Art is 80

I am really trying to understand what is going on, but having a very hard time of it. Specifically, I am talking about the Djibouti Eight, the eight men whom the Trump administration wants to deport to South Sudan, but who have been stuck on an American military base in Djibouti. Two of the men are originally from Cuba, two from Myanmar, and one each from Vietnam, Laos, Mexico and Sudan. I think that the government asked each of their native countries to accept their return, and all refused, and in late May the government decided to send all of them to South Sudan.

This was one of several situations involved in a class action suit brought in the United States District Court in Boston.

In late April, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued an injunction saying that the government could not deport people to third party countries without giving them the right to make a claim that they would be at risk of torture in those countries. Murphy set some standards for the government to abide by.

On May 21, Judge Murphy, apparently having been informed that his order was ignored and the men in a plane on the way to South Sudan, issued a subsequent order, giving the government the option of returning the men to the U.S., or holding them in a different country while giving them all the rights they would have if they had remained in the United States. Then plane carrying the men to South Sudan had stopped in Djibouti, and the eight men (along with twelve ICE agents) were temporarily held there.

So far, at least, everything was clear. But then it turned murky, when on June 23, the Supreme Court “paused” Judge Murphy’s order, in effect saying that additional notifications as to where deportees would be sent if not to the places stated on their deportation orders were apparently not required.  The ruling was 6-3, with no explanation given by the majority but with a full dissent drafted by Justice Sotomayor.

Judge Murphy’s original injunction was overturned, but when the government ignored it, it was in force, leading to Murphy’s second order. The government had ignored the second order and the question was whether this lack of compliance could lead to problems for the government.

Putting aside whether the June 23 Supreme Court decision was correct (and the three liberal justices clearly thought it was not), it was a separate question as to whether the government should be faulted for violating an injunctive order when it was in effect. So the question became one of judicial procedure more than substance, or perhaps better in addition to substance. And Justice Sotomayor wrote a second dissent that focused on this, citing law, the Constitution, and an international treaty involving prevention of torture.

I have read both Sotomayor dissents and find them very persuasive. And it is clear that there is at least a legitimate legal dispute here. But this is not the most important point I am trying to make today.

My point relates to the attitude of the MAGA folks in charge of our government today, who don’t worry about the legal niceties at all.

This is how Steven Miller described the situation:

“A Boston judge openly defying and nullifying a Supreme Court order is a radical escalation of the communist coup taking place within the judiciary.”

Got that? Radical judge. Communist coup.

And then, not on this subject, our dear president could not help himself in his Independence Day message when he said this about Democrats: “I really do. I hate them. I can not stand them because I really believe they hate our country.”

I joined my first law firm in 1972, saw it grow from seven to over one hundred lawyers, and then saw it split up, the victim of its own success. Twenty or so of us joined about a dozen other lawyers to form the DC office of a large New York firm. It was a physically easy move because we stayed in our suite, the only change being the name on the door. But no….it was not the same. I may have been behind the same desk in the same office in the same suite, but the governance changed, a new gang, with different practices and very different values. It was unsettling and uncomfortable and my analogy at the time was: I am still living in the United States, but the Russians have taken over. I feel the same way here today. Just substitute MAGA for the Russians.

I had signed a two year agreement with the New York firm. On the first day of the third year, I autodeported and set up a new firm (now in its 35th year) with a friend. Relatively easy to do when all you are talking about is a law firm.

But when the problem is the nation?

It’s a beautiful July 4 and I am finishing my meager breakfast in the backyard, puzzling over the Friday NYT puzzle that Rex Parker (you look at his daily site?) calls “easy”, and almost forgetting that I have a blog post to write.

The picture is of the river birch we planted about 40 years ago. It’s hard for me to convey its size and beauty in a photo. Let’s try this.

Better?

Trump’s BBB will soon be the law of the land, and we will see how that plays out. No further comment right now.

But for many, passage of that bill diminishes the July 4 holiday. And I understand that, of course, but it is also important to know that our history is far from pristine.

Today, it is hard to conceive of slavery in this country, existing decades after it had been outlawed in virtually all of the then advanced world. And that its eradication took 600,000 lives to accomplish.

It’s perhaps less hard to imagine the segregationist laws and practice that quickly followed, laws so harsh that Adolf Hitler could use them as a model for Nazi race laws.

Yes, we have overcome the worst of all that, but so many Black Americans, for all sorts of reasons, still form a pervasive economic and social underclass. And those Americans who have worked so hard to help this underclass gain parity have been temporarily stopped in their tracks by the Trump administration. It started with the demeaning of the “1619 Project” and continued into making any attempt to foster Diversity, Equity, or Inclusion a virtual federal crime.

Estimates of the population of the current United States before the Europeans landed here are only estimates, and they seem to range from 2 to 18 million

We may not ever be able to be more precise than that, but we can be fairly precise in concluding that by 1900, that number had been reduced to 200,000.  And even today, decades after the end of patent governmental land grabs, the majority of this population forms an economic underclass.

None of this, plus elements of our history that include Chinese exclusion, Japanese interment, anti-Jewish, anti-Irish and anti-Italian discrimination among other things, can make us proud.

But progress, and a lot of it, has been made. That is, until the Trump administration and its implementation of Project 2025 called a halt to progress on these fronts and determined to turn the clock back.

The concept of American Exceptionalism (which was always suspicious) was based not only on our GDP and military prowess, but on our continual attempts to better ourselves, our capacity to serve as a model for much of the rest of the world, and for our willingness to share our good fortune with others. No longer is that the case. No linger can we claim any form of exceptionalism. We now show ourselves for what the Trump administration has made us (or perhaps for what we always on the whole have been, leading to our creation of the Trump administration): heartless, greedy, and self defeating, with absolutle no concern for those who reside elsewhere, and no concern for many who reside here.

It is Independence Day. Is it a day to celebrate? Or a day to take stock of ourselves? Sometimes, it is hard to do both at the same time.

[I am late with this today. No proofreading. It’s a holiday.]

There are those who say that President Trump is losing grip on his sanity. Bosh, I say. That is absurd. The president’s mind is as sharp as it can be. I give you two examples to prove my case.

(1)  Last October, Trump said: “The word grocery, it’s sort of a simple word. But it means, like, everything you eat. The stomach is speaking, it always does. And I have more complaints about that – bacon, and things going up double, triple, quadruple.”

In April, Trump said: “It’s such an old fashioned term, but a beautiful term: groceries. It’s sort of a bag with different things in it.”

In May, Trump said: “We have a term – groceries. It’s an old term but it means basically what you’re buying, food. It’s a pretty accurate term but it’s an old fashioned sound but groceries are down.”

This week, Trump said: “It was like a strange word. I hadn’t heard the word grocery in so long. But what could be more beautiful than “grocery”?”

(2) And this week, when Trump was asked by a reporter at the christening of the detention center in the middle of the Everglades how long he thought detainees, sent to the detention center, would be staying there. He looked like he heard the question clearly, and he was determined to give the best answer he could, so he said: “I’m gonna spend a lot. This is my home state. I love it. I love your government. I love all the people around…these are all friends of mine……I’ll spend a lot of time here. You know for four years I’ve got to be in Washington, and I’m OK with that because I love the White House. I even fixed up the little Oval Office. It’s like a diamond. It’s beautiful. It wasn’t maintained properly, I will tell you that, but even when it wasn’t it was the Oval Office so it meant a lot. I’ll spend as much time as I can here. You know my vacation is generally here because it is convenient. I live in Palm Beach….”

See? Our president is fine. No wonder all Republican legislators follow his every lead.

The word this morning is that Trump’s BBB is going to pass and be signed into law.  And I guess that means that July 4 will be marred by a signing ceremony. As with much legislation, its impact will be felt over time, with some of the more draconian positions being put on hold until after the 2026 midterms, so we will see what this means to the America we grew up with and expected to live in throughout our lives.

That is an example of a Big Problem. What about the smaller irritations?

Yes, there are the smaller things that are annoying me, especially on my smart phone, where I seem to spend so much time. Some examples:

We have all been irritated by Facebook, where we used to be able to keep up with friends and family, and where we were able to reconnect with people from our past. No longer. Now, I turn on Facebook and I can learn the proportion of Europeans who are red heads, country by country. Or I can see that I am less likely to die in the next decade if I can get up from the floor without using my arms or resting on my knee.

It used to be that if I wanted to look something up on Google, I would get a bunch of links, often starting with Wikipedia. Now, I start with entries created by Google AI, which I ignore because they seem usually to be either partially or totally inaccurate. I downloaded Duck Duck Goose as an alternative to Google, and now questions asked on that platform start with answers from Duck AI.

How about my simple Yahoo account? Why are they now giving me framed edited summaries of emails. Sometimes, they are just repetitive. Sometimes, they miss the point entirely. In no case do I decide not to read the email because I have already read the summary. In these summary boxes, I can check to tell “them” if it was helpful or not. It is never helpful. If there is a way to turn it off and stop receiving these summaries, I haven’t found it.

And these summary boxes were not enough for the mischief makers at Yahoo. They now categorize my emails as All, Priority, Offers and Others. It opens up on Priority, which means each time I have to reset it for All because, as you might suspect, Yahoo has no idea which ones are really priority.

But wait, there’s more. If I get an email with a question. Let’s say it’s a simple question from Edie: “Where are you?”, and I respond by telephoning her to explain when I expect to be home. Yahoo will begin sending me notes: “Respond to Edie? It’s been two days.” And so on.

Stop the world; I want to get off? No, that’s not me. But it would be nice to be able to rewind it a bit and redo the last decade or so.

If you can’t say something good, then just don’t say anything at all. That’s advice that no one ever gave me.

Discretion is the better part of valor. The same people who never told me not to say anything bad never told me this either.

Brylcream – a little dab’ll do ya.

Which reminds me. We saw the first of the 8 Black Mirror episodes of 2025 last night. In our overly commercial world, I thought it made some good points.

A young married woman collapses and needs brain surgery. It is dangerous surgery and may affect her cognition. But a new technology would guarantee her functioning. It is based on cloning the affected part of her brain, putting it on a server belonging to a company called Rivermind, and letting her brain continue to operate through an app on her phone.

It is also relatively inexpensive, so she and her husband, who are financially struggling, go ahead.

It turns out to be bait and switch, as Rivermind keeps cutting back on service unless the couple upgrades their subscription at an ever increasing cost. The service restrictions come by decreasing the area covered under their “plan” until they are restricted to one New York county, and until, under the basic plan, the patient begins spouting out advrtisements geared to their particular situations. Her husband becomes upset; she inadvertently suggests a specific anger management program. One of her students is facing domestic hardship; she blurts out an ad for Christian family counseling.

The writer of the episode suggests he got the idea from service subscriptions that start out cheap for the first year or so, or from podcasters who subtly interrupt their conversation to give a little commercial message. And I assume from YouTube and other services, which eliminate ads if you pay for premium status.

L.S.M.F.T.  Lucky Strike means fine tobacco.

As you might imagine, this is not what I expected to say on the blog this morning  amidst my frustration with the Republicans, the Democrats, King Donald, King Benjamin, King Vladimir, and the Washington Nationals.

I had intended to alleviate my frustrations by turning back to some of my books. Picking a different shelf of a different bookcase. One with an assortment of signed books.

And more.

Have you read Wouk’s book? You may think it’s about Humphrey Bogart, but it’s really about a Jewish kid who finds himself in the WWII Navy and wonders what to do about the girl he left behind.

And what about Schindler’s List?

You think Schindler’s List was about Meryl Streep? If you do, that means you are mixing it up with Sophie’s Choice. Shame on you.

And, by the way, did I tell you about the time Tom Keneally and his wife came to our house for Shabbat dinner? One day, I will. I hope his memories of the evening are as warm as mine.

You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsident.

I really must upgrade my WordPress subscription.

To keep up with my hometown, I subscribe online to the St. Louis Post Dispatch and get by mail each week a copy of the St. Louis Jewish Light. In the Jewish Light which came yesterday, I saw that Doris Finger had passed away. Sad, to be sure, but also shocking because I had not thought about the real Doris Finger in decades, and had you asked about her, I would have told you long ago that I assumed she was no longer living. Doris Finger was 98 years old.

Now, you are wondering who Doris Finger was and why I am writing about her now. Doris Finger was married to Don Finger, who was my second cousin. His grandmother and my maternal grandfather were siblings. Do you remember me writing about cousins in Denmark, Sweden, and Australia. Doris was related to them as well. The Margulis side of my family.

I actually think I met Doris only once or twice. But her husband Don I knew quite well. My grandfather was a physician, and Don was a protoge of his, and also became a doctor. Don was my father’s doctor (maybe also my mother’s, but maybe not) and mine once I outgrew my pediatrician. He was one of the nicest people I have ever known. He was also an excellent doctor who became known as a master diagnostician. Other doctors near and far would send their mystery patients to Don to figure out what their problems really were. It was beyond tragic when Don passed away from a rare disease in 1979, when he was in his early 50s.

To give you an example of Don’s skill. When I was away at school in the early 1960s, my parents had a family event at our house, and the Fingers were included. Out of the blue, Don told my father, who apparently felt fine, that he looked pale, and that he wanted to see him in his office the next morning. My father went, and the next day, he was successfully operated on for colon cancer, and lived another 15 years, passing away from something unrelated. To me, that seemed like a miracle.

(I still remember the mid-week phone call from my mother in my dorm room. We never had mid-week phone calls. Sunday only. But there she was and I asked her if everyone was okay. Her response was “I’m okay. Your sister is okay. Both of your grandmothers are okay. And your father is okay NOW.” I was very angry that no one told me anything until after the surgery. And I rarely get angry.)

Doris fits into the picture in another way. Although she and I hardly ever saw each other, she has actually been a recurrent presence in my life. Let me explain.

I have never been a big telephone talker. I was not one of those kids who spent hours on the phone with friends. I was ecstatic, as a lawyer, when email was invented, so I didn’t have to make as many phone calls. Even today, I avoid telephoning when other communication options are available. Telephone calls seem intrusive. Why should anyone want to have their life interrupted by me at this particular time?

But in the 1950s, there were few options. And sometimes, when I had a health question, I would want to ask Don. One night, I wanted to ask him something, and my mother said, ” He’s probably at home. Call him up.”

The thought frightened me, and I responded, “What if Doris answers?”

As I said, I really didn’t know Doris. If she answered the phone, what would I say? There was the simple, brusk “Can I talk to Don?”, or some variant. That would be embarrassing, especially if she said ” Who is this?” Or should I say, “Hi, is this Doris? This is Arthur Hessel.  Can I talk to Don?” This was frightening, too. Don was not related to me on the Hessel side, and what if she didn’t recognize the name and responded with “Who?” Orcshould I say, “Hi, Doris, this is your cousin (Don’s cousin?) Arthur Hessel, how are you?” I obviously did not really care how she was and didn’t think she wanted to tell me how she was, and what if her answer was, “Fine, how are you?” Well, if I said “fine”, why was I bothering her husband at night, and if I wasn’t fine, why should I tell her? She wasn’t the doctor, after all.

So, I never called.

From then on, whenever my mother wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do, or whenever I hesitated to do something that I actually wanted to do, my mother would look at me and say “What if Doris answers?” Those four words became ingrained in my psyche.

“What if Doris answers?”

And, you know, if I had called that one time, and if Doris had answered, who knows? We may have had a great conversation and been friends for the next 65 years. My telephone inhibitions, which I clearly still have, may have evaporated that day in the late 1950s.  And I might have become a totally different person.

May her memory be for a blessing.

Looking for a new piano bench? We saw a nice one in Manassas.

I go to Manassas VA a few times a year to go to McKay’s Used Book Store. It’s quite a place and, for a used book and media shop, is usually quite busy.  I bought a copy of Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America, by Dick and Liz Cheney, signed by them on a Republican National Committee book plate.

The price was $2.74, as noted on a strategically placed sticker. This is why I like McKay, the epicenter of mysterious pricing.

But yesterday, McKay’s was a sideline, as Edie and I took the 45 minute spin out I-66 to see a bit of Manassas.

Digression: I-66 and historic Route 66 have no connection with each other. When I-66, a short route that runs only between DC and I-81 at or about Front Royal VA, was built, I think there was little choice for its designation. As you may know, as an east-west Interstate, it needed an even number. And, as the east-west Interstates are numbered from lowest in the South to highest in the north, it had to fit between I-64 and I-68. No other choice. End of digression.

We started at the Manassas Museum, now housed in a modern building in a park-like setting near the  town’s historic center. It has two exhibit rooms, a timeline along a corridor, and a gift shop. That’s it.

The timeline is interesting if you want to know about Manassas’ past. It includes a number of artifacts mounted behind glass. One confused me.

This piece of railroad company script seems to be worth both ten cents and five dollars. Can anyone decipher this for me?

There are two related large 19th century homes in Manassas. The older, called Liberia, is 200 years old this year, starting as a working plantation with as many as 90 enslaved workers, then being transformed into an active and prominent dairy farm, then a family residence, and now a publically owned property rented for special events. The original owner of Liberia was an active member of the American Colonization Society, which wanted to free the enslaved and send them back to Africa, to Liberia.

The house has been restored to its original status from the way it had been upgraded by one of its owners. That means that today, it looks like this

and like this, but not like the one after, which was grandly remodeled, and then unremodeled by the city.

The other hostoric house? Annaberg, was built after the Civil War by an Alexandria brewer, who wanted a summer house in the country. It was, so it is said, the first air-conditioned house in the US, though the process used (blowing fans over ice) was probably less than perfect. Here is Annaberg, now under restoration:

Yes, during the Civil War, Manassas (home of the Battles of Bull Run) was divided.  And, yes, that division still exists, I guess.

There is more to see in Manassas, as you might suspect, starting with the battlefields. Maybe next time.

Oh, and why do they call it Manasses? Google it.

The second sentence of this post may be internally inconsistent. A couple of things are clear, I think.

One is that American Nazis and Nazi sympathizers tend to support Donald Trump and MAGA. Another is that Hitler had and Trump has totalitarian tendencies, and that totalitarian tendencies are totalitarian tendencies.

Yet, if anyone dares to say anything that shows any similarities between Germany in the 1930s and the United States in the 2020s, people want to chop their heads off. But many who were alive in Germany during the 1930s (and obviously, the word “many” refers to a proportion of a smaller number every day) do remark on the similarities. How can that be?

Before I go further, let me add one more thing that is perfectly clear, I think. and that is that Germany in 1933 and the United States in 2025 are very, very different. Hard stop here.

Okay, now let’s proceed. What are the similarities?

We can start with an obvious one. America First and Deutschland Uber Alles are very similar, at least on the surface. Can anyone disagree with that?

Both Trump and Hitler do not like opposition and do their best to demean or restrain those who publicly oppose them. I think this is pretty clear, too.

Both Trump and Hitler are master orators in that they are able to use their charisma to draw supporters to their side.

Neither Trump nor Hitler show any self-restraint in describing their opponents or those who they target, using types of descriptive language which, before their times, would not be used or allowed in public discourse (this trait becomes part of their attraction to their supporters).

In both countries, for some similar and some differing reasons, you had legislatures that gave full support to the government and permitted their own authority to be diminshed, and you had judicial systems which fell quickly into lockstep.

In both situations, the enemies were the liberals, the globalists and the communists. In both cases, tremendous pressure was put on newspapers and other media and certainly on educational institutions.

Both Trump and Hitler have expansionist tendencies. Hitler’s “Drang nach Osten”, over time, turned into a World War II, but it took time. Trump’s proposals, which will probably not result in World War III (but you never know, do you?), include the desire for the United States to take over Canada (a land, excluding Alaska, which is bigger than the United States) and Greenland (of course, Greenland and Canada together are bigger than the U.S. with Alaska) and the Panama Canal.

Hitler hated Jews. There is no reason to think that he didn’t hate Jews as Jews, but it is even more relevant to recent history that Hitler used hatred of Jews as a political ploy to get him into power. Jews, he said, were infiltrating Germany and controlling and changing German society. As historian Tim Snyder described it in Bloodlands, his first book about the Holocaust in Poland and the Baltics, Hitler viewed humanity as groups of ethnic peoples who were in constant conflict with each other looking for power and control, with some groups having superior characteristics giving them at least a leg up, all of this demonstrated by wars and shifting borders throughout history. The Jews, on the other hand, were a cosmopolitan group, with members here and members there. They didn’t fit into Hitler’s vision of human dynamics, but were constantly disrupting things, and therefore, one way or another, had to be eliminated.

There is obviously no reason to think that Trump shares Hitler’s feelings towards Jews. In fact, whether it is a matter of principle or one of expediency, or even if it is to make it difficult for others to compare him to Hitler, Trump has adopted a  public emphasis on fighting antisemitism everywhere he sees it, and even in some places where he doesn’t.

But Trump has his own target. Immigrants. And Trump’s policies regarding immigrants are closer to Hitler’s regarding Jews than you may think. Remember, the Hitler’s Final Solution didn’t start until 1942, nine years after he came to power, and that at first, his idea was simply to expel the Jews from lands under his control, using terror as a weapon. It took time for that program to be implemented, and when it was, it was kept secret.

I do not want to draw the analogy too tightly, and I am not trying to foretell the future. But in both cases, we had ruthless government troops whose sole job was to arrest members of the target group, to send them to detention centers (in Germany, they were often work camps), and to hold them indefinitely without any form of what we call due process. In both countries, the arrests were sudden, unwarned, and often violent. In both countries, there were detention facilities outside of the country to which prisoners were sent. In both countries, families were split. Jobs were lost. Services were denied.

If you study Germany, you will see that restrictions were increased gradually over a period of years until Kristallnacht in 1938, an expansionist war in 1939,and death camps in 1942. Hitler came to power in 1933 and at that time, although the targets were identified, there was no way to see what was coming down the road.

But now we have the history of the Holocaust to serve as a warning. And the fact that so many who lived through the 12 years of the Third Reich see so many similarities today should concern us all.

And as to antisemitism? While there is no hint that this will become government policy here, when you have a totalitarian government, things can change on a dime.

Could anything have been done in Germany to stop Hitler? This is probably a question with no answer, but one worth contemplating.

It’s Saturday, so we can take a break from deep thinking. For those of you who have been to our house, you probably recognize the bookcase wall in our dining room:

I decided to pick a shelf and show some of the books sitting on that shelf. So here goes:

This is a one volume edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, published in Philadelphia in 1805, which is apparently the first single volume edition of this important book published in the United States.

This is the first full life biography of Abraham Lincoln, written by John Holland, published in 1866.

I don’t know the provenance of this handwritten book called The Story of Jane and Hilda, written for their father’s December 7 birthday. I have no idea who these people were, but the young writer had good penmanship and knew how to spell. It is special. I wish I knew more about them.

A one volume compilation of the works of Laurence Sterne, including autobiographical notes by him. Published in Philadelphia in 1867, 100 years after Sterne’s death.

I have a fair number of old American Bibles. This one was published in New York in 1823.

1866 book of aphorisms and quotations. My guess is that a lot of what is quoted in this book has been long forgotten today.

I could go on (obviously), but it’s time tovstart your weekend activities. On your mark. Get set. Go!

We watched a terrific film on Netflix last night. It is called Number 24, and is a biopic telling the story of Gunnar Sønsteby and the Norwegian resistance during the Second World War. Most of it is dramatized, but it is centered around a lecture Sønestby gave to what appeared to be a large group of Nowegian high school students before his death at 94 in 2012. The film, which earned a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, is not a Holocaust film. Although the fate of Norway’s Jews is mentioned, this is a film dedicated not to saving a small, targeted percentage of the population but is dedicated to saving a country. I recommend it very highly.

Norway was under German control for 5 full years. Its king and government fled into exile in London; it was run by a puppet government led by Vidkun Quisling, who was executed by a Norwegian firing squad after a trial in October 1945. His name gave rise to the term “quisling”, now an English word meaning “traitor. “

The Norwegian resistance movement was active during the entire occupation. Many members lost their lives, but more outlived the war, and Sønsteby was the most decorated resistance hero in the country.

Sønsteby started his lecture saying he was going to talk about values. And the question of values is one of the film’s most important topics. Yes, there is history and a lot of courage and at least as much luck, but every resistance activity, which brought dangers to those undertaking the action, but also to those who might become collateral damage, had to be judged on a scale of values, something is still a question in lesser forms of resistance to governmental actions today.

Karl Marthinsen led the roundup of Norwegian Jews. The country had a very small Jewish population, and 2/3 of Norway’s Jews were able to escape to neutral Sweden. Marrhinsen was killed by the resistance, and in return for that, apparently a sizeable number of Norwegians (some resistance members and sone who were apolitical) were killed either by the Quisling government or by the Germans). A student asked Sønsteby whether, considering the reprisals, killing Marthinsen was worth. He said “It is impossible to answer that question.”

Other than luck, why was Sønsteby so successful. For one thing, he was a careful planner. For another, he kept calm. His nerves never failed him. This is a rare attribute, to say the least.

So, if one night you are wondering what to do for the next 1 hour and 52 minutes, try Number 24.

Tuesday night it was a program on wineries in Israel’s Negev. Last night, it was a talk by Yehuda Kurtzer, co-president of The Hartman Institute, at Adas Israel. Kurtzer is a very smooth talker, and it was easy to  listen as to his 45 minute speech. The general topic was: what is it like to be Jewish in Israel or America today, and what does our tradition (he terms it “Torah”) tell us about how we should be reacting. He talked about Israel, over the past two years, developing a “warrior culture”, while Jews in America have developed a “worrier culture”. I thought that pretty clever (or I wouldn’t be repeating it here).

My overall reaction was, as it often is when I listen to this type of a talk, that I wish I had the speech in print form in front of me, and I wish I had the time (or would take the time) not only to read through it thoroughly and slowly, but to annotate it, to write comments by each sentence, to see where each sentence might lead me, to agree with a sentence or disagree and explain why I did one or another, complete with links, references, quotes and notes. But clearly, even if I had the speech in front of me, I wouldn’t do that, and neither would you or virtually anyone else. There is just too much else that I have to do, or that I would rather do, or that I would feel guilty not doing. And then, of course, I am lazy.

The first part of Kurtzer’s talk was devoted to “time”, and to social danger and disruption. He has concluded that maybe we have been spoiled, or both blessed and spoiled, by living, as American Jews, in a long time of peace and quiet. Israelis have not had that luxury, although they had entered a period of relative quiet until the events of October 7, 2023 led to the start of a long period of a very unusual type of war. But maybe the typical Jewish experience throughout history was more like the Israeli history than the American history, Jews throughout the world lived most often in periods of uncertainty and danger, not in a period of extended peace and comfort.

Okay, I will accept that. But he went on to say that American and Israeli Jews today (June 25 2025) look at the future very differently. Although they have been involved in various types of war for close to two years, Israeli Jews see that they have not done too badly in these wars and that they are in better shape than their enemies are today, and that that gives them the possibility to look to the future with optimism. American Jews, on the other hand, are very pessimistic, no matter wherever you go, or with whom you speak.

He ascribes this to the fact that Israeli Jews can do something about their condition (as he terms it, they have “agency”), while American Jews by and large can only look at their phones, updating the website of The Times of Israel every five minutes, and worry. And not only do American Jews lack agency (the ability to do anything about what worries them), but they also spend so much time worrying that they often ignore taking care of themselves. Israeli Jews do take care of themselves (for you have to do this if war is raging all around you). Kurtzer then goes to Jewish tradition, which says that we should be balancing self-preservation with reaching out to others. At the current time, he concludes that American Jews are not very good at this.

But in speaking about the concept of time, and how Israelis are beginning to become optimistic about their future, I have a differenttake than he does. Kurtzer is 48 years old. His father, who was once American ambassador to Israel, is only 76. I am, as you know, 82. I believe that you look at time differently when you are 48 than when you are 82, and since most of the American Jews that I associate with are closer to 82 than to 48, and the audiences that Kurtzer tends to address are probably on the whole closer to 82 than to 48, I wonder if I can be excused in not looking at time as he does.

His talk brought me back to the end of World War II. World War II, as we all know, ended in Europe in 1945 and the continent was virtually completely destroyed at the end of the war. I believe (obviously I don’t really know) that an 82 year old, crawling out of rubble as the shooting stopped, would be pretty depressed – a good life in a world of progress totally torn apart by an extensive war and destroyed everything. Yes, for that 82 year old individual, whether he lives another 5 days or 5 years, this is the way the world ends.

But if you are 48 when the war ends, or 38, or 28, you might look at things differently. The war is over, the enemy (internal or external) is vanquished, and we have a lot of work to do. But work is healthy, and we are doing it together, and we have time, so maybe things will one day again be good.

In 1962, 17 years after the shooting stopped, I along with three college friends (and now three old college friends), spent the summer in Europe (I have mentioned this trip several times, as you may remember), traveling through Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. Everything looked prosperous and clean, and everyone looked content and happy. There were virtually no places which looked like they had recently been destroyed by war. But, unless he or she lived to be 99, those who were 82 at the end of World War II were not around to see prosperous Europe of 1962. But if you were 28 at the end of the war, in 1962, you were only 45, and you might have another 40 or so years to see Europe prosper even more. If you were young and optimistic in 1945, your optimism was validated.

Something else I thought about at the Kurtzer program was brought up not by Kurtzer, but by someone who asked a question. The question related to the different ways different groups of Israelis were treated during the current period of conflict. The subject was bomb shelters. Virtually all Jewish Israelis (80% of the population) have access to bomb shelters. But those Israelis living in Arab towns and villages and in Bedouin settlements do not have bomb shelters; the government has refused to build them. And there were apparently instances where Israeli Arabs tried to enter bomb shelters in Jewish areas and were refused entry. This is an issue that comes up whenever Israel is under threat or attack.

Thus, many Israeli Jews may be strong on the self-preservation ethic, but weak on reaching out to others. What, the questioner asked, did Kurtzer think of this? Kurtzer said he agreed with the question “on steroids”. But Kurtzer, of course, is an American Jew, not Israeli, and Kurtzer did not worry (as I assume many Israeli Jews might) that this Arab (and who knows if he is an Israeli Arab, or someone who sneaked his way into the area) might be a danger to the Jews in the shelter. In times of trouble, simple courtesies get very complicated.

He did not discuss that most American Jews vote center left, while most Israeli Jews are now voting hard right. This is another obvious difference. But people on the hard right tend to be tribalists. In this country, tribalists tend to feel themselves threatened by immigrants. This fear is a major source of Trump’s strength. In Israel, they tend to feel threatened by their neighbors, whom they look at as wannabe immigrants. It is really, I believe, two versions of the same thing.

One thing that did not come up was the surprising runaway victory of Zohan Mondani in the Democratic mayoral primary in New York, and his now assumed victory in the final vote in  November. A 33 year old Muslim, a founder of a chapter of a pro-Palestinian organization as an undergraduate at Bowdoin, an individual who has expressed support for the BDS movement and for penalizing American charities which provide funding which supports settlement building in the West Bank. Even though Mondani has many Jewish supporters, including at high levels, and over and over proclaims that antisemitism is an evil that must be erased, his presumed election does raise some questions that have not previously been raised in New York City politics. (Of course, Mondani is more than a pro-Palestinian Muslim; he is a self defined socialist, who wants to redirect New York City dollars in very different directions than is currently the case.)

Is Mamdani bad for the Jews? You can’t foresee the future, but I would suspect 82 year old Jewish New Yorkers more concerned about his potential mayoral term than 48 year old Jewish New Yorkers? He may be the last mayor they will experience, while younger Jews can look beyond him to the future.

Sometimes you see a headline and just don’t know what to do with it. Today, this came up on my internet feed: “12 billion light-years from Earth, NASA has discovered a massive reservoir of water containing 140 trillion times the water on Earth.” If you are wondering where this is, it surrounds quasar APM 08279+5525, and is neither liquid nor ice, but gaseous, even though the temperature is about -63 Celsius. In case you didn’t know, this would be a little colder than -84 Fahrenheit. The quasar surrounds a black hole that has a mass equal to 20 billion suns, and the power that it throws off is “comparable to a thousand trillion stars like our sun.” This reservoir, they say, has been there since long before the Milky War was created.

Okay, so these are big numbers, no question about that. Source? The website is paris2018.com. It looks legit, but I can’t say I know what it is.

In order to find some other big numbers, I asked Google to tell me how many galaxies there are in the universe and Google told me that there are “an estimated 2 trillion galaxies” in the observable universe. And that there are 10 to the 24th power stars. Now if you are wondering how many stars that would really be, all I can tell you is what Google tells me: “more stars than all the grains of beach sand on planet Earth”.

And then I asked how many black holes there are in the observable universe, and I was told (by Google again) that there are an estimated 40 quintillion. That is a number I can write out: 40,000,000,000,000,000,000. You want to know how 40 quintillion compares to 10 to the 24th power? I happen to know that (thanks again to you know who). A quintillion is only 10 to the 18th power (and a sextillion is 10 to the 21st power).

I know you can go up to a centillion using recognized words for the numbers and then names become more speculative. I want to tell you how many zeros there are in a centillion. I thought that would be easy. But Google stumped me: “A centillion has 303 zeros in the American system. In the British system, a centillion has 600 zeros.” And, no, I am not going to ask Google the obvious follow up question.

My 4 1/2 year old grandson is fascinated by numbers. He likes to watch two groups of videos on YouTube, “Numberblocks” and “Wonderland”. There is an episode of Numberblocks where the focus is on big, big numbers, and you go (in cartoon style with sort of an underlying plot) through all the -illion numbers, until you run out and then reach a googolplex. He tells me that this is the biggest number in the world. He is sure of it. I tell him that I know a bigger number. He doubts me. And then I tell him. It’s googolplex +1. He is stumped. He knows I am correct.

In dictionary.com, when you look up the definition of “centillion”, you get to that part of their definition where the word is used in a sentence. For centillion, I think they have one great sentence: “In physics, one chance in a centillion is considered an impossibility because there are fewer than a centillion seconds before the end of the universe.”

I asked Google if the universe is ever going to end. It told me yes, although the manner of its ending (bang or whimper?) is not yet agreed upon. It might end with the Big Freeze (think Kurt Vonnegut and Ice-9), it might end with the Big Rip, and it might end with the Big Crunch. And then there are those who do not believe that any of these three possibilities are in our future. There are some who believe that there will be the Big Bounce. The proponents of the Big Bounce Theory actually believe in the Big Crunch, but they think that the Big Crunch would be followed by another Bitg Bang. And that this will happen over and over, and I guess has happened over and over.

So is this something worth thinking about? And, as they say, how does it affect the Jews? And how does it affect God and the creation story? Well for one thing, if you grew up thinking that God was all powerful, and that you knew what that meant…….you have been fooled. You had no idea what “all powerful” means.

What got me on this kick tonight? I don’t know. But maybe it had to do with the wine tasting party that Edie and I returned from. It was a small event, featuring local educator Steve Kerbel, whom I know from the Haberman Institute, and who is an expert on Israeli wines. and it was pretty interesting. We tasting a number of different blends and I (whose wine palate is not the most refined) can tell you this. Darom by Yatir Trio Red is as good as it gets. It’s available for about $30 a bottle ($30 usually gets me two or three bottles, but none of them taste like this one). It is bottled somewhere in the Negev. And going back to big numbers, just for a second, Steve talks about some wineries in Israel that put out several hundred thousand bottles a year. He considers those large, I think, and he did describe another winery that puts out 50,000 bottles a year. That one, he said, was small.

Tonight’s event by the way was sponsored by Americans for Ben Gurion University, a group that I still have some involvement with, but on whose board of directors I served for 20 years, including 6 years as national treasurer.

You probably know that the university, situated in Beersheva, and Soroka Hospital, which serves its two medical schools, were bombed during what is temporarily being called the 12 Day War. Let’s hope that name sticks.

Chaos, Cruelty, and Corruption.

The Supreme Court allows deportations to third party countries, 6 to 3. Here is what I don’t understand:

1. This decision “paused” a District Court ruling that said that a deportee should first have a right to claim he may be tortured in the country where he is being sent. Since the substantive case is still to be heard and may wind up with a ruling in favor of the deportee, how is it right for the Court to discriminate against a deportee because he was deported before the ultimate ruling? And won’t this interim ruling just lead the federal government to deport as many as they can to third party countries as quickly as they can?
2. The Court previously said no one could be deported without a due process hearing. I assume that would hold for deportees being sent to third party countries. How do you have a due process hearing on deportation without the potential deportee being able to show what will happen to him on being deported?
3. The deportees to El Salvador are being put in prison, presumably for crimes committed in the US, and are sentenced to indefinite terms under conditions outside of US control. It is apparent that some of these men have committed no crimes or very minor infractions. What recourse will a potential deportee have now if they are being transferred not inly to a foreign country, but a foreign prison?
4. The public is not being given any information regarding terms of agreement between the US and foreign countries as to handling American deportees. Is this some relevant to a potential deportee at a due process hearing?

I have so many questions about what ICE is doing and how they are doing it. This, as Elon Musk would say, is “just a scratch”.

Sorry for two posts today. But this seems so important.

Chaos, Cruelty, and Corruption.

I haven’t done this on the blog for a while. I opened a drawer in the family room for the first time in probably decades, and here is some of what I found.

We start with prints:

Watercolors:

A picture of me by daughter Hannah when she was 15.

A pillow cover from somewhere in Latin America:

And a copy of a very classic recording:

The Harvard Lampoon Tabernacle Choir Sings at Leningrad Stadium.

And no, this isn’t all. There is some aging sheet music, copies of some famous art work, another piece by Hannah, a children’s puzzle,  two earrings that do not match, a sizeable and maybe colorful inside rock.

See why downsizing would be so hard? Does all this go in the trash? If not….where does it go?

Chaos, Cruelty and Corruption

Everybody else is talking about Iran, so I think I will skip it. Except I will ask one question: What if, after bombing Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Japanese emperor had said, “We aren’t at war with the United States. We are just at war with Pearl Harbor”?

Now, let’s leave the war behind, and move up alphabetically and discuss water. On our way yesterday from the Metro to the Shakespeare Theatre, Edie decided she would like a bottle of water. We stopped at Fresh Baguette to pick one up. The clerk with “trainee” on his shirt said “Sure” and rang up the sale. It came to $6.16. I knew that was absurd, but didn’t say anything, following my motto “Anything for Edie”. Plus, I didn’t want to be late for the show.

Digression: Edie says that she has never known that was my motto. I believe she should start paying a little attention. End of digression.

The clerk trainee then told us they had no cold water and asked if that was okay. We said it was. But then he told us that they had no water at all. So we said we wanted a refund. The clerk trainee didn’t know how to do that, so he went back into another room and brought somebody who was a full-blown clerk. He was sort of grouchy. He was fiddling with the computer and told me (standing there quietly) to “hold on”. He grew more grouchy when I responded “sure, to what?”

When we got our refund, I discovered that we were charged $6.16 because the clerk trainee thought we wanted two bottles. Maybe, in fact, we did. I am not sure what we wanted, although we only ordered one. He may be a very talented trainee clerk.

We had one more chance. A bottle of water at Gregory’s. $3.25. We then crossed the street to the theater and saw that if we had bought the water in the lobby, we would have saved a quarter. (For those of you who have not used cash in a long time, a quarter is 25 cents.)

You may remember that the day before yesterday, we saw Berlin Diaries at Theater J that had, at times, two actors, male and female, playing the same role on stage at the same time. Schrodinger’s cast, I guess.

I went into Theater J hopeful on Saturday, and I went to Shakespeare Theatre yesterday, hopeful.

At Shakespeare, we saw a version of Frankenstein, sort of. But it was only the Frankenstein story if you closed your eyes and didn’t listen. Yes, Victor Frankenstein creates an new creature, but he doesn’t tell anyone and his unnamed creation may or may not have killed his six year old brother, or it could have been the young boy’s nurse who did it. After all, she confessed and was executed.

What else happens? Frankenstein marries his sister. Well, she was adopted. We don’t know why he wanted to marry her, but we know she wants to marry him because he is the only man she has ever met. They have a child (a surprise to him somehow) and put her in an orphange because Victor is sure his creation will kill her, but his sister/wife takes their daughter out of the orphanage six years later and the show, because Frankenstein is totally bonkers, turns into Who Killed Virginia Woolf as the couple goes unto atomic war mode. But then the Victor-made artificial man comes to the rescue and it is possible that everyone lives happily ever after, except you can’t be sure because the lights go out, and you go home.

In Berlin Diaries, the playwright started with her great-grandfather’s book and tried to build a play around it. In Frankenstein, the playwright started, I think, with a concept about the relationship between men and women, and then tried to frame it around a book. I don’t think either succeeded.

Chaos, Cruelty and Corruption.

Chaos, Cruelty and Corruption

Bulletin: The latest war started too late for this post. Cry havoc! Let slip!

First, I want to expand on my comments of yesterday. To recap, I had suggested that the God of Judaism, God of Islam and God of Christianity, supposedly the same God, confuses things by speaking out of three sides of his (His) mouth at once, saying different things to different people. As I thought about this a little more yesterday afternoon, I realized that this is in fact the true Trinity, God who is one God and three Gods at the same time. Theologians, pay attention.

Next, for my Christian readers, I have a question: In the New Testament, when placed on the cross, Jesus says (presumably in good Aramaic), “God, why have you forsaken me?” A high school friend of Edie’s put this on Facebook yesterday (why, I am not sure; this was the entire post) and I told him that I never understood this line. He didn’t seem to understand my confusion, I didn’t want to get into an open Facebook discussion, but I ask you: Hadn’t Jesus read the script? Hadn’t he been given the script? Didn’t he know what was going to happen? Was he just told what his pre-crucifixion lines were, and not what was going to happen once the Romans caught him and strung him up? This part of his story, and only this part, was a surprise to him? I am sure I am not the first to ask the question.

Third, my old (getting older) friend and former law partner Jeff posted a comment yesterday commending me for offten seeing both sides of a story. I thanked him, and it reminded me of my old client Gordon, no longer of this world. Gordon was several years older than me, lived in New England, came from a prominent family and spent his career rehabbing single family homes, duplexes and triplexes as low income housing. He was indeed somewhat of a character (as were most of my clients) and was one of those who, when faced with providing quality housing for his tenants or following to the letter the regulations of HUD and other relevant agencies, always chose good housing as paramount (giving his lawyer a lot of business, as an aside). Gordon and I were very friendly and he would call me up sometimes just to talk about world affairs, usually when something happened of importance. He told me that he called me, and not any one else, for the same reason that Jeff thought he should commend me, that I would never see anything as black and white, and that even when talking about Israel or things Jewish (something that Gordon was not), I could always explain it from more than one side. He valued this, I guess. 

One day he called me somewhat exasperated and said “I was just looking at the bill I got from you and I realize that you aren’t charging me when I call you about what’s going on in the world. I am not trying to waste your time or take you away from other business. I expect to be charged.” Of course, he never was.

Finally, on a topic very different, Edie and I went to Theater J yesterday to see a play called Berlin Diaries. As Edie pointed out, Berlin Diaries was about only one diary, so the name of the play itself was a bit misleading, even if unimportantly so. But I must say this. In spite of yesterday’s positive review in the Washington Post, there were many better ways I could have spent yesterday afternoon. Just being honest.

The play is semi-autobiographical. The playwright, Andrea Stolowitz, is also a character in the play. She is a playwright in the play and she has been given a grant to go to Berlin to write a play based on the diary of her great-grandfather Max Stolowitz, which he started in 1939 and, I think, finished in 1948. The diary was given to her mother and then her mother gave it to Andrea who put in on a shelf for a decade or so before she opened it up.

The meta story is that, while in Berlin for a year, she had a difficult time figuring out how to turn the diary into a play. The play itself is presumably the result of her frustrating year in Berlin, and I think she proved her point as to how difficult she found it. There are only two cast members (good choice, Andrea, that makes it less expensive to produce and more likely to be performed), playing a large number of characters. That is okay, but what is weird about it is that the two actors (one male, one female) are not given specific characters to play. One minute the female is playing Andrea, the next minute the male is playing Andrea and sometimes they are both playing Andrea at the same time talking to each other or simply alternating lines. The whole play is like that. It made no sense as a structure to me; it would have been better as a one-woman play, or even as an actor with a hand puppet play.

There were other things that frustrated me. In real life (IRL), museum is called the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In the play, it is called the United States Holocaust Museum; no “Memorial”. In informal speech, this is no problem, but “Memorial” is omitted several times even when an actor is reading correspondence from an archivist at the museum. Why?

The story of Andrea’s family may have been interesting, but while we hear a lot about her coming up with names of lost relatives (like her otherwise missing Great Great Aunt Flora), we don’t learn anything about any of them. We just know that there were relatives who did not make it out of Germany whose names Andrea never heard.

If her purpose was to make these names known, I guess she succeeded. If she wanted to tell their stories, she failed. She didn’t even try.

We saw no one we knew at Theater J. That is unusual.  I asked Edie who these people were. She told me they looked like people who didn’t drive at night. I think she was right. We were part of the young crowd.

And finally, we watched the documentary Grenfell Towers, the story behind the 2017 fire that claimed 72 lives in London. I recommend it. A story of a fire that never should have happened and a response that should have been much different. On Netflix.

Chaos, Cruelty and Corruption.

Chaos, cruelty, and corruption.

Netanyahu and Trump take two different approaches to world affairs. Netanyahu’s is: I am ruthless, I know where you are, and I am going to get you. Trump’s is: I am crazy, you have no idea what I might do, so you better be nice to me. Each of these approaches might bring short term success (or not), but neither would be an approach you would learn at any university in the world, and neither can possibly lead to long term stability.

But these two approaches are playing out in the current conflict with Iran.  We know that every Iranian government official and nuclear scientist believes themselves to be potential targets of Israel. We know that every Iranian citizen fears United States involvement. We know that no Israeli, American, or Iranian knows what will happen when the fighting stops.

If given the choice, though, anyone would rather be in Iran today than in Gaza. Gaza shows the ultimate failure of Netanyahu’s policy. Fear of being targeted doesn’t work if you can’t be located because “I know where you are” is not always factual, and if your evasive activity is successful because you don’t care about the safety of the people over whom you rule. In that case, Netanyahu’s approach results in massacres. And Trump’s approach, to paralysis.

No answers here today, only analysis. And pretty basic analysis at that. And unfortunately, there appear to be no answers anywhere. But maybe that is always the way it is during bad times. And these are bad times.

Of course, the Trump and Netanyahu approaches are not the only ones. There is always the Putin approach. The Putin approach is simply expansionist. It is: my people deserve to be at the heart of a great empire and we are going to create or recreate that great empire and if you live on land meant to be ours, that is too bad for you. (But, Arthur, forget Putin for once. He is irrelevant to this post.)

And then there are those who operate on conflicting signals being given by the same God. God says three things at once. He says: Jews, the promised land is yours: go forth, take it, and multiply. He says: Muslims, the world is yours; conquer it and never relinquish it. He says: Christians, the end times are near; the Jews and Muslims will destroy each other, and only you will be the winner, so sit back, prophesy, and enjoy.

Perhaps neither Trump nor Netanyahu, nor the Arab nor Iranian leaders, believe this. Or let’s put it another way. Perhaps they do believe this, but don’t know that they believe this. That is more likely.

We may not think very often about these end-times Christians. But they sare around. We know about Mike Huckabee, now ambassador to Israel. And now we know about Ted Cruz, who told Tucker Carlson that he supports Israel because the Bible tells him to. Carlson was aghast: the Bible tells you to support today’s political state of Israel? Yes, said Cruz. What should we learn from Cruz’ answer?

Okay, end-times for this post. Did we get anywhere today?

Chaos, Cruelty, and Corruption.

Three things from yesterday’s New York Times that had an effect on me:

First, sadness. “An 8 year old girl who loved dancing in a red dress at her dentist’s office. A 28 year old national equestrian champion. A young poet one week away from her 24th birthday. A graphic designer who worked at National Geographic. Grandparents in their 80s. All are among the civilians killed during Israeli airstrikes on Iran.”

Second, the department of “I had no clue”. “South Africa has for decades been a medical research powerhouse,yet its stature has been little known to people outside the field. South Africa’s scientists have been responsible for key breakthroughs against major global killers, including heart disease, H.I.V. and respiratory viruses such as Covid-19.” This article referred to the effect of American cuts on South African research.

Third, the category of “you gotta be kidding”.  “Even though Brian Wilson grew up only five miles from the Pacific Ocean, he rarely went to the beach. He’d felt scared by the size of the ocean on his first visit. Being light skinned, he also feared sunburns. He tried surfing, but got hit on the head by his board and decided once was enough.”

The article about Brian Wilson was the only thing I read yesterday that gave me anything close to a chuckle. Everything else was too heavy.

For example, how did Donald Trump commemorate June 19? By posting “Too many nonworking holidays in the United States. It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all these businesses closed……..It must change if we are going to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

And what about this odd deal between U.S. Steel and the Japanese company that purchased it? If you haven’t paid attention to it, you may be surprised to learn that the deal gives certain corporate governance authority to the President of the United States. I guess no one knows the full scope of those powers, but they include vetoes on matters affecting production in American facilities. Has this type of deal ever been done before? Is this a form of socialism? Of nationalization? What sort of new animal has been created?

Of course, the two most important issues today are the questions of whether the United States will formally enter a war against Iran, and how ICE is going about stopping people willy-nilly on the street, throwing them to the ground, handcuffing them and sending them to detention centers whether or not they have broken any criminal laws, or are legal residents or U.S. citizens.

As to Iran, Trump has said he (not “we”, but he) will decide within the next two weeks. I know what that means. That means it might be tomorrow morning, or it might be six months from now.

It means that he believes going to war is up to him, and that once again Congress has no role, Constitution be damned.

As to the detention activities of ICE, ICE employees should learn that one day soon (within the next 3 1/2 years at most), they will most likely be shunned by their fellow Americans.

The government’s sweeps have frightened the entire country, or at least large swaths of it. People are afraid to leave their houses or go to school or work. It obviously does not have to be this way. We know that there were very large numbers of people sent out of the country by prior presidents, and that the Obama administration sent out unauthorized people in larger numbers than has Trump so far. But there wasn’t any of this unbelievable hullabaloo then. It wasn’t done to spread fear or to make the daily news. We are involved with something different.

Fear is a prime focus of totalitarian regimes, and our totalitarian regime is trying to spread fear to make people less and less likely to protest against it for fear that they themselves will be placed under arrest as a result of their oppositional activities. And to expand fear, a totalitarian regime would make its officials look as frightening as possible. Over dressing them in military style outfits and masking their faces, and sending them around in large numbers, with no personal identification – that’s what this type of regime would do. Remember, as a recent example, the “little green men”, the Russians who ten years or so were infiltrating eastern Ukraine? That is what we are seeing here now.

After Pearl Harbor, we all know that the federal government began rounding up people of Japanese ancestry (American citizen or not) and sending them to detention camps. We all know how horrific this was. But I want to point out two things – first, I don’t think that families were broken up during these activities, and second, I don’t know that there were the “fear” tactics used, as opposed to tactics simply relating to following orders, I don’t know that people got roughed up as they are today, or that people of, say, Chinese or Korean ancestry were taken and detained just in case they might be of Japanese ancestry.

Going back to Iran, everything is confused. This isn’t surprising. Is Israel right when it concludes that Iran was on the cusp of having a bomb? Or was U.S. intelligence correct? And how do the conclusions of the International Atomic Energy Agency fit in?

I have also heard both that Israel is destroying Iran’s nuclear capacity, and – on the other hand – that no matter what it does, it will only be setting it back a year or so.

Perhaps Trump is actually confused here. That would be a change.

But let me ask a question. What is the endgame? Have you heard that question before? It is one that we never seem to be able to answer. What was the end game in Iraq, or in Afghanistan? We had none and suffered because of it. And we always say that we will make sure there will be no more military interventions until we know how the war will end, and what things will look like the day after. But here we are again.

And what have we learned about Israel as a result of their activities in Gaza? We have learned that they have no way to end a war because they, too, have no defined end game.

What we do know is that one day, the Trump administration will end. (Okay, we don’t really know this, but we have to say that we do, or they might not.) And we know something else – we know that after tlit ends, those who were involved in all of Trump’s illegal activities will have to face the consequences of their actions.

But that won’t be enough. We will have another problem. The United States will not be able to go back simply to status quo ante Trump, because things will have changed so much and in so many respects that this will be impossible. And we won’t want to go back to status quo ante Trump  in any event because, after all, it is status quo ante Trump that led us to Trump in the first place. So it will be very complicated. In other words, we do not yet know what our own endgame is.

But without a defined endgame, what chance do we have?

Chaos, Cruelty, Corruption.

Soroka Hospital in Beersheva is by far the largest hospital in the south of Israel, serving not only the city of Beersheva, but the entire Negev region, which includes the country’s large Bedouin population and the settlements overrun by the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 which started it all. It is also the major training hospital for the medical school of Ben Gurion University of the Negev. It recently opened a new patient facility. It was hit last night with a missile launched from Iran. Apparently, the damage was serious.

In the meantime, my vision is of Donald John Trump, wearing a white t-shirt, blue shorts, no shoes, and a quizzical look on his face, sitting in a field of many petalled wild flowers, picking off the petals one by one, saying “I’ll bomb Iran. I’ll not bomb Iran. I’ll bomb Iran. I won’t bomb Iran.” On and on.

And I have a picture of Ayatollah Khamenei, in his clerical garb, with the face and expression of Alfred E. Newman, saying (in Farsi, of course), “What, me worry?” as he shakes in his clerical boots.

I have a picture of Virginia Senator Mark Warner, minority leader of the House Intelligence Committee, and Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, bonding with each other as founding members of the federal Order of Chopped Liver.

I have a vision of Benjamin Netanyahu dancing a traditional Israeli circle dance, in a deep bomb shelter  with no one else in the circle and with garlands in his hair, chanting (in Hebrew of course), “I’m saving my country. I am winning my war.”

I see Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson yelling at each other: “You don’t know anything about Iran. “No, YOU don’t know anything about Iran.”  No, strike this paragraph, Arthur, that’s too absurd.

I see Putin offering to be the mediator and peacemaker, and Trump saying “That should work.”  And, in fact, who knows? It might work as well as anything else.

I see the son of the Shah of Iran, saying, “I am ready to take over the country. I know Iran. I was there as recently as 1979, when I was a teenager.”

I see the 10 million residents of Tehran, under orders from Donald Trump to vacate the city, each saying, “I have a cousin in Los Angeles who would love to see me. Does El Al fly there?”

I see 2 million people in Gaza who say, “Now that Israel is preoccupied, maybe we can once again……but first, a little food please. Butter, please. And guns.”

Meanwhile, what about me? I’m going to turn on Morning Joe and find out what’s going on in the world.

Chaos, cruelty and corruption

The news in the music world this week has been the death of pianist Alfred Brendel at 94.

Brendel was, in my mind, an exceptional pianist in that his playing had a definite personality. It was clear, crisp, uncomplicated, straightforward, pure.

And it got me thinking about how many great pianists there have been, an uncountable number. And how I wish I listened to them more. And how I wish I knew more about so many of them.

I don’t know who the best pianist playing today is. There probably is no single individual who has that title. But the most exciting may be Yuja Wang, of course.

Say what you want about her fashion choices, her dexterity and accuracy are amazing. We saw her once at the Kennedy Center z”l, some years ago when she was still a phenom. I think she has outgrown that description by now.

My all time favorite? Probably Sviatislav Richter, the great Soviet pianist who died in 1997 (at the noble age of 82).

I discovered him while I was in college through his recordings. His tone was so precise. He could play a series of notes so perfectly that you would think you were listening to rain falling, not to a percussion instrument.

And then, of course, there was Arthur Rubinstein.

I know. You normally picture Rubenstein in his 80s, not as a young red head, but here he is. Rubenstein outlived Brendel, dying at 95. He was in many ways, Brendel’s opposite, not always precise, hitting the wrong note now and then. I read both volumes of his memoirs and think you should, too. He was, as a youth, a wild and crazy guy, and, if you believe him, he really never had to practice that much.

And then there was Vladimir Horowitz.

Horowitz’ only fault was that he hated to play in public. And for years, he was only known from recordings, until he was convinced to play at, I think, Carnegie Hall, where he almost changed his mind at the last minute (or was it the last second?)

I could go on and on, but I will stop by mentioning three women. First, the late Alicia de Larrocha.

Then there is 84 year old Martha Agerich

and there is Helene Grimaud

Of course, not all great pianists are classical pianists, but some classically trained pianists cross into other musical modes. Did you ever hear Nina Simone, trained at Julliard, play?

And who can forget Victor Borge?

Chaos, Cruelty, and Corruption. Not these musicians.

Chaos, Cruelty and Corruption

Donald Trump leaves Calgary a day early so he can solve the problems between Iran and Israel. He doesn’t want to try to arrange a ceasefire, but wants to arrange something bigger than that.

What could be bigger than that? We don’t know, but we do know that Donald Trump would like to see the population of Tehran leave the city. That sounds easy enough – there are only about 10,000,000 people in Tehran.

Now, why would Donald Trump want 10,000,000 people to leave Tehran? One possibility is that he would like to move 2,000,000 people from Gaza and 3,500,000 people from the West Bank into Tehran. Once they are settled, Donald Trump can then select 4,500,000 undocumented people currently in the United States and transport them all to Tehran, which will become the most cosmopolitan city in the world, filled with people of ambition and grit. They will be allowed to build their families’ future in the new Tehran (to be renamed Trump, Trump, Trump) with only one limitation. They will not (for reasons that should be obvious) be allowed to travel outside of the city except with permission of the Trump family. They will kept in by a Big Beautiful Wall, to be paid for by Mexico.

Now, this satisfies Israel’s problems, so that Israel can now without resistance expand itself from the river to the sea, and it solves the Big Beautiful Illegal Immigration Problem in which the United States has found itself. But (and you are probably smart enough to see this), it does not solve the problem of the 10,000,000 residents of Tehran who have left the city. Donald Trump does not classify this as a problem. For one thing, he says, 10,000,000 is just a number (to prove his point, he names other numbers that are just numbers, like 6 or 134,555,201 or 2/3). For another, he believes that all of these 10,000,000 have friends or relatives in other parts of Iran who would love to have them come and live with them; Donald Trump has read that hospitality is a hallmark of Iranian society.

Donald Trump believes that some of these 10,000,000 from Tehran might want to leave the country. He would welcome into the United States anyone who will pay $5,000,000 into the U.S. Treasury. This would be part of his proposed “Gold Card” immigration program (don’t believe me? Google it.). Let’s say that 200,000 residents of Tehran have $5,000,000 and want to come to the United States. I quote Commerce Secretary Howard “The Brain” Lutnick: “At 200,000 people, that’s a trillion dollars”. Donald Trump again understands that these are numbers, and that numbers are what makes the world go round. Howard “The Brain” Lutnick knows that if you can find 7,200,000 Iranians or others who will pay $5 million to come into the United States, that “trillion dollars” will grow to $36,000,000,000,000 dollars (that’s another, more frightening, way to write 36 trillion), and the National Debt will be totally wiped out.

So, let’s see. We have solved the Israel problem, the Iran problem, the Palestinian problem and the American problem. By the way, I did read Tom Friedman’s column this morning where he tried to suggest sort of a way that might in some instances begin to solve the Israel and Iran problem with a little luck (make that “with a lotta luck”), and was surprised that Friedman did not think big like I am. So tell me again, why does Friedman get the big bucks?

A digression. Speaking of big bucks (and moving to a different level altogether), we had dinner last week for about the third or fourth time this year at our neighborhood best restaurant, Buck’s Fishing and Camping, and once again I give it an A. I had a Parmesan encrusted trout (where do they find trout swimming covered in cheese?), which was delicious. (I guess this is why Buck’s should pay me the big bucks.) End of digression.

Speaking of numbers, I assume you have been reading about DOGE and Social Security and the Musk statements that 40% of the phone inquiries received by the Social Security Administration were fraudulent? Well, it turns out that 40% was, yes, just a number disconnected with reality, and that a very high level administrator knew that, but was told by Katie Miller (the charming wife of the equally charming Stephen Miller, of course) who was working at the White House but is now working for Elon Himself, that “The number is 40%. Do not contradict the president.” So, there.

Okay, one last thing. There is a front page article that says that Buc-ee’s is opening its first shop in Mississippi (in Pass Christian, by the way, a name that offended me when I first heard it in junior high school). Upon recommendation of a friend with whom we supped in Florida in March, we stopped at a Buc-ee’s in Georgia or maybe it was South Carolina or it could have been North Carolina on the way home. Have you been to one? It’s as large as the Wegman’s on Wisconsin Avenue (that is not a compliment) or any Costco (also not a complement) and, I was amazed to see, had not one thing that I wanted at all. Not one thing. ‘One”, by the way is also a number, a very small one. “Not one” may or may not be a number, depending on how you define it. If “not one” might mean two or three, then it is a number. But if “not one” means “none”, then I don’t really think that’s a number. But, I could be wrong.

Do you ever wonder if I sit down to write a blog having no plan whatsoever? You can wonder no longer.

Chaos, Cruelty, Corruption

Chaos, Cruelty, and Corruption.

With everything going on, you will be forgiven if you didn’t notice that Amanda Feilding died a few weeks ago at 82 (a noble age, to be sure – she was two months younger than I am). You will also be forgiven if you don’t know her as the Countess of Wemyss and March (thanks to her husband, the Count), or by one of her nicknames, such as Lady Mindbender or The Crackpot Countess. (I get all of this from the New York Times, of course.) Or perhaps you are personally familiar with at least one of her two children, whom she named Rock and Cosmo (perhaps she named them after her favorite dogs – that, I don’t know).

Before she married the Count (she probably called him James), she had a number of boyfriends,  including an affair with Bart Huges, a scientist from Holland who experimented (along with Amanda) daily with LSD, and who was a student of and a proponent of “trepanning”. What? You don’t know what trepanning is? Neither does my computer’s spell check, so don’t feel bad.

Trepanning, according to her obituary is “believing that puncturing the skull relieved pressure and increased blood flow, perhaps creating a permanent high.”

From the NYT article: “No surgeons were willing to participate, so she bored the hole herself in her attic – with a dental drill – after injecting herself with an anesthetic. She filmed the procedure and made a short documentary about it called “Heartbeat in the Brain” (1970). A screening of the film at the Suydam Gallery in New York made several viewers faint. ‘In the film, Ms. Feilding cut off her fringe and applied the drill’, Anthony Haden-Guest wrote in New York Magazine. ‘Minutes flitted by like hours as she lost one and a half pints of very Technicolor blood.’”

The Times goes on to say that she had other friends who were in to trepanning, including another long time live in boyfriend, writer Joseph Mellen. Never heard of Joseph Mellen? He is known for his book Bore Hole, which is – of course – about trepanning. Mellen is still going strong (or at least going) at the age of 86. He is the father of Rock and Cosmo.

It is important, in order to keep your sanity, to know about people like Feilding and Mellen, and to understand that it is possible that a little trepanning might help our current president. After all, we know it couldn’t hurt.

In the meantime, back here on earth, we see that the result of the 11 million (at least that is the number being thrown around) No Kings protestors is a statement by the president that ICE should pick up the pace and deport more people, especially from Democratic governed cities. And there is some question about whether Trump meant it when he said that there should be no deportations of agricultural or hospitality workers. No proof yet that anyone is paying any attention to that. And, come to think of it, if ICE rounds up you and four of your friends, but decides only to deport you, are you an ICE pick? Enquiring minds……)

More reality now. In Rehovot, Israel, an Iranian attack has apparently severely damaged buildings, one in particular, at the Weizmann Institute, showing that no military attack is without significant danger to the home front. Thinking about this, I realize that an air attack, as Israel is making in Iran, does not let the locals under attack to come out with bouquets of flowers to thank the attacking forces for causing havoc in their home towns. There is no real way for those being attacked to show their appreciation, except for a quid pro quo attack on the attacker, it would seem.

Perhaps this is a necessary action that Israel is taken; it is hard to judge that from here. But it is going to come at an enormous cost, and might draw the United States in further, especially if Iran holds true to its pledge and attacks our bases in their general neighborhood.

In the meantime, our non-trepanned president has landed in the 51st state for a G-7 meeting, where everyone will be pleased to see him, I am sure.  Why doesn’t he just announce the annexation while he is in Calgary and call out the King’s Guard (or whatever they might be called) and federalize them, sending them to our southern border to fight the Mexicans?  This is what a real man would do, I think.  And if any member of that august body claims that he cannot be activated because of bone spurs?  He will know exactly how to deal with him. And it won’t be pretty, I will tell you that.

Finally, I see that E. Jean Carroll still has her $5 million verdict against the First Assaulter, as the Court of Appeals refused to review the case. Time for collection, I think. I am waiting for Carroll to bring an action to garnish Poor Donald’s presidential wages. I would love to see the court’s deal with that.

Chaos, Cruelty, Corruption

Chaos, Cruelty and Corruption.

We turned the TV on to watch the parade. I started with Channel 7, a local station, but soon switched to C-Span, where they were showing everything with an announcer and two Army officers giving color. We saw some bands, including one dressed in 18th century outfits. We saw a lot of jeeps and tanks. We saw some paratroopers. It was quite boring and, frankly, I forgot the TV was even on. I know that Trump and Vance both spoke, but I guess we turned it off before they did. What happened? Trump, the great showman,  could not pull off a great show. And, believe it or not, the crowds were bigger at his inaugurations.

Sure seemed like a waste of my money and others’ time.

And yes, it was overshadowed by the murders and assaults in Minnesota. Such a tragedy, and such a potentially dangerous turn if this country becomes like Mexico and every public official knows that their lives are at risk.

Ythey are still looking for this guy, and he may  be able to do more harm before he is found. But he does intrigue me. I don’t know his “motive” for doing what he did, and, according to his hit list, wanting to do more. That only slightly interests me. What really interests me is why a 57 year old man, with a family, whose background apparently showed no criminal activity, who had an interesting career, and so forth, would decide to do this irrespective of motive?Were there things in his background that have yet to come out? Did he suffer from chronic mental illness? Or did something happen that caused him to become something that he wasn’t before?

After the Egyptian native shot up the demonstration in Boulder CO a few weeks ago, even though there was apparently nothing to tie his wife and children into his crime, his entire family was arrested  confined, and threatened with deportation. They can’t deport the family from Minnesota, but are they going to do anything to them without evidence of complicity?  Or, again, are some more equal than others?

And today, of course, is Fathers Day. As someone who generally feels that holidays simply disrupt the routine, my inclination is to ignore. But I can’t do that, so when one of my daughters asked me how I wanted to celebrate this year, I left the plans to her, reminding her only that less is better. Two festivities are on the calendar, one at 11, one at 6.

By the way, two books in process. One, Prophet in a Time of Priests, by then 98 year old Janice Rothschild Blumberg, the story of her great-grandfather, Rabbi Alphabet Browne, and Thirteen Ways of Looking, by Colum McCann. Both worth further discussion.

Meanwhile, in Israel? Gevalt.

Chaos, Cruelty and Corruption.

I have been afraid that today will be a very interesting one in the United States of America, and as we all know, interesting is rarely good.

And we have started with a series of attacks on Minnesota state representatives, leaving one member of the state House and her spouse dead, and another and his spouse seriously injured after being shot multiple times. Is this the start of something bigger, or has the shooter(s) accomplished what he/she (they) had set out to do?

The No-King movement is sponsoring demonstrations all around the country, except here in the District of Columbia. Nevertheless, there are sui generis demonstrations going on here, including a group of maybe one hundred or so sign and flag carrying men and women lining Connecticut Avenue near the Van Ness Metro Station, and others are scheduled for later.

The day here is warm and muggy and the skies are cloudy; the feeling (to me) is sort of Caribbean. According to Weatherbug on my phone, there is only about a 15% chance of rain right now and for the rest of the first half of the day. When the Trumparmy parade is scheduled to start at 6 p.m., the chance of rain is 65% and remains at about that level until about 10. With luck (IMHO), the parade crowd (if there is to be a crowd under any circumstances) will be diminished because of the rain, and the aerial parts of the display (the flybys, the helicopters, the parachuters) will be canceled. That, we shall see.

Whether the Minnesota shootings were timed to coincide with the other events today, of course we don’t know. But there is concern that there might be other tragedies before us, particularly in those states where governors have called out their National Guards, and particularly in California, where the federal government has both taken over the National Guard (this is in the courts, with a hearing set on Tuesday) and activated or sent out into the streets a significant number of U.S. Marines. And I don’t know if you saw the video clip, but the sheriff of Brevard County FL, at a press conference, said that if anyone attempts to interfere with law enforcement, they will, no questions asked, be shot “graveyard dead”.

Keep your eyes open today; anything could happen. Here, for example, law enforcement is going to be focusing on the events at the Mall and the parade. This will undoubtedly make the rest of the city less secure. I drove by the Israeli Embassy this morning, for example. The front of the embassy is on a restricted street called International [ ], one side on Van Ness and the back on Reno Road. Obviously, with the additional problems in the Middle East as a result of the attacks on Iran, the Israeli embassy is in an even higher risk situation. Yesterday, I saw a police car (maybe a Secret Service car) posted on Reno Road in back of the embassy. That car was not there today; there was a Secret Service car on International in front of the embassy, but the side and back (other than the open fencing) seemed not to be secured.

There will be other crowds today in this area. For example, in the suburb of Kensington, about 6 miles north on Connecticut Avenue, today is the day of their Juneteenth celebration. And I am sure there are other things going on – I know there is a festival in a suburban Virginia park where our friends, Little Red and the Renegades, are playing. And there is a 1 p.m. baseball game at Nats Park.

Speaking of the poor Nats who once again seem to be dropping lower and lower, there was great hope as they started a home stand against the last place Miami Marlins yesterday. And in fact, the Nats did score 9 runs and get 16 hits. Unfortunately, the Marlins scored 11 runs and got 17 hits. The Nats, which had brought their season record to within a couple below .500, are now once again 9 below .500.

I have also been trying to follow what is going on in Israel and Iran. I am hearing conflicting things. Most everyone is saying that Israel’s strike was very successful and very professionally done. The nuclear capacity of Iran has certainly been diminished, but many are saying that there is much more to be done, that there are some nuclear sites that have not yet been attacked, particularly the Fordu site near Qom, hidden deep in a mountain. Whether they can affect Fordu is unclear.

In the meantime, Israel has now apparently destroyed most of the Iranian defensive facilities surrounding Tehran, so the capital is now vulnerable. The two goals of Israel are presumably the destruction of the country’s nuclear program and its ability to defend itself or to institute attacks through the air. Because Iran is separated from Israel both by Iraq and Jordan, a land fight is very, very unlikely. And one thing we know is, whenever there is an initial attack that looks successful, that is when the trouble starts. Do you remember the U.S. attack on Iraq and G.W. Bush proclaiming victory shortly thereafter on an aircraft carrier?

Why is this day different from all other days?

Chaos, Cruelty and Corruption.

These four words say it all. This is the description of the Trump regime used last night on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show by Congressman Hakim Jeffries. I think that this should be the Democratic Party’s mantra over the remaining years of Trump’s reign. I think it should be adopted by independent anti-Trumpers. I think it should be used throughout the next campaign. The Democrats have a hard time coming up with catchy slogans, and a hard time using them over and over the way Trump does. This simple description is a keeper.

Tomorrow is the big hoo-haw on the Mall, followed by the big parade, followed by the big concert. It is costing the U.S. taxpayers at least $50 million and that assumes that the streets of Washington don’t get torn up. I have heard remarkably little about the parade and related ceremonies, considering that it is all taking place within a few miles of our house. I don’t know anyone planning to go, and I haven’t heard anything about masses of tourists coming to town to see the parade. I haven’t heard about hotels filling up, or restaurant reservations being hard to find, or statistics about economic benefits to the city’s commercial economy.

There are going to be several thousand “No Kings” protests everywhere in the country, as you undoubtedly know. But none in Washington, as the organizers decided that they shouldn’t risk a confrontation here. But nevertheless, there are demonstrations and protests planned; I know of at least three: one on Connecticut Avenue, one on Wisconsin Ave, and one at Fort Reno Park. There may be others. We have no definite plans to attend any of them (they take place at staggered times), but may change our minds. After all, the three that I mentioned are all within a mile or so of our house. So I went this morning to Strosniders Hardware and spent $7.98 to by two “made in the U.S.A.” American flags to wave if we decide to attend.

Tomorrow, of course, is the 250th anniversary of the formation of the Continental Army by the Continental Congress. It is also Flag Day, celebrating the adoption of the first American flag (13 stripes and 13 stars) by the same Continental Congress in 1777. And, sadly, tomorrow is also the day known as the American Nakba, otherwise known as the birthday of Donald Trump. So taking an American flag to a protest is appropriate.

But so much more is going on. One of the surprises was the FBI attack on Senator Padilla at the Kristi Noem news conference. I have to say that I think that Padilla made a mistake not so much at going to what was apparently an open press conference in a building where he has an office, but at trying to speak out and ask a question when questions do not appear to have been in order. That mistake, however, does not excuse the FBI accosting Padilla, dragging him out of the room, pushing him to the floor and cuffing him. That was outrageous. Full stop.

And then there was the hearing of the House Government Oversight Committee where Democratic governors Hochul (NY), Walz (MN) and Pritzker (IL) were bullied and raked over the coals by outrageously disrespectful and rude Republican members. As so often the case, this hearing was clearly not to obtain any information from the witnesses, but rather to make ridiculous political statements presumably to appeal to their own voters at the expense of the witnesses. In most instances, when a question was asked, a witness was not permitted to answer it. Their answers would be cut off at approximately the third word. One way to do this was to say that the only acceptable answers would be “yes” or “no”, and then asking a question like “What color is the sky?”, and any answer that was not “yes” or “no” would be clipped with either “Reclaiming my time”, or “So you refuse to answer the question”. The video of this hearing is undoubtedly on the C-Span website, and I suggest you watch it just to see how far down we have fallen in the operation of the highest levels of our government. You will see, for example, Nancy Mace asking Tim Walz “What is a woman?” and his responding “How do you want me to answer that?” and she said “I want you to say that I am a woman and no man can ever be a woman”. (Only a slight paraphrase)

And then there is a question of who should control the National Guard, now being bandied about by the courts; I suspect that this will become more of an issue after tomorrow’s demonstrations.

And, ah yes, there is the question of Israel’s attack on Iran. It’s interesting that we are living in a time when warfare is changing so drastically. We have witnessed the remarkable attacks through cell phones that Israel has made against Hezbollah, the drones secreted into Russia by Ukraine that destroyed much of Russia’s bomber force, and now a major attack by Israel on Iran which focused not only on nuclear sites, but military response sites, and the leadership of both Iran’s military forces and scientific programs. Each of these attacks used technology that did not exist only a few years ago, and involved moles or “assets” deep within the victim states. And of course all this goes on while the horrors of Gaza continue.

So every day, there is more, and more, and more.

Go out and protest this weekend. And remember the slogan: Chaos, Cruelty and Corruption.