Art is 80

While driving from DC to Virginia Beach yesterday, I am pleased to report that we didn’t listen to the news at all. When we checked into our hotel, I looked to see what I missed. I missed Kash Patel’s brilliant thought that what the FBI really needed was a partnership with UFC, the martial arts entertainment company, with UFC setting up programs to train FBI agents on MME moves. I admit that I had never thought of this before, but am surprised no one else had. No wonder Chris Wray was fired.

We left our home at about 10:30 with gray skies and light rain. Typical slow traffic on I-95 until we were past Quantico and the US Marines Museum, and a little after twelve, we drove into Fredericksburg and passed the campus of the University of Mary Washington. Two things you may not know: first, Mary Washington was the mother of George and lived in Fredericksburg for many years, and second, until 1972, the University of Virginia was male-only, and highly qualified women were sent to Mary Washington.

We had lunch at Foode, a highly rated restaurant housed in a building that once housed the Farmers National Bank and was built in 1819. We were served by Robert in the Lincoln Room and admired the vault.

We were intrigued by the marker in front.

After lunch, we visited the Fredericksburg Area Museum, home to many historic artifacts from the city, and much instructional material on the history of the city, including racial history and economic history. Very well done. Very provocative.  Here is a small selection of photos I took.

The building is the former city hall, a three story building from the 1840s. The first floor was a food market, with no access to the other two floors. Apparently, this was an Eglish style, rarely used in the US.

Avoiding I-95 south of Fredericksburg,  we took US 17, which passes through Tappahanock and by Yorktown, with historical signs all along the route.

After horrendous traffic on I-64 after we left US 17, we pulled into Virginia Beach, got an oceanfront room at the Capes Hotel ($88 for an oceanview room in February), we picked up my cousin Susan Day and had dinner at the very busy and quite good Lucky Oyster.

The restaurant is filled with fish stuff on its walls. I was intrigued by this….for obvious reasons:

Susan is my second cousin. Our maternal grandfathers were brothers. She is my age and has lived in Virginia Beach for years.

The evening ended, we returned to the hotel in a serious rain storm, and -of course – turned on Rachel Maddow, only to find out that everyone in the government seems to have been fired. And a judge said that you can’t do that and so far, no one pays attention to that judge, who may be impeached, anyway. Lifetime tenure is so, so temporary.

By the way, something big happening at Virginia Beach.  There is zero sand on the beach where we are. A lot of work underway. Spring will be here soon.

I will start today by confessing two things. First, I am not, nor have I ever be a bully. Second, I am not, nor have I ever been a deal maker. Neither is in my DNA.

As to being a bully, I have often (well, okay, not so often) wondered that if I were 6’6″, rather than 5’6″, and 280 pounds, rather than 140 pounds, would I have developed a different personality. I think the answer to that is “yes”, but I don’t think that different personality would have been that of a bully.

The deal maker question does not have anything to do with my size. There have been short deal makers and tall deal makers, I am sure. But it’s just not who I am. This is what explains that, during my 40 years of law practice, I was much more comfortable defending clients who were being attacked by government agencies than I was representing clients buying or selling properties. To be a good transaction lawyer, you need to be something of a deal maker for sure. To be a good defense counsel, you just need to try to attain justice.

So, there you have it. I am not Donald Trump. But I pay attention to Donald Trump, as do now all of us, and I pay attention to Donald Trump, the deal maker.

Donald Trump is in the middle of making, or trying to make, two deals. He is trying to make a deal for the future of Gaza as a part of a deal to end the Hamas-Israel war. And, he is trying to make a deal to get for America (?) a good portion of the valuable mineral resources of Ukraine as a part of a deal to the Russo-Ukraine War. The question is, in both cases, is whether he is trying to accomplish these transactions as a deal maker, or as a bully. Of course, in the case of Donald Trump, these two ways of going about his business may blend into each other, as they always have. To a true deal maker, I guess, deal making takes precedence over bullying. To one who looks for justice, I believe it is the opposite.

So, as President Zelensky comes to the United States, we await the potential completion of the negotiations over Ukrainian minerals. Will Trump simply say “Gimme, gimme, gimme, or we will stop supporting you and really join forces with Russia”? Is that what will happen? Or will Zelensky say: ” Let’s talk about security guarantees, and weapons, and peacekeepers….”, with Trump saying: “Of course, let’s talk.”

And a similar description can be used in talking about Gaza, with an additional question as to with whom negotiations would even be undertaken.

We will see what we see. King Donald the Dealer or King Donald the Bully. I have my guesses.

Today, Edie and I are getting in our trusty Prius and starting our annual winter/spring road trip. Read the posts and you will accompany us, with the Trump administration taking second place to our adventures.

Where are we going? Be patient. You will find out.

If I were in charge of the required watching aspects of this daily class, I would require everyone to watch last night’s Rachel Maddow Show, which I am sure you can find on YouTube. Or at least watch the first half of it. The theme of the show, I suggest, lies in a word that I don’t think she used: “Meritocracy”.

Yes, only in a meritocracy, devoid of DEI, can you wind up with a military Joint Chief of Staffs Secretary, who is a retired reserve Air Force three star general, and only in a meritocracy can you wind up with FBI Deputy Director (the individual who actually runs the agency) who has never worked for the FBI and has spent the past several years continually badmouthing it, and only in a meritocracy can the Director of National Intelligence be someone who has never worked in Intelligence, and only in a meritocracy can you have a Vice president who believes that the main purpose of courts is to be ignored.

Now that I think about it, unfortunately, Rachel Maddow didn’t speak of any of that yesterday, either. She spent most of her time talking about Elon Musk, the man who certainly does not run DOGE, because that agency (okay, it’s not an agency, it’s not an anything, is it?) is run by Amy Gleason, who apparently found out about her newfound job while she was vacationing in Mexico. She lives in Nashville.

Well, if you believe that Gleason runs DOGE, you probably believe that the St. Louis Cardinals are the team that gets to vote for the next pope. But, maybe Gleason would be better at running DOGE than Musk is. After all, she couldn’t be any worse, could she?

Maddow talked about the infamous emails that Musk sent out telling people to describe their jobs in five easy sentences or, if they don’t, they will be assumed to have resigned. She goes through the (1) original emails, (2) denials of the emails’ authority, (3) instructions to ignore the emails, (4) second instructions restating the seriousness of the emails and restating the need to respond or pack your bags, (5) and an amazing email from the leadership of one agency that said that any responses should not be specific as to any matter one is working on and, in composing the responses, each federal employee should write their response as if they were expecting it to be read by an enemy foreign power.

She also spoke about the government releases showing just how much in savings DOGE has achieved, and how so many of them have been taken down, because they were unbelievably in accurate. One which said “billions” instead of “millions”, one savings which was multiplied by a factor of three, and on and on, even when replacement information turned out to be in error. And then there were the nuclear weapons regulators, the FAA safety regulators, the bird flu scientists, the federal officials who test the safety of surgical robots. All of these who were fired, and who the government had to rehire (or try to rehire) because either the nature of their positions or the work they were doing was not taken into account.

And then there is good old Ed Martin, nominated to be the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who says that he will be Donald J. Trump’s attorney and he will go after Trump’s opponents who say things unkindly about him, free speech be damned.

So, if the president thinks he is running a meritocracy…..But of course, he doesn’t. He knows exactly what he is running.

And, by the way, tell me about this deal being completed to give the United States half of the mineral wealth of Ukraine. What does that mean? What is Ukraine getting for it? Is this a deal, or – as Cong. Eugene Vindman said yesterday – is it gangsterism? It’s important to know the answer to this question. Will this guarantee that the U.S. will turn back to the support of Ukraine? Is Ukraine turning over to us half of the mineral rights in the part of Ukraine now occupied by Russia? What is this deal? And Vindman was right – if this is a deal that benefits both countries, good for the Trump administration. But if this is the result of gangsterism or bullying, shame, shame on us.

For decades, the Germans have been damned for allowing Hitler to come to power and to carry out the plan that he had, years before, outlined in Mein Kampf. It has been said, over and over, that the Germans were 1/3 pro-Hitler, 1/3 anti-Hitler and 1/3 indifferent. And here we are…….

I don’t say this as hyperbole. I think we are Germany of the early 1930s, with two important exceptions.

The exceptions, of course, are the lack of government sponsored antisemitism as a way to bring the rest of society together, and the absence of a private, uniformed army operating separately from the government, but able to cause mayhem without push back.

But, while Hitler brought Germans together by focusing on the Jews who were destroying German society, Trump is focusing on immigrants, who he claims are destroying American society. And while Hitler had his SS corps terrorizing Jews on the street, Trump has not authorized his Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to hunt down undocumented immigrants, and has left that job to governmental forces.

But this is all a matter of degree, not of methodology.

Prior to coming to power, Hitler had convinced the German public that the Weimar democracy was not something that favored them. It favored the elites, the city folk, the wealthy, the Jews, and everything about it conspired to keep real Germans in their place. How different is this from the MAGA position that the real Americans have been overlooked by a bi-coastal elite out only for themselves?

In other words, if you take Hitler’s antisemitism out of the picture, how different is the MAGA movement from the Nazi movement? They both want expansion, they both want to (but don’t) service the “common man”, they both strive to capture all branches of government, they both ignore the restraints of law.

We probably are not a third in favor, a third against and a third indifferent. We are probably closer to 40-40-20. We need to convince the 20.

Hitler, like Trump, engineered a successful disinformation campaign, convincing many that, no matter what you think of their own movements, the opposition is worse. And in Germany, and so far here, no sufficiently charasmatic opposition leader has emerged. If one does, will he or she be allowed to flourish, or will we have a Navalny situation on our hands? Your guess is as good as mine.

One of the characteristics of Fascist leaders is that they don’t like to lose.  We know that. And because an organized opposition has not yet fully formed, we haven’t seen yet the typical Fascist response. Doubling down, repression, attack. But there is no reason not to think it will be coming.

Have you noticed that I keep rambling on about the same things? I am sorry about that, but these are really important things. So while one part of me says “Erase this post and start again on a more entertaining subject”, another part of me won’t let me do that.

(1) Let me start by saying that I was sorry to read this morning that MSNBC is taking Joy Reid off the air, or at least cancelling her evening show. We tend to split the 7 p.m. time (often while eating supper) between Reid on MSNBC and Wolf Blitzer on CNN, and with Blitzer being removed next month by CNN to a 10 a.m. slot, this means that our 7 p.m. habits will undoubtedly be changed. I know that both of these channels are trying to increase their viewership while trying to compete with Fox, so I can’t blame them from moving things around. I understand that Jake Tapper (our neighbor a few blocks away – something he does not know) will replace Blitzer, and I understand that MSNBC is moving their weekend trio, Michael Steele, Alicia Menendez, and Symone Sanders Townsend, will bring their show to the 7 p.m. time. You hadn’t heard any of this yet? Now you have.

(2) Next, congratulations to Alex Ovechkin on his hat trick yesterday as the Capitals beat the Oilers. Ovechkin only needs 13 more goals to tie Wayne Gretzky (who played for the Oilers for years) for the most goals ever in an NHL career. Gretzky has been extraordinarily gracious in spurring Ovechkin on to tie or beat his record. Gretzky is, I think, a very attractive personality and, of course, King Donald the Outrageous has already crowned him as the next (and, as Donald hopes, the last) prime minister of Canada before Canada becomes are largest, most populated, most Democratic and 51st state.

(3) Third, let’s cheer on the Washington Nationals after their first two Spring Training games resulted in lopsided victories over the Astros and the Mets. They may not have any current superstars (their superstars are playing for the Mets and the Phillies and other teams), but they have a slew of players who are just below that level and who are still in their early twenties. In fact, they have too many of them, so all of those who look good won’t make the team, something that must be discouraging for those who will be playing again in Rochester this years. In addition to all of the youngsters (some of whom played with the Nats last year, and some who would get their first chance this year), there are three new veterans on the team. One is Josh Bell, who has been with the Nats before, and I am really happy to see him again (he is slated to be our Designated Hitter), not only because of his playing skill, but because he was such a community oriented guy, especially working to help inner city children learn to read and to appreciate reading.

(4) One of the things I like to do least is our taxes. And I am always amazed when a friend tells me how they do their taxes on Turbo Tax or its equivalent and save the money that I spend on an accountant. I am sure that Turbo Tax makes things very easy. I have never read their instructions, but I assume they start with something like “You put your left foot out, you put your left foot in”, and guide you on from there. But I, on the other hand, look at this 80 or so page preparation questionnaire that my accountant sends me, which starts with pages and pages of important questions, all of which are sort of like “Do you have any income from an off shore leasing business chartered in Myanmar this year?” or “Have any of your dependents been accused of grand larceny so that their undeclared income is high enough that you might go to jail if you continue to declare them a dependent?” At any rate, yesterday was my tax day and I put everything together (watching on Netflix for most of the time an absolutely ridiculous film called “The Menu” with Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy) and today I take the long drive to my accountant’s office, which is miles and miles from here. The one advantage to going to my accountant’s office is that I can have lunch at the Gourmet Asian Bistro on Muncaster Mill Road – but, alas, it is not open on Mondays.

(5) Finally, and hopefully least important, I am curious as to what will happen between now and 11:59 p.m. (EST ?) tonight, when all federal employees are supposed to tell Elon Musk what five things they have accomplished on their job over the past week. I know that there is a lot of resistance across many (most, all?) government agencies to respond to this nonsense, but Musk says that anyone who has not responded in time (too bad if you are sick or on vacation) will be treated as having resigned their position. I know that the reaction is to accuse Musk of being juvenile, perhaps more juvenile than his 20 year old Muskovites who are invading the federal government more and more each day, but I am not going to do that. I am just wondering what will happen when all air controllers decide, as a block, not to respond and see their paychecks disappear. Or when some CIA or NSA personnel say something like: “I spent last week working on a way to topple the Ukrainian government” or “I eavesdropped on phone calls between Chuck Shumer and his wife by virtue of our illegal wiretaps.”

Well — it’s a new week. Let bygones be bygones. Let’s hope for the better, even though we know that, as bad as things may seem, there is no such thing as the bottom these days. Things can always get worse. Much worse.

First, to be honest. The title of this post is not original to me. And it’s not something I necessarily believe. But perhaps, like avoiding a black cat crossing the road in front of you, kings are a bit suspicious when they think about what the theater might do to their reputations. I have no personal knowledge of this of course, but King Donald the Despicable probably does. And of course, if he is concerned about this, it would be through intuition. No one, lest of all King D, remembers the last time he actually went to the theater.

But this fear is obviously what is behind his Kennedy coup, his takeover of the Board of Directors of the Kennedy Center and his appointment of Himself as Grand Poobah.

There are many ramifications to this. Federal funding only supplies about 20% (I think that is correct) of the Kennedy Center’s budget, the rest coming from ticket sales and philanthropic contributions. One of the biggest contributors has been David Rubinstein, whom King D supplanted, and who has contributed about $100 million to the Center. That, by the way, is approximately $100 million more than I have. So we know that outside contributions will fall, and probably fall precipitously. I have also recently read that ticket bookings, in this highly anti-DT DMV, have fallen 50% since the day of the coup. The Kennedy Center cannot stand these losses for very long.

We have also seen that some of the individual scheduled programs have pulled out of the Kennedy Center and others, we assume, have been cancelled. And we know that those KC stalwarts, like the Washington Opera and the National Sympathy, who really have no choice but to stay, are going to be innocent victims of all of this turmoil.

One of the shows to pull out is a production of Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day, which had been scheduled to open for a two week run in early March, coming from a highly reviewed run on Broadway. The reasons given were “financial”. I guess that is possible, if ticket sales abruptly went down, but because this play has been advertised for some time, and was close to opening, I think that it is more likely that (like the drag shows, which the King mentioned in his coup address) the show was canceled for idealogical reasons.

Eureka Day was first presented in DC about five years ago. We saw it at a mid-size DC theater, Mosaic, just before the start of the pandemic. As I recall, it is a very clever, well written play, which does cause you to think, it presents a dilemma which may have no clear answer.

Let’s see how much I remember. It is a private day school in Southern California, and a very, very liberal place. It is so liberal that it permits parents who do not want to get their children vaccinated to let their unvaccinated children come to school anyway. Back then (the olden days of 2019 or 2020), mandatory vaccination policies were the norm.

All is fine at the Eureka Day school, until the mumps arrive. And the question becomes whether the liberal vaccine policy needs to be changed to protect students. The debate, which forms the basis of the play, is staged between (do I recall this, or am I imagining it?) between school administrators and parents.

There you have it. King Don the Terrible takes over the Kennedy Center and the first play to open after his coup is about VACCINES. Do you really think it closed for “financial reasons”?

Yes, one of the purposes of theater, beyond entertaining the audience and showing off the skills of the cast and production staff, is focusing on subjects that make you think. And perhaps make you think in ways different from the ways you were thinking when you first came into the theater. Last week, we saw a play at DC’s Studio Theater, where daughter Hannah works, called Downstate, which occupies the same type of niche as Eureka Day.

Digression: FYI, “Downstate” refers to Illinois south of Chicago, just like “upstate” refers to New York north of New York City. Maybe you already know that and this is an unnecessary digression. If so, just forget you read this digression, or just skip it all together.

Downstate, another wonderfully written play, takes place in a halfway house, in a small town somewhere in Illinois. The house is occupied by four men, each with a different story, and each accused of, and convicted of, pedophilia. The men are very different. One an elderly white man, convicted of taking advantage of two of his piano students. Two are Black men, one of whom seems to have had an underage male “lover” and the other a history with juvenile women. The fourth is Hispanic, and his case involved his own daughter. The four are, to different degrees, repentant, rebellious or forgetful of their acts. Their relationship with each other is fraught, and with their handler, a woman who works for the authorities and keeps her eyes closely on the four, is more fraught.

The house is visited by one of the white man’s former piano students who comes to demand an apology from his attacker – an apology that he himself has written, and things go quite awry.

The beauty of the play is that, while you never are tempted to forgive any of the men for what they have done, you begin to see them as something more than just criminal pedophiles. You feel for their condition, for their helplessness and their dependence on what their handler says that they can or can not do. And, although there is no doubt that the old piano teacher did molest his young students, you realize that memory can be a funny thing, as the man who has returned and written out this very detailed apology begins to question his own memory of events, a memory which he thought infallible until then.

Downstate, like Eureka Day, is probably a play that can not today be presented at the Kennedy Center. But it can be presented at a theater such as Studio. Or can it? Like most professional theaters across the country, Studio relies not only on ticket sales and philanthropic contributions, but on governmental grants, through the National Endowment for the Arts for example. Studio receives hundreds of thousands of dollars of government money. As I understand it, this year’s money will come with some conditions, some new standards that theaters have to agree to meet. This will probably exclude some plays that they would otherwise want to present, and will affect many playwrights whose productions will not be able to be shown at major theaters across the country.

And who knows where it will go from here? All because the King Donald the Abhorrent is afraid that a play will catch him. And it might.

A few months ago, I read Liz Cheney’s extraordinary book, Oath and Honor: a Memoir and a Warning, which leads you through the work of the Congressional Select Committee’s investigation of Donald Trump after the January 6 invasion of the Capitol. You obviously remember that Cheney was one of the two Republicans on the Committee, the other being Adam Kitzinger. Neither Cheney or Kitzinger were able to remain in Congress because of their participation in this important Committee.

But what you might not know is that there was another Republican involved in the Select Committee, a former Congressman from Virginia named Denver Riggleman. Riggleman was not a member of the Committee (he had already left Congress), but was an important senior member of the Committee staff. And he wrote a book as well, which I have just finished reading, called The Breach. It was as good and as informative as Liz Cheney’s book.

Riggleman spent one term as the Republican Congressman from Virginia’s 5th District (which includes Charlottesville and Lynchberg), now represented by Republican John McGuire. He was doomed to lose his spot because he is one of those rare politicians, a moderate Republican who has integrity. You may have seen Riggleman recently, as he is one of those moderate and intelligent voices that sometimes show up as a commentator on CNN (not one of those Republican shills that they include on their panel shows). Whenever I have seen him, I have noted that he seems like an intelligent guy, but I never thought more about him until I ran across this book. Riggleman is now contemplating the possibility of running for Governor of Virginia; the election is this year, November 4, 2025. Riggleman is only 54 years old. He would run as an Independent.

Denver Riggleman is a very complex man with a surprising background. His family was about a dysfunctional as they come. He was born and raised in Manassas, went to several community colleges before finding himself at the University of Virginia from which he graduated, and spent 15 years in the Air Force. He has two important characteristics: one, he is very, very smart and technologically savvy, and two, he knows he is very, very smart and technologically savvy and doesn’t mind letting you know. After he left the Air Force and before he ran for Congress, he ran a high tech company called Analytics Warehouse which was an NSA contractor. (He and his wife also have or had a distillery near Charlottesville.)

His job for the Select Committee was to analyze the telephone records of individuals who had attracted the attention of the Committee, and his team’s analysis was of major importance. Yet, some of their findings were not part of the Committee’s report, and many of them form the substance of this book.

Some of the conclusions? First, the Jan 6 revolt was long planned. Second, the planning included a lot of activity by leaders of the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and other similar groups, and these leaders were in contact on a regular basis with people on Trump’s team. Third, the point man for all of this was Mark Meadows, whose telephone records show many contacts with these groups.

Now, it is true that the analysis was limited to who called whom and when, and could not get into the substance of the phone calls. But the patterns are clear.

The book discusses many topics, including not only the January 6 plans, but other plans to challenge the elections (and the plans to challenge the elections, Riggleman shows, were also not spontaneous, but planned well before the election itself), questions relating to the lack of timely security at the Capitol (he believes that the blame here is in fact shared by the White House and by Congressional leadership), and has chapters regarding various individuals involved in all of this (some come out better than others), including Ginni Thomas. Let me just say this: he does not have much use for Ginni Thomas or her husband.

He weaves through all of this his own unusual history, his rough childhood, his venture into and out of the Mormon church, his time in the Air Force and his development of his technical expertise, his use of what he learned as a security contractor, his now 35 year old marriage and family, including his fraught relationship with his ultra ultra ultra conservative mother.

The Breach was published in 2022, so it isn’t up to date, but that’s just as well. Added to the Cheney book, it tells what as much as you need to know, I think, about what led to January 6, how January 6 unfurled, and how the Committee went about its important investigation.

If you missed last night’s Rachel Maddow Show, which featured several recent polls showing how Americans now feel about King Donald the Ridiculous, I suggest you go to YouTube and watch it. If you happen to be King Donald the Dangerous, you will not be very happy to say the least. The polls cited (and there about six of them) show that the American populace are negative on virtually everything (or maybe it would be more accurate to say absolutely everything) Trump has been doing, whether it’s foreign policy, economic policy, pardons, Ukraine, federal employment, USAID, or anything else.

There appeared to be only one poll that asked this question: would you like the next Congress to be controlled by Democrats or Republicans? And the response was that the Democrats won that one by a substantial amount.

This should give some optimism to Democrats and to all those who are so negative on Trump. But the Democrats have to keep this anti-Trump feeling going, and the question is whether they will be able to. I have earlier said that I thought that Chuck Schumer and Hakim Jeffries were not the right guys to put the Democratic message across. I have spoken to a lot of people about this; they all (yes, all) seem to agree.

But even assuming the Democrats change their spokespeople, they will need something more. They need mottoes that peoples hear time and time again. Hear so often that they become a part of their actual identities.

You need advertising professionals to help the Democrats. I am obviously not one of those. But I have one suggestion: a campaign based on the simple, and actually often heard, mantra HE IS NOT MY PRESIDENT!

I would like to see those five words over and over and over again – orally and visually. Over and over and over again.

And these five words are important because they not only might help American voters, but they are important for people in other countries, who otherwise might think that King Donald the Outrageous does indeed represent our thinking.

That’s all I am going to say this morning, because it is so important that I don’t want it to get lost because of other topics hoarding the space.

So that’s it. HE IS NOT MY PRESIDENT!

Last night, we had dinner at Bistro Aracosia on MacArthur Boulevard, an upscale Afghan restaurant with my old (yes) college roommate Doug, and his S.O., Susan.

A few digressions. (1) name – no one calls MacArthur either MacArt or MacArtie, and maybe someone calls Doug Douglas (maybe not), but never, I am sure, Dougie , and (2) geography lesson – Aracosia is the old Persian name for the southwestern part of Afghanistan whose largest city is now called Kandahar.

Back to our story.

Susan lives in Nova Scotia, where Doug spends about half of his time, and gets to DC once or twice a year. We usually have dinner when she is here, and it is always a delight..

Yesterday was particularly interesting because it gave us a chance to talk to a future resident of the 51st state. Of course, she doesn’t expect to be a subject of King Don the Terrible, but told us that he is attacking Canada when it is quite weak, with a sputtering economy and, in effect, a powerless prime minister. There will be parliamentary elections later this year. She says the Liberals will have the stronger party leader, but thinks they will have a tough time remaining in control.

The food at Aracosia is always good (I have been there four or five times), but last night, I think Edie made the best choice, getting the vegetarian flight, a dish with six or seven vegetarian dishes, plus rice.

The restaurant’s vegetarian menu is enormous and previously I have chosen from it, or ordered something with chicken. I limit myself to red meat twice a month, and decided to try a lamb dish last night. It was good, but I will stick to my usuals from now on.

I also had an espresso after dinner. I can’t explain it, but I can drink coffee at 10 p.m. and sleep just fine. But a single espresso, containing less caffeine, at 8 will do me in. So I tossed and turned ladt night until about 2 a.m., giving me a lot of time to think about my red meat and espresso mistake.

In the meantime,  in addition to taking over ownership of the Panama Canal, the Gaza Strip, Canada, and Greenland, King Donald the Awful (he named himself King yesterday, you might have heard) wants to set New York City’s transportation policies by immediately abolishing the new and apparently successful congestion charging, which he did by Executive Order (up to the courts now), and wants the federal government to run DC. He probably does not have the Congressional support to end DC home rule, but he will undoubtedly try, just as he will try to do what he can by E.O.

You probably know that King Donald the Terrible quoted a line from a film, as if it came out of the Holy Bible. “He who saves his country does not violate any law”, says Napoleon in the film.

Forgetting the weird source, let’s parce the quote. Either (1) it is ridiculous, or (2) it is correct. Although (1) is clearly the better choice  (2) raises an interesting question. If, as it is, the country needs to be saved, one way or another, from King Donald the Horrible, then it would follow that….

Last night, there was an interesting Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies program featuring San Francisco author Lois Silverstein talking about her recent book, When Crying Stops: Echoes of War in Romania. I had never heard of the book, and I think it has been far from a best seller, but I would like to read it based on what I heard last night. The book is a novel. It is fiction. But it is based on a series of interviews that Silverstein, who is in her 80s, had with three Romanian Jews who had survived the Holocaust whom she befriended years ago. They were considerably older than she was then, and are no longer alive.

At first, I thought that Silverstein’s presentation was a bit scattered, with some reading from the book, and some ruminating on her personal reactions to her conversations with the three survivors. But as she went on, and particularly in the extensive Q and A period, I was more fascinated by what she was saying. She was talking about “belonging” and described herself (she grew up in New York, went to college there, and then got a Ph.D. from McGill in Montreal, before moving to California) as someone who never felt she belonged where she was, and never could imagine a place where she felt she belonged. She viewed the Romanian survivors who were, as she called them, “ordinary people”, as also not belonging in Romania, where Jews had lived for a thousand years, and not really belonging anywhere else. She said that she thought she could have written about any other ethnic group in the same situation anywhere in the world at any time, because she was basically writing not specifically about the Holocaust (although obviously she was), but about the universally common situation of not belonging.

It’s not a feeling that I personally have. I feel that I belong here in the United States, but I know there are a lot of Jews who felt the same a few years ago, but who now, with increasing antisemitism, are now concerned that maybe they no longer “belong”, or perhaps never did.

With such dramatic changes to the American psyche developing during Trump 2, American views of their country may radically change. And once one’s views change, one’s memory of the past may change as well. Or, if memories of the past may not change, some individuals may hide their memories of the past, both to others and to themselves.

Silverstein quoted Martha Gellhorn. Remember her? Hemingway’s third wife, American war correspondent, and – most importantly – native of St. Louis. She was in Germany in 1945 and wrote the following:

“No one is a Nazi. No one ever was. There may have been some Nazis in the next village, and as a matter of fact, that town about twenty kilometers away was a veritable hotbed of Nazidom. To tell you the truth, confidentially, there were a lot of Communists here. We were always known as very Red. Oh, the Jews? Well, there weren’t really many Jews in this neighborhood. Two, maybe six. They were taken away. I hid a Jew for six weeks. I hid a Jew for eight weeks. (I hid a Jew, he hid a Jew, all God’s chillun hid Jews.) We have nothing against the Jews; we always got on well with them. We have had enough of this government. Ah, how we have suffered. The bombs. We lived in the cellars for weeks. We welcome the Americans. We do not fear them; we have no reason to fear. We have done nothing wrong; we are not Nazis.

“It should, we feel, be set to music. Then the Germans could sing this refrain and that would make it even better. They all talk like this. One asks oneself how the detested Nazi government, to which no one paid allegiance, managed to carry on this way for five and a half years. Obviously not a man, woman or child in Germany ever approved of the war for a minute…..”

After I heard this last night, I wanted to share it.

Having read it again now, I have another thought. America at some point, we hope, will get beyond the Trump years, and again be a beacon of freedom. When that happens, what will his former supporters say or think?  Will it be a version of the Gellhorn quote?

Could be.

Yesterday, I met someone I hadn’t met before. In effect, I was interviewing him as a potential board member for the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies. I won’t tell you his name, but I will say that I think he would make a very good addition to our board.

Towards the end of the meeting, he asked, “Are you Art or Arthur?” Of course, I responded “Both”.

But it got me thinking. I grew up as Arthur. No one in my family ever called me Art, and even though I knew it was a nickname for Arthur, I didn’t identify with it, and I never expected anyone else to identify me with it. I lived in dread of anyone daring to call me Art.

Then came sixth grade.

In sixth grade, I started a new school. I knew no one in my class. My teacher was also new to the school and, coincidentally, he was the first male teacher I ever had. His name was Ken Koger.

On the first morning of the first day of school, I was sitting at a desk in the first row. I must have been put there by Mr. Koger, because I would never on my own sit in the first row of a classroom. I’d much more likely be near or at the back of the room. But there I was in the first row.

And then Mr. Koger spoke: He introduced himself and said that he was happy to be here (or something like that) and that he knew that almost everyone in the class knew each other and he didn’t know anyone yet. Yes, he said, pointing to me (right there in that dreaded front row), “Art and I are the only new people in the room.”

I shrunk. Art? He called me Art

My life is ruined.

Everyone started calling me Art. No one in the room knew that I was always Arthur. No one called me Arthur at all. They probably didn’t even know that was my name.

Of course, I got used to being Art. In fact, and it couldn’t have been more than a few years later, I was watching a TV show, a variety show (remember them?) or something like that. And the guest was Arthur Treacher.

Today, I couldn’t really tell you who Arthur Treacher was (other than a namesake for a fast food fish and chips franchise), except that he was quite old then, and was British. Stuffy British. The host of the show, and I can’t tell you who that was (except in my mind it might of been Garry Moore; if I had to guess, I’d say that there is a 30% chance it was Garry Moore), made some sort of joke about Arthur Treacher being one of the Seven Lively Arts.

Arthur Treacher went berserk. Absolutely berserk. He was having a Ken Koger moment. His life was being suddenly changed just when he thought he had escaped any Ken Koger moments. My reaction. I just wanted to tell him to get over it.

Throughout my high school years, I was generally Art. My family still called me Arthur, but none of my friends. But as time went on, now and then I was surprised when I was called Arthur. And by that time, Arthur seemed to me my family name, not my public name. As I thought about it, I realized that my male friends never ever called me Arthur, but that girls did, particularly on dates. There must be a reason, I reasoned. But I never reasoned well enough to figure out the reason.

There were two other Arthurs in my high school class. Arthur Schneider and Arthur Silbergeld. We were all Arts, and I never even thought about asking either of them their Art/Arthur experience. I guess it isn’t too late.

So, there I was. A man with two names. And I am not sure I ever really had a preference. As long as no one called me the third leg of the stool: Artie. It wasn’t in the front of my mind all the time (or really any of the time), but it was always there somewhere.

And when I got to college, there was one person, a friend, but not a best friend, a fellow named David, a high school classmate of one of my roommates. He called me Artie. That’s all he called me. And he did it in such a casual way, yet so sure of himself, that I didn’t want to tell him the truth.

I knew there were some people who didn’t mind being called Artie. There was jazz musician Artie Shaw, originally an Arthur. And there was my mother’s first cousin Artie Weiss. We saw him now and then when I was young. I assume he was an Arthur, but my guess is that he was an Artie since birth. Too bad, perhaps, he didn’t look like an Artie. More like an Arthur. He was an accountant after all.

Then there was this young woman that a mutual friend told me to call. She thought we may get along. The young woman was named Edie and I called her and we agreed to get together. I had introduced myself at the beginning of the call and, at the end of the call, I wasn’t sure she caught my name. So I asked her. And she, quite sure of herself it seemed, responded: “Yes. It’s Artie”. She tells me I had another Ken Koger moment. Maybe so, because I can tell you that, more than 50 years later, she has not dared call me Artie again.

But my old friend Dave did. At a college reunion (I think it was the 40th reunion).

He greeted me warmly. “Artie”, he said, “good to see you, how have you been?”

You know, maybr I made a mistake. Maybe 2 year old Arthur should have told his parents he wanted to be Artie. After all, Arthur is a name that intimidates. And Art is really a nonentity as a name, connoting not much of anything. But Artie? Artie sounds like everyone’s best friend. And that’s really what I wish I could be.

It is George Washington’s Birthday. “No”, you say, “it is Presidents Day”. But I am correct. The official holiday is George Washington’s birthday even though today is the 17th of February and he was born on the 22nd and everyone, absolutely everyone, calls it Presidents Day. If you want to know more, you can do one (or both) of two things. You can Google either Presidents Day or George Washington’s Birthday, or you can look at the fact-filled post I wrote a year ago on George Washington’s birthday, which I believe was February 19.

One of the things that happen on George Washington’s birthday is that the DC trash collectors get the day off. Our regular Monday pickup slips over until Tuesday, as it does with each of the federal holidays that always fall on Monday. So, I was surprised when, at about seven this morning, I heard a trash truck coming down Davenport St. It was too late for me to pull the trash and recycling bins to the street, so the garbage will fester in the trash bin for another week. That really isn’t a problem. But what happened?

I googled the question this morning and found some conflicting information. The DC trash collection is pushed back a day for George Washington’s birthday, and the DC trash collectors will be working this year on George Washington’s birthday. I am sure that, after Trump takes over running DC (“mayor for life”), this will never happen again, but we received no notice of a change for this year. The result, I assume, is that the only people who had their trashed picked up this morning were those who forgot that today was a holiday with no trash pickup.

That’s the way it’s been around here since about…..January 20.

You may wonder how Trump has affected Washington so far. I am not sure that I am the one to ask, since I don’t think he has affected my daily life yet, but I see that there have been a lot of mini-demonstrations in front of government buildings, for one thing. I also hear that some federal buildings have been locked, some abandoned, some put up for sale, and some invaded by a smart-alecky bunch of teenagers.

I hear that again the Republicans want to abandon home rule for DC (and give up any idea that it will ever be a state, of course). I doubt that they will succeed because they will need 60 Senate votes, but you never know. They have their ways. Trump has already issued at least one executive order affecting DC – he wants all of the graffiti removed from federal buildings and monuments. I agree, and there is more of this than there used to be, but I guarantee you that the president’s call to remove graffiti will only have one result. More graffiti.

Let me digress for a minute and talk about TikTok. You recall that TikTok was a MAJOR SECURITY CONCERN, that the Chinese owner could scoop up the personal and financial information of any user at any time it wanted to. So, with all of our national intelligence agencies saying this was a security problem, Congress passed a bill and Biden (remember him?) signed it, to force TikTok to be sold to an acceptable buyer (it being unclear if such a sale would include the algorithm that tells you what you want to see) by January 19 or be shut down. There was an exception if TikTok was in the process of being sold, and more time was needed (I think there was a short limit) to consummate the transaction.

On January 19, TikTok went dark and the app was no longer available to purchase in the various online app stores. On January 20 or 21, new/old president Trump said that TikTok could go back in business, that it should still be sold maybe sometime soon or not, that it wasn’t a bit of a security risk, that it had helped him in his election, and that the app stores that sold the app and the platforms that serviced the app would not be charged with any malfeasance or misfeasance if they went back to business as usual.

The January 19 closure of the app by the Biden administration was the canary in the coal mine, and the January 20 or 21 resurrection of the app was the camel’s nose under the  tent. Since then, the whole issue of TikTok has receded into the place where memories are lost, and nobody even mentions it.

But TikTok is where Congress first fell apart. It passed a law, the president signed it, the new president said he was going to ignore it, and Congress, so anxious to terminate TikTok on a bipartisan basis by a date certain, now said…..”Meh.” Once this happened, it was only a short step to let a racist, xenophobic teenager into the Treasury Department to rewrite the code governing the federal payment system. And today, I have read, that same teenager, or maybe his BFFs, will get access to the IRS.

Okay, let’s wrap this holiday issue of the blog up. Last night, NBC had a Sunday night special celebrating the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live (that it was on a Sunday is also exemplary of where we are as a civilization). Edie and I turned it on and, about 15 minutes later, turned it off. I was reminded of why I never watch Saturday Night Live. It stinks.

Which brings me to the new Chairman of the Board of the Kennedy Center (soon to be rebranded as the Trump Center, just as the capital of the country is soon to be rebranded Trump, D.T.), Donald J. Trump. He will, I am sure, not allow programs as bad as Saturday Night Live at the Center and, to be honest, I had been thinking that he should take over the Kennedy Center for some time now. Even had Harris won the presidency, I think that Trump should have been put in charge of culture in DC.

One reason, of course, is his impeccable taste. A second is that he has no connection with any artist who has ever performed at the Kennedy Center before, so there will be no conflicts of interest. (If there is one thing Trump abhors, it is a conflict of interest.) He comes into this pure and clean. In fact, it is not clear that he has ever been in the Kennedy Center before. I saw part of an interview where he was asked why that was the case. His answer was as clear as an answer can be: “Because the programs were bad. So bad.” So there.

I for one look forward to thevGolden Age of American Culture, and I look forward to my next visit to the Kennedy Center, maybe in 2029.

Well, when I sat down this morning to write this, I had no idea what I was going to write about. What’s that? It’s obvious? Thanks, that means a lot.

So much of what is going on in the Musk/Trump/Much too young Vance administration is laughable. And most laughable of all, it seems to me, is the case brought against Starbucks by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. Am I wrong? Will Missouri win this case?

Maybe you don’t know it. And I haven’t looked at any of the paper work. I have just read a number of news articles. Basically, Starbucks is being attacked for having a hiring process which takes into account race and gender to try to have a workforce representative of the community at large. On the basis of its DEI commitment, Starbucks is being charged with discrimination against (you guessed it) white males.

What is the evidence of this discrimination? Apparently Starbucks’ staff in its 200 Missouri locations and the rest of the country is over 50% minority (40% black) and about 70% female. Once you see this, it appears, it is clear that discrimination must exist.

Now, keep in mind that Starbucks does not make rockets to take us to Mars; it brews and serves coffee and coffee-ish drinks. You can take a position for or against the quality of Starbucks’ coffee, and as far as I know the quality of the drinks are not at issue. But, according to the Missouri Attorney General, having blacks and women pour coffee results in service that is much less efficient than the service that would be provided by white males, making customers wait longer and, somehow, raises the prices charged the public. I have read that the filings don’t explain how prices are affected.

One of the mainstay positions of the Trump administration, and Project 2025, is White Nationalism. (Some say that it is White Christian Nationalism, but I am not sure that is the case. It is clearly, though, White Not-Muslim Nationalism.) One of the ways this plank is being implemented is through the destruction of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs which, until recently, seemed to be national policy. One of the first groups of federal government employees who were fired were those who were involved in DEI programs within their agencies. But it went beyond this, in that the administration has also made it clear that DEI does not belong in private business either, that the continuation of DEI programs might affect the willingness of the government to deal with those companies, and that federal agents might open investigations targeted on companies advocating DEI as part of their personnel policies.

Once again, Cole Porter:

“The world has gone mad today

And good’s bad today

And black’s white today

And day’s night today…..”

Yes, anything goes. Or not. Maybe only one thing goes.

I understand that it is difficult to know how to fight the Trump administration right now. So many things are being hurled at once that you don’t know which one to defend against first. And it would seem that everyone has to make their own choice as to which to fight. You would think that individuals would do this based, at least in part, on what does, or could, affect them most. And since DEI focuses on all minorities, not only Blacks, Hispanics and other ethnic groups, but also on Women.

But, somehow, even among those who fought so hard for DEI programs a year ago, there seems to be surprisingly little excitement. At least, that is the way I see it.

A few years ago, I read How to be an Unracist by Ibram X. Kendi. Kendi’s position is the mirror image of Trump’s. His position is that, for example, if the United States is 20 percent Black, every governmental office, every private company’s board of directors and workforce should strive to be 20% Black. The ultimate of DEI. This is not a position that I agree with, because such pure quotas could actually lead to hiring people less qualified to do certain jobs, but it does set a goal to keep in mind. But if the goal is not only a numerical one, if it is also to provide sufficient opportunity, support, mentorship and training to enable qualified members of minority groups to qualify for and apply for open positions, I think that giving a bit of a hiring edge to a member of a group formerly discriminated against is fitting and proper.

I think most Americans agree with this. But today, it is becoming illegal to act in that fashion, and is being deemed as discriminating against the groups that have succeeded in the past because of their “privilege”. Cole Porter’s lyrics come alive.

Of course, this emphasis on protecting white American males is not new to the Republican Party. Following the overturning of much of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court, many states (mainly former Confederate states, to no surprise) began to change their voting laws to make it harder for minorities to cast their votes, and Republican led states have gone wild with extreme gerrymandering. And on and on.

One of the areas where the protection of whites comes to the fore is, of course, with immigration, where the “replacement theory” now runs rampant. Close the borders, they say, and kick out all those Hispanics and other minorities who have worked their way into the country. This prevalence of this feeling might have been the biggest reason Trump won the 2024 election, and the biggest gaffe of the Biden administration, with racist fears (fears of crime, poverty, corruption of youth, etc.) overriding any arguments about the necessity of immigration to gurantee economic growth in the country.

Now that Trump is in office again, closing the border is not sufficient. He also has to kick out of the country refugees from those countries whose emigrants had been given Temporary Protective Status by Biden. And even that is not enough, apparently, for now the Trump administration has decided that we need more white immigrants, and he is starting with white Afrikaaner refugees from South Africa, because he is falsely claiming that they are being discriminated against by the current South African government.

Yes, we have trouble. Right here in River City. Trouble with a Capital T. And that rhymes with Trump.

Time for coffee. Sorry, Starbucks, we’re not in Missouri any more.

Well, maybe it’s not really on yet in the physical sense. It is certainly on intellectually. And neither task is going to be easy.

When the President says that it is time for the Russia-Ukraine War to end, and that he will end it by working out a “deal” with one of the two warring parties, but not the party that was wronged, you know we have a problem.

When the Secretary of Defense says that these negotiations will wind up with Ukraine having a smaller land area, and that Ukraine will never be able to join NATO, and the negotiations have not even begun, you know we have a problem.

When the much too young Vice President lectures the security professionals of our NATO allies that their problems don’t come from Russia or China, but rather from left wingers and immigrants in their countries, you know we have a problem.

When co-President Elon the Musk sits down with a far right, Nazi inspired party leader in Germany (and then gives a Nazi salute back home), and the much too young Vice President follows suit, while ignoring Germany’s current governmental leader, you know we have a problem.

When the President tells you that Vladimir Putin, the man who invaded Ukraine, clamps down on news sources in his country, and kills or imprisons his political prisoners, you know we have a problem.

When thousands and thousands of federal jobs within the United States are cut without any sort of process and without any thought to whether or not the individual people or the jobs themselves are important to the country’s well being, you know we have a problem.

When the President sits behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office and let’s his co-President without official authority control a press conference along with his 4 year old son, you know we have a problem.

When the co-President fires hundreds of employees at the Department of Energy and then realizes that he has fired the people that protect and safeguard our nuclear arsenal so that he has to try to reverse the firing, you know we have a problem.

When the President is determined to cut out entire federal departments, such as the Department of Education and USAID, without any sense that some or most of their programs might actually be helpful, and without any regard to the individuals being fired in the process or their families, you know we have a problem.

When the President decides that only he can run the Kennedy Center to ensure that programs do not violate his ideas of culture, you know we have a problem.

I could go on and on, and yes, we all know we have a problem. Or do we?

I say that because the polling being done still shows that half the country (the polls vary, but settle at about 50-50) believes in Donald Trump. Do I think that the polls will remain that way? Not at all. And the reason I don’t is that when pollsters ask particular questions on particular issues, the approval of the Trump policies tend to lose by a fair amount. But there is that messianic belief that these temporary losses and problems are just the first step in something much bigger, and that boom times are coming our way.

And, what is even more disheartening is that the polls still show that the Democrats are viewed as much more problematic than the people Trump has put into place.

Trump supporters at this time seem to be of several types. There are the very wealthy, who want to become wealthier and view Trump as a vehicle for themselves and their families. There are the Evangelicals who believe that God has a plan for the salvation of their own souls and of America, that Trump is the chosen person to implement that plan, and that a Time of Troubles is something that God is creating to lead to the fulfillment of what would be their version of a Second Coming. As I have long said, if you can believe in the Virgin Birth and if you can believe that Jesus walked on water, you can believe anything. Then there are Trump supporters who are convinced that immigration will be the downfall of America (and this is the one area that the Biden administration just blew) and believe that if you can stop people from coming into the country and kick out those who either came in illegally or who came in under presumed false claims for asylum, you will save America. And there are the pro-Israel Trump supporters, who believe (as to most of the Evangelicals) that Trump will support any anti-Palestinian moves the Israeli government may want to take, obviously including clearing out Gaza (and building the Trump Gold Coast) and moving all or most Arabs out of the West Bank, creating a larger Israel form the river to the sea.

You add all these folks together and you have a formidable number of people who need to have their minds changed. Or maybe their minds won’t be changed, and you need to concentrate on those who supported Trump as the presumed better of two alternatives, or those who don’t support Trump, but also don’t go out to vote. Whichever of these tasks is most important, you need a group of Democratic Party leaders up for the job. And they are at this point hiding under the bed.

There is such disdain for the current Democratic leadership (I don’t understand why, but it is fact), that they cannot right the ship. New folks are needed. Members of Congress, governors, members of state legislatures, mayors, common folk. The Democrats have to regroup and totally change their image. Not in 2026, but right now in February 2025.

This is a total rebuild. When the Democrats rebuild, the country will start to rebuild. But who will win the rebuild race? the U.S., or Gaza?

An interesting article in The Forward yesterday about the apparently serious attempt by Hitler’s Nazis to move Europe’s Jews to Madagascar. When that proved impossible, only one course remained: round them up and kill them.

It was an interesting article, although I don’t think their analogy to what the Germans were up to and what Trump is suggesting for Gazans is at all the same. But it did remind me that there is a large province in southern Mozambique (I know it’s not Madagascar, but it’s close) called Gaza, a coincidence that the article did not mention.

But it is easy, is it not, to confuse Gaza in Palestine with Gaza in Mozambique? It is for one obvious reason: they are both Gaza. As I understand it, it was confusion between the two that led someone (someone named Donald Trump) to say that USAID had given $50 million to Gaza in Palestine for condoms. In fact (and I can’t swear to the amount of money) that the funds for condoms were going to Gaza in Mozambique, not Gaza in Palestine.

Now, some might say: “What’s the difference? We should not be using taxpayer money to buy condoms for either place.” Well, that’s wrong. And that is because distributing condoms is one of the important aspects of our assistance to countries in danger of AIDS epidemics, as condoms not only prevent pregnancies, but prevent STDs. So, the criticism was not well placed, although its erroneous premise has not been countered on a wide enough spread basis.

I am interested in the apparently upcoming Egyptian proposal for the reconstruction of Gaza (in Palestine) without displacement. I am interested in what the redone Gaza would look like, what the economic base would become, who would be in control of all of this, how (if?) Hamas will be out of the picture, and how things would be arranged to involve Israel (still the site of the major routes in and out of Gaza) and to make both Israelis and Gazans feel that further fighting was out of the question so that the Strip would not be rebuilt only to be destroyed once again. It will be quite a trick.

Of course, I can’t not mention Danielle Sassoon, now the former acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and her example of integrity in action when she resigned her position after she was asked to dismiss without prejudice the pending case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, without any concern as to the merits of the case. And then five high and very high ranking DOJ officials in Washington, who were also asked to involve themselves in this matter, also resigned.

We will see where all this will go. The case, which was apparently transferred from the SDNY to Main Justice, has still not been dropped. They will need to find someone ready to sign the request rather than resign their position.

And, then, if a request to drop the case is submitted to a judge, what will he/she do under the circumstances? Apparently, the judge can accept or reject the request, or can even engage a special prosecutor. That’s what I have heard on the news.

There are at least two other facets to this. First, the quid pro quo. Apparently, Adams’ lawyer told the DOJ attorneys that, if the case were dropped, Adams would fully cooperate with the Trump agenda. Not good  that, a swap of political loyalty for criminal exculpation. And it was more than talk. Reportedly Adams let, or said he would let, ICE agents into Ruykers Island prison to search for undocumented prisoners,  an apparent violation of New York law.

Second is the question of whether all Southern District prosecutors who worked on the case would be fired, just as the DC US Atty office prosecutors, and maybe the FBI  agents, who worked on the Jan 6 cases were, or will be, fired. I ask you – what is  more wrong or unfair as this?

And then, I guess, there is a third facet. NY governor Hochul apparently, under state law, can remove Adams as mayor. Last night, she said it was under consideration.

I saw New York City Controller, and mayoral candidate, Brad Lander on Chris Hayes’ show on MSNBC. He spoke well. Brad is the son and nephew of old (yes) St. Louis friends and deserves everyone’s support.

I am starting to read The Breach, by Former Congressman Denver Riggleman about the Jan 6 investigation, with which he was involved. I have already read Liz Cheney’s Oath and Honor about the committee’s work, which is an extraordinarily good book that I highly recommend.

Elon the Musk met with Prime Minister Modi of Ibdia today. Trump was asked whether Musk was meeting with Modi as a representative of the American government, or on the basis of his personal business interests. I paraphrase when I say Trump responded by saying “I don’t know”. Even surprised me. Particularly since it came after Trump’s comment that no one should worry about Musk, because Trump is watching what he is doing very carefully.

A lot more happened today, but you know that. What you don’t know is that I finally finished reading Stanley Karnow’s Paris in the Fifties, and I expect to talk about it when I get tired of writing about Trump. The final chapters I read today were on the French parliament (the French parliament in the 1950s was frighteningly similar to our Congress today), and the disintegration of the French colonial empire in North Africa. Reading this last chapter might give Expansionist Trump second thoughts.

Time for a totally different subject? At my Thursday morning breakfast group, I heard one of its members give a very good presentation on the breaking of the German and Japanese secret codes during World War II as a result of the work done at Bletchley in the U.K.

The Bletchley story is an amazing one, which may scholars believe did shorten the war and decrease the number of casualties in some places as the war ended. I knew that the entire operation was secret, just as the development of the A-bomb here was kept secret; clearly, this type of secrecy would be impossible today for all sorts of reasons. What I did not know is that there were 9,000 people employed at Bletchley. My reaction to that? What would Elon Musk do? He’d have closed in down immediately. Waste, fraud and abuse, he would conclude (he would conclude that before he set foot on the ground).

Until tomorrow.

Things are becoming clear. The United States no longer believes that Ukraine should control its own future. The United States no longer cares if the Donbas and Crimea belong to Russia, whether or not Ukraine cares. The United States no longer supports any future which sees Ukraine as a member of NATO.

President Trump is not only going to meet with President Putin, but it looks like they may have two meetings, one in Russia and one here. During these meetings and further telephone calls, they will talk about how the war in Ukraine must end. President Zelensky will not be part of these talks.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a violation not only of international laws which respect the boundaries of sovereign states, but a violation of specific treaties involving Ukraine and Russia, which has been deemed a major threat to world stability not only the United States, but by virtually all of NATO, now no longer really matters that much. An agreement to end the fighting by Russia with territorial losses by Ukraine, which had been viewed as another Munich agreement, emboldening Putin to attack other neighboring states, is now the cat’s meow.

Yesterday, Marc Fogel, an American teacher who was arrested and convicted four years ago for having in his possession in Russia a small amount of marijuana, has been freed and today, four prisoners of Belarus (one of whom was American) has also been freed. It is widely assumed that their release (and who can be sad about their release) came at a price. The price does not seem to be prisoner exchange, as one would normally expect, but rather a promise or set of promises having to do with American support of Ukraine and America’s relationship with Russia. Details, we don’t know.

On Monday, I suggested four books about Fascist leaders which I suggested you read, starting with Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen (Edie has put it next on her list). Today, I add another, Anne Applebaum’s new book, Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Rule the World. I admit that I haven’t yet read this book, but I have heard its author speak about it several times, and understand the general idea. The general idea is that today, as opposed to times past, dictators (the same as strongmen) who have varying ideologies have banded together to form a mutual aid society to oppose democratic countries. Whereas before, you would not expect a Putin and an Ayatollah and a Xi, with widely different political philosophies, to band together to oppose the liberal West, today this is exactly what is happening. And it poses a major challenge.

The problem is, using Applebaum’s terms, that with Trump’s election, it is less and less clear that the United States stands on the side of the democracies and that, if this is true, we will see Trump cozying up to some of these dictators, such as he seems already to be doing with Putin and joining Autocracy, Inc., or at least becoming a fellow traveler.

First reports from Pete Hegseth’s meeting with NATO officials about the Ukraine state that the United States position is now to support conversations to end the war, to make it clear that American troops would not get involved in policing the area, and to insist that Ukraine will not join NATO. On the other hand, Treasury Secretary Bessent has recently been in Ukraine and he is talking about further American support being dependent on Ukraine’s granting America the rights to $500 billions of rare minerals, which seems a bit in contradiction to Hegseth’s and Trump’s comments

So……we really don’t know what will happen next. But it is very worrisome.

This morning, with my Thursday breakfast group, I heard a friend’s presentation on the secret code breaking accomplishments during World War II at Bletchley Park in England, where both the Japanese and the even more encrypted German codes were broken to help the Allies win the war. Within this amazing story is a fascinating statistics. At its height, there were about 9,000 people working at Bletchley, experimenting, running into many dead ends, and finally reaching success. WWEMD? What would Elon Musk have done if he had been asked to examine the staffing at Bletchley Park? What a difficult time we are now living in.

Now, on my TV, is the committee hearing on Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the FBI. I am now publishing this blog post before knowing how this vote will come out. I haven’t watched the entire hearing, but I don’t see any sign that any Republican has spoken against the Patel nomination, so I guess we know, without waiting for the vote, how this will turn out.

Let’s see if I get this right:

1. If Canada and/or Mexico refuses to boost their border activities, the United States will put tariffs on their exports to the United States.
2. If any country puts tariffs on their imports from the United States, the United States will put reciprocal tariffs on them.
3. If Jordan and/or Egypt refuses to take, on a temporary or permanent basis, as many as 2.5 million refugees from Gaza, the United States will not give them the financial assistance (totally almost $3 billion) that we give them every year.
4. If Hamas does not free ALL hostages this weekend, “all hell will break loose”.
5. If Denmark does not simply give to the United States (as if it could) Greenland, Denmark will no longer be an ally of the United States.
6. If Russia does not give Marc Fogel to the United States, the United States will not support Russia in its war in Ukraine. But if it does…..
7. If Ukraine doesn’t give to the United States at least $500 billion of rare minerals, the United States will stop giving Ukraine support for its war against Russia.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk have spent their lives being bullies. You can’t teach old dogs new tricks.

Trump’s foreign policy is a bully policy, to be sure. His America First policy has nothing to do with trying to make the world of the future better than the world of the present. It is simply a policy which seems to have no concern whatsoever about the future of the world outside of the United States of America. And seems to assume that if the United States gets everything that Trump wants it to get, the world of the United States will be better irrespective of what happens elsewhere. Here, he certainly is wrong.

And of course, this gives Trump the benefit of doubt. It assumes he is thinking that what he is doing is going to benefit the United States, rather than just satisfy his ego. And frankly, I doubt whether he deserves the benefit of doubt.

While writing this, I am watching the House Government Efficient and Waste Committee hearing, with three witnesses who are giving more than reasonable testimony how government efficiency. But it is really a shame that the Republicans will not ask Elon Musk to testify, since he is the prime mover in trying to make the government more efficient, right? And why doesn’t the hearing talk about the legality of what is being done by our co-presidents? And what about the illegal firing of so many Inspectors General? And what about stopping the various investigations into Musk’s various companies?

These are the things that this Committee should be looking at. But bullies do not look at themselves and, although Congress should be looking at this, they too (the GOP majority) are victims of the same bully. If they say anything that Trump dislikes, they will either lose their seats in 2026, or – if they can keep their seats – it will cost them much more money than they, or perhaps their supporters, have.

One last thing. In yesterday’s Presidents Musk and Trump press conference, there was an important guest, whose father is already thinking about the 2056 presidential race. It is four year old X æ A-Xii Musk. How old will he be before he goes down to court to request a name change?

Just wondering.

Yes, “the underestimation of the bad actor”, a phrase I heard yesterday from New York University Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat. She is, as you may know, an expert on totalitarian regimes, and author of the terrific and informative book Strongman. The question she was asked was: what are some of the typical things that happen in democratic countries which have turned to some sort of one-man rule? Her answer is the title of this post. And her further explanation was that underestimating the strength, intent or drive (my words) of the potential strongman has been fatal to defending against him.

With all that is going on, it was disheartening yesterday to see the result of a new CBS poll showing that Trump has a 53% approval rating. That is disheartening for two reasons. One is that 53% is a big number, and two, because he didn’t win the election by this large of a percentage. On the other hand, it seems to me that the pollsters worded some of the questions to give a distorted result.

For example, I would have answered yes to the following questions: Is Trump tough? Is Trump energetic? Is Trump focused? Is Trump effective?

Of course, I would have answered yes to those questions if they were asked about Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin.

Trump has scored high on his deportation program. Most Americans approve. But, from what I see in the brief description of the survey I have read, while the deportation program gets high marks, the establishment of “camps” to hold those being deported does not. Yet, even with this question, I wonder. The recipients probably don’t know that, in spite of Trump’s braggadoccio (my word), his deportation numbers are comparable to/lower than Biden’s or Obama’s.

Similarly, there are internal contradictions in the polling results. 54% of Americans like the way Trump is handling Gaza, but only 14% think America should take over and redevelop the Strip.

And, although results are 53% positive overall, 66% think he is not doing enough to reduce prices, only 44% are for tariffs on Mexico, 40% for tariffs on Europe, and 38% for tariffs on Canada. As to DOGE and Musk, I saw results split by party. 74% of Republicans think Musk should have at least some influence on government “operations and spending”, while 70% of Democrats think he should have “not much” or (49%) none.

You can see all the results online. There are several more categories and gradations, but there was also one major omission (at least), in that there were no questions asked about Ukraine or Russia. And none about Trump’s cabinet nominees.

While news is flying about fast and furiously, there may have been a few things that you have missed. Did you know that Trump has issued an Executive Order requiting federal agencies to immediately stop ordering or providing paper straws? And that he wants a national plastic straw development plan put together for the entire country?

And do you know that, clearly for political reasons and nothing else, he has ordered the District Attorney in New York to drop all charges against NYC Mayor Adams? Has nothing to do with guilt or innocence (not even a pretense that it does), but because Trump views Adams as a potential aide leading to his control over his hometown.

And what about American businesses who pay bribes to firms or governments overseas in return for favors? Now, he has made it clear that the Department of Justice is not to bring any prosecutions under those laws. How can Americans become first if we can’t use bribes to throw around our economic weight?

We will see how Trump will react to an increasing number of losses in court. Whether he will obey the courts, ignore the courts, or come up with tricky workarounds. We will see when Republican legislators will finally break with him, if ever. We will see if the Democrats can get their messaging in line, and whether they can come up with the right messengers. We will see a lot.

In the meantime, try to get a copy of Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen, or Madeleine Albright’s Fascism, Jared Diamond’s Upheaval, or Masha Gessen’s Surviving Autocracy, and see how much you recognize in what they say.

There is so much to read these days that I don’t have time to read any books. I have been working on Stanley Karnow’s Paris in the Fifties for two weeks, a chapter here and a chapter there. Typically I would have read it in two or three days. It, by the way, is a marvelous book, chapter by chapter. I especially enjoyed the chapter on French executions and the humane invention of the guillotine, which I may report on when things calm down. It really showed you a “slice of life”, or as Karnow reported, when talking about the executioner being paid by the execution, this might have been the first example of severance pay.

Onward.

Our beloved president issued one of the few orders yesterday with which I substantively agree (whether he followed correct procedure, I don’t know). He has ordered the Mint to stop making and circulating pennies. I had previously read that one day the government would pay people 5 cents for every penny they turn in, as a part of getting pennies out of circulation, but now I doubt this will happen. I have several large jars of pennies awaiting my 5:1 conversion, but it looks like my collection will lose, not gain, value. We will, of course, see.

Did you see Masha Gessen’s column in yesterday’s print edition of the New York Times? I thought it very interesting, and helpful, since it gave a different slant on what is going on today. The article talked about Gessen’s parents who, for the first time, 40 or more years ago, took a trip outside of the USSR. They went to Poland and saw the American film, Cabaret. They returned and told young Masha that they were chilled when they heard the young, vibrant, blond haired, blue eyed Germans singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”. It was the first time that they, living under Communism their entire life, realized that there actually could be a better time, but that better time could suddenly end.

Of course, Gessen is using this story as an analogy to the start of Trump2, and went on to discuss several ways to react to this time in American life. You can read the article to see what she said.

But it reminded me of the two other times in my life when things changed on a dime (not on two pennies), and my reaction to each.

The first was in February 1968, now 57 years ago. With a friend who shared my predicament, I got on an airplane at Lambert Field and disembarked at the San Francisco airport. We were on our way to Ft. Ord, outside of Monterey, for four to six months (we didn’t really know) of basic and advanced training in the U.S. Army. We were newbie members of an Army Reserve unit based in St. Louis and were happy that we would be civilians (sort of) in several months and that it was unlikely that we were going to see Vietnam.

We had a day and a half wandering around San Francisco (first time for me anywhere in California) and in 1968, San Francisco was another world. Everyone was either a hippie or overly dapper, the city was clean and progressive, the weather could not have been better. It was as different from St. Louis as it could be. We reported to any Army building at the appointed time, with the minimal luggage that we were told we could bring, joined a significant number of other young men (obviously, men only) and were politely escorted onto an Army bus for the hour or so trip to our new home.

The bus trip was relaxing. Everyone was in a good mood, although we noted that, as we neared the Monterey Peninsula, the sun hid itself and everything was gray and damp, which did cast a shadow on our mood. We did not know, at that time, that the overcast sky was going to last our entire time in Monterey.

The bus pulled onto the base, as we looked around with curiosity, and stopped in front of one of the many white painted wooden buildings, and we were told to get off.

The second we got off, people started yelling at us. Screaming at the top of their lungs. Like I always imagined it would be at a German concentration camp, if truth were known. Cursing. Personal remarks about appearance. Yelling at us to get our belonging. Yelling at us to start running. Giving us orders and changing them before we even really heard them. It was chaos.

The chaos continued through basic training (and then miraculously stopped). We were no longer subject to American constitutional protections. Freedom was gone. We did not belong to ourselves anymore. We belonged to them.

And how did we react to that? We, a group of young men, ages 19 to 25 or so, raised in the freedom of America. Did we revolt? Did we make our feelings known? Did we form a clandestine organization? Did we just fall apart?

None of the above. We simply accepted and accommodated to our new situation. And it took us less than two seconds to do so.

So, whether it’s the US Army, the USSR, or Trump’s America, my guess is it is pretty much the same.

My second example is maybe less extreme. I joined my first DC law firm in 1972. It was a very successful and comfortable firm, and it grew rapidly. But by 1989, it outgrew itself, its parts became more valuable than its whole, and it split up.

About 20 of us stayed together and, with about a dozen other lawyers, became the Washington office a large and well established New York firm. We stayed in our offices, and the others moved in so that, in a sense, nothing had changed. But in fact, everything changed. At the time,  I remember feeling: this is how it would feel if I woke up one day in my house and discovered that the Soviets had taken over.

It didn’t get better, by the way. The Soviets remained in charge until I walked out the door in 1991, my two year commitment fulfilled. The others from my firm remained longer, unhappy, grousing to each other, but accommodating themselves to their circumstances.

So my conclusion? People give in and accept new circumstances more often than they don’t. And Presidents Trump and Musk know that and count on it.

We had a very nice dinner with a group of friends last night. One of the couples are (is?) the Schneiders. I am not going to identify them further, but you may want to try to figure out who they are. According to Google’s AI, there are 101,290 people in the United States named Schneider, and it is the 312th most popular name in the country. So, good luck.

By the way, when I asked Google how many Schneiders there were in the country, did I expect a real response? No, I didn’t. But there you go. I also learned there are approximately 44,000 Hessels in the country. It is hard to believe that the ratio of Schneiders to Hessels is less than 3 to 1, but that’s what Google says. This may be one reason not to trust Google AI. And, you may also be interested to know there are fewer than 5000 Trumps, thank God.

The reasons I bring this up is that last night I learned about the “Schneider Rules”. They are rather straightforward, although I may have missed a couple of subtleties.

1. You do not talk about Donald Trump before you have had your morning coffee or breakfast.
2. You do not talk about Donald Trump after 9:30 p.m.
3. You do not talk about Donald Trump on holidays or Shabbat.
4. You do not engage in a conversation about Donald Trump with anyone at any time until you have received their consent.

There was a brief further discussion (even though it was by now after 9:30 p.m.) about what your responsibilities are if you violate one of these four basic rules. That seems to be unclear at the present time.

I have been watching MSNBC this morning. It is so often you see people on news shows with whom you vehemently disagree, and it is refreshing to watch people with whom your sense of agreement is almost 100%. The guests on this morning’s shows included Congressman Jamie Raskin, recently “fired” Federal Election Commission commissioner Ellen Weintraub, and Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza. In fact, if you asked me to name the three people I would most like to have dinner with (last night’s friends not included), I would suggest Jamie Raskin, Ellen Weintraub and Vladimir Kara-Murza. What a delight that would be. If you are not familiar with them, I would suggest you Google them and click “News”, read Vladimir Kara-Murza’s Washington Post op-ed piece that I think is being published today, and then go on YouTube and watch some of their recent interviews.

What a world (with all its problems) this is that you can do all of that by a click on a keyboard.

Kara-Murza (can I just call him Vladimir?) of course is one of the luckiest men alive, having been released from Russian prison (his friend Alexei Navalny was not, unfortunately) in a prison swap that clearly had nothing to do with Donald Trump. He was interviewed by Ali Velshi (I’d be happy to have dinner with him, too, but he seems to busy) and spoke about the actions of American social media companies that say that they favor free speech, but which succumb to the “laws” of countries like Russia that prohibit free speech. He specifically mentioned Apple, which has eliminated certain news apps from its app store inside Russia at the request of the Russian government. He made the point that the United States, with Radio Free Europe, etc., had spread democratic thinking behind the iron curtain, but that now American companies were in effect conspiring with dictatorial regimes to repress free speech.

Kara-Murza talked about his initial days after his arrest in Moscow, when he was thrown together with four other normal Russian prisoners, and he was able to learn exactly what they knew about the war in Ukraine from Putin’s clampdown on free speech in the Russian media. He said that after a few days, he was able to convince them of what was really going on (civilian killings, hospital and utilities bombing, etc.), and that this shows you what would happen to build up opposition to Putin if technology was used to broadcast “truth” into Russia, rather than suppressing it in accordance with “local laws”.

Ellen Weinstein, who has been illegally “fired” by Trump, and locked out of her office and computer, is still an FEC commissioner because her term is not up and Trump clearly has no right to fire her. I saw her a couple of nights ago on Rachel Maddow, as well as this morning on MSNBC, and she is still figuring out what to do. But, as you will see when you Google her, she is someone you clearly want to serve out her term, and maybe you would like her then to do even something more (beyond having dinner with me, that is).

At any rate, today is a rather unscheduled day in our house. I guess I will watch the Superbowl tonight. For the last several years, I have rooted for Kansas City (home state loyalty), and I never like Philadelphia fans to win anything (for obvious reasons), but I seem to be very neutral this year. Not sure why, except I guess maybe my mind just has bigger fish to fry.

When Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he said that the election results were fraudulent, that the Democrats had cheated nationwide. His response was to bring, or cause to be brought, over 60 law suits challenging the results. He lost every single one of those law suits, either at trial or on appeal, whether or not the judges involved were appointed by Democratic or Republican presidents.

He won the 2024 election, so no allegations of fraud were brought and no challenges were filed. Instead, he has taken his fairly narrow victory as a rout, and is attempting to recast the country in his image. His actions have resulted in a large number of opposing law suits, and – according this morning to Lawrence Tribe – the results so far are Trump 0 – Democrats 12.

The opinions of the District Court judges so far, although based on different fact patterns, all have found that Trump has overstated his authority in one or another (or perhaps, in every) way. And at least several of these opinions have concluded that Trump’s actions are not only against the law, but are unconstitutional. Some, like the attempt to end birthright citizenship by fiat, seem blatantly unconstitutional, while others, like attempts to simply erase Congressionally established agencies, such as USAID, are less directly unconstitutional but go to the constitutional relationship between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government.

As both houses of Congress are now narrowly controlled by the Republicans, and as no Republican seems to have the courage to vote against the President on any matters (this itself being a serious governmental problem), it is left to the third branch of Congress, the judiciary, to weigh in and attempt to keep the Constitution from disintegrating.

To my knowledge, throughout American history, no president has challenged the authority of the courts. If the courts find a presidential or Congressional act to be unconstitutional, so be it. It is unconstitutional. But is the Trump administration paying any attention to the decisions being rendered by the courts so far? It is harder to answer this question than you might think it should be.

For example, Trump put out a very early Executive Order freezing all government spending (with limited exceptions), and the court determined that the Executive Order was improper. The White Houses then withdrew the Order. But…… But it is not clear that they haven’t frozen the spending anyway. In fact, at one point, the president’s young press secretary (if I remember correctly) said that the court required the order to be rescinded, but not the substance of the order.

We now have a number of decisions requiring certain actions to be undone, and there will be more. Keep DOGE away from certain government data and files and require them to destroy any such material they may have already in their control. Reverse certain personnel decisions. And, probably, there will be injunctive relief regarding Trump’s ability to by himself terminate USAID or the Department of Education. And who knows what the courts will do when OMB director Russell Vought starts impounding funds in violation of anti-impounding laws and maybe the constitution.

The big question is whether or not Trump will abide by the decisions of the courts. If he doesn’t, it will be a first, and it will create a constitutional crisis of mammoth proportions. For, as you know, the courts do not have their own enforcement mechanisms. So if, for example, the courts say that Trump cannot abolish USAID, and he says “I am going to do it anyway”, what happens next? None of us know.

There are so many other things going on that it becomes almost impossible to follow them all, and some of them may get lost, as Trump undoubtedly hopes they will.

For example, and I don’t understand the details, he has ordered all federal agencies to stop referring not only to DEI, but to words such as “gender”, and all federal agencies seem to be conforming. I read a post from Cong. Jamie Raskin yesterday referring to what is happening at schools on military bases. He cited an incident at one school, where photos of Martin Luther King and Susan B. Anthony were taken down from a classroom wall, but a picture of Leonardo da Vinci left hanging.

Another example is this young Musk-ateer who resigned when it became known that he had X’d (or something) that he was a “racist before it was cool”, that he couldn’t be paid enough to marry someone outside his “ethnic group” and so on. Musk then announced that he was going to rehire him, Vance said that “everyone deserves a second chance” (ha ha to Vance), and the Presidents said that if the “vice president approves, so do I”. So the racist will be rehired (we don’t even know who is paying him, by the way), as civil servants are being fired.

A third example would be the ego-chutzpadik (my word) action by Trump to make himself the chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center to usher in the Golden Age of American culture. Not only does this raise questions about the future of the Kennedy Center, but it got me thinking that about all of the arts community. I have a daughter who is the associate development director of a major DC theater. She tells me that the theater receives several hundred thousand dollars of funds either from federal institutions (like the NANational Endowment for the Arts) or from DC agencies who receive funds from the federal government. What strings will now be put on those federal funds? And this is not something that just affects her theater. It will affect almost every theater in the country.

I can’t help but thinking, for example, of the Roundhouse Theater in Bethesda, now playing What the Constitution Means to Me, a terrific play we saw years ago, but which has now been updated to reflect the Trump years.

And then there is the task force Trump is setting up to rid the country of (non-existent) anti-Christian bias. Project 2025, here we go.

And finally, for today, after putting the fate in jeopardy of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans and others in this country through the Temporary Protected Status program, Trump has announced that white, South Africans with Dutch descent whose properties are being taken over by the South African government can come here under TPS. You noticed I used the word “white”, right? That’s because that is Trump is saying. As I understand it, the only property being taken is abandoned property and it is all being paid for, etc., etc., but that seems irrelevant. If Trump can get white immigrants and, as Boers, largely very right wing white immigrants, hooray? And among those white South Africans who have earlier come to this country, count one Elon M.

Until tomorrow.

When you decide to watch a film on TV, there are so many choices. How can you possibly select a good one? Last night we selected a good one. We only knew about it because it was one of the five films named last week in the New York Times as films that were leaving Netflix by the end of the month. We had previously watched one of the five, namely Blackhat, which I mentioned earlier. It was a good film, if not a great one, about CIA and Chinese intelligence agents cooperating to solve a problem evidenced by a number of major facility explosions in both countries, clearly done by the same criminals.

Last night, we watched another of the five, one that I thought was even better, called 21 Bridges, filmed in 2019 and starring the late and great Chadwick Boseman as a New York Police Department detective. I only glanced at its ratings before we decided to watch, and was a bit confused because Rotten Tomatoes critics only gave it a 55% rating, while Rotten Tomatoes viewers gave it 91%. We were obviously viewers, not critics.

Boseman is a detective called in to investigate the murder of eight (I think it was eight) police officers by two men who entered a bar in Manhattan to steal 30 kilos of cocaine, the bar also being a front for drugs. How the police knew that the bar was being robbed started out as quite a mystery (the kind of “what did I miss?” mystery), but it all becomes clear as the film goes on. It is a shoot and die film, with a lot of (in fact, probably too many) chase scenes, but it has a very interesting story line, ending with (stop here if you don’t want to know) the involvement of virtually an entire precinct of New York’s finest as being heavily involved in the distribution of illegal drugs. Yes, at the end the good guys (I’m sorry, the good guy) won, and, boy, there were a lot of dead cops. It’s not a gory, violent film in that there is little blood (and by the way no sex at all) and little fighting. Just bang bang, and they’re dead. I’d recommend it. You have until the 28th.

Oh, the 21 bridges? That’s the number of bridges that connect Manhattan to the rest of the world.

From this film about lawmen gone astray, we turned on Rachel Maddow and learned about real life lawmen gone astray. These were the fellas she called “Elon Musk’s juvenile delinquents”, and that seems to be an apt title. I had lunch with my daughter today and we were talking about the 19-25 year olds holding all the country’s secrets on (perhaps) their smart phones, and she said that, although they don’t know it, they are probably going to spend the rest of their lives in jail. She may be right.

So far, it is reassuring to see the courts doing their job generally with regards to the bevy of illegal DJ/BigE actions, but what we really don’t know for sure is if the courts’ decisions are going to be taken seriously by the GOP bigwigs.

This is a big question, and even if they do comply, some of the things they are doing will be hard to undo. And, although I really doubt that DJ will remain president for the next four years, I don’t have any confidence that JD has either the ability or desire to right the ship.

As usual, there are so many problems, you don’t know where to start (part of the plan, as we know). But let’s do air controllers. Young Ms. Leavitt, has, I believe, said two conflicting things: (1) US air control systems are obsolete and need to be, and will be, totally overhauled, and (2) US air travel is as safe as it can be. I guess it’s her job to speak out of both sides of her mouth (that’s a saying, no?).

In the meantime, I heard our president talk about the air control system this morning at the National Prayer breakfast. Our air control system, he said and I paraphrase, is old, creaky, falling apart, second rate, hard to maintain, etc. etc. Other countries have much better systems.  But have no fear. We are going to replace it, top to bottom,  with a new system. Coming soon to your neighborhood airport.

But then, as usual, he went off the rails. The captain of his private plane does not even use the American air control system. It is so unsafe and bad. He uses a system from another country.

Okay, what does that even mean? How can you land at an American airport using an air control system from another country? Oh, Donald.

Last point of the day. Explain this to me. Russell Vought has now been confirmed as OMB director. He believes (no lie or exaggeration here) that laws against the impoundment of appropriated funds are of no effect, and that OMB and the president can decide, say, to not provide funds to a Congressionally created program, and no one can tell them otherwise.

Now, we have a hard date (March 14, I think) that the government will shut down if we don’t have a budget approved, and the debt ceiling limit increased. I have my doubts (that’s an understatement) that Congress will have a budget by then and maybe they will simply agree to another extension to avoid a shutdown, and maybe (considering the administration wants to shut down the country anyway) they won’t. But assume they do.

Forget the Democrats for a minute, and assume that the Republicans will put together a budget and that Congress will approve it. Since the Republican Congress and OMB are theoretically on the same page, does this mean that whatever is passed by Congress will be permitted to be spent by OMG without impounding funds? Or will the Republican Congress put together a budget and then find that OMB will now permit part of their budgeted funds to be spent? And if the latter is true, will the Congressional Republicans just be surprised when OMB impounds, or – as they say – is the fix in? Will OMB and Congressional Republicans discuss the impoundments before the budget is prepared and passed, so that the members of Congress won’t be surprised? And, if that is the case (which I suspect it will be), will whatever budget that is placed for Congressional approval be a Potemkin budget, having nothing to do with the plans of the administration?

See you on Saturday.

Karoline Leavitt (DJ’s press secretary) is, I must say, off to a pretty good start, in that she is able to parry questions very successfully, seems to have not only swallowed but digested the MAGA line, and is friendly to the press pool, all at the same time. Very impressive, I think, for someone who is only 27 years old. A little about her: her father owned an ice cream shop somewhere in New Hampshire, she went to St. Anselm college on a softball scholarship, and her majors were politics and communications. What could be better for her present position: scoops, softball questions, politics and communicating.

She is married and has a young child, born only 6 months ago. Her ability to function as she is able to may even be more praiseworthy (depending on how you view motherhood responsibilities). One more thing. Her husband is (according to Wikipedia) 32 years older than she is. That would mean that he is about to turn, or already has turned, 60.

More power to her. Oh, not really. I don’t mean that.

She gave a response today as to how impressive DJ has been after only two weeks in office. Each of her points involved dealing with foreign leaders: Trump, she said, achieved his goals with Canada and Mexico on border issues, Colombia and Guatemala on taking back their citizens, and even El Salvador on agreeing to take everyone and put them in prison, whether they were Salvadoran or, say, Nepali. What does it show? It shows a bully will get his way. At least he will until he doesn’t.

Remember Karl Marx? He is the guy who said that “the end justifies the means”. That as long as you have a goal you like, you can do anything you want to get there. You are judged only on whether you did or not reach the end. You are not at all judged by the means you employed.

It looks like the Republicans are, at least to that extent, dedicated Marxists.

On Rachel Maddow’s show tonight, there was a discussion of legality. About how, until January 20, government officials knew they were not allowed to do anything illegal. Now, DJ, the Big E, and their ilk do things illegally all the time, either thinking they are above the law, thinking no one cares, or thinking the courts are too slow to matter. She and Lawrence O’Donnell were batting around possible analogies, but I think they failed.

Try this one: the best analogy is “right turn on red”. Assume a clear illegality creates a red light. When you get to a red light, you stop. If you are a Democrat and want to veer left, you can’t.  But if you are MAGA, and want to turn right, go right ahead; you are expected to break the law, and will be applauded.

What about that old reversed adage, “Ready, fire, aim”? Usually, when you use this, you are talking about someone who is so anxious to move on that they reach the third step before fully completing the second. But that isn’t the case here. Here it is much more stark.

The DJ/BigE plan is to be ready and to fire. Literally, to fire. To tell thousands of people directly or indirectly, that they are being fired. They skip the “aim” portion. That would require them, say when dealing with USAID, to decide which activities in their opinion were proper, and which were not. They just skip that step. Maybe “ready, fire, aim” does not provide a good analogy. Maybe just “ready, fire” would be enough.

Another line: “Every soldier with a living parent step forward!  Not so fast, Jones.”

That may not be very funny, but it provides another good analogy. As they send out all these buy out letters, and people come forward, they are met with comments like “not you, we need you control air traffic”, “not you,  we need you for law enforcement”, “not you, your expertise on North Korea is too important”, or “not you until, at least, after the tax season”.

Enough of the bad jokes, you say. I agree, but we are stuck with the worst bad joke I know.

Of course, I want to rail against our delusional president today, but I am going to let it go and see what others are saying….

Instead, I am going to tell you what I learned yesterday as I was wandering through Ancestry.com. As you search for your ancestors, the more generations you go back, the more people you find from whom you are directly descended. You know what I mean – four grandparents, eight great grandparents, 16 great-great grandparents and on it goes.

Over the past decades, I have put together a family tree, much of which is dependent on two other family trees put together by relatives. I had always thought that I would never be able to go back beyond 1700, where one of the lines on my maternal grandfather’s side traces back to the Baal Shem Tov (and his father, identified from his tombstone). But today I found a public tree on Ancestry.com that goes back well before that on my fathers side.

I am going to abbreviate it for you.

My father Meyer Hessel

His father Abraham Hessel

His mother Gertrude Siegel
Her mother Sona Birnboim

Her mother Feyga Breslav

Her mother Yenta Felshar

Her father Gedalia Felshar

His father Fishel Felshar

His mother Dvora Kuklai

Her father Selig Joffe

His mother Ruchlia Katz

Her father Mordechai Katzenellenbogen

His father Samuel Jehuda Katzenellenbogen

His father Meir Katzenellenbogen

His mother Julia Malka Luria

Her father Yechiel Yehuda

His father Aharon ben Nathaniel Luria

His father Nathaniel ben Yechiel

His father Yechiel Yehuda

His father Reb Shimson of Erfurt

His father Yehiel

His father Soloman

His father Jehiel

His father Solomon

His father Moses Arenetta of Orleans

His father Isaac

His father Eliezer

His father Aaron (the doctor)

His father haGaon Atdam

His father Gaon Yossi of Constantinople

His father Drowsy

His father Yossi bar Nachman of Eretz Israel

His father haGaon Yochanan

His father Yehoshua Zimri

That means that Yehoshua Zimri (and that’s as far as the trees go) was my

great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather. And that reaches back at least 1,000 years!

Now I know you have two questions. One is how I can rely on this information, and to that I have no good answer (at this time, at least). Your second question is why anyone would have tried to reach so far back and believe that they have succeeded. That’s an easier one. It’s because Rashi is on this chain and from his time backwards, you can understand why this search has been done.

A couple of other things. How many 32nd great grandparents does one have? I looked that up, and I didn’t find an answer, but Google AI tells me that I have 1,048,576 18th great grand parents.

On this list, my 18th great grandparent would be Rev Shimson of Erfurt, whose life straddled 1400, or about 600 years ago. The world population in 1400 was about 350 million. The Jewish population in 1400 was only about 2,000,000.

If you continue to multiply that 1 million ti the 32nd generation, you wind up with almost 17 billion greatx32 grandparents, of whom dear Yehoshua the Gaon was only one.

There are estimates that several hundred years before, the Jewish population of the world was much larger, maybe as high as 8,000,000. As to how many 32nd great grandparents one has, I am sure it is even more than 8,000,000. This all raises other questions, to be sure. And then how do we get back to that one couple in Africa who were the ancestors of us all?

The other interesting thing about this list is the geographic spread of this chain of my ancestors, or rather not the spread, but the migration. If you had asked me where my father’s father’s family was from, I would have said that they are from northern Lithuania, near the Latvian border. And that would be true as far as my great grandfather and great, great grandfather, but then things are much different. Some of the people on the above list do come from Lithuania or Latvia, but others are in present day Ukraine, Belarus, Germany, Italy, Turkey, France and Israel. Just wandering Jews, I guess, even though sometimes their wandering stops for two or three generations. And, of course, each of the individuals on the list above had a spouse, and it appears that sometime the two spouses were born in the same city, but other times you find spouses who were born hundreds of miles apart. Think of all the stories here.

I hope that at some time, I will find the time to explore all of this further, so that when my grandchildren are given the obvious assignment in elementary or middle school (can you tell use about your 34th level grandparents?), the will answer: “of course”.