Art is 80

I wish I knew more about what I am writing about this morning. I only know a little, but it’s enough to get us all thinking. We need to put some things together.

First, Pam Bondi and Kash Patel announced indictments of Ryan Wedding and others for a number of crimes relating to significant cocaine trafficking. I listened to their description and they included an accusation regarding the murder of a prospective witness in an earlier case against Wedding as the witness was eating in a restaurant in Medellin, Colombia. He was shot in the head five times.

Then, I was listening, but only with one ear, to Jan Psaki on MS NOW last night when she was talking to an Epstein survivor making her first public appearance. The survivor, whose name I did not get, said that she was trafficked to other men than just Epstein, that some of them had names we would recognize, and that she could or would not name any names. On the same program was the brother of Virginia Giuffre, the Epstein victim who both wrote a book and then took her own life. He said that the survivors could not name names because there were some very important people involved, and that some of them have made threats to the survivors, and to their families.

Think about the poor prospective witness in Colombia. Where do powerful, privileged individuals stop when they feel threatened?

Third, you may remember my post earlier this week after we saw Ibsen’s The Wild Duck. In that play, a happy family was forced to face truths about their relationship and family’s history, and those previously unknown truths tore the family apart with fatal consequences. At that time, I warned to beware the release of the Epstein files.

Assuming that Bondi and Trump do release the documents and do not redact names (and I think the legislation as passed requires names to be named), there may be some surprising names on the list. It might be appropriate for the men involved to have their participation made public, but many or most of these men may have totally innocent wives, and totally innocent children and grandchildren. All will be permanently affected. The Epstein saga has already taken the life of Virginia Giuffre. The Ibsen play took the life of a 14 year old family member. The Wedding saga has taken the life of a potential witness. What will be the result of the release of the remaining Epstein files, and of the inevitable actions that will be called for after those files are made public?

I just wish things could be handled with less confusion and potential for more hurt and harm.

So far, the only definitive names we have heard are Former Prince Andrew, who has been divorced for 30 years, and whose two daughters are in their mid-30s; Steve Bannon, divorced with a 30 year old daughter; and Larry Summers, married to his second wife for over 20 years, with three adult children from his first wife. Summers’ position is the strangest since, as I understand it, he was looking for romantic advice from Epstein while married to his current wife. Is that true?

I am now watching Dick Cheney’s funeral on C-Span. That is something I never thought I would be compelled to do, as I was so opposed to everything Cheney stood for through so much of his career. But times have changed, and I view Cheney as representative of the country that we now seem to have lost and for which I feel a great deal of nostalgia.

By the way, you probably know that today is Joe Biden’s 83rd birthday. He is spending it at Dick Cheney’s funeral. Cheney was 84.

I pulled out the contents of a random drawer in my office desk, which has 12 drawers. What would you do with these things if you were clearing out my house?

I am sure that guides to the renowned St. Louis Zoo are a dime a dozen. But this one is from 1881. You might be confused if you thought the St. Louis Zoo was established after the 1904 World’s Fair closed. You actually are correct. This is a much earlier, private zoo located at what is now Fairgrounds Park in north St. Louis.

The guide was written by 22 year old Festus Wade, who later became one of the leaders of the organization which developed the World’s Fair, as well as the founder of the Mercantile Bank and Trust, for a long time St. Louis’ largest bank, and then president of the American Bankers Association, and an individual asked by President Taft to help draft the Federal Reserve Act.

I have not located another copy of this booklet.

This original zoo had a large building called the Bear Pit, which held grizzly and black bears, and which still exists today, unused. And no one, I bet, who uses that park knows what once was there.

I think I said this before, but singer Al Jolson and my father were first cousins. I have quite a collection of Jolson memorabilia. This signed photo is one piece that does have some value. Jolson’s father, Moshe Reuben Yoelson (my grandfather’s older, but not oldest, brother) lived in Washington DC, where Jolson was born. He led a synagogue in S.W. DC (the building is no longer there), which merged into today’s Ohev Shalom Synagogue on 16th Street. I never met Jolson (who died in 1950) or his father, who died earlier.

This is a small Russian (or I should say Soviet) world atlas from 1960. I know no one keeps or uses any atlases today, and one in Russian from 1960 has limited value, but I have a number of Soviet atlases of that vintage, as well as a Russian language globe in perfect condition. It’s interesting because it notes lakes and rivers and mountain ranges, and oceans and cities, but has no country markings at all. It is not in a drawer.

This theater playbill may have limited interest to most of you. If you were clearing the house and came upon it, what would you do? Easy to toss it, right? Looking on EBay, though, I see that someone is selling a copy from the same year (but Washington instead of New York) for just under $200. Maybe throwing it out would not be so smart.

This map of St. Louis is from 1905, one year after the World’s Fair. Now look closely…..

This is obviously the same map. Just as obviously, perhaps, the green marks show city parks and cemeteries, pretty much the same today as then. The largest park (center, left) is Forest Park, where the Fair was located, and where the St. Louis Art Museum and today’s zoo can be found. As an aside, abutting the western park boundary, just outside the city limits, is the start of the Washington University campus. If you look northeast of Forest Park, you see some more green spaces. The smallest and furthest south is today’s Fairgrounds Park, the home of the old zoo referenced above. By the way, there was also a race track in the park. Horseracing was banned in Missouri in 1905. St. Louis’ three tracks all closed, and the area’s racing moved across the river to Illinois.

The rest of the drawer is a hodgepodge. An 19th century map of Africa showing a lot of unknown territory, a 19th century lithograph of the St. Louis waterfront, a very complete guidebook to Plymouth MA from 1920,  a brochure in English and Chinese publishing the then new Constitution of the Republic of China in 1928, the year Chiang Ksi-Shek declared the country unified under a new overall structure (didn’t last that long), a note from right winger Pat Buchanan, a letter to Metropolitan Opera General Manager Schuyler Chapin, a 1920s invitation to “you and your lady” to attend a speech by Vice President Charles Dawes under the auspices of the Nebraska Society of Chicago, a 165 page 1946 guide to Washington DC with a large pull-out street map, a three-hole laminated notebook sheet on how to improve your bowling, and finally a small pre-Nazi German book titled Die Minnesinger, with very nice illustrations:

And, yes, my entire house looks just like this.

When it was time to clean out my parents’ house, and Edie’s parents’ house, it was pretty easy. They lived in modestly sized homes, there were family members around who took some things (my sister in St. Louis took quite a bit), we had a one day non-professional estate sale at Edie’s, and we gave things to charity and threw out the rest. My mother never wanted anything that wasn’t top quality and, because she couldn’t afford a Picasso, she had a limited number of things. My father had no feeling for possessions at all. Basically, he left behind his clothes.

Our house is totally different. There is so much in it that it will take our two daughters decades to dispose of things. It is, I know, irresponsible of us to leave them with that task, but it sure looks like that is what we are going to do.

Sure, I could throw some things out today. Like, for example, a large cardboard box filled with a few hundred foreign cigarette  packages.

With a small number ofUI exceptions that were given to me, I picked them all up off the street on various trips, or on the streets of DC. I will still pick one up off the streets if I come across one, but the pandemic really changed things. You might not have noticed, but you see many fewer empty cigarette packs on the street than you did prior to 2020. That is a fact.

At one point, my collection wasn’t limited to foreign packages. I had an equivalent box with domestic packs (only one of a kind), and another of other tobacco products, like chewing tobacco and cigarillos. Some time ago, both went into the trash.

The cigarillos really surprised me. Every flavor imaginable, and they were everywhere along the streets of DC. But…..I never saw anyone smoking them. I could never figure it out.

Picking these things up as I took long walks (something I do much less of now) served two purposes. First, it gave me a goal for my walks and having a goal was important. Second, like any collection you build, you become interested in both the differences and similarities of what you are putting together. Designs, for example. Or the large variety in so many languages of warning about the dangers of smoking. Or in how many different parts of the world they make Marlboros or Lucky Strikes. Or how much more colorful cigarette boxes are elsewhere, even in Canada.

Now, I never open this box to look through my cigarette packets. Never. And I could take this box and throw it in the trash. Or I guess ask on Facebook Marketplace if anyone wants it.

But I wouldn’t be doing my kids much of a favor by doing this, would I? Throwing this box out would be so easy for them. It isn’t even heavy. You pick it up, put it in the trash, and you have a feeling of accomplishment, of immediate gratification. I don’t want to take that from them. Everything else is so difficult.

In addition to picking up cigarette packs as I took walks, I would also pick up business cards. They too have pretty much disappeared since the pandemic. I have well more than a thousand business cards. I could throw them out, too, but why? They take up very little space.

The same is true of my collection of bookmarks. How many? I am not sure, certainly hundreds and, like the cigarettes and business cards, come from all over. I especially like the bookmarks from foreign bookstores, those made of materials other than paper, and those approaching 100 years old.

And of course, there is my collection of (only) 60 or so foreign Hard Rock Cafe tee-shirts. I see them advertised on EBay for $10 or $15 apiece, so they aren’t ready for the trash heap. If I had the energy, I would dispos of them myself and not leave these to the kids, but …….

Getting rid of these 4 collections wouldn’t give much of a break to Michelle and Hannah. They would still have 99.99% of my stuff to remove. Of course, the easiest thing would be to rent a storage space or two. Then, they could leave everything to their kids. But that would be heartless, wouldn’t it?

I have long been a fan of Williams Davies King (about whom I know very little) a professor of theater at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  He has written about the art of collecting items that are themselves individually nothing, but become something when they form a collection. He has written about his collection of pieces of scrap metal that he picks up while he walks around town, as well as his collection of cereal boxes. It is so reassuring to know you are not alone.

First you say you will, and then you won’t.  Then you say you do and then you don’t. So, what are ya gonna do?

I am speaking to you, Donald Trump.

You say that “tariff” is the most beautiful word in the English language, that we need tariffs to rebuild our country’s economy, that tariffs are paid by foreign countries, and that tariffs will have no effect on American consumer prices. Now, you are cutting tariffs on things like coffee, beef, and chocolates because their prices have risen so much and eliminating tariffs should bring them down.

You argue that you are the “peace president” and that you have solved eight, or is it 80, wars. But you have attacked 21 boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing at least 80 people, and have moved extensive naval fire power into the area and threatened to launch an attack on Venezuela.

You have instructed your Republican Congressional puppets to leave town and not assemble for over a month to avoid public  release of the Epstein files, and now you have instructed those same puppets to vote for their release.

And I could go on……will the real Donald Trump please stand up?

Yesterday, we went to see a production of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck at the Shakespeare Theatre. In 19th century Norway, a husband and wife and their 13 year old daughter are living a simple, but happy life, thanks to the wealthiest man in the neighborhood, who had once been the business partner of the now impoverished father of the husband. The rich man’s son returns to town, having lived elsewhere for years, armed with the belief that society is flawed because it is built on deception and what is  necessary is truth and honesty.

Exploring the relationship of his father to this family, he concludes that his father was so helpful to this family not because of warm feelings for his old business partner, but because he had had an ongoing sexual relationships with the wife and because the daughter was likely his daughter, not the husband’s. This news tears the family apart, the young girl shoots herself with the gun that appeared in the first act, and the play ends.

What did I take from this?

Beware the release of the Epstein files! You never know where the (presumed) truth might lead.

You can’t really blame him. After all, Alexander Ovechkin is the only player in the history of the National Hockey League ever to score  900 goals, and he is 40 years old and his beard is gray. But I don’t think we thought that the Washington Capitals would be in last place in the NHL’s Metropolitan Division at this time of the year, but there they are, with only 18 points. They lost last night to the division leading New Jersey Devils in a shoot-out, 3-2.

Ovechkin did score his 5th goal of the year, but that is only about one a week. I have recently learned that  perhaps his attention is elsewhere. I think this may be the case, as I Ovi is now not only in the hockey business, but the cereal business.

Someone needs to tell him to slow down. You can’t do everything.

The Capitals were expected to be a competitive team this year, and might still be as the season goes on…..if Ovi gives up his extracurricular activity.

The Washington Wizards of the National Basketball Association were never supposed to be good this year, but they have started the season not even living up to their preseason expectations. The Wizards record as of now? One win, eleven losses. No cereal.

This of course leaves the NFL’s Washington Commanders. They stand at 3-7. Pretty good for a Washington team this year, right? Of course, they have lost 5 in a row with none of the games close, and their star quarterback, pass receivers, and several others are not playing because of injury. Today, they play a team with an identical record, the Miami Dolphins, but I bet I know what will happen. Want to get to the game? Better hurry. It is now 8:30 a.m. in Washington. The game starts in an hour. They are playing it in Madrid. Go figure.

Of course, there are other teams in town. The Nationals came in last in the MLB National League, losing 30 more games than they won. Of the 15 teams in Major League Soccer’s Eastern Division, DC United came in – you guessed it – 15th. But the Washington Mystics of the WNBA did do a little better this year. They were 10th out of a league of 13 teams. Not bad for DC, you say. But who knows what would have happened if the season had gone on longer? After all, the Mystics lost their last ten games.

But there must be at least one sport that Washington is good at. Let’s say, for example, war. Okay, our last attempts (Iraq, Afghanistan) didn’t really see us in the victory column, but it’s a new season, and I am looking forward to opening day against Venezuela. The preseason games have been pretty easy for our guys and gals, and we can only hope for a lopsided victory. The rest of the season, however, may prove tougher.

Let’s just hope our coach does not get diverted.

I don’t think anyone knows the artist who created this 12 foot statue of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands, but it is now sitting at 14th and V Streets NW, in front of Busboys and Poets, at least for a while. There is, I understand, a larger story behind the displaying of this statue, but guess what? I don’t really care.

By the way, for what it may be worth, when I went down to take a photo of the statue, which as you may know is in a very busy area filled with people in their 20s and 30s, there was a small crowd doing the same thing. The average age of the picture takers was probably about 70. Make of that what you will.

Today is a very special day in the world of artis80.blog. It is the blog’s 4th anniversary. And, because I have not missed a day, this is blog post number 1,097. If the average post would be  2 or 3 pages in print, we would have about 2500 pages of printed text, or about 8 volumes at about 300 pages per book. Just sayin’.

We celebrated the anniversary last night by having a grandchild sleepover. We watched the Adam Sandler animated film Leo. No one had seen it of the four of us. I really liked it.

Leo is a pet lizard kept in Ms. Malkin’s 5th grade classroom, along with his friend Squirtle the Turtle. They have been in this classroom quite some time. Leo is 74 years old and learns that lizards live 75 years. He panics, and decides it’s time to spread his wisdom to the kids.

The unique thing is that Leo and Squirtle can talk, although nobody knows it. They keep that trick secret. But when Ms. Malkin decides that every weekend  Leo should go home with a child, Leo tells each child he can talk, but swears them to secrecy.

Each child has a problem. One is shy, one a bully, one never stops talking, one is very rich and thinks she should get everything she wants. Leo helps each of them deal with their problems.

Of course, there is adventure, too. Leo must be rescued after he is dumped in the Everglades, for example. And that’s not easy.

This morning, they turned on another film to watch while we’re getting ready to ship them off. This time, it was the Minecraft movie, which they seem to know almost by heart. I wasn’t paying close attention, but it seemed to me just an awful film.

One reason I didn’t pay close attention to the film is that I did a 7:15 a.m. run to Bethesda Bagels. A great time to go. You can actually park right on the street and the line was only 1 person long. But it sure operates like a factory with important deadlines to meet. The kitchen and counter filled with people, each multi-tasking with beginning of the day energy.

We hope to have a quiet day today. The schedule tomorrow is fuller. Probably too full.

Until then….

As I understand it, the U.S. Bureau of Printing and Engraving has announced it has stopped minting pennies. For me, this is exciting new, because I have two large glass containers, each with, I am sure, thousands of pennies. I had been previously led to believe that once pennies were no longer being minted, prices for all items would be rounded up to the nearest nickel and pennies would be given the value of nickels. So my, say, 2000 pennies will no longer be worth $20, but now be worth $100, making my investment in pennies the most successful investment I have ever made.

Now, no one has yet publically stated that one penny equals one nickel, but I assume that will come in time. The delay may because there is now talk about eliminating the nickel and moving its value to a dime. It is my understanding that it costs the government about a dime to make each nickel, so this would make sense and double the value of my portfolio to $200.  When the dime becomes a quarter, I will be up to $500 and then we are talking real money. For $500, for example, our furnace people can come to our house and say “everything looks good”.

Well, I read the other day that about 90% of U S. money is imaginary anyway. If I write you a check for $50 from my bank account and you deposit the check into your bank account, no money moves from one to another. We just pretend it does. And our bank supports our imagination by sending us every month a piece of paper showing how much imaginary money is in our account. And it lets us use that imaginary money to buy real things.

Of course it used to be much different. At one time, real money was the only money. And then, paper evidences of money were printed, but you could take that money to designated places and exchange it for gold. And later, you could exchange it for silver. You can’t exchange your money for anything like that now. What you have, with regard to your paper money, are “Federal Reserve Notes”. The role of the Federal Reserve in this instance is to convince us that this money really is worth more than the paper it’s printed on. And it can only do that by playing on our gullibility, because in fact, outside of our imagination, it is only  worth the paper it is printed on.

Of course, we think it also has the backing of the government.  But does it? And what does that even mean? Inflation can tear its value to pieces.

That gets me to cryptocurrency, about which I understand not very much. But I think I understand this much. Cryptocurrency is just a different form of imaginary money. But cryptocurrencies are not backed by the Federal Reserve or by any other governmental agency. They are only backed by others who are invested in cryptocurrency, all of whom are determined to keep the imaginary value of this non-existent money very high. We will see how long they can do it and what happens if they can’t.

Now here is where my understanding collapses. U.S. imaginary money exists because the Federal Reserve says it exists and decides how much of it should exist at any given time.

Without the Fed, who decides how much imaginary cryptocurrency exists? Naturally, it is the original inventors of the imaginary cryptocurrency concept, who want to make sure the imaginary supply of this imaginary money is kept to a limited amount.

In order to do this, they developed the imaginary concept of “mining” this imaginary money using not pickaxes, but computers. And they developed a way to mine cryptocurrency that is very technical, very expensive, and very time consuming, and which requires a large amount of expensive equipment and uses an unimaginable amount of energy and electricity. All to “produce” something that you can not feel or see, because it does not exist.

But in order you produce this imaginary currency that benefits only those rich enough to play a part in this game, you (1) have to build large data centers that eat up a large amount of land, (2) and use an inordinate amount of electricity, putting a strain on real customers of that electricity as they see prices rise and capacity diminish.

What is the government to do in this situation? It could limit and regulate cryptocurrency, or it can ignore the problem because one of the big beneficiaries of the sordid business is the president of the United States himself.

Getting back to my pennies….

Manhattan Island is 22.82 square miles in land area. The City of San Francisco is 46.87 square miles in land area. The Denver International Airport is 54 square miles in land area. I tell you this not because this information sets forth a universal truth, but simply to say show you that some elements of reality are completely unreal.

That includes information about American rabbis and rabbinic students. For example, we have all heard that some congregations find it difficult to find rabbis. Apparently, that is the case. But, if you are a university Hillel (sort of a congregation, to be sure) and you are looking for a new rabbi, you will, on average, have 19 applicants.

This is according to the Atra Center for Rabbinic Innovation and is part of a recently released study that covers all but the most Orthodox of rabbinic movements. The study turns up some fascinating hard to believe conclusions. It is not hard to believe that female rabbinic students outnumber male students. This seems to be true in so many fields. You know that  in the Catholic Church if female priests were permitted, it would lead to a mixed gender College of Cardinals, and eventually to a female Pope. A female Pope is etymologically impossible, so what would  she be called?

Going back to rabbinic students, Atra reports that 12 percent of them identify as bisexual. That is more than double the approximately 5.2 percent of Americans in general who describe themselves that way, and it seems like a big number.

But beyond this, another figure really surprised me. According to the study, 51 percent of rabbinic students identify as LGBTQ. That is, by my calculations, a majority, and about 5 times the percentage of self-identified LGBTQ people in the United States generally. Assuming this number is true, why is that the case? And is related to the amount of  gay men found to be in the Catholic priesthood?  Are members of minority sexual orientations more apt to be looking for answers to basic life questions, and hoping to find them in religious communities or by delving deeply into religious thought?

I bring you these facts and more (such as a giraffe has a 21 inch tongue) to take your mind off the more pressing questions of the day, such as (1) what did Trump know? and (2) when did he know it? To say that “he knew about the girls” tells me nothing. Of course, he knew there were girls there. But “what” did he know about them?

But it goes beyond Trump and ex-Prince Andrew, right? The accusations included Andrew as a participant. No one has, at least yet, said that about Trump. But the many survivors all have their own lists of men who were active participants, to one or another extent, in their victimization. But none have named names. If it is appropriate to hound Trump for whatever he did, is there a reason to leave the others alone? Shouldn’t it be that everything should be laid bare (no pun intended), or nothing should be? And if the answer to that is an easy “yes”, what is the answer to the harder followup question?

And one thing more. What did Ghislaine name her prison service dog? That just might be the key. My guess? My guess is he is Prince Andrew.

Jennifer Rubin, formerly of the Washington Post and currently one of the founders/leaders of the website/podcast The Contrarian, published a vituperative posting yesterday/this morning tearing apart the eight Democratic senators who voted with the Republicans to end the government shutdown. Rubin was so angry at them that she suggested that the Democratic Party cut off all funding support for their next re-election campaigns and suggested that Illinois Senator Dick Durban should not only be removed from his role as Democratic whip in the Senate, and should not only not be nominated by his party for another term (Durban is my age and has already said he will not run for re-election), but should immediately resign and let Illinois governor Pritzker pick a real Democrat to take his place.

Jennifer Rubin is wrong. The Democrats made their point and publicized what would happen to health insurance costs and availability for millions of Americans, so that everyone (hopefully) understands the problem. They stood up for what they believed, and the government shut down because the Republicans refused even to meet with or talk to their Democratic counterparts. The shutdown lasted longer than any other government shutdown and was beginning to drastically curtail SNAP payments, relied upon by many, and air traffic schedules, relied upon perhaps even by more, as well as other governmental functions. Continuing the shutdown would simply continue and increase pain.

At this point, the politics of the shutdown seemed to favor the Democrats, as seen from their victories in last week’s elections. Continuing the shutdown indefinitely might have changed that, and both parties might have found themselves equally blamed for the inevitable chaos. By voting to end the shutdown, the eight Democrats showed that they were looking out for the overall good of the American people. On the other hand, the Republicans showed that they were willing to increase the suffering of the population indefinitely, rather than talk to the Democrats or consider any change to their current position.

If you saw Lawrence O’Donnell last night, you would have seen a much more reasoned response to the vote by the eight senators. Basically, he said that the decision on how to vote involved a “guess” as to what would happen in the future. And the eight made a guess that letting the shutdown continue would wind up hurting, not helping, the country. Others are making a different guess. No one knows which guess is correct, but the task is to start from where we are today, not yesterday, and work as hard as possible to obtain a change to the current position of the Republicans.

O’Donnell is correct.

You might remember Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, who during the height of the Vietnam War, suggested that the United States should simply bring all its troops home, and declare victory. Leahy was correct. The Democrats now should do the same thing regarding the shutdown. Declare victory, show that their point has been proven, and state that now is the time to work towards continued, and then better, health care coverage. They obviously have not done this yet, and now it seems that Leader Trump has declared that the ending of the shutdown is a big Republican victory. Trump is wrong, but the Democrats might be letting him get away with it.

In the meantime, what about Leader Trump, our great peace president, who has ended at least eight wars (none of which seem to have really ended, but that’s just a detail)? Now, he is talking about starting at least two wars. He wants to attack Venezuela (and maybe other South American countries while he is at it), and he wants to attack Nigeria, of all places, so that the country will stop attacking Christians. Say, what? And somewhere in the background, isn’t there still the possibility that he will take military action to wrest Greenland from Denmark or the canal from Panama? And what happened to the Great State of Canada, USA?

Of course a lot can happen between now and November 2026, but it looks today like the ability of the Big Beautiful Bully to operate within the Bully Pulpit at will may then be coming to a close.

Finally for today…..tariffs. The original purposes of the tariffs, said Trump, were to make the United States less reliant on other countries, to build up the economy of the United States, and to raise money to help curtail spending and slow, or stop completely, the rise of the National Debt. This seems to have changed as his ICE policies make it more difficult to staff the ventures he wants to bring stateside, and now even more as he says he wants to give $2000 to every American (that includes you, Elon Musk) out of the tariff revenues.

The question is simple. How can you slow the rise of, or begin to pay off, the National Debt if you give away the money you have raised to do that? And, while you are curtailing subsidies for health insurance premiums and SNAP assistance, how can you justify giving $2000 to Elon Musk (and everyone else)?

Those are my questions from yesterday. Today will, I am certain, bring more.

It was Will Rogers, I believe, who said: “I don’t belong to any political party. I’m a Democrat.” This is because the Democratic Party was always a big tent party, then with southern segregationists and New York socialists, banded together to keep this country from the grips of big business. Times have changed – and you can’t even tell which party is more in the grips of big business – but once again we have the specter of a unified Republican Party under the absolute control of its Dear Leader, and a Democratic Party divided as to how it should be dealing with the current government shutdown and divided as to whether its current leadership is right for the times and up for the challenge.

Of course all of this is happening while the country is reeling under a government whose three branches are all controlled by the Republicans, and a country, as was shown last Tuesday (seems like a month ago already), ready to kick the GOP out of office wherever the opportunity arises.

I happen to think that the eight Democratic senators who voted with the Republicans to end the shutdown were correct. There are those who say that they were traitors to the cause of extending the ACA subsidies and other health care benefits set to expire, but their conclusion was that the Republicans were not going to give up on these points, and that the shutdown was going to drag too many people down, as SNAP benefits were being slashed, air traffic controllers and others not being paid, and much, much more.

But it is also true that the eight senators did not simply roll over. They obtained a number of benefits – reopening the government being an important one. Another was the reinstatement of all federal employees who have been fired or furloughed during the shutdown, with a promise not to fire or furlough any more federal employees before the end of January. It also guarantees that all federal employees, those required to work without pay during the shutdown and those laid off during the shutdown, will get full back pay.

The government is now funded until January 30, 2026, and three appropriations bills for the entire fiscal year, previously approved, are presumably now ready for signature, with time to finish the other FY 2026 appropriations bills. Before now,  appropriations for the past year would have ended before Thanksgiving, ten days from today. And SNAP payments, along with appropriations for various other essential programs, have now been assured through September 2026.

The big question, of course, not answered by the proposed legislation ending the shutdown relates to the health care subsidies and related matters. This was the reason given by the Senate Democrats for refusing to agree to appropriations bills for other agencies for FY 2026, and this is what led to the shutdown. Now, the only progress on this crucial point is that Majority Leader Thune has agreed with the Democrats that he will allow a vote on a bill, prepared by the Democrats, to extend the subsidies. The bill has not yet been written; I don’t think that the timing is clear. And, of course, any such bill, written by the minority party, would require a 60-40 vote to pass, and that outcome now seems pretty unlikely. In addition, such a bill would of course also have to be approved by the House of Representatives, and Majority Leader Johnson has not committed even to allow such a vote.

So the question is: if the eight Democrats had not voted to end the shutdown and had the shutdown continued, would the Republicans have buckled under and reached a compromise, or not? My guess is that they would not have, or at best would have suggested an incomplete compromise only after the shutdown had brought much more suffering (in some ways hard to imagine) to the country, and that by then blame for the shutdown would be placed at least as much on the Democrats as on the Republicans. Now, the polls show the Republicans bearing most of the blame, and that calculus is important with the midterms coming up now in less than a year.

And, of course, negotiations on the future of the Obamacare subsidies are not dead. They will have to be settled by the end of January or, who knows, another shutdown may occur. And the negotiations won’t be undertaken with a fear that premiums will go up in the future (the date being Jan 1?), but with premiums already having risen. Presumably, that will put more pressure on the Republicans to compromise, or will sway the electorate even more towards the Democrats.

Ken Martin seems to be doing a good job as chair of the Democratic National Committee (based on November 4 results). Hopefully, he will weigh in and be listened to.

In the meantime, leadership of the Democrats is in question. I have said several times on this blog that both Schumer and Jeffries need to be replaced by more charismatic individuals, and by people who do not talk with New York City accents. This is not because I hold anything against either of them; I just don’t think they are right for the job today. There are several Democratic legislators saying the same thing now. Of course, this does make the party look like it is divided (and perhaps to some extent it is), and I believe it is up to current leadership to end that divide by stepping aside. I also think that it is important that this happens now, not later. Why? Easy. There is a must-win election coming up next November, and the Democrats need to put their best feet forward. They must be united, and they should not present themselves with outmoded or lame duck leadership.

Eight Democrats in the Senate vote to end the shutdown. I was only half listening last night when they had a press conference and stated what they got, and what they did not get, as a result of their agreement and this morning I am still not sure. I am also not sure what the next steps are, but we will learn a lot more over the course of the week. I was disappointed to see some Democrats who disagreed with the eight who voted to end the shutdown attack them in fairly harsh terms. I hope that does not continue.

At some point, the shutdown was going to end, and we know it was not going to end with a complete Democratic victory, and in the not too distant future, the voters would stop blaming the Republicans and blame both parties, as suffering would continue among many different constituencies. If ending the shutdown brings back full SNAP payments, back pay for all federal workers, and full airline scheduling, that’s all to the good. If it postpones the debate about health care subsidies, that is okay, because if the debate can occur without a shutdown looming (can it?), the Democrats can certainly come out the good guys.

(What else has happened? Let’s see. Rudy Giuliani has been pardoned. Trump has become a Fox News sportscaster. There is talk about Trump wanting the Commanders to name their new stadium after him. There was some mention of Trump’s name being etched in the marble at a prominent location in the Kennedy Center. There is talk about the US minting a new coin, a coin with two heads, with Trump on both sides.)

Although we missed seeing Damn Yankees Saturday at the Arena, we did see Enemy of the People at Theater J yesterday. I first read Ibsen’s play decades ago; it stayed in my mind, because it seemed so true and so timeless. In a Norwegian village in the late-19th century, a doctor (who happens to be the brother of the mayor) is the medical director of a new municipal spa, meant to provide healing waters and to be the mainstay of the town’s economic future. But the doctor, a hero for his work on the spa, discovers that the water is contaminated and dangerous, as the mayor and others had decided to put the waterworks below the tanneries rather than above the tanneries, and he then concluded that everything had to be put on hold until the piping could all be relocated. That process would cost hundreds of thousands of crowns (apparently a lot of taxpayer money) and take two or three years.

The mayor/brother is aghast at this possibility and wants to downplay or ignore any dangers. The progressive journalists at the newspaper are 100% in favor of making sure the waters are safe before opening up the baths, until they realize the financial cost of redoing the plumbing, and the economic costs in generally of having the opening of the spa being delayed, and until they realize that they and their families will be affected by such moves. Then they all turn against the doctor and he becomes an “enemy of the people”.

It’s a very well constructed play. It’s a serious play. It’s a timeless play. And it’s a play that I have seen before. But I have never seen it in the fashion it is being performed at Theater J, where it has become somewhat otherworldly, stereotyped, stylized, in an adaptation by Amy Herzog that was seen last year in New York. Should you see it (the run has a few more weeks to go)? I think so, but I must say that, after the first act, I was ready to pan the production. In the second act, when the doctor has been given a hall to read his report on the water to the crowd, chaos breaks out in the best of theatrical ways and I thought the production was saved and for that scene alone, worth seeing.

Herzog makes many changes to Ibsen’s script, while keeping the plot pretty much the same. I would say this production is 60 percent Ibsen, and 40 percent Herzog. I wouldn’t say that I think that Herzog has improved the play; perhaps, quite the contrary. But her production keeps the main issue of the play alive: you are in a position of influence, you know something that should be altered because of a looming danger, but you learn that making the alteration will just bring about a different danger, so what do you do? How do you solve the dilemma? How do you avoid conflict? How do you assure transparency and no misinformation? Happens all the time.

For example, allowing health care subsidies to be terminated. You for sure don’t want to allow that to happen, so you oppose it the only way you see that is possible. You withhold your support and that leads to a governmental shutdown. But eventually the dangers posed by the shutdown seem at least as onerous as the dangers posed by the termination of the subsidies. At what time do you stop being a potential savior of the citizens’ health care, and turn out to be an enemy of the people?

Oh, yes, in the play there is the inevitable colloquy: I think we should pack up and move to America; this would never happen there. But, gee…

And one more thing, a sorta digression. Several decades ago, I had a meal in a Chinese restaurant and opened my fortune cookie to the strangest “fortune” I had ever seen. It said: “Never wear your best pants when fighting for your freedom”. Life went on and years later, I saw a (more traditional) production of Enemy of the People, and almost jumped out of my seat when I heard the doctor, in the last act of the play, point out that his trousers were torn, and exclaim: I guess you should never wear your best pants when fighting for your freedom!

I have no idea why Ibsen threw this line, seemingly out of rhythm with the rest of the dialogue, into the play. I am sure someone knows. I don’t think there is anything about Ibsen that someone doesn’t know. If you are that someone……

On October 15, I went on the Arena Stage website, logged in to buy two tickets to see their highly praised production of Damn Yankees. Because we were about to leave town for two weeks, I ordered tickets for the Saturday November 8 matinee. The final performance was scheduled for November 9.

I selected two seats (there were limited choices) and pushed the button to pay my money.

I thought no more about it until yesterday, the morning of the performance. My first thought was whether I had them leave the tickets at the box office, or whether they had sent them to me. My second thought was that I didn’t remember getting anything from them, including a confirmation of my purchase.

I looked at my Quicken account and saw I had recorded the purchase the day I bought the tickets, but there was no evidence of purchase on my Arena Theatre account, and there was no record on my Master Card account. I spoke to a very nice young lady at the box office who looked everywhere she could and found me nowhere. She could get us standing room tickets only, and I declined.

My fault.

So instead, we took a walk around the neighborhood.

We had a nice dinner with friends last night, and the conversation at one point turned to the Supreme Court’s decision to let the Trump administration require passports to state the gender assigned to the holder at birth.

Now there are many topics I am not expert in, and gender identification is one of them. I knew a few trans people of my generation and a few of the generation of my daughters. But it seems that so many of our friends’ grandchildren have gender issues. Assuming that there have not been any significant changes in human structure over the past decade, I can only assume that this represents some new found freedom. And who can argue against a new found freedom?

I understand there are issues. Although findings seem to feel that most people who change gender identity are happy with their new gender, clearly there are some who find life more difficult. This can be with family relationships, sexual relationships, psychological problems in general, practical problems, athletic endeavors. But none of this relates to passports.

To the extent that a passport serves as a piece of identification, you would think you would want the listed gender, like the displayed picture, to show the holder’s present status. What possible utility, on the other hand, does the gender at birth show? All it does is enable someone looking at the passport to recognize the holder as trans, for whatever mischief that could lead to. Just think: someone is identified as male at birth, becomes female after undergoing surgery and hormone treatment, definitely looks female, has a female name, and has to carry a passport that says male. What can possibly be a good reason?

The good reason is that a major goal of the administration is to sow chaos, to keep us off balance, and yes, to destroy our individual identities.

Finally, we’ll over a year ago, I said that Elon Musk’s major aim was to be the world’s first trillionaire. And look at him now!

We had a wide ranging discussion at my Thursday morning breakfast group meeting this week. The overall subject was how the Democrats should face the 2026 mid-term elections. Three of us were in charge of pulling together material to form the basis of the conversation. We did this by assembling material from various polls and studies, the most complete one being the Pew study of the 2024 presidential election, which analyzed various trends over set periods of time. We then listed a large number of platform issues, and asked which should be included, which should be emphasized, and which should be ignored by the party in its march to take over Congress next year.

There were about 30 of us present at our in person meeting at Congregation Beth El in Bethesda. Our group is composed of older males, mostly retired, all Jewish, ranging in age from about 65 to 101. Lawyers, doctors, government officials for the most part. Some academics and, because this is Washington, relatively few businessmen. And, oh yes, also because this is Washington, no Republicans. Actually, we did have one Republican, and a fairly prominent one, but he passed away at about 90 several years ago, ending our claim to be bipartisan.

How do people join our group? We have a cap on membership, and only add someone when a vacancy occurs. We have informally appointed one individual as the entire membership committee. He has a list of people recommended by other members and, every now and then, a new face appears. This undemocratic and very efficient system works well.

The discussion at the meeting quickly veered away from detailed analyses of issues, although the issues certainly loomed in the background, and went to more strategic considerations. The conclusion was that Democrats had to target those groups who had wandered away from them and now were often voting for candidates whose positions were harmful, not helpful, to their interests. These groups included younger white males without college educations often living in rural areas. This is, in fact, the largest group.

And to get to this group, the Democrats need to have emissaries with whom single, white less educated males can identify. Yes, it is true that there are some issues that should be back peddled. Gun restrictions, DEI related issues, emphsis on trans’ rights cannot be the Democrats’ focus if these voters are to be attracted. It was assumed that over concentration on matters like that would drive away this group, and that the emphasis should be on the economy, on opportunity and on hope. It seems like this may be what the Democrats are in fact doing if the words of DNC chairman can be believed.

Our presentation, so carefully prepared, was of course affected by the Democratic victories in the elections of last Tuesday. Many of the trends emphasized by Pew seemed to have been reversed. Especially, it appeared that some of the groups that seem to be abandoning the Democrats might be coming back to the Party. Certainly, there was a change in the Hispanic vote.

The large Democratic victories were in states that supported Harris, but there were smaller victories in places like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and even Mississippi, and there were zero Republican victories anywhere.

As it seems like everything Trump is doing is hurting him politically, the Democrats now have the momentum, but a year is a long time and all sorts of things can happen.

And yes, there was talk and concern about Mamdani in New York, with regard to the Jewish population, the potential flight of wealth from the city, and the inevitable identification of Mamdani as the face of the Democrats by the Republicans. But that is for another day.

At the end of the session, we passed around a ballot with a large number of presidential possibilities listed, asking each member to pick three candidates

We have collected 20 (we hope to get the others) and the individual with the most votes was Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.

Surprising?  He fits the overall tenor of the discussion. He is white, from a red state, male, from middle America, non-threatening.

Our plan is to reprise this session in late winter or early spring to track any changes in our thinking. I will keep you informed.

Yes, truth is stranger than fiction. And Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was one of the strangest books of fiction I read my kids when they were young. And then it became a movie.

Well, I assume that another movie is about to be made. And that it will be called Cloudy with a Chance of Submarines. Maybe this one won’t be for children……but maybe it will.

When Donald Trump first put federal officers of various types in the streets of Washington a few months ago, a federal employee, Sean Dunn, was outraged. He yelled at some border patrol officials, went into a Subway Sandwich Shop, bought a salami sub, came out of the shop, and threw the sandwich at Agent Gregory Lairmore, hitting him smack in the bulletproof vest.

The U.S. Attorney, Jeanine Pirro, had instructed her office to throw the book (metaphorically speaking, I believe) at apprehended alleged criminals, charging them with the strongest crime that they could be accused of, so her office wanted to bring felony assault charges against Mr. Dunn. The matter was brought before a sitting grand jury in the District of Columbia, and the grand jury refused to process an indictment.

So the U.S. Attorney started again, this time bringing the case as a misdemeanor. And now there has been a jury trial, a two day trial. And Sean Dunn was found not-guilty.

Now, there is no question but that Sean Dunn threw a salami submarine sandwich at Lairmore, or that it hit him. It may be that Lairmore exaggerated the effect of the incident when he said that the sandwich exploded, spewing onions and mustard all over him. But the sandwich, which was photographed on the sidewalk, apparently was still in its wrapper.

The jury apparently decided that throwing a sandwich at someone cannot cause harm and therefore is not an assault, that it was like a teddy bear being thrown at a parent by an angry child. Frankly, I don’t know. It seems to me you don’t want people willy nilly throwing sandwiches at federal officials all over town. You know, you start with a sandwich, and pretty soon, it’s a baked potato, and then maybe a baked Alaska.

I can’t give any advice to the federal officials strolling our streets, other than to have some paper towels handy. In fact, all of us need to be prepared, because food fights might be starting out all over. And you will have no recourse to the courts, to be sure.

On the other hand, there may be a silver lining. I for one will take my IRA and invest it in Subway stock.

Clearly, I have misgivings about this verdict. If you throw something at a federal officials, what is the boundary between something that is an assault, and something that isn’t? And if throwing a sandwich does not constitute an assault, does it at least constitute littering? Or is that only if you don’t pick it up? And when does throwing a sandwich become interfering with official duty? Only if the official is doing something? Or do I and the U.S. attorney both have this wrong? Perhaps throwing a sandwich is not an assault because, like so many others things, it constitutes free speech.

But I think this phenomenon goes beyond a submarine sandwich. Look at it this way.

Washington DC hates Donald Trump. Over 90% of Washington voted for Kamala Harris. And Donald Trump has no love lost for dirty, crime ridden, embarrassing DC. After all, he has “occupied” the town with the National Guard and extra law enforcement personnel.

He has occupied the city from whose citizens DC juries are selected.

Moreover, over the last four years DC grand jurors and DC jurors have worked very hard indicting and convicting 1000 or so individuals who rioted to various extent on the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021. Donald Trump showed absolutely no respect to DC juries or grand juries when he pardoned each and every one of these convicted criminals.

Conscious or subconscious, I don’t know. But don’t you think it may be a little time for payback?

I read yesterday that the average age of an MSNBC viewer is 72. Only a little over 20% of American voters are about that age. So it got me thinking…..where do younger people, and I guess I mean people under, say, 40, get their news? They don’t watch any TV or cable station in place of MSNBC; I assume the average ages are similar (although I don’t know). They don’t subscribe to newspapers. Or magazines. Most of their news they get somewhere on line, I assume, or from family or friends. From all of this, I conclude that they get their news in snippets. A Tik Tok reel, a headline from an on-line source, a comment from a friend. Snippets. And, if you get your news in snippets (“So what do you think about bombing those Venezuelen fishing vessels?” “Yeah, I heard about that. Sounds bad.”), how do you really understand anything, or – if “understand” – is too conclusionary – how do you even know enough to piece things together?

Now, I am not talking about the under 30 person who works in a field that requires them to keep up in the world, but the ordinary folk, who have no such professional need. How do they learn what is going on in the greater world and how does the lack of that skill affect their ability to define context in their lives?

Across my screen today, I got one of those posts that said something like “Five Things You Think About Upon Reaching 80”. Like most of those posts, it wasn’t worth much, but I appreciated No. 3: You find that the rest of the world has passed you by. To a great extent, that is true. But it isn’t that I regret not being a part of the world-to-come, but rather I regret that those in that world are not part of the world that I have been living in all this time.

For example, I spent a lot of time examining the results of Tuesday’s election. Did anyone under 40, who didn’t have to, do that? Okay, of course some did, but how many? Few, I bet.

But I learned a lot. I learned that, at least in the states that had something on the ballot this week, the voters didn’t think much of Donald Trump. I saw that, as to all the minority groups that began to swing towards the right over the past few years, they all pretty much swung back this week. That was especially true of the Hispanics, who I assume are tired of assuming, although they are all voting citizens (obviously), that they could be picked up and thrown in a detention facility half way across the country because they look like they might not be a citizen.

In fact, the only minority group that seemed to have moved against that tide were the Jews, who at least in New York, drifted to the right (if not away from the Democrats, because the top two mayoral candidates were both Democrats, although only one ran under the name of the party). Over 60 percent of the Jewish voters in New York City voted for Andrew Cuomo, only somewhat over 30% for Mamdani.

As an aside, let me say this: I am glad that Mamdani won the race for mayor, because otherwise I would have worked so hard on spelling his name correctly for no good reason.

As another aside, let me say this: Several paragraphs above, I used the word “screen”. That reminded me of my five year old grandson who was over here the other day and listening to his mother tell him how much screen time he could have while he was here. He was obviously not happy with her restrictions and decided to play on her sympathies, looking at her almost with tears in his eyes, saying “But I love screens!” He then paused a bit and said, to himself in a much lower tone as he looked at the floor, “But I hate people.”

I hope you saw how broad the Democratic victories were on Tuesday. Sure, you know about the governors of Virginia and New Jersey. But do you know that, in the Virginia General Assembly, the Democrats increased their one delegate advantage to an advantage of 14. And that some of those seats had not been won by a Democrat for 40 years, according to DNC Chairman Ken Martin. And then, in New Jersey, as I was watching Ali Velshi on the “Big Board” showing how Sherrill was doing county by county compared with Harris in 2024, it seemed that in every county where I looked, she was doing remarkably better, while the Republican candidate was trailing well beyond Trump.

Another example was in Pennsylvania, which had obviously gone for³ Trump in both 2016 and 2024. The only statewide elections were for either extending the terms of, or terminating, three judges. They were all selected by Democrats, and the Pennsylvania Republicans, plus the President, had campaigned to have the voters kick them out of office. All three were retained by at least, I think, two to one margins. Similarly in Georgia, there were only two statewide races being determined, both for somewhat minor positions on a state agency panel. In each of the two cases, there was a Democratic and a Republican candidate, and the Democrat won. What is so interesting about that is that these are the only two Democrats to win statewide offices in Georgia in decades.

There were also a number of mayoral races in major cities, including Cincinnati (where the losing Republican was J.D. Vance’s half-brother), Minneapolis (where the loser was an outspoken Arab-American), Pittsburgh, and Detroit. In none of those cases was a Republican elected.

But the only reason I know this (and in fact know more), is that I read the Post and Times this morning, I read the full Times set of election results, I read a number of news articles on my phone, and I had MSNBC on for close to two hours. How many people under 40 did that?

As to the mayoral election in New York, I thought there were three poor candidates. Cuomo I have disliked strongly since he was the Secretary of HUD, Sliwa had no chance, and Mamdani is, I think, too young and has said some troubling things. But Mamdani has been elected and needs everyone’s support. A number of very wealthy New Yorkers, who for understandable reasons were not supporting Mamdani and might have been supporting Cuomo, have contacted Mamdani today, congratulated him, wished him well, and asked what they could do to help. Obviously not everyone did this, and not yet, but that was both very encouraging and the right thing to do. Even Donald Trump said he wanted to help New York even thought it now had a “communist” mayor. But the Anti-Defamation League, which I think has gone off the deep end in recent years by automatically treating any anti-Israel sentiment as being antisemitic, has done the opposite. It has announced a “Mamdani Watch”, where it is going to keep it eyes on everything the mayor-elect does, and call it out when they don’t like it. What a pall on a formerly respectable and important institution.

Trump now has a dilemma. That is, he has a dilemma if he is in control of his own thought processes. Voters in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, California, and elsewhere have defeated him at every turn. What does he do now?

Does he say “I better change my ways to give my party a better result in the 2026 midterms?”, or does he say “Screw the bastards. Full speed ahead”?

With Prop 50 passing in California, and with the possibility of similar legislation passing in New York State, the redistricting already accomplished in Texas may have started as series of changes that will hurt, not help, the Republicans. It may make a Democratic House majority more likely for Trump’s last two years. Can Trump do anything to change that?

Of course, Trump does still have the Supreme Court behind him and, unless something changes, the Court will continue to exert more power than any other president has attempted to wield. And Trump still has a lot of control over US foreign policy. We will see if the Court will allow him to continue to exert dictatorial policy over tariffs, as the next test.

And then there’s the shutdown and, related to it, whether some Republican members of Congress will decide that unbroken fealty may not be in their interests.

On the other side, how will the Democrats capitalize on their victories? This may be a harder question to answer. And what will New York City under Mamdani look like?

There will be tremendous Republican focus on Mamdani. He will be attacked in all ways, and the Trump team has talked about punishing the city, although this may be politically unadvisable.

I did a quick look at voting patterns in the city. White New Yorkers voted strongly for Cuomo. Black, Hispanic, Asian and other minority groups for Mamdani. This will put a lot of pressure on the new mayor, and we will see how he handles it.

In conclusion? There really is no conclusion yet. And much of what happens will be up to the Democrats, not Trump. If the Democrats can prove themselves to be a big tent party and keep themselves from being targeted as crazy, far left Communists, they should do just fine next year. If Trump and the Republicans continue to act as they have been, they should do terribly. But we have a long way to go, and it’s not going to be fun.

I woke up with some anxiety this morning. There could be many reasons for it, but I will ascribe it to today’s elections. I am very impatient waiting for the results, even though I know they won’t come for the next 12 hours or so.

Politics make strange bedfellows, they say. Take our president, Donald Trump. Yesterday, he came out in support of Andrew Cuomo for mayor of New York City. Let’s get some things straight. Cuomo is a Democrat running as an Independent (should this word be capitalized?), and Trump is an Independent masquerading as a Republican (much like Hitler was an Austrian masquerading as a German – ok, enough with the Hitler analogies). But Trump as a Republican, and as the unabashed and unchallenged leader of the Republican Party, does have, you would think, an obligation to support Republicans, right?

Well, there is a Republican in the New York mayoral race, a long time Republican named Curtis Sliwa. But Trump had previously advised this Republican, a life long Republican, to drop out of the race, and as of yesterday has endorsed Democrat/Independent Cuomo (a man no one really likes – for good reason) as mayor in the hope of peeling off sufficient votes from Zohran Mamdani to keep Momdani out of that job. It was, to be sure, a ringing endorsement: New Yorkers should vote for Cuomo he said, because better a “bad Democrat” than a “Communist”.

Now, there is no way that anyone with a half rational mind could conclude that Mamdani is a Communist. He isn’t even a pure socialist, just a Democratic Socialist, which is (agree with their principles or not) a thing unto itself. But Trump’s hope, of course, is to convince New Yorkers that a vote for the Democratic candidate is a vote for Communism. And I am sure that he will succeed to some extend.

There are others who don’t support Mamdani, including a sizeable portion (maybe the majority) of New York’s Jewish population. They are wary of Mamdani not only because he is a Muslim, but because he has been relatively outspoken about the plight of the Palestinians living under Israeli operation, has pretty much refused to renounce the slogan “Globalize the Intifada”, has said that if elected mayor, he would have Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu arrested if he entered the city, and has recently said that he wants to examine the partnership between Cornell University and Israel’s Technion, which relates to space occupied by Cornell on Roosevelt Island and which I assume is on city owned land.

All this may be worrisome, to be sure, but there are a lot of New York Jews of a progressive persuasion and many whose age is similar to Mamdani’s (he is 34) who agree with Mamdani on many of his positions regarding Israel. This, of course, does bring up the continuing question as to whether you can condemn Israel’s government (and it is the government Mamdani criticizes; he has never, to my knowledge, suggested that Israel should not exist as a state) without being antisemitic. Mamdani insists he is not antisemitic, his many Jewish supporters take him at his word on this, but the Jews who are holding their nose and voting for Cuomo, or those of a largely orthodox persuasion who will vote for Sliwa without holding their noses, do not believe him.

And, to make matters worse, Trump, in pure Trumpian fashion, has said that if Mamdani wins the election, the federal government will simply cut off all funding to New York City. Of course, we all know that he can’t really do this, but then again, he is Donald Trump and, as he sort of says, “only he can screw this up”. There is a lot of mischief he will be capable of doing.

Then there is Virginia, where I am confident Abigail Spanberger will be the next governor and that the Democrats will be successful in all positions with the possible exception of Attorney General, I think that candidate Jay Jones (that is his name?) disqualified himself when he wrote that the VA Speaker of the House and his children should die. Period. Full stop.

But I also don’t want to see a Republican in that position. Polls this morning show Jones ahead but within the margin of error. No matter who wins, I will be unhappy.

Other races? I don’t understand why the New Jersey governor’s race is so close. If Democrat Sherrill loses, it will be quite a wake up call, to be sure. And in California, it appears clear that redistricting will be approved.

The other wild card, of course, involves Trump sending “election monitors” at least to California and New Jersey. They can create quite a mess and tie things up in the courts for years.

As I said, I woke up anxious. Now you see why.

So much comes through various sources on my computer that I don’t even try to keep their origins straight. This morning I saw a post from some organization that has come up with a list of the twenty most livable cities in the world. All were in western Europe, Canada and Australia. None were in the United States.

A few days ago, I saw another post, this one written by an American who had moved to Europe (I think Germany) as a young adult. It was a fascinating post (most things like this are not). He described his childhood in America, where he had learned that he lived in, by far, the best country in the world, and that there was nothing that remotely was as exceptional as American exceptionalism. He then described some of the differences living in Germany: free health care, free education, safety on the streets at night, no fear of everyone carrying guns, better public infrastructure, reliable public transportation, life seeming more affordable even when you had less money, and on and on. I think there were twenty things in all – something like that – where he concluded that life in Europe was better, but that hardly any Americans realized that.

And finally, just this morning, there was a fascinating segment on Morning Joe on MSNBC with Scott Galloway, whom I know as an intelligent podcaster, but who also teaches at NYU, and has been successful as a E-marketer. He has a new book coming out tomorrow, Notes on Being a Man, about the plight of young men today in America, and basically how they are being shaped through isolation and on-line algorithms, and losing their most important roles, to be protectors of their families and of others who are vulnerable, and to view themselves as members of an interconnected society. I know Galloway is talking about America – whether he would reach the same conclusions regarding young men in other countries is unclear to me. But one thing he said was interesting: he said that, with all of their dangers and problems, the country whose young men are the strongest and most resilient today is Israel, where everyone has to join the military or otherwise participate in the common defense (he did not mention that Haredi Jews who avoid this service for now). Galloway is a strong supporter of mandatory National Service, among other things, and an even stronger critic of internet technocrats.

It is clear that, in many respects, America has lost its way. Galloway terms it starkly: he says that we have become very intelligent and capable, and are using that intelligence and capacity to make our species extinct.

I turned off the program after this segment, but saw that the next segment was going to be with Tim Barnacle (veteran journalist Mike Barnacle’s son), who has apparently written a book on Newt Gingrich, and how Gingrich still influences America. I don’t know what Barnacle’s book says, but I agree that Gingrich and his invention of the Tea Party (did he invent it?) did and still does play a big role in our long downward slide. I find this true on at least two levels. First, that we are still living with the concept of trickle down economics, the idea that if you make the rich richer, they will somehow use their wealth to shore up those with fewer resources. Hasn’t worked yet; ain’t gonna work in the future. Second, that there can be bottoms up political organizing that can somehow convince the masses that they are organizing for their own benefit, when in fact, they are organizing for the benefit of the wealthy classes. Of course, these two things are connected. Members of Tea Party-type movements (and that includes MAGA) are convinced, evidence to the contrary be damned, that their movements will result in their lives being improved through (although they wouldn’t put it this way) trickle down economics.

It seems apparent to everyone who can shake themselves from these cult-like movements that we are in a downward spiral, and that nothing that our current president will do, or even wants to do, will reverse course. But it is also fascinating that those who oppose our current president are no more popular than he is. Maybe even less popular. We have a number of elections coming up tomorrow – in particular in Virginia and New Jersey and New York City. It will be interesting to see what happens. I would expect the Democrats to do well, the question only being how well. But, I also thought that the Commanders would have a winning season, and the only question would be how many victories they would achieve.

One last thing: the concept of American Exceptionalism was always nonsense to me, and a way of hiding our deficits. Now that our deficits are out in the open, I would hope we can, as a country, stop hiding behind our exaggerated opinions of ourselves, and look to all of those other countries around the world, in Europe and in Asia as well, to develop a sense of international best practices, and to convince the majority of Americans that best practices are in fact best.

Clint Courtney was the St. Louis Browns’ catcher in 1953, their last season before they moved to Baltimore and became the Orioles. He had an up and down big league career, became a minor league manager, and died of a heart attack while playing ping pong at the age of only 48.

On our last road trip day, we spent several hours in Cumberland MD (never before), including a visit to a true collector’s shop, called appropriately Awesome Gifts and Collections. If you collect sports cards, they probably have what you want. Rocks and geodes? Yes. Coins? Fossils? Cameos? Russian nesting dolls? They have it all.

Including a 1953 Clint Courtney baseball card. Not cheap and not needed, but it brought back memories. (They had a number of Browns’ cards, but this is the one I focused on.

I looked up Courtney on Wikipedia. He grew up in Louisiana and then Arkansas very poor. Edie found his best quote, something like: I grew up so poor that my shoes were bad enough that if I stepped on a coin, I could tell you if it was heads or tails.

It turns out that Cumberland, a town of 20,000 in western Maryland (once a town of 40,000 in Wwestern Maryland) is worth visiting, if only for its impressive architecture and unusual street layout. It’s one of those places, like Paducah has shown to be, where all you need is a bunch of creative people to make it sparkle.

It is well worth a visit.

On the way home, our last stop (of course) was Wonder Books in Frederick MD, where I found a signed copy of George H.W. Bush’s All My Best, and a copy of a book of poetry signed by Nikki Giovanni. That makes four books I bought this trip.

Last night, we watched the 7th tremendous World Series game of 2025. Wrong team, but that’s the way it goes.

Back to real life. And to a president who wants to give China sensitive technology, kill seamen in the Caribbean and Pacific, attack Venezuela, attack Nigeria and start up the nuclear testing arms race. And that’s only the half of it.

As I sit down to write this post about the tenth day of our road trip, I find the days blending together. Where were we last night, anyway?

I know. We were in Elizabethtown, where we had Indian food, did a quick turn around its downtown, and got on the road. Our goal was Weston WV and it was going to be one long ride.

We had entered Kentucky the day before, by crossing the Ohio River at Cairo IL and left Kentucky just south of Ashland KY. That is a distance of over 400 miles, over 6 hours of straight driving.

Kentucky has always interested me. It is different from any other state, and although it has great diversity, each of its distinct parts is itself pretty unique to Kentucky. For one thing, it is the Blue Grass State. Where else is there blue grass?

I admit that I have never seen grass in Kentucky that I would describe as blue. But I have never been in Kentucky in the spring, when Kentucky blue grass takes on a blue tint.

And it is apparently the unique blue grass that gives rise to another Kentucky specialty, raising and racing thoroughbreds. Horses, they say, love and thrive on Kentucky bluegrass.

Western Kentucky, with its history, agriculture, and river life may not be completely unique, but you do notice a difference when you cross from a neighboring state. And towns like Paducah and Owensboro provide a liveable mixture of the old and the trendy.

And western Kentucky is very different from the central part of the state, which is the center of horse culture, and also the center of bourbon production. And then, as you move east, and the manicured hills become higher and more forested, you are in Appalachian coal country, poor and extremely remote.

And of course, this doesn’t include Kentucky’s mammoth Mammoth Cave. If I remember correctly, Kentucky has more caves than any other state

And there is the 250 square mile reservoir, Kentucky Lake, dammed from the Tennessee River, that provides enormous recreational opportunities.  And I haven’t even mentioned Louisville, a major city with major tourist attractions.

My maternal grandfather had a brother in Louisville, who when I was young would come to St. Louis every year to see a few Cardinals games. He had a neighborhood grocery and a couple of kids, but his children have never been and part of my life. On my maternal grandmother’s side, a niece of hers married someone from Louisville and moved there. They had two daughters, just a few years younger than me. For a while, Edie and I saw one of them (and her husband) on a regular basis when their son was at American University. But that was 25 years ago.

And even more years ago (more than a half century ago), I dated someone who had gone to college in Kentucky and who worked for Legal Services in Kentucky during her two summers while in law school, and that gave me opportunities to spend time in Louisville, Danville, and Prestonsburg (in the heart of Appalachia), all interesting.

Well, you ask, what about today?  We did not have any long stops, basically keeping to the Interstate, enjoying the beautiful fall colors. We did get off the road (but not out of our car) at Bardstown, to look at this attractive, upscale town, the location of My Old Kentucky Home, and we passed a few of Bardstown’s 9 bourbon distilleries. The distilleries each look like a major factory, certainly not a mom and pop operation. You can tour some of them. Next time. When we drove through Lexington, we stopped at Keeneland just to see it. Again, no time for a tour. Actually, I am not sure what happens at Keeneland. I just know it is a center of the thoroughbred world. Next time, ee will find out more.

We stopped in one more town, Morehead, a small almost Appalachian college town that looks like no other place we saw in the state. It has the ambiance of the old west. Can’t quite explain it.

We crossed into West Virginia and drove another 100 miles or so. West Virginia may be wild and wonderful, but it’s not nearly as interesting as Kentucky.

Most importantly, I should add that yesterdsy was our 49th anniversary. My part of this has been easy. But can you imagine what Edie has had to put up with for so long?

Two photos only today. The entrance to Keeneland, and the Mexican restaurant in Morehead prepared for the Day of the Dead. Yes, that is today.

We started in Sikeston MO, about 160 miles south of St. Louis, a town with a very small central business

district, a lot of businesses on the Rockville Pike-like outer roads, and a surprising number of fine old houses.

From Sikeston, we went 30 minutes south to New Madrid, a planned town that never took off, but which sits on a major fault line and was the site, in 1812, of the strongest earthquake ever to hit North America. There is a very good museum with very complete (it seems) information about earthquakes in general, about the Indians who lived in the area before Europeans arrived, and about the Civil War in and around New Madrid, all of which is very interesting.

Much of the agriculture south of Sikeston is cotton, and we were surprised, on October 30, to see so much cotton still waiting to be picked. A lot, however, was already baled, waiting to be carted to the cotton gin.

The Mississippi at New Madrid, hidden behind a high berm, is beautiful and was surprisingly busy with barge traffic.

From New Madrid MO, we drove to Paducah KY. A part of our route was remarkably fascinating. We were on an older U.S. highway, and crossed the Mississippi on an old two lane bridge into Illinois, just outside of Cairo, and then a virtually immediate right turn onto a similar bridge into Kentucky over the Ohio River, just before it spilled into the Mississippi.

Paducah is a surprisingly interesting town, filled with artist studios, trendy eateries, and the National Quilt Museum. Our goal was the Quilt Museum, but we never got there, deciding to peep into galleries and craft stores, instead. The ice cream was tempting.

Historically, Paducah had an active Jewish community, evidenced in part by the Cohen sign at Stella’s Restaurant (Stella Cohen had at one time been an owner of the property), and in part by the reference to Finkel’s on its former building. You may also recall that after General Grant issued Order #11 expelling Jews from the geographic area under his control, that it was a group of Jewish businessmen from Paducah who successfully asked President Lincoln to reverse the order.

After lunch in Paducah, we got back on the road, wanting to make Elizabethtown before dark. We got here, had a nice dinner at a popular Indian restaurant and I watched on the restaurant screen a kabaddi match. You know what that is? I didn’t.

Oh, yes, we did stop on the way at Center City KY, to pay homage to the Everly Brothers. Older brother Don was born there.

Today, the goal is Weston WV. Tomorrow, the goal is home.

Rain, rain, go away

Come again another day.

It has been raining all day and promises to go away tonight, and come again another day. Tomorrow.

We didn’t leave St. Louis until after 11 this morning driving down I-55 for a little more than an hour, until we reached Ste. Genevieve, the oldest European settlement west of the Mississippi. Founded by French Canadian settlers in 1735, Ste. Genevieve in 1800 was bigger than St. Louis. Today, it’s population is only about 5,000. The city has several houses from the 1700s, and many from the early 1800s.

Several houses are normally open to the public, but the government shutdown has closed those operated by the National Park Service, including this one

This house was built by the Janus family in 1791. In 1803, a tavern was opened in the house, and shortly after that, the state’s first Masonic lodge was founded in it. Today, it is known as the Green Tree Tavern, or the Janis-Ziegler House.

We did get to visit the Louis Bolduc House, built in 1788, and now owned by the Society of Colonial Dames in the State of Missouri. In fact, we had a private tour by a very informative guide from the adjoining Museum of French Colonial Life. Here are some photos:

We enjoyed driving through the historic district, which still looks historic because so much is labeled, and so little has been overly upgraded.

We also visited a pewter studio and shop, meeting the owner and her two large cats, and had a a good lunch at the crowded Stella and Me Cafe (rated 4.8) in its building dating from the 1850s.

It’s less than an hour drive from Ste. Genevieve to Cape Girardeau, a significantly larger, but less interesting town. It’s on the Mississippi, but dangerous flooding required shutting off the town from the river by building a flood wall, decorated with famous people closely connected to Missouri.

These include Cape Girardeau native Rush Limbaugh

and odd neighbors Joe Garagiola, Stan Musial, and Dred Scott.

From Cape Girardeau, a 30+ minute drive to Sikeston where we stopped for the night and had a filling Japanese meal.

Tomorrow? New Madrid MO and points east.

Day 7 was a quiet day, late start, visit to a bookstore, coffee house lunch, visit with cousins, visit with friend Michael, dinner with Edie, host Judy and long-time-no-see friend Patti. Great to see Patti, but the surprise of the evening was when I thought I ordered a scoop of gelato and got this:

Today, after a Zoom Haberman Institute leadership meeting we hit the road in what can truly be described as a driving rain

Because I always buy books, none of which I really need, you will be pleased to know that I only bought two this trip (so far).

The first is Robert F. Kennedy’s book The Real Anthony Fauci, which has been described by Kennedy supporters as the book that shows the corruption between big government and big pharma, and by experts as misleading nonsense. I bought it because…….there it was.

The other book I bought (and will read) is the memoir of Prince Felix Youssoupoff, published in 1953. Felix (if I may be so bold to call him that) was the leader of the group that murdered Gregor Rasputin in 1916. The Youssoupoff family lived in an enormous “palace” in St. Petersburg and Rasputin was shot in a basement level room and then transported to a frozen river where he was dropped through the ice. We visited the palace some years ago. In the room where Rasputin was shot, they have Madame Toussaud-like characters portraying the final scene.

The palace itself is beyond luxurious and contains a private theater still used today for chamber music concerts and so forth.

The memoir talks to both the history and life of the family in Russia, and Felix’ later life in exile in Paris. At home, I have another book written earlier by Felix covering the death of Rasputin. Published in the 1930s in Paris, the text is in Russian.

Although I never find time to do a lot reading on road trips, I have read through about half of a book from the late 1930s called Searchlight on Spain, about the Spanish Civil War. It is very interesting, especially so far about the political turmoil in Spain leading to the outbreak of actual fighting, when most of the army deserted the Republic and joined the church and major industrialists in revolutionary activity. What did I learn? The right wing never changes in their political beliefs or their utter lack of a moral code as they go about achieving their goals.

Gotta hit the road. No time to proofread.

When I was 5 years old, and probably had never been west of University City MO, on Lindbergh Blvd, just north of Clayton Road, a family opened a restaurant called Kreis’ Steakhouse (not to be confused with Ruth’s Chris). It is still going strong (to put it mildly) and we had dinner there with two friends last night.

Edie had salmon, our friends both had prime rib, and I decided to order something I probably haven’t had in well over 50 years – Weiner Schnitzel Holstein (that is, a breaded veal cutlet with a mild tomato sauce, topped by a fried egg and anchovies!).

I basically stopped eating red meat in the late 1960s. At that time, I had two exceptions – Chinese restaurants, and Roy Roger’s roast beef sandwiches. The exceptions gradually faded away, and I became strictly a fish and fowl guy.

When we opened our new law firm at 1 Thomas Circle in 1991, there was a small carryout lunch spot off the lobby which had fresh roasted turkey every day which they would carve off  the bird when you ordered your sandwich. That became my lunch maybe three times a week, and it was delicious.

But one day, as I was walking towards the elevator, God spoke to me (for the first and last time), telling me that I had had more chicken and turkey that I was ethically entitled to, and I should eat them to more. I had no choice. I stopped “cold turkey”.

I then told myself that if God had ordered me to stop eating chicken and turkey, he probably wouldn’t want me to eat fish either, but that he probably just hadn’t considered it yet. So I decided to become a strict vegetarian.

I stayed a vegetarian about ten years, gaining a reputation that I still have in some quarters. But in spite of everything you read in books, being a vegetarian didn’t seem to offer me health benefits. Weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and more all were going in the wrong destination.  So, a little after the turn of the millennium, I decided that it was okay to start eating meat again.

God had nothing to do with that decision as far as I know. Instead, it was the result of the menu at the Bluefin Bay resort on Lake Superior north of Duluth, which featured venison. I had always thought that venison would be the way to end my meatless decade, and I could not resist. It was delicious.

Basically, though, I decided to go back to my fish and fowl diet, avoiding red meat. Today, and I don’t know exactly when it started, I have an informal rule of not more than two red meat dishes a month. Yesterday was the 27th of October and I had no recollection of recent meat meals, so the schnitzel seemed okay.

Well….

The schnitzel was excellent. The warm soft bread with the very hard crust was excellent. The green beans almondine were cooked to perfection. The hot apple strudel with vanilla ice cream was just right. Even the coffee was top notch.

What more could one want?

By the way, Robert Reich’s blog this morning about Elon Musk is very worth reading. Reich concludes that Musk outside of government may be even more dangerous than he was inside government, discussing Tesla, Space X, the Boring Company and more. He reminds us that Musk’s demand for a trillion dollar compensation package from Tesla (to keep him in focus on the company) is the equivalent of a thousand billion dollars, or a million million dollars. Worth it?