Perhaps the Republicans got something out of their convention this week, but I am not sure what it was. We didn’t watch most of it, and what did watch consisted of a bunch of second rate candidates all saying the same thing: Trump is God, I am his acolyte, beware the heathen Democrats. Over and over.

We didn’t watch Trump’s 2 hour speech (his definition of a speech that was 1 3/4 hours long), where he promised every adult American (and that would include you, Jared Kushner and you, Elon Musk) $5000. Now, I assume he means “citizens” when he says “adults”, and Google tells me there are approximately 245 million adult citizens in the country. So that would be about $1,250,000,000,000, or 1 1/4 trillion dollars. Our national debt is now about $32 trillion. Donald Trump has been president for a little less than 6 years of the 250 years of the United States; the national debt has grown $11.6 trillion during these fewer than 6 years. In other words, the Trump years have (so far!, two plus to go) been responsible for 36% of the national debt! And the payment of $5000 to each adult citizen would bring that 36% almost to 40%.

Conservatives and even MAGA conservatives (as well as most liberals and others) do believe that servicing the national debt is harmful and growing more harmful day by day. This has long been a complicated issue for conservatives because history shows that the debt has grown more under Republican presidents than under Democratic presidents, and conservatives have refused to believe this. But it is getting to the point that it is hard to them to call it fake news.

Shouldn’t this be a big talking point of the Democrats? Answer: yes. But is it? Answer: not really, yet.

Of course, one of the items that has increased the national debt is the Iran War, and as it now will be important to rebuild our stockpile of weaponry, our defense expenditures will grow, increasing the debt further. The entire convention seemed to ignore the Iran War, except for occasional statements by Trump that “Iran will never have a nuclear bomb” and if he hadn’t started this war (excuse me, military action – just like Putin in Ukraine), Iran would already have such a bomb and, even more important, we would have been blown to bits by now.

And, oh yes, there was at least one mention of the war by Vance, who seemed to say, as I understand it, something like: “You may disagree with us on the war, and on all of our other policies, but just imagine how many worse things the Democrats would do to you.”

Vance’s talk (the part of it we heard) was interesting. Vance’s wife is of Indian ancestry, as you know, and Michigan’s Democratic Senator candidate Abdul El-Sayed, made an unnecessary comment some time ago about how Vance’s Papaw (that’s what J.D. calls his grandfather) would not have approved of J.D.’s marriage. He shouldn’t have said it because he obviously did not really know what Papaw would have said, but it gave Vance a talking point, who ended up lauding his grandfather and saying that he was a much better person than El-Sayed would ever be. That is all fine and good, but when you look at what Vance wrote about his grandfather in Hillbilly Elegy, you get the picture of an out and out, uncontrollable drunk who was both verbally and physically very abusive to his grandmother until he cleaned up his act later in life. He seems to have been, for most of his life, someone that Vance would have wanted off the streets and locked up away from society. My guess (only a guess) is that El-Sayed was probably right about what Papaw would have thought about Usha, but do you think there was ever anyone of Indian descent in Middletown, Ohio for him to meet?

Of course, there was a lot of bad mouthing of the Democrats. By each of the candidates, and especially by Vance (whose talk was particularly nasty) and by Trump (as would be expected). The Democrats are going to take all of your property (that is what Communists do and, as Trump, said, Democrats may call themselves socialists, but we know they are really Communists), they are going to tell you what you are allowed to think and what you are not allowed to think, they are going to open the borders with no checks on who is coming in, they are going to raise your taxes more than anyone ever has thought possible, and they are going to make your life extremely expensive. No, this is no longer FDR’s Democratic party, they said, over and over again. Left wing. Radical. They are Communists!

So, we will see if the GOP gets a boost from anything that happened this week in Dallas. I doubt it.

This morning, I heard that the government is bringing another lawsuit against a university, this one against – of all schools – the University of the District of Columbia. I would not have assumed UDC a likely target, but – hey – why not? This issue here is not DEI per se, and certainly not antisemitism, but is the fact that UDC allows non-citizen residents of the District of Columbia (or maybe it is just DC residents who are not in the country with the proper papers) to attend the university at in-state rates, which the DOJ has determined is discriminatory as to citizens from other states.

Okay, read that again. A new theory. Not that these people can’t be educated, but that they can’t be charged the same amount as their neighbors who may be citizens if the school charges citizens who live in other states a higher tuition. What could possibly be the basis for this lawsuit? What could possibly convince the federal government that it needed to intrude to this extent on decisions made by the university?

UDC is not your normal school. It is (except in a few areas where it does have national recognition) a school primarily for DC residents who are short on cash and want to improve their positions in life. Google tells me that only about 25% of UDC students are right out of high school, about 45% are adult learners, and the remainder are senior citizens. And by the way, students who live in Montgomery or Prince George’s County MD, or Washington’s Virginia suburbs, are treated as DC residents for tuition purposes. Only about 10% of UDC students are from outside the DC metropolitan area, and most of those are older adults, not typical undergraduates.

So, I ask you: what is the purpose of this law suit?

Okay, today’s conclusion: Happy New Year/l’shana tovah, whether you celebrate or not. No one need be excluded.