Art is 80

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s see if I get this right:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just wondering.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Onward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you on Saturday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course, I want to rail

This was accidentally erased. I have a copy on my home computer.

I have been following the news the past two weeks very closely, much more closely than usual, as I try to figure out exactly what is happening in this country. But most people are not following the news as closely as I am, and most Trump voters, if they follow the news at all (many do not), either get their news from social media sites that I could not even identify, or from TV networks such as Fox and Newsmax. So, I think what I will do today, as I have no commitments before mid-afternoon, is turn on Newsmax for an hour or more and hear how they are reporting the news.

In the meantime, I have already done my quick morning routine, looking through a number of news sources, including a quick run through of the print New York Times and print Washington Post, and an online run through of such sites as Haaretz, the Forward, eJP Daily Phil, Jewish Insider, and Times of Israel for Jewish/Israel content, the free WSJ headline site, USA Today, CNN, Axios, Daily Beast, Politico, and the Huffington Post, as well as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for St. Louis local news. Over the course of the day, I will dip into some of these again, and listen or read some of what is on The Contrarian, the Economist, and the Washington Business Journal, and the TV will be on MSNBC and CNN off and on as the day goes on.

This makes it look like I have time to do nothing else, but really this is pretty much just the time I would be wasting or which would be free time if I weren’t so attached to today’s news. At some point, this will all cool down, I hope.

Of course, I am interested in what the increased China tariffs will do, and what will eventually happen with Canada and Mexico. And what will happen to USAID, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the FBI, the DOJ and all those other agencies that DJ and the Big E want to shut down, as well as the Treasury Department’s checkbook, which may be the most important thing of all the important things being affected. I did read this morning a list of all of the groups filing litigation opposing all of this, and it was overwhelming. We will see what the courts do and, even more crucial, perhaps, whether the administration will pay any attention to what the courts do. As it has always been said, the Supreme Court has no enforcement mechanism. So much depends on the American social contract, if that is a good term, and Trump and friends (or better Trump and lackeys) don’t think they need to abide by any contract, much less a social contract.

It is really interesting to see how fragile our government is, and how much really does depend on good faith and common agreement. We don’t have that now, and it will take some time to get it back, I am afraid.

I mentioned yesterday that I thought that the next step would be for Trump to come after the press. That is happening and it will really accelerate. Expect to see, at some point, attempts to take away broadcast licenses. Of course, MSNBC (and maybe all of NBC), and PBS would be the first to be attacked.

What we have already seen are: (1) different people allowed into the White House Press Room, (2) NBC, the New York Times, etc. being replaced by organizations such as Breitbart as being allowed to have offices inside the Pentagon, (3) an investigation into PBS (and NPR) sponsorships, which I think is putting the camel’s nose under the tent, (4) attempts to get “mainstream” news organizations to turn over to the government raw, unpublished investigatory data, and (5) Trump litigation against various news organizations as the opening salvo in getting the courts to loosen up public figure libel law. The First Amendment may guarantee a free press, but I guess the definition of “free” is flexible.

Finally for today, did you see that El Salvador has apparently told Little Marco Rubio that they will take and hold in prison any criminals the United States wants to send them? Not only citizens of El Salvador, but citizens of the United States and all other countries? Rubio calls it an extraordinary act of friendship. But think about this. We arrest someone for criminal activity and we don’t have the capacity to house them in prison, or we just decided we want to get them out of the country, and we send them to another country? How will our judiciary system deal with their trials, etc? It’s bizarre.

But beyond that, Google “El Salvador Carcel”. Carcel is the main El Salvador prison, located in the remote mountains of the country. Opened less than two years ago to house the many criminals stalking the streets and filling the gangs of El Salvador, CNN broadcast a special report on it in November (available on line – short and shocking), showing how poorly its prisoners were treated. But more than that, do you know the capacity of Carcel? Ready for this? 40,000!!!!! They obviously have excess capacity in their prison system and I assume we have some financial arrangement to cover their costs. But the fact that we are sending our own prisoners to El Salvador is pretty embarrassing, I’d say. And when you add to this facility, preparations being made to house 30,000 in a prison camp at Guantanamo, we are really setting something up here that will probably lead to serious unforeseen (or foreseen) consequences.

Okay, on to Newsmax. Well……before that, I better watch what is going to happen to Tulsi and Junior as their nominations and consent processes are continuing. I hear that Susan Collins is going to vote to approve Gabbard. Susan Collins – how many times has she said “I am going to do what is right…..nevermind.” Jeez.

The reason I can do that is because I need a break, and we did enough this weekend that I can pretend I was thinking about other things.

But first, look at this.

For years, I have driven by and wondered about it. It’s okay. Tuna on whole wheat and a cup of coffee for $12.02.

Onward…..

We went to the theaters twice this weekend. Both very good experiences.

Saturday, we saw “Out of Character”, at Theater J. It was the final performance of the one man show by Ari’el Stachel, an Israeli-American actor who won a Tony for his role in The Band’s Visit.

Stachel is immensely talented, with an emphasis on immensely. The show, an 80 minute autobiography,  is interesting. Satchel’s battles with OCD, his feeling that he needed to hide his Jewish Yemenite father who “looked Arab”, his difficulty coming to terms with his own identity as he lived, on stage and off, with created identities.

But, because I always need to find something to criticize: the play is a trifle (actually more than a trifle) narcissistic. Perhaps this is part of Stachel’s therapy. That, I don’t know. But how many of us would want to write and put on stage with ourselves as the actors playing not only ourselves, but versions of everyone who had any influence on our lives?

The second play, which we saw Sunday, was the opposite of narcissistic.

Called Who Cares? The Caregiver Project, and produced as part of the Voices Festival Production, Ari Roth’s current company,  its run has also ended.

Who Cares is a very unique show featuring six actors playing many more roles. It is centered around a support group of six, who meet, sometimes with an advisor, because each of them, all theater professionals, find their life plans altered because they have become necessary caregivers to their parents,  their spouse or their sibling. Their stories, based in real life interviews with real life people, are told with honesty, compassion, frustration and humor. Each of the cast members played their many parts, exceptionally. It is performed in the round with the goal of making each of the 60 audience members feel like more than just a spectator.

A criticism? Of course. Following an absolutely perfect first act, the second act went on for too long. A ten minute chop would make both acts perfect.

I was also going to write about some things we have streamed or seen on TV, but they can wait.

By the way, the Grammys this year had some wonderful performances. Critique? Trevor Noah was a particularly uninteresting host, and the outfit worn by virtually all of the ladies would look better in the trash bin. If Ye’s wife wore her outfit as a sartorial protest, I would understand it. Did she?

I would like to write about something else today (or tomorrow or tomorrow’s tomorrow), but how can I given today’s circumstances? I remember (without ever seeing) the films (I think, films) titled “Girls Gone Wild”. We are now living in the era of a “President Gone Wild”, and while girls going wild might be interesting to look at, looking at a president going wild is horrific and painful.

Did you watch Fareed Zakaria this morning? I am sure that his Sunday show is available to stream and I really suggest you do it. His first guest was Chrystia Freeland. You may not today know who she is, but she was the former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Canada, who resigned her positions in December after having a dispute with Prime Minister Trudeau, and who will undoubtedly be a candidate to succeed him as Prime Minister. Basically, she said that (a) Trump’s tariffs were loony, (b) Canada would fight back, although a trade war is the last thing they want, (c) the tariffs will hurt both countries (and she explained in detail what the US would miss not importing from Canada and what US business would miss by not being able to do business as usual in Canada), (d) that the amount of anger in Canada today is hard to imagine, and (e) that the Americans should not underestimate the determination of Canada to win this battle. Zakaria also spoke with a Chinese born economist who now is on the faculty of the London School of Economics, Keyu Jin, who talked about China’s strength and resiliency and determination and preparation. She said that tariff fights between the United States only serve to increase Chinese markets and trade arrangements elsewhere, especially as other countries grow wary not only of becoming too dependent on American trade, but also becoming too dependent on the American dollar.

Both of these interviews are well worth listening to. Both women, by the way, are Harvard graduates. Freedland got her undergraduate degree at Harvard, where she studied Russian history and literature (her mother is Ukrainian and she is fluent in Ukrainian). Jin has both a B.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard in economics (she moved to the US from Beijing when she was 14).

Of course, until I saw Zakaria this morning, I wasn’t going to write about his show. Perhaps it’s just as well, because I am still thinking about the Trump/Hitler analogy. Of course, many, many people are saying that that is a no-no, which is probably a reason to look at it seriously, and not take it off the table.
I understand, in saying this, that no analogy – least of all this one – is perfect. After all, among other things, beginning conditions are very different, and Hitler (clearly not Trump) used antisemitism as his lever to obtain power.

Without antisemitism, Hitler would never have obtained the chancellorship of Germany. His party attacked Jews (mainly verbally; sometimes physically) even before he came to power and, once in power, took immediate steps to remove Jews from certain occupations, including all positions in government and universities, and within a few years, taking away their citizenship. Trump is doing none of that, but….would Trump have come to power if he had not railed against immigrants and refugees, legal and illegal? And once in power, he is taking enormous steps to attack those who have entered this country, even using the military to help with this task. And, keep in mind that he is not only attacking “illegals”, but also attacking those who have been admitted to the country awaiting asylum hearings, and those who are here under protected status (refugees from Haiti, Venezuela and certain other places). In striking against all of these newcomers to America, he is telling the rest of us that they are criminals, mentally ill, destroying our society and so forth – this not so different from what the Nazi party was telling Germans about the Jews.

In Germany, Jews were the enemy around which Hitler rallied his followers. In America, it is the immigrants.

Now, you say, yes, but he is not exterminating them. No, of course he isn’t. But in 1933, when Hitler came to power, he wasn’t exterminating the Jews, either. That “final solution” was not officially adopted until 1942. Until then, putting aside what happened outside of Germany during the war years, Hitler simply put Jews in concentration camps. Oh, and what did Trump say just a few days ago? He said that Guantanamo Bay was being prepared to hold 30,000 illegal immigrants. That, folks, is a concentration camp.

Of course, Germany had other problems that led to Hitler’s success. Most prominent of those was Germany’s defeat in World War I (a great disappointment and embarrassment to be sure), the enormous German debt created as a result of the Versailles treaty (we don’t have that, but we do have enormous debt), and the imposition on Germany of the Weimar Republic (which helped to serve to urban elite, including a very large Jewish urban elite, but did nothing for the rural and ethnic Germans of less than middle class, and which threatened at the same time the wealth of German nobility). You can see where some of these factors have parallels (not exact parallels, but to be sure parallels) here.

Trump wants to make America great again, right? Isn’t this exactly what, although he used different wording, Hitler was trying to do?

Hitler also had is own army, so to speak, which operated outside of the German military, although he obviously controlled the official military as well. Trump does not have that, right? Or does he, now that he has given the Oathkeepers, and the Proud Boys out of jail cards? You can see how the various right wing militia in this country could unite behind him, can’t you? It might not happen, of course, but guess what? It could.

Trump is now purging the government of all those he believes are his enemies. This is exactly what Hitler did (although Hitler identified Jews as a class as his enemies). Trump is now allying the government with the wealthiest oligarchs. This is what Hitler did as well, Jews aside.

And all of this is being done without attention to the laws. The governmental purges (DOJ, FBI, inspectors general, etc.), the buy-out proposals, and more. All of these things violate the law, but who cares? If you control the executive branch (he does) and the legislative branch (he does), only the courts are left to make things right. And if you control the courts (which he might at least in part, and that part might be the important part), then no one can stop you. Hitler had all branches of government – he controlled the executive and the legislative branches, and the German judges, although independent, all had lifetime tenures and were by and large supporters of “making Germany great again”, not of supporting the Weimar constitution. And, yes, Germany had a constitution; Hitler just ignored it.

Finally, don’t think that life in pre-war Germany (1933-1939) was hell on earth if you were not Jewish. In fact, the opposite. Germans were fairly united, looked forward to an unstoppable future, and were quite prosperous. Even look at the American and British journalists who were there, read their descriptions of a country that (treatment of Jews aside) seemed much more prosperous than depression ridden America.

I have long thought that if Hitler had not been antisemitic, Germany today might rule the world. Of course, he might have needed antisemitism to come to power, just as Trump needed anti-immigrant feelings. But if he had been able to avoid targeting the Jews, the Jews probably would have allied themselves with him and Germany would have been unstoppable. Would Trump be in a better position if he had not picked on the immigrants?

I see all sorts of analogies. You may see none. But, as Rachel Maddow says: Keep your eyes on this space. My guess is next will be actions crippling the media.

The hearings for the Trump nominees have been very disappointing and it is only partially because of the nature of the nominees themselves. The other reasons include the format of the hearings themselves, as well as the nature of the questioning done by the Senators who are members of the various vetting committees.

In most instances, I believe, the members of the various committees have the opportunity to have a personal meeting with the nominee, in addition to being able to review whatever material is made available. The only case this year where this did not happen is when the new Secretary of Defense refused to meet with the Democrats. This blanket refusal didn’t affect his clearance at all.

But the Democrats have done a terrible job questioning the nominees. Why is this? Perhaps it relates to the competence of the individuals, but I don’t think this is the case. In part, it’s because the hearings, being televised, are opportunities for the Senators to put something on video record that might be useful back home. In part, it’s because in the nature of members of Congress generally to berate those who testify before them, a form of public bullying that I have never understood or accepted. It’s also because many times a Senator wants to get a question on the record, but doesn’t have the patience to wait out an answer, or is afraid the nominee will answer the question in a way different from the way the Senator would like the nominee to answer it. So the Senator starts to ask the follow up question without giving the nominee a chance to respond to the first. But it is also because each Senator is generally limited to five minutes to question the nominee.

Five minutes is insufficient to do anything productive. First, each Senator obviously wants to make a brief opening statement, which eats into their time. Second, the nominee knows that he/she can stall almost anything for five minutes and not really answer a questions, which provokes the questioning Senator, whose time is fast running out, to interrupt and get nowhere.

I would suggest it would be better to limit the number of questioners to, say, six (three from each party, to be decided by that party’s committee members) and give them each 30 or 45 minutes to question the nominee. This would make for a much more meaningful hearing.

To make matters worse, the Senators do not ask the obvious questions, such as: (1) Do you think Trump is perfect? If not, name two things that he has done or said that you do not approve of. (2) If DOGE is successful in cutting the budget of your agency by, say, 20%, where will those cuts be made, and how will that affect your agency’s accomplishment of its mission? (3) How do you define DEI? How will you insure that there is no DEI activity in your agency? What will the effect of those efforts be? Will you recognize, for example, Black History Month?

And so forth.

Trump has been in office for 11 days and the world has been turned inside out (much harder to comprehend than upside down). But it is now that the fun is starting. Today (Feb 1) 25% tariffs are being charged to material coming in from Mexico and Canada. Not that I have any real idea as to how quickly that can actually be implemented, but how will industries (and particularly the auto industry) accommodate to this practice, which will throw all of their operations and planning off?

We have also heard that various FBI officials have been asked (ha!) to resign, and clearly those who worked on the Trump investigations are at risk. How will the FBI deal with this. Forget about the Trump investigation cases – what about the other pending cases that these investigators are working on? The same question can be asked with regard to the various U.S. Attorney offices. Won’t our entire criminal justice system be affected?

Finally, I am glad that someone quickly fact checked DJ’s ridiculous press conference yesterday, when he blamed the National Airport crash on Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg and their ridiculous DEI hiring program at the FAA. We now know that that hiring program was not instituted by Biden or even by Barack Obama. It was implemented by the administration of one Donald J. Trump the First.

It will be interesting (that’s a euphemism) to see how all this plays out. If it plays out at all.

It’s hard to know where to start. And it’s not my goal to write things that you see elsewhere without putting a new twist onto things, and now there are so many people concentrating on the news that it’s hard to come up with thoughts that others haven’t thought before.

Before the inauguration, I had really tired of watching TV news, and we didn’t really watch it as much as we did before the election. We weren’t alone, as the ratings for our two go-to channels, CNN and MSNBC had fallen quite a bit. Now that were are in the middle of the Trumpickle, things have changed and we (and others, apparently) are watching once again.

We seem to begin our news watching at about 7. We generally watched Wolf Blitzer on CNN because Ari Melber on MSNBC got carried away with rap musicians, something that seems to us (but not to him) totally inappropriate for a news show. Now, however, it appears that CNN is going to reprogram Blitzer for a morning show. Not sure what will happen at 7. Now, it is Jim Sciutto, but I don’t know that this is a long term assignment.

In any rate, at 8, I am now favoring Chris Hayes (MSNBC) over Anderson Cooper. At 9, we used to watch Kaitlin Collins on CNN, but now that Rachel Maddow is back for 100 days on MSNBC, that’s where we go. It’s too bad, in a sense, that Collins, who is quite good at what she does, has to face such strong competition. At 10, we wind down our watching. Lawrence O’Donnell has just become a little too predictable and sometimes a little to partisan just for partisan sake.

We don’t watch Fox or Newsmax, of course, because we don’t want to watch fake news, and certainly don’t need their slant. For those who say that CNN and MSNBC are too left-wing, I say: “Huh? You don’t know what left-wing is.” Both of those channels are middle of the road in virtually all modern nations but ours.

Just two more thoughts this morning.

First, having watched long and short excerpts of the Kennedy, Patel and Gabbard hearings, I must say that DJ’s concept of “merit” and mine are quite different. Kennedy has been a surprisingly bad presenter, while Patel and Gabbard have done a good job presenting themselves as unrelated to the Patel and Gabbard who existed before they were nominated for their high level positions. I had also watched part of the Vought hearing, and it reaffirmed what I had thought before – that along with Elon Musk, Russell Vought is the most dangerous man in America today, and his appointment to OMB would be (probably will be) disastrous. I saw that he was voted out of committee by an 11-0 vote yesterday. Unanimous, you say? No, not for a 21 member committee. The Democrats simply refused to vote at all for a candidate so bad. (Reminds me of Samuel Goldwyn’s comment that no one should care what the critics say, they aren’t even worth ignoring.)

Of course, DJ’s presser about the plane crash (is that really a word? if so, too bad) was a disaster, even though it was good to hear that the reason for the crash was an example of Pete Buttigieg’s incompetence and the fact that the FAA is filled with people of intellectual limitations and dwarfs, to name a few.

Secondly, a few words about antisemitism. I listened to (actually watched) a presentation by an esteemed professor emeritus at the Jewish Institute of Religion, who gave a very good talk on the present condition of American Jewry and future expectations. The only thing that bothered me in his presentation was the claim that antisemitism, while far from a mainline American problem, was equally a problem on the left and on the right. I beg to differ.

Nor do I think that Samuel Goldwyn’s many quotes should be forgotten. The question is: did he and Yogi Berra have the same writer? (Don’t give a knee jerk reaction to this one.)

Right wing antisemitism (the “they will not replace us” type) is good, old fashioned antisemitism that seems to be impossible to stamp out. Or at least no one has figured out how to stamp it out. Left wing antisemitism is, in my opinion, a very different animal, one connected solely with Israel and Israel’s doings with regard to its neighbors. I don’t view that as antisemitism per se, and the attempts to define antisemitism to include anti-Israel political positions is, I think, a mistake. This is another subject worthy of a book or two, but I think that equating these two positions creates a problem bigger than the sum of its two components.

The title of this post? An old play on words on the New York Times motto coined during the Vietnam War, when Madame Nhu and her family members fled Saigon. Totally irrelevant to anything I said today, but I just don’t think it should be forgotten.

After spending the day immersed in the Trumpickle, I wanted to move to a different universe, so I started reading Paris in the Fifties by Stanley Karnow, the stories of his years there as a TIME magazine journalist.

I didn’t get very far, because everything was so interesting.

Karnow went to Europe in 1949, after his Harvard graduation. He thought he was going for the summer, but wound up staying much longer. I read the first 40 pages, stopping continually to learn more about what he was describing.

For instance, Rotterdam, where his ship landed. It looked like this:

When I first visited Rotterdam in 1962, it was the most modern city I had ever seen. There was no hint, or at least I had no idea, of the war damage.

After Karnow settled in a student hotel in Paris, he and his college roommate went on a road trip. One place they went was the Loire Valley, where they visited a few of the hundreds of chateaus. One was Chambourg:

I have never been to the Loire Valley. I thought I knew what I was missing. Now I realize I had no clue.

They also went to Prague, where it was still not clear that Czechoslovakia would wind up fully behind the Iron Curtain. There, they met and had dinner with one of Karnow’s Harvard professors, F.O. Matthiesen.

I knew nothing about Matthiesen, so I Googled him. A brilliant student and Rhodes scholar, he became a very well-respected American literature professor and author. But he was gay when being gay was illegal and hidden. His partner of 20+ years had recently died and he was grieving. Plus, Matthiessen was a socialist and a leftist, and he was afraid that he would be called to testify as part of the McCarthy campaign where, among other things, his homosexuality would become public. About a year after his meeting with Karnow, Matthiessen jumped out of a 12 story window. He was 48.

Even in these first few pages, Karnow has hung  around again and again with Norman Mailer, Brendan Behan, and I.F. Stone.

Meanwhile, in Trumpland, here is part of what I learned yesterday.

(1) Robert Kennedy really embarrassed himself at the first day of his hearings.

(2) DJ wants to send Elon himself to the International Space Station.

(3) DJ’s government has taken back the freeze memo that a federal judge enjoined Tuesday. But they seem to have decided that the injunction required the memo to be rescinded, but not the contents of the memo, which they maintain still stands.

(4) We are setting up a concentration camp at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, for 30,000 deportees.

(5) The US was about to spend $50 million to send condoms to Hamas.

(6) The US was not about to spend $50 million to send condoms to Hamas.

You think (5) and (6) are in conflict with each other?  That apparently is irrelevant.

Tomorrow, day 2 of the Kennedy hearings, plus the Gabbard hearing and the Patel hearing. Guys, I am only one person.

Do you remember the very clever Doll Song from Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann?

Olympia, the wind-up doll, doesn’t really sing TikTok, but it sounds like she does, and that’s good enough for me. And just like the Chinese TikTok, she winds down and looks like she is done. But then someone winds her back up and she sings on. That someone is Donald Trump.

Now, why I wrote this, I am not really sure. But I think it’s only because that’s what I thought of last night when I thought of TikTok, and it’s such a cute piece that I wanted to share it.

But let’s recap a bit. TikTok is owned by a company which is owned and/or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Our national intelligence officials have been very worried that the Chinese could mine all sorts of data from the almost 200 million American TikTok users and create all sorts of mischief, including some serious mischief, whenever they wanted to. Congress became very concerned and passed a law banning TikTok in the US on January 19, unless the President extended it for up to 90 days because the company was under contract to sale to an American entity, and the sale was moving along.

January 19 came, President Biden did not extend TikTok because he could not, and it went dark. On the very next day, DJ was inaugurated, and, as his first illegal act (technical or otherwise), he simply issued an order extending TikTok’s life, and it again became available. Since then, DJ has said that, notwithstanding the conclusions of the national intelligence world, he doesn’t think any more that TikTok creates a national security problem. Why he reaches this conclusion, I don’t know, but he seems so clear about it that he suggests that maybe there should be a 50-50 joint venture, half Chinese and half American, running TikTok.

What will happen to TikTok is unclear.

And now, there is DeepSeek, a new Chinese AI app, suddenly available to the American populace. It’s apparently an app that can do all sorts of things. And it is free.

Now the introduction of DeepSeek was a big, big, big surprise to everyone, it seems. And the stock market went into eclipse, especially those shares of companies in the AI business, the data center business, and the chip business. This is not because it was available, or flexible, and free. Rather it is because DeepSeek apparently demonstrates that this new Chinese company has come up with a way to create AI platforms using many fewer chips and much less energy, throwing into chaos America’s short term future plan to retain and expand whatever AI dominance it thought it had.

At least this is what I read Monday as the stock market was falling, and I thought I understood the problem. But maybe not. Last night, I watched Kevin O’Leary talking to Erin Burnett on CNN, and I learned something more. I learned that the introduction of DeepSeek at the time when TikTok may be about to disappear was probably not a coincidence, but instead was carefully planned to give China a way to steal Americans’ information, if they could not continue to receive it through TikTok.

Of course, yesterday there was much more of importance than this. I can think of two you might be concerned about: (1) a freeze on all government payments and grants (recipients be damned, literally), and (2) a buy-out plan for all (sorry, I am ALL) government employees. It just means, if these don’t get stopped by Congress or the courts, we will just have no federal government in the United States. Is that okay?

Well, it looks like it is a possibility, doesn’t it? Oh, yes, unless the courts stop it. But, guess what? Why do you think that the DJ government will pay any attention to what the courts say? (I have been saying this for several days. I head Tim Walz say it tonight.) And if they decide to ignore the courts, just like they have already ignored laws passed by Congress, who is there to stop them?

Yes? Thank you. “The horror, the horror!” (Kurz in Heart of Darkness)

You know how they say that Hillel the Elder explained the Talmud in one line by quoting the “golden rule”, and saying the rest is just “interpretation”?

Well, I say, you want to know all about the Trumpickle? It’s “the horror, the horror!” The rest is just interpretation.

Rachel Maddow said on her show tonight that there is so much in the news that you can’t cover it all. And then she gave a quick one liner about a million or so things that Trump is doing or threatening to do that you might call a derivative of “the horror, the horror”. And then she just talked about a few of them.

She did start with something that I had been thinking about. You know how horrible Venezuela was in releasing all of those criminals and mentally ill folks into our country? Is there even a tad of truth there? I don’t know. But I do know that one Donald Trump has at least equaled Venezuela by pardoning or commuting the sentences of over a thousand criminals a week ago. Already, one of them has been re-arrested on illegal gun charges, and another killed yesterday in Indiana for resisting arrest. Just wait until you see what other crimes we will see from that group.

It has long been held, during the first DJ term and during his three campaigns, that everything that Trump accuses others of doing is, in fact, something that Trump himself is doing? Still going on, it appears. And it appears that it is Trump more than Venezuela who is letting out dangerous criminals on American streets.

We have already seen the confirmation of Headset, so that is behind us, I guess. Although I did hear today that it was the fence sitting Senator Tillis who convinced Headset’s ex-sister-in-law to spill the beans under assurance that this would convince some Republicans not to vote for him. If so, I wonder if Tillis told her that he, Tillis, would not be one of them who would be so convinced.

But the even dicier (and yes that is possible – isn’t one truism that there is nothing so bad that it can’t get worse?) are the prospects of Tulsi Gabbard (the woman who hobnobs with America’s enemies), Kash Patel (the man who authorized a rescue mission which had not been authorized, who has an enemies list that he has made public, and who believes that the riots on January 6 were purposely staged by the FBI), Robert F. Kennedy (you know his problems), and more.

The one who is going to be the hardest to fight against is Russell Vought, scheduled to lead OMB. As far as I know, he has not engaged in scandalous behavior. All he has done is written or directed much of Project 2025, and made it clear that he does not think that the law needs to be followed when it comes to whether or not the president can “impound” funds (i.e., decide not to use the funds that Congress has appropriated and directed him to use).

Law is a funny thing, you know. DJ just fired a dozen or so Inspectors General, something that he is not able to do without notifying Congress 30 days in advance, and fired career prosecuters and others in violation of civil service laws. I think it was Lindsey Graham who was asked what he thought about these illegal acts? His answer was that they were only “technically” illegal.

Ah, Kellyanne Conway, where are you now? Kellyanne was the inventor of “alternative facts”. I guess we now have “alternative law”. And the sad thing is that we cannot even rely on the courts to uphold the actual laws, rather than rely on Trump’s variations.

So, at least for two years, we have both legislative bodies held by the Republicans, which means not only that they will traditionally tend to vote in certain ways, but that they will presumably for now act as the USSR’s Supreme Soviet acted, unanimously. And we have the courts, where (I think) the Democrats recently named more district court judges, but the Republicans more appellate judges. They are potentially out of control as well, particularly because the Supreme Court has already ruled that the president can act illegally if he is doing within the scope of his job description, and never face any personal consequences other than not being reelected. For lame duck DJ, this means no consequences at all. He can do whatever he wants.

So, we have competent officials being illegally and improperly and unfortunately fired, and people being put into office who have no competence, no experience, and no sense.

Will things ever go back to normal order? We will see what happens on March 14, the day that the current government funding runs out, that a budget must be approved, and that the debt ceiling will undoubtedly have to be extended so that the government can, among other things, extend the Trump tax cuts. Do I think they can do this? Probably. You know why? President DJ will simply issue Executive Orders doing all the above, and his Trumpees will march ahead in lock step. They will be told that “you can’t do that”, that “it’s against the law”. Their answer will be “only technically, so sue us.” Then we will really see what happens.

And just wait until Elon Musk is president. He can’t be because he wasn’t born here? A technical violation of the Constitution. No more. We will then be faced with an even more unique situation. Elon Muskvwill simultaneously be the president and the ex-president.

I need coffee.

To get our minds off the current Trumpicle (hereafter Trumpickel), I went back to two of the bookcase shelves in my home office to look at what I have placed in front of the books.

Here is some of it:

Roman Catholics: Want beef on a Friday? Fly American Airlines. (I guess this is what was meant)

It’s a fake USSR passport holder, and I have no idea why I have it.

A small marble box. Maybe from the days when the Coloseum was brand new?

Southwest Airlines playing cards. Unopened. I never play cards.

A very nice card from former French President Jacques Chirac. Why do I have it? Where did I get it? You know as much as I do.

A few years ago, granddaughter Joan (now 9) portraying our online book business, ARichard Books and More.

The Capitol dome, Waterford version, which I received from the National Leased Housing Association,  after my year as president. A long time ago.

Speaking of a long time ago, here are Edie, Michelle and Hannah. Yes, the picture looks blurry here, but so is my memory.

A clown. A gift from my Aunt Loraine. She gave a lot of gifts. Most looked like this one.

An old Jewish Nation Fund tzedakah box. It makes noise when you shake it. ( A propos of nothing, do you know that Neil Sedaka’s name is a variation of tzedakah?)

We will end here. Five pens. Three belonged to my father, including one marked St. Louis University. The bottom Washington pen has a photo of the Capitol on its other side. The 5th pen is Zim Shipping Lines, and has a floating SS Herzl, a Zim ship.

As an aside, I was watching Anne Applebaum on Morning Joe while putting this together. She was sitting in front of one of her impressive bookcases. You know what she puts in front of her books? Nada.

Last night, we watched the 1939 film Stagecoach on PBS. Stagecoach, as you may know, was a John Ford western that gave John Wayne (one of the worst actors of the 20th century, by the way) his first important, big role, and was nominated for seven Oscars. This post is not going to be a review of the film (let me just say, today those seven nominations would not have been given out), but something different, something more contemporary.

First, though, we have to review the simple plot. It is the west (filmed on the Utah/Arizona border), and it is the story of a commercial stage coach traveling from one town to another, carrying seven passengers, and having two drivers. The seven passengers are a mix: a prostitute, the wife of a U.S. soldier looking to rejoin her husband, a wealthy banker absconding with $50,000 of someone else’s money, a 24/7 drunken doctor, a liquor traveling salesman, a gambler, and a prison escapee looking for revenge against a man who killed his mother and brother (that’s John Wayne, of course).

There is a lot of tension between this mixture of passengers, and along the way, they argue back and forth, and the group faces a number of challenges. But the biggest challenge comes when the stagecoach is attacked by what must be about 100 Apaches. Three of the seven passengers and one of the two drivers are injured by the Apaches, and innumerable attackers are knocked off their horses and probably killed by the group on the stagecoach. But what saves the stagecoach is the U.S. Cavalry, which – with flags, banners and bugles – comes to the rescue.

Here is what I thought, viewing this film in 2025. The stagecoach is the USA itself, filled with a mix of people with different ideas, different abilities and different limitations. All it wants to do is keep moving forward.

The Apaches? That’s MAGA. MAGA wants to cripple the USA, just like the Apaches want to cripple the coach. MAGA wants to eliminate those who currently govern the USA, just like the Apaches want to demobilize the two who are driving the stagecoach. MAGA has its own goals to take over the USA, just as the Apaches undoubtedly had their own goals to take over the stagecoach and its passengers.

But the Apaches failed for two reasons, just as I expect MAGA will fail. The Apaches largely failed because they really had no plan. They were chasing and chasing the stagecoach, but they really didn’t have a plan to stop the coach other than continuing to sling arrows at the stagecoach, and they certainly did not look like they had a set plan for the stagecoach or its passengers.

And then there was the cavalry. The cavalry, beautifully uniformed, universally with perfect riding posture, beautiful horses. The cavalry was the United States of America, the true, true Americans, coming to save their country, here the stagecoach, under attack by yes, another group of Americans. And the cavalry apparently scared the Apaches to death, for the remaining Apaches ran, as they say, for the hills. America was saved.

I know. This is a terrible analogy. And the film’s portrayal of the Apaches as no better than today’s films might portray Hamas attackers is inexcusably politically incorrect. But, as I watched the film, the sense of good guy Americans battling bad guy Americans with those Americans in the stagecoach, who wanted nothing more than to live their lives, was a midrash, you might say, on our current situation.

See you tomorrow. (By the way, “yippie-ki-yay” comes from that old standby “I’m an Old Cow Hand”, which has nothing to do with movie, and even less to do with me.

Let me start with something that I know is not politically correct. It’s the name “Hegseth”. I find it both hard to pronounce and hard to type. So, from now on, on this blog, he will be Pete Headset. I know that Donald Trump (hereafter DJ), who never has heard a name he couldn’t change, would approve.

So last night, Pete Headset was confirmed by the United States Senate as Secretary of Defense. Over and done. There was a vote, every senator was present, the result was a 50-50 tie, and Vice President J.D. Vance (hereafter JD) broke the tie by voting for the confirmation of Headset.

But it got me thinking. And this is where you will have to bear with me. Sorry ’bout that.

The Constitution provides that in two types of situations (presidential appointments and treaties), the “advice and consent” of the Senate is required. In no other instances, is this term used in the Constitution, and nowhere does the Constitution describe what either “advice” or “consent” means. There seems to be a common thought that “consent” means “majority vote”. But I am not sure that is necessarily the case.

The Senate operates by a set of “rules”, which – as I looked last night quickly – only mentions “consent” in Rule XXXI, which deals with nominations. But here again, “consent” is not defined, nor is “confirmation”. Again, the assumption is that the majority rules.

Now, I don’t know the history of the Constitutional provision or of the Senate rule, and finding that out would be interesting, but I have a lot of questions that I think are worth pursuing.

One of the things I did last night is look at the etymology of the word “consent”, and saw that it comes from the same Latin root as “consensus”. Clearly, last night’s vote did not evidence the consensus of the Senate that Headset should be confirmed.

Secondly, I looked up the term “group consent” – I didn’t know what else to look up. I found many, many references to the writings of ethicists and bio-ethicists, and didn’t find anyone who said that to establish “group consent”, you should take a vote and that the barest majority wins.

Thirdly, I wondered if the way to find out if the Senate has consented to a nominee is to take a vote at all. In other words, when the Senate votes on, say, a bill, it is clear that you take a vote and the majority wins. That is clear from the Constitution and the Senate rules, as well as common practice. But does “consent” come through a simple yes/no vote? After all, there is nothing in the Constitution that equates “consent” with “majority” or “majority vote”.

And let’s go a step beyond that. The Vice President, who is not a member of the Senate (not a Senator), but who presides over the Senate under the title “President” of the Senate, gets a tie breaking “vote”. But if “consent” is not a “vote” in the way approval of a bill into law is (and nothing in the Constitution says that it is), should the Vice President even get a vote here? After all, it is a given that he will vote “aye”, and he had not been involved in any of the committee work or full Senate body work that preceded the vote.

And if you take away J.D.’s vote, there was a tie, and the nomination would have failed. There would have been no consensus, and no “consent”.

“Enough”, you say. Get on with your life.

Alright, but…..a few more things. Three Republicans did vote against Headset. One, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska can be counted on to vote as she thinks she should. Another, Susan Collins of Maine, can be counted on to let you know how she thinks she should vote, but often then votes opposite what she thinks she should do. The third, Mitch McConnell…….well, I hope he does not think that this vote will make up for all of the horrific things he did as majority leader. Because it won’t. And, what kind of leader is he, if he could not convince one other Republican to vote their conscience in this matter, to be a Murkowski just once.

And then there was Tom Tillis, who was apparently on the fence until some time yesterday evening. Poor Tillis could not vote his conscience, I bet, in part because of D.J.’s quick visit to western North Carolina yesterday morning. Seeing how D.J. is ready to throw California to the lions unless they kow-tow to his whims of the day, poor Tillis must have been thinking: I gotta keep D.J. on my side right now; the future of North Carolina depends upon it. And he was probably right.

Reports of journalists and Democratic senators are consistent in saying that many Republicans believe that Headset is an atrocious choice for this job. But they are afraid to vote the way they think they should. Maybe they shouldn’t count in the consent count, either.

There is another provision in the Senate Rule XXXI that provides that at any time in considering a nomination, the Senate can determine that the discussions and the votes can be taken in Executive Session, without public eyes upon them. Maybe this would be better – to keep the trstimony sessions public, but the vote itself secret. After a secret vote on a nomination, the Senate rules do provide that a Senator can make his (the rules are silent as to “her”) vote public.

Finally, yes, it is true. I offer neither a definitive better way, not a road to a better way. I didn’t speculate on the possible role of the judiciary.

Maybe I should just go back to sleep.

Of course, I have seen a lot of films over my life. Some were great, some good, some alright, some meh, and some I walked out of, or turned off. A great movie is generally the same as a good movie, only better. But – now and then – you see a film that is not only, but different. Unique.

The film that fits that category that I had most recently seen was Emilia Perez, which may win the Best Picture Oscar this year. If you haven’t seen it, it’s the story of the vicious chefe of a vicious Mexican cartel, who has – for his entire life – felt he was a woman and finally decided to get a sex change operation. So he disappears, abandoning his wife and children, only to later return as a woman who is not recognized as the man he used to be, even to his intimate family. In her new identity, Emilia also takes on not only a new personality, but a new inner person, becoming as charitable as she previously had been vicious. And all goes well, until it doesn’t. And then it really doesn’t. And, by the way……..it’s a musical. This was one original film.

Last night, quite unexpectedly, we saw another film that fit’s the “wow” category. We went to our neighborhood theater, the Avalon, last night for its monthly Israeli film night. The showing was a documentary, with the double entendre name of The Return from the Other Planet (you will see why it’s a double entendre in a minute). The focus was on a man born Yechiel Feiner, who “gave up” his name and his history during two years in Auschwitz, and who was one of the first, if not THE first, person who wrote about the Holocaust under the name Ka. Tzetnik. And the books he wrote, especially “The House of Dolls”, were best sellers, and absolutely raw and horrific.

But Ka. Tzetnik was the name of a survivor and writer; in his day to day life, he had a third name, Yechiel De-Nur. And, as millions read the books of Ka. Tzetnik, none of those people identified him with his mild mannered Clark Kent identity as De-Nur.

According to a number of personality experts, De-Nur and Ka. Tzetnik were two personalities in one individual, a form of split personality. Ka. Tzetnik was not a simple pseudonym.

At the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, De-Nur was called as a witness. After first being unwilling to testify (in part because it would, for the first time, show that De-Nur and Ka. Tzetnik were the same person), he agreed and, during his testimony (part of which you see in the film) about how he (the Ka. Tzetnik “he”) felt that Auschwitz was “a different planet” where normal human rules do not apply and where he began slowly to describe what he saw there, he was interrupted by the chief judge asking him to speed things up and telling him (De-Nur in this case) that he had some specific questions. At this, De-Nur/Ka. Tzetnik, collapsed. He had a stroke, and was apparently paralyzed for about three months.

He recovered, felt extraordinarily embarrassed, and found his life more and more troubling. His wife convinced him to go to The Netherlands for experimental LSD treatment (read that as a sort of hypnotic treatment under LSD), which was tough, but apparently successful, and he came out of the therapy a different person.

No longer did he believe that Auschwitz was a different planet with different rules. He changed his mind completely, deciding that the Germans did not create Auschwitz, humanity did. That any person, any group of persons, could have created an Auschwitz. That the torturers and the victims could have been reversed. And he wrote a new book, Code, to explain what he had learned and how he had changed, and was interviewed on Israeli TV for the very first time. He lived to be 91.

So, that’s the story. That does not explain why the film, a combination of vintage films, interviews with his wife and with a few people who knew him, as well as experts in personality studies, was so successful. This has to be credited to Assaf Lapid, who was making his debut as a director and had been working on this film for, he said last night at the Avalon, 12 years. And to the composer of the music which accompanied the film and set the perfect atmosphere for the story line. Because Ka. Tzetnik is not now a familiar name,   his story is not a familiar story. So, you really don’t know where the film is going. Auschwitz, Eichmann, other planet, double personality, LSD, reversal. You are drawn in during the very first scene, and you are kept in, intrigued and wondering how this story is so unknown.

The film has won a number of awards already. Apparently, it is having trouble being included in film festivals, particularly in Europe, because producers are afraid to show Israeli films right now. But my guess is you will be able to see it. So keep your eyes open.

As to Ka. Tzetnik’s books, I have read none of them. We do, in our collection, have a copy of “Phoenix Over the Galilee”, published in 1969, and signed by the author. Quite rare, I believe. He didn’t sign very many.

Today is a non-Trump day on the blog. Here goes…

Late last year, the members of my Thursday morning breakfast group were asked to recommend one book to the group that they thought everyone should read. Most, but not all, responded, and I am sharing the list with you. We had two sessions where each recommender had a few minutes to explain his choice. Sorry, no way to share that. The numbers following each book, by the way, are the Goodreads ratings, which I put together just because that’s the kind of thing that I do.

1. Oath and Honor: a Memoir and a Warning by Liz Cheney 4.59
2. Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce a Responsive Government by Chris Achen and Larry Bartels 3.99
3. The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese 3.99
4. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 3.75
5. How Ike Led by Susan Eisenhower 4.34
6. Spies of No Country by Matti Friedman 3.93
7. Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt’s Shadow and Remade the World by David L. Roll 4.46
8. The Books of Jacob: A Fantastic Journey Across Seven Borders, etc. by Olga Tokarczuk 4.02
9. One Summer, America, 1927 by Bill Bryson 4.09
10. Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross 3.91
11. Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study by George E. Vaillant 4.15
12. The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World by Jay Winik 4.07
13. Tablets Shattered: The End of the American Jewish Century by Joshua Leifer 4.15
14. Here All Along: Finding Spirituality and a Deeper Connection to Life in Judaism by Sarah Hurwitz 4.43
15. Judgment at Tokyo by Gary J. Bass 4.28
16. American Priestess by Jane Fletcher Geniesse 3.60
17. Vision by David S. Tatel 4.44
18. Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet by Robert Pinsky 3.96
19. Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson 4.53
20. The Rigor of Angels by Willian Egginton 4.26
21. Israel – a Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby 4.33
22. To Be a Jew Today by Noah Feldman 4.22
23. Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore 4.08
24. A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan 4.38
25. The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust by Elizabeth B. White and Joanna Sliwa 4.03
26. The Yeshiva by Chaim Grade 4.14
27. The Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett 4.19
28. An Ordinary Man by Richard Norton Smith 4.44
29. The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson 4.30
30. Destiny of the Republic: a Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candace Millard   4.21

It took the Fraternal Order of Police over 24 hours to condemn the commutation or pardoning of rioters who attacked the police, but they have now done it.

Many Republicans have refused to support their release, either through outright disagreement or through simply giving “not my department” answers, and many of them had previously said that those who were violent should serve out their sentences, and they now live on as hypocrites.

Even Vice President Vance (hereafter sometimes known as Vice President Obvious) said it was “obvious” that you don’t release violent criminals.

But the foul deed has been done, and we will see where it leads.

But there was another pardon issued by the president yesterday. Ross William Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road underground,  dark web drug marketplace, serving a life sentence in prison. Little publicity about this one. But Google it. Look him up.

It’s the Golden Age of America.

There was no surprise at another departure yesterday. Vivek Ramaswamy, just about four days after I realized how easy it really was to spell his name, is returning to Ohio to think about a losing race for governor. This is not surprising for at least two reasons. In his short campaign for the presidential nomination, we all realized he was about the last person you would want to be your companion on an isolated desert island. And, because Elon M. clearly couldn’t abide sharing the spotlight with him. So Elon has DOGE to himself.

By the way, I do not understand DOGE. Has it now been created by Executive Order? Can an EO create a government agency just like that? Does it have a budget? Are people (these mysterious agents apparently cropping up across the country) being paid by us? Does it take a bureaucracy to destroy a bureaucracy? So many questions, but I don’t hear them being asked.

Elon is, as we know, the richest person on Earth, and maybe one of the oddest. To me, his main goal seems to be to become the first trillionaire, and Trump is his vehicle to get there.

But what does Trump get out of his association with all of these billionaires? Is it glory? Is he the kid from the other side of the tracks who has something to prove to himself? Does he expect their money to rub off on him?

Probably, there is some of all of this in his thinking. But I think there is something else. I am thinking that Trump believes that only billionaires are able to do anything. His life has been to put his name on big buildings that change skylines. This is something that takes someone with both money and vision. That is how he views himself and that is how he views the billionaires he is surrounding himself with. They are the “masters of the universe”, and they are the only ones who can wear that title. Thus, if he wants to get anything done, to lead America into its Golden Age, he thinks he can only do it with the help of billionaires.

And, of course, just like Vladimir Putin learned, there is a side benefit of working with billionaires – they can make you a few, or more than a few, billions on the way.

And the billionaires win, too, because they will get enormous support and faorite son treatment from the government.

So this explains how Trump chooses his friends. And it explains how the extension of the Trump tax cuts and other benefits make sense. And it explains how the government bureaucracy, clearly composed of people who are not billionaires, can not be relied upon, and must be replaced to the greatest extent possible.

But billionaires, of course, can not just be allowed to run amok. That would bring billionaire anarchy. You need a Great Leader to guide them and force their energies in a unified direction. And, like Kim Jung Un, Donald Trump is that leader.

And the rest of us – those of us who are not billionaires – we are just worker bees. He just needs to keep us to provide the manpower needed to bring the vision of the billionaires into reality. Those of us who build, those of us who provide intellectual assistance, and those of us who stand guard, ready to fight and protect.

The end. You will note that I did not use the words “oligarch”, or “fascist” in this article. You should also note that I could have.

Or as Woody G might say: “This land is his land, this land is their land, from the Gulf of America, to the State of Greenland. From north of Mackinaw to the canal of Panama, this land is made for Don and E.”