIA is filled with people who are 100% against her policy and determined to undermine it and to undermine her.

The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, however, is a controlled American asset, blackmailed into his position by the CIA’s Saul Berenson. It turns out that he was also a Mossad asset, not through blackmail, but through a $45 million payment. You can’t serve two masters, as he will rudely find out.

CIA operatives, along with a popular media figure who looks and acts like Steve Bannon, try to assassinate Keane, and discredit her, before her inauguration. She survives, has a closed door inauguration ceremony, and starts her revenge. When Series 6 aired in 2016, it all still seemed like fantasy. Today…..

(4) After yesterday’s kiddush at Adas Israel, Rabbi Alexander led an interesting session on how the Orthdox Jewish establishment in Berlin coped with modernity in the pre-war German Empire, when Jews were no longer an insular community, but part of mainstream Berlin life. He discussed decisions relating to intermarriage, conversion, and identifying who was, and who was not considered Jewish, and compared them to decisions American rabbis must make today. His focus was on the writings of Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann, a respected source during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I had never heard of him. Interesting. Had nothing to do with Nazis or the Holocaust.

John Henry was a steel driving man. John Henry was a Luddite, and also an enslaved man, who outperformed a mechanical drill in digging through rock during the construction of the cross country railroad tracks in the 19th century. He outperformed the steam drill, yes, but he also died “with his hammer in his hand” when he finished.

A digression: A Luddite is a sedentary John Henry. Ned Ludd was the John Henry of the English weaving trade, when machines were introduced into the English textile world. Ned Ludd did not die competing against the machines. He simply destroyed the machines.

I am sitting here this morning, watching the finals of the men’s snowboarding half-pipe, where all of the competitors look like John Henrys, but so far none of them have died. For those who don’t know what this event entails (that would have included me 15 minutes ago), imagine a very large (very, very large) hollow pipe with the top half cut off, covered in deep snow. Then imagine starting at the head of the half pipe, your feet attached to a snow board, and starting to go down hill (yes, the half pipe slopes downward), and four times on your speedy journey, you turn to board up the sides of the half pipe. As you get to the top, you wind up in the air, when you hit the half pipe’s rim and, while there, you do a bunch of tricks, which involve spinning and turning and rotating sideways and upside down, and then you land, still standing (hopefully) on your board to continue your way down to the finish line.

As a human endeavor, this seems absolutely impossible to me, but clearly there are those who can do this with relative ease (maybe), although falling seems to be something you expect to happen now and then and, for some reason, you never seem to be hurt when you fall.

There is no possible competition with a steam drill here, to be sure, but how about this? When I first turned this on this morning, it seemed to me unreal. I thought I was watching Japanese anime, an artificially constructed sport. And then I thought of the competition. Real life half pipers vs. AI. Who would win? I must admit that the fact that two of the medals (gold and bronze) went to Japanese competitors seemed appropriate. As I would imagine that the animators would be Japanese as well, I can see it now. Man vs. machine once more. Anything the techies could come up with (there would have to be rules, of course, and limits to ingenuity), man can do better.

The winter sports are more interesting to me than the summer sports. Not that I enjoy watching them more (I don’t), but they seem more unreal to me. To perform in the summer Olympics, I would just have to be much younger and better than I am. To perform in most of the winter competitions, I would have to be of an entirely different species.

But then, maybe I could have competed in the luge. As I see it, the skills needed for that sport are the same that are needed to get an MRI. You lie down on your back, close your eyes, don’t move, and minutes pass until you are told you are through and you can get up. Yes, the luge is both colder and breezier than an MRI, but that just means you have to be dressed appropriately.

And what about curling? Curling is a sport that appears every four years when the winter Olympics happen. During the time between winter Olympics, I never hear anything about people spending their weekends curling (except perhaps in beauty salons, something that I know nothing about and whose events are rarely televised). But curling has one advantage to it. You are told to push (or curl) the “stone”, keeping it straight for your target, and making sure you don’t push it too hard so that it does not go too far. That sounds better to me than a sport where you push it as hard as you can. I would be much better at “restraint” than “excess”, I am sure.

I just read (because I just looked it up) and saw that the curling stone is typically made of granite (like a tombstone, I guess), and that it weighs about 42 pounds. In Britain, of course, a stone is a weight measure meant equivalent to 14 pounds. This means that, in Britain (at least), a curling stone is three stones in one stone. Now, I weigh about 10 stones, and that means if you weighed me and a curling stone, we would weigh about 13 stones, which would probably be unlucky, so I will give up my plans on becoming a senior stoner.

I am now watching women’s team speed skating. This is another sport I would have a hard time competing in. Not only would I find the skating hard, the speed impossible, and the coordination with my two speed skating teammates confusing, but I would be accused of being a man competing in a women’s sport and would probably be disqualified.

All of this made me wonder if I should compete in the 2026 Senior Olympics, and I decided that I would. But much to my disappointment, I have now learned that there are no 2026 Senior Olympics, and that I will have to wait until 2027. But, it seems to me, by then I will be much too old to have a chance of being selected on a team that could qualify. There are about 30 sports featured in the Senior Olympics. I might have a go at shuffleboard (that is one of them) or cornhole (another). Or maybe Senior Beach Volleyball? Why not?

See you in 2027 in (believe it or not) Tulsa.

Usually, when I am on a Zoom call, I am sitting at my desk and the view behind me that of a bookcase. The books on that bookcase are about as random as possible. I can not begin to tell you why these particular books are there. It’s a mystery.

For example, from thr top shelf:

This is not everything on that one shelf. You will also find The Jew and His Duties by Hyman Goldin, The two volume The Jews in the Soviet Union by Nora Levin,  The Old Teatament Speaks by Samuel Schultz (3rd edition), Ancient Israel by Roland de Vaux, three volumes of Festival Prayer books published by Joseph Schlesinger in Vienna in 1900, Life in a Haitian Valley by Melville Hershkovitz (1937), Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism edited by Herschel Shanks, The American Story, edited and signed by David Rubinstein, The Westminster Atlas of the Bible, Dali, Dali, Dali (that is one picture book), and yes, even more.

I am not going to try to explain or understand why these books, some never opened by me, have such a prominent place.

I don’t know how many of you saw all or part of the House oversight hearing featuring Attorney General Pam Bondi as the Bad Bunny of the event. Yes, she spoke in English, not Spanish, but what she said made about as much sense to me, someone who understands English but not Spanish, as did the Spanish rapped by Bad Bunny on Sunday. And yes, in response to nothing, Pam Bondi did say that the Dow, the Nasdaq, the S & P, and yesterday’s job report should have been the subject of yesterday’s hearings, not the performance of the Department of Justice, and certainly not any perceived negative performance of His Royal Highness Donald the First (did you ever realize that Donald the First rhymes with Donald the Worst?).

I guess that Cabinet members testifying before Congress often bring briefing books with them, so that they can refer to statistics, to facts they might otherwise be able to keep in mind, and various reference points related to questions that members of Congress have told them they would probably be asking. But the briefing books that normally sit next to testifying officials are nothing like the “burn book” accompanying Pam the Ham. Everybody else might be familiar with the term “burn book”, which I heard several times last night on news reports, but it isn’t a term that I had ever focused on before. So, I went to Google AI (or it came to me when I Googled “burn book”) and here is what it said: “A burn book is a notebook used to compile rumors, secrets, insults, and derogatory comments about people, originally popularized by the 2004 movie Mean Girls.” I am pretty sure I never watched the film, or any of the clones that were made of it more recently. Do you know that Tina Fey wrote the screenplay?

At any rate, a burn book is exactly what Pam the Ham brought to the hearing, and referred to constantly. In fact, when Democratic representatives were asking her questions, she tended not to look in their direction, but rather to be leafing through and studying her burn book. This is because she had no interest in what the questions were. If you watched, you know that she didn’t answer any of their questions, but went off on different subjects. There were two reasons for this. First, she didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of any answer. Second, she had no idea what their questions even were.

This is not a quote, but will give you an idea of what I mean. If a question was asked like “Have you or anyone in your department met with any of the Epstein survivors sitting in this room?”, her answer would be something like “What about Ronaldo Garcia Lopez, an undocumented alien from Honduras, who brutally raped and murdered a 19 year old girl in your Congressional district, and about which you have never said anything?”

That’s the way it went all day. Okay, not exactly. She would interrupt answers like that to tell Jamie Raskin he was a failed lawyer, to tell Jerrold Nadler that all he did was trade stocks, to tell Thomas Massie he was a failed politician, to tell Pramile Jayapal that she (Pam the Ham) would not get down in the gutter with her when Jayapal suggested that Pam should apologize to the Epstein victims. Throughout the day, she would insult the Democrats, talk over them, and claim the right to answer questions in her own way (i.e., by ignoring the question and saying whatever she wanted, such as reporting the latest Dow Jones figures). And, to Republicans’ questions, she would politely answer “yes” or “no” and sit there waiting for the next question.

Well, enough of that. This morning, a prominent Democratic leader spoke to our morning breakfast group about the first year of the Trump administration. He gave a good synopsis of most of the irregular things that Trump has done, and how he has been packed up equally irregularly by rulings of the Supreme Court. He thinks that it will be almost impossible for the president following Trump, even if he or she is a Democrat, to undo and reverse what Trump has done over terms of four or eight years, that the damage would take much longer to reverse, even if there was consistent agreement on reversals. He also said that there is sufficient disunity within the Democratic party that consistency is probably impossible, unless the Democrats can put together a program to enable them to rise above their 29% (his figure, as I recall it) approval rate, and that focusing on progressives like AOC will not do the trick.

And, he said, even if the Democrats score major electoral victories, they are going to have to put up with a Supreme Court which has given Trump major victories, both as to its substantive rulings, and as to its use of its “emergency calendar” to make rulings without following normal procedures. (With regard to the Supreme Court’s delayed rulings on the presidential authority to set and change tariff rates without Congressional action, however, he expects that the Court will rule against Trump, and that the delay in the expected ruling, he understands is related to Justice Alito’s request to delay it so he can write a lengthy dissent. Whether this true, we will see. Perhaps.)

His final words were that his list of Trump’s harmful actions, which obviously was very extensive, would be meaningless to the great majority of Americans, who are only interested in their own economics, and that voting in 2028 may depend on the price of eggs and other essentials, and the jobs reports, irrespective of anything else.

As one commentator said, “thanks so much for putting all of this together so well and ruining my day”.

It was a busy morning, and I have just sat down to grab lunch at about 1 p.m., having just finished looking at the toilet choices at Lowes. They have about 20 models on display from 5 manufacturers and what I can report is this: they all look the same.

I have something else to report: Pam Bondi is a nasty person, and sadly, my guess is, if there is a rapture, she will be left behind.

In case you wonder what she is saying at today’s House oversight hearing, how about her telling Jamie Raskin that he is just a “washed up loser lawyer”?

And where am I having lunch? I am at a small Indian Cafe in the same section as Lowes in Kentlands, 19 miles from home. Yes, I could have gone to a closer Home Depot, but I boycott Home Depot for fear that any money I spend there will wind up in Donald Trump’s pocket. I don’t even know the name of this restaurant, but I know what the ceiling looks like.

A display on my table advertises Rupee Beer. As you can see, Rupee Beer is named “best beer for world food”. No idea who the namer was, but I bet it wasn’t Pam Bondi.

And look at the two varieties: one is an IPA (a bit unexpected in that India Pale Ales were British brews designed for export to India, able to withstand the long trip, not brewed in India (you learned that here), and the other a “basmati rice lager”, which I don’t really want even to think about. I just looked at a review of the lager: “a bit odd, but not unpleasant”. Hmm.

Well, almost done (ate about half). Looking forward to more Bondi on the way home.

The menu is expansive, and I decided on “Indo- Chinese” fried rice. It was the winner in a tense inner conflict, edging out a spicy chicken dosa at the last minute.

He is called Bad Bunny because as a child he once was forced to wear a bunny costume and he hated it and got very angry. Doesn’t seem like a good reason to me, in fact. I was forced to dress up in an army uniform when I was in my twenties and I didn’t like that at all. No one calls me Bad Soldier. But, come to think of it…….

At any rate, I thought that his Super Bowl half time show was extraordinary. Of course, after having watched it, I still don’t know if he can carry a tune, and I couldn’t understand a word of it, but so what? After all, when I saw Rigoletto in Hungarian, I couldn’t understand a word of that either. And when I listen to the Torah being read.

But what amazed me was the showmanship. The number of people involved. The choreography and general design of the show. How many different sets could be created on a football field, and how quickly it could be installed and taken down. The surprise (to me) appearances of Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin. An actual wedding! A nail bar and a snack bar. 14 different songs and scenes. And, to top it off and I don’t really know what this means, 9,852 theatrical pyrotechnics. All in fewer than 14 minutes.

The general message, as I understand it, was love over hate, and treating the countries of the western hemisphere as all being part of America. I understand that some of the songs when performed outside of the Super Bowl context have some words and phrases that many would object to, but that these were toned down on Sunday or omitted altogether. I have not seen a translation of the entire show, although I have seen some segments translated.

Up until yesterday, I could not have told you even what state Rep. Andy Ogles represents. Now, I know it is Tennessee. Ogles claims to have been outraged at this degenerate performance and wants Congress to immediately investigate Bad Bunny and the NFL. In a classic line, Ogles (showing his true colors, undoubtedly) said that the show was “conclusive proof that Puerto Rico should never be a state”. I guess that says it all.

Of course, Donald J.T. didn’t like it any better than Ogles did. He thought it an affront to American culture, and said that nobody understood a word of it. Many of course did not (I don’t understand a lot of what is said by performers in English, either, of course), but I have read that of the 350 million or so living in the United States, Spanish is the first language for 50 million of them. And, in one of his lines, Bad Bunny said that while he understood that Spanish wasn’t the first language of the land that constitutes the United States, English wasn’t either.

Trump also spoke out against American Olympian Hunter Hess, who in Milan said that there were things about today’s America that he did not support, particularly those involving ICE (Bad Bunny mentioned ICE, too), causing Trump to immediately call Hess a “loser”. Republican Congressman Byron Donalds told Hess to pack his bags and go home. There is a question as to whether the Olympics should be a politics-free zone, and so as to whether or not Hess’ remarks were appropriate. But the reaction, as you might expect, was stronger than their cause, and makes you wonder if free speech ends when you cross an ocean. It also makes you wonder if it would have been okay for Hess, if he were a fan of ICE, to show support for ICE while in Milan and to bad-mouth Biden or Obama or other Democrats the way Trump does, not matter where he is. This would not put him in the category of criticizing the United States, but certainly would put him in the category of being political at the Olympics.

I am watching the Olympics when I can, but I must say that I am not one of those whose view of the Olympics is to root, root, root for the Americans. I don’t seem to care who wins particular events and, of course, the United States never dominates the winter games as it is often able to in the summer. I just get amazed at the athleticism and the lack of apparent fear in so many Olympians, no matter where they come from. In fact, usually my sympathy goes with the representatives of smaller countries, the Latvians or the Slovaks. I remember the funeral of my late friend, Rabbi Bill Rudolph, when one of his daughters talked about his seemingly irrational pick of teams to support, since he did not seem to favor Washington teams or teams from Buffalo, his home town. The she realized that he always supported the teams that he thought were best, that he liked to see the best athletes he could. Isn’t that what the Olympics should really be about? Isn’t that the ultimate way to take politics out?

(I realize that in talking about the Super Bowl, I didn’t mention the football game. Seattle’s defensive ability was amazing, and it makes a stunning contrast when compared to the poor Washington Commanders. And, while we are talking about Washington teams, sort of, how do the Nationals plan on getting through the season without any first rate starting pitchers or relievers? What is the plan?)

We often have military helicopters fly over our house in a line that, to me, runs from the Pentagon, or the White House, to Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda. They fly quite low and make a lot of noise. This can happen at any time, but generally not before noon or after 11 o’clock at night.

But this morning, at about 6 a.m., three or four flew past, waking me up, and much less pleasant than a Muslim call to prayers. I wondered if someone important had taken ill in the middle of the night. Either no one did, it seems, or…..you heard it here first.

I did fall back asleep, waking up about 8, but I didn’t enjoy those two hours. It seems I was a lawyer again, practicing in a small office in Washington. I was a junior lawyer, not the boss. We were involved with a company in the suburbs called Murch. Murch was both a landscape company and a funeral home and there were some questions of improper dealings involving two of their employees.  They had agreed to sit for a deposition in our office. It was to be the next day.

A senior partner told me I should pick them up in the morning for the deposition and drive them back after.  I told him that made no sense, since they were 45 minutes away. It meant I would spend three hours in the car with them. Finally, he agreed.

The next morning, at home, I decided I should wear a coat and tie for this important event. My shirt was almost a neon blue, and I couldn’t find a tie that worked. I tried on several, and finally chose a red one.

My daughter (whoever she was in this dream) told me she would drive me down to my office, that she was going that way. I said “ok”, and we had a nice conversation in the car, until I realized that we were on Connecticut Avenue near W Street, and my office was on C Street. It was already late. I jumped out of the car and decided to walk. It was not only the 20 something blocks from W to C, but we were another 20 blocks or so across town. I was in trouble.

I rushed down Connecticut towards Dupont Circle, but decided I should go  east as well as south, so I turned left and found myself in a neighborhood that looked more like the Moorlands in Clayton MO than anything in Washington.

For some reason, I went into a building and an empty apartment and started to take off my clothes. I realized that was a mistake, put them back on, left through a back door of the building, and I was lost. I looked for a street sign and saw I was on V Street. I had only gone one block since I got out of the car.

I saw a taxi and got in. There were two other passengers. I sat in the front seat next to another passenger. I don’t know where the driver was, but he was there.

I told the driver I was going to the Federal Court House. I don’t know if I said that because I was confused, or because that was near my office.

While we were driving, I told my fellow passenger my sad story. It was now almost noon. I told him that I hadn’t told anyone I was running late and I did not know if they were waiting for me or  if someone else was asking the questions. I told him I was afraid to look at my phone to see any messages.

That is when I realized that no one else in the office knew details of the case, but that I had no ideas what questions we wanted to ask.

The taxi pulled into a nondescript parking lot in a rough looking neighborhood. I did not know where I was. The driver told me that new security regulations made it impossible for a cab to drive closer to the Court House. He pointed in a direction and said “It’s that way.”

I think that is when I woke up.

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…..