Art is 80

The day started with breakfast at Goldman’s Deli, located in a shopping center on Route 1 as you head out of (or in to) Key West. At about 9 a.m., it was bustling. The menu looks like any other Jewishy deli, the people who work there look like every other deli staff, and the menu could be from a Goldman’s Deli anywhere. There was nothing that resembled anything else we saw in Key West. The food was fine. But strange things happened.

Edie ordered granola and yogurt. Our server (name given only on request) came back and said, ” I forgot to ask. You want 8 or 16 ounces of yogurt?”

I ordered oatmeal  with brown sugar and raisins. She brought me oatmeal and brown sugar. She apologized and said, “We are looking for the raisins.”

The raisins came several minutes later. When they arrived, Edie asked for tea. Our server said “Sure” and walked away. Five minutes later, she returned without the tea, but with a question. “What did you ask me for? My brain isn’t working this morning.”

When we were finished, she put our check on the table. I put a credit card on the check and it was whisked away by a different  employee, who looked to me like he was a second or third generation Goldman.

Time passed. All of a sudden, a third server appeared near the register, held my credit card high, and in a loud voice, yelled “Is there an Arthur Hessel here? We have your credit card.”

Do I recommend Goldman’s? Absolutely. The selection of bagels looked excellent, as did all the pastries, even though we tried none of them.

The ride to West Palm Beach (actually Riviera Beach) was fine and uneventful. We are at our friends’ condo with a beautiful view. 

Last night, we saw the Nats beat the Mets 5 to 4, scoring in the bottom of the 9th on a double by Nasim Nunez. Today, we go back to see the Nats and the Cardinals. Tomorrow,  we continue north. Home on the 12th.

This was our last day in Key West. We finished it by going back to Cafe Solé for the third time, but this time not alone. A high school classmate of Edie’s happened to be here for a few days with her husband from their home in The Villages (yes, The Villages) and we had a nice visit with them. We last saw them two years ago and plan on seeing them at Edie’s high school reunion in October.

But we started off the day at the Key West Botanical Garden, not the biggest such garden in the world, but an interesting one, as all the plants and trees are tropical, and the identifying signage is exceptional. Let’s look, for example, at mahogany.

Or, look at some of the Cuban palms

We went to another part of town to make sure we tasted Blue Heaven’s key lime pie, but found it mostly meringue. Here is the pie and some shots of the large, very popular restaurant.

This area of Key West is called Bahama Village, where we saw some of the few examples of Key West street art.

Key West and the rest of Monroe County voted for Trump, about 60-40. But there are a lot of federal employees here, especially for the Navy. Jobs are being cut, and many are afraid they are next. We spoke to two former federal employees, one a former high ranking Navy official, who told us what they see going on.

Hopefully, tomorrow will show us on the road early. Tomorrow, it’s baseball. Go, Nats.

And, Go Musk. SpaceX rocket explodes. Tesla stock down 40%. It’s time for you to attend to business, Elon. It’s time for you to go.

Harry Truman spent 175 days at his Little White House in Key West. His home was originally the home of the commanding admiral of the Key West Naval Base, built in 1890 and remodeled in 1948. The major portion of the base is long closed, and a great deal of it was transformed by a developer named Singh over a period of many years. It is called the Truman Annex and has close to 500 single family dwellings and additional condos and townhouses, most of which are used, I am sure, as second homes. Single family homes seem to start at about $4 million, condos at $2 million, and small townhouses at about $1.5 million. It is one exclusive neighborhood.

In fact, it is so exclusive that, to visit the Little White House, you cannot park in the Truman Annex at all, but have to find a rare space nearby or pay $30 to park on a lot about a half mile away.

The tour of the house tells you much you did not know about the house, its history and the Trumans. Did you know Truman took a shot of bourbon under doctor’s orders every morning? 

For some reason, except for one room, photos are not permitted. Here is one shot of the exterior, one of the interior, and one of the President’s limousine, a 1950 Lincoln.

Oh, yes, Harry’s piano.

We did go to the beach for a short while. There is a lot of beach on Key West, but we went to Ft. Zachary Taylor State Park, found a bench away from the beach itself, and enjoyed the rocks and the water.

Food?

Lunch was at Olive’s, a six month old, ten seat restaurant,  run by a young man from Turkey, using his grandmother’s and grandfather’s recipes. As I told Edie, my skewer of chicken was maybe the best chicken I ever tasted. We picked the restaurant because we found a parking spot. Then I looked at ratings on Google. 5.0. And his story is very interesting.

For dinner, it was Mangia Mangia, strangely called a “pasta cafe”. Our pappardelle, which we split, with spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, and garbanzos was also perfect.

And yes, we still saw many chickens. But we made a new friend, as well.

This was also at Ft. Taylor. Ft. Taylor was built before the Civil War to protect Florida from a Caribbean attack. The U.S. never lost control: throughout the Civil War, Key West always remained in the control of Union forces.

Tomorrow? Our last day on Key West. It will be a little cooler.

1. It all started with Tik Tok, and no one ever mentions it. For reasons of national security as described by American intelligence,  Congress passed a bill saying that Tik Tok would be unavailable in the country as of Jan 19, unless it was under contract to be sold by its Chinese owner to an American entity.  On Jan 19, Tik Tok went silent. On Jan 20,newly inaugurated Trump brought it back and said it would soon be sold. This was a clearly illegal act; no one denies that. When no one yelled and screamed, Trump must have realized that he could do anything he wanted, the law be damned.
2. So the 5-4 Supreme Court agrees that Musktrump does not have the authority to abruptly cancel all US foreign aid. But they send it back to the District Court to rewrite their injunctive relief with more specificity.  What do I take from this? That means that the District Court has a very difficult problem and whatever they do will be subject to appeal. Let’s assume the courts are all the king’s horses. How will they put the government together again?
3. I heard Trump last night. Touting his tariffs, he told how excited American automakers were. Today, already a different story. Now he does talk to the industry leaders, sees how upset they are, and pauses auto tariffs 30 days. Ready, fire, aim, then run for cover.
4. Senator Slotkin’s Democratic response was, I thought, underwhelming. After introducing herself, I don’t remember one thing she said. Disappointed, but probably not many watched her anyway.

We are staying in a small hotel. 23 rooms, a patio and a pool. Our room is small, but adequate. And with a very nice shower. It is located in the historic part of Key West, surrounded by homes built between 1850 and 1890, the growth period for this 25,000 (today) population island.

The breakfast is a cold breakfast, with a fair number of choices. The only thing warm is the coffee. Next to the coffee, there is a large assortment of tea bags. Unfortunately,  there is no hot water for the tea. The response from a hotel worker was simply “No, we have no hot water today.”

Tomorrow? “I doubt we will have hot water tomorrow.”

Go figure.

Today was a 10,000 step day. Much of it walking through old Key West from the hotel to Duval Street,  the biggest commercial street in town. What does it look like? Here:

This last house has an interesting past.

Our biggest stop was at Ernest Hemingway’s house, which he and wife #2 bought in 1931. The house had been vacant for 40 years, so needed much renovation. Wife Pauline’s uncle paid the bill (he was a founder of Pfizer pharmaceuticals) for the acquisition and renovation.

We had a terrific guide and learned many things. Here are a few photos:

Very worthwhile.

Very near the house is the Key West lighthouse. Both the lighthouse and the keeper’s museum looked good, and I would have liked to see the view from the tops, but….no elevator, and we are not spring chickens. Just under 100 claustrophobic steps up. And down.

Speaking of chickens, roosters and hens wander  all around the city. Here is one:

And there are cats. Like this one:

The Hemingway house has 57 cats, with their own staff.

The other highlight of the day was meeting Alejandro F. Pascual, author of this book.

Key West is 50 miles closer to Cuba than it is to Miami, and its history is replete with Cuban influence. For one thing, I didn’t know that Key West once had over 100 cigar factories, all rolling Cuban grown tobacco. After a major fire before the end of the 19th century, cigar rollers, led by the Ybar family, began to move to Tampa.

Pascual left Cuba at 14. Spent the biggest part of his career working in New York for the Latin American edition of Newsweek Magazine. Moved to Key West twenty years ago because the vegetation and the feel of the air here is like Cuba.

I read a little of the book about the settlement of Cuba that I had never thought about. By 1850, Spain had been kicked out of Latin America, leaving only Puerto Rico (then less developed) and Cuba as Spanish colonies. Latin American Spanish loyalists flocked to Havana. They were by and large, as you would imagine, both conservative and financially successful. When Castro took over and so many Cubans fled to the US, they probably included descendants of this earlier group. It might explain the financial success of the immigrant population and their predilection to vote Republican.

We went back to Cafe Sole last night. Hogback snapper and tuna.

We ended our evening with Donald Trump.

We made it to Key West. The roads don’t go any farther. I thought it would be a fairly quick drive – 3 1/2 hours, but I decided to avoid the Florida Turnpike and instead just go down Route 1. So we learned how big Dade County is. It added about an hour to the trip. But then, south of Marathon Island, we began to hear sirens and emergency vehicles speeding past us, going in our direction but on the wrong side of the street. Clearly, northward traffic had been blocked. Soon, our side stopped moving as well. We were on a causeway. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. And no bathrooms. We were stuck for more than an hour. Three ambulances went back north, sirens blaring. And two tow trucks, one with a pickup and one with an SUV, both totally smashed in front.

After we were able to move, we could see how backed up the north lanes were. Maybe two miles.

At any rate, our arrival was not 2:30 or even 3:30, but 4:30. But here we are for the next three days.

As to the ride through the Keys itself, I have done it once before. About 50 years ago. The scenery is much different now. And not at all for the better. In fact, there is so much kitsch on the way down here on the more than 100 miles of US 1, that I wonder why anyone vacations on the Keys, when there are so many other places so much closer.

Key West is different. It looks like it looked 125 years ago, but the rest of the Keys?

Street parking is free in Key West. If you can find a place. We did, about four blocks from our small hotel. I hope we can let it just sit there until we leave.

Our goal is to walk around, see the major sites, and chill. Our inn, Heron House Court, has a very comfortable looking front porch, which I hope we get to use.

As to food, we found a restaurant named Sole, less than two blo ks from here, which it turns out has been ranked by Zagat as the best restaurant in the Keys. My duck and Edie’s snapper were A plus. It’s not inexpensive – the entrees are all over $40 – but, what the hell, it is so good and so convenient, we may make it our go to place.

In the meantime, we did hear a few more podcasts about current tragic events. Looking forward to tomorrow night’s speech (ha ha), and wondering what the Dems would do. I asked Edie how, if she were Shumer or Jeffries, she would tell the Democrats to act. She gave me some very responsible answers. My answer to my question was different.  I would tell the Democrats to wear old shoes. Just in case after they threw them, they weren’t able to retrieve them.

Finally, free coffee, tea and cokes. Two days in a row. Can you guess how that happened?

And one more question.  Why did the chicken cross the road?

Remember when we were stuck on I-95 for two hours two days ago?

Well, todY, we have been stuck so far for an hour on US 1 south of Marathon Island on account of a major crash somewhere ahead of us. There have been 4 or 5 police cars, three ambulances which have already returned with siren on, lights flashing, and two tow trucks. Have no idea what happened or how long we will be here. Beautiful day, water on both sides, 42 miles from our destination.

First, a passenger in the vehicle in front of us was very attractive. She wore a ponytail, and that really suited her.

Second, typical DEI is so 2024. But how about DEI for white men? Probably OK, even today.

Third, cheap Coca-Cola and cheap gas (they go together?).

But the best sign, I drove by too quickly to photograph. At, I think, a storage facility in Savannah,  they have a marquis, which said: “Email us and tell us 5 things you accomplished last week.”

The day was a long one in the car, almost 500 miles. We are now in South Miami.

Tomorrow,  we go further south.

Because we were in the car, had lunch at a Culvers  and even stopped at a Cracker Barrel, there isn’t much to report. The highlights were a number of YouTube podcasts we heard.

I suggest you find (1) yesterday’s podcast featuring Anthony Scaramucci and Michael Wolff, talking about Wolf’s new book, All or Nothing, about the 2024 Trump campaign, (2) a recent conversation between Bill Kristal and Anne Appelbaum on the reaction in Europe the recent visit by  President Zelensky, and (3) an interview of dissident Russian journalist Konstantin Samoilov called Threats to Putin Growing, showing some (to me) surprising developments in Russia as a result of Trump”s about face.

As I said, we are in South Miami, where everyone but us speaks Spanish (apparently over 70% of Miami’s residents are Hispanic  and almost 2/3 of those are Cuban).

We are staying at the Novotel. Here is the view from our room

We walked to Casa Tua for a very good dinner.

And on the way, sundown..

Now, the Oscars.

As we headed south, our oroginal plan was to stop in Savannah, and head into Florida the next day. But then, I said, let’s go all the way to Brunswick, about another hour, and we will have less driving the next day.

We passed Savannah at about 5 pm. With an estimated day end arrival a little after six.

Here is a question for you. Have you ever been stuck in traffic on an Interstate for about two hours, never going faster than 10 mph, but often going at 0 mph? Something, termed roadwork, caused the 3 lanes of I-95 to compress to one lane, and that caused (when we got there) at least a 20-mile backup. After close to two hours, we saw a sign that showed we had at least 10 miles to go, so we left the highway and backtracked about 10 miles to Savannah, and found a Hilton Spark that had room.

I initially called a Hilton Tru, but they were filled. My Hilton representative on the phone, who was probably in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, using very precise English, tried very hard to please me and tell me over and over how I could get 500 extra Hilton Honors points when all I wanted was a room. He told me I could stay at the Sp_______, and when I asked him to spell, I think he said S, as in Samuel, P as in Paul, A as in alpha, R as in Romeo, K as in time.

At any rate, we then needed dinner and went down the street to a Texas Roadhouse, where we avoided the beef. We were looking for a refreshing meal. It was already about 7:30, and were told the wait could takec50 minutes (it was over 30), so we were seated after eight. The food was fine (my third good meal at a TXRH out of three tries). We remarked at how many servers they have working – over 20, maybe 30. And how hard they worked.

That gave us an opportunity to learn a little about Texas Roadhouse. It is headquartered in Kentucky, not Texas (as opposed to KFC, which now based in Texas). It prides itself on its training courses and employee support programs, and its phlilanthropy. Jim Cramer, it appears, advised just two days ago that people should sell their Wendy’s stock and buy Texas Roadhouse. I think he is correct.

Oh, yes lunch. It was in a part of Charleston that seems to be in the middle of nowhere and is part of a development still being built. A Mexican restaurant call Catrina’s. Quite large and carefully adorned. Like this:

TXRH is much more ordinary:

Any other adventure? Certainly, no touring. But yes. Edie’s phone is missing. It was in the car, out of power  when we went to lunch, and by mid-afternoon, it was nowhere. We alerted the restaurant, but they did not have it. We can get a new phone, but her passwords are home, not here.

The best laid plans.

My mind was thrown off by our president and vice president,  who preplanned and purposely made public today’s event with President Zelensky. They proved three things: One, they are mentally adolescent bullies who do not belong anywhere in public life. Two, they have no idea how to conduct diplomacy. And three, they have no idea how to treat a guest. Shame, shame, shame. So I don’t think that I will even mention them today.

I didn’t think of them when we started our dsy in Virginia Beach, which probably has more street art per block than anywhere else.  A few pieces of outside art we saw today.

Our night at the Capes resort was fine, but ventured out for breakfast and wound up at a dingy place called Waffles & Co., a place which for its own sake, I hope has seen better days. It seems to be run by three men, probably in their 70s. My guess is that, after they retired from their careers, their wives got together and bought this place for them to get them out of the house.

We drove south, spent a little time driving through beautiful Edenton NC and had lunch in Washington NC, known as the Original Washington, because it was given its name in 1776. The first city named for George. It is a nice town of about 10,000, with pleasure boating and fishing on the Pamlico River, and is the home of the North Carolina Estuarium (look it up). More importantly,  it is the home town of Ryan Zimmerman.

We had a wonderful light lunch at 1906 Bistro and Bourbon. Here is the wall behind the bar:

Its building was constructed in 1906 for a bank. There was a small hotel on the site before that, which served as the  location of the meetings of the local temperance society.

After lunch, a brief stroll, a stop at the Pamlico Book Store, and coffee (very good coffee) from the Washington Cafe.

A nice ride further south to Wilmington, a charming city. We explored downtown, but decided not to stay in a downtown hotel, as we were just passing through, so we stayed on Wilmington’s version of Rockville Pike. We had supper at a Bonefish Grill across the street in Wikmington’s version of Congressional Plaza. Edie’s salmon was quite good. I had “soy infused, blackened tuna”, which, I am sure was soy infused, but was horseradish infested, overriding any real taste of the tuna. Madison, our server, was certain there was no horseradish in the mix. I told her to try a little when she went back to the kitchen. “No”, she said smiling, “I am a very picky eater.” She came back to the table a few minutes later after checking the “prep sheet”. Horseradish.

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

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

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

We were intrigued by the marker in front.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So that’s it. HE IS NOT MY PRESIDENT!

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

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

Back to our story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Could be.

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

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

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

Then came sixth grade.

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

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

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

I shrunk. Art? He called me Art

My life is ruined.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once again, Cole Porter:

“The world has gone mad today

And good’s bad today

And black’s white today

And day’s night today…..”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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