Art is 80

Several decades ago, we went to an exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York honoring Varian Fry, a man I then knew nothing about. Fry, a Christian American, ran an organization called the Emergency Rescue Committee, risking his own life in 1940 to get prominent Jews out of Vichy France to the United States. Working with several others, and with the aid of American diplomat Hiram Bingham IV, who issued authorized and unauthorized visas at the U.S. Consulate in Marseilles, he had remarkable success.

The story is incredible, and the ERC was able to get over 2000 Jews out of France and (via Lisbon or Martinique) to the United States. Those rescued included Hannah Arendt, Jean Arp, Andre Breton, Marc and Bella Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Leon Feuchtwanger, Arthur Koestler, Wanda Landowska, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Lipchitz, Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, and Franz Wefel. Don’t know some of these folks? Google them.

We have just finished watching the seven episode miniseries on Netflix titled “Transatlantic”, based on the historical novel by Julie Orringer, “The Flight Portfolio” which in turn was based on the dramatic story of Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee. Thus, the story told in “Transatlantic” has gone through many sieves and prisms, and while the forest is fairly accurately portrayed, the trees are not.

I haven’t read the Orringer book, but want to. She took a story and fictionalized much of it, I think, to make some larger points about the rescue efforts, including the horrific choices Fry had to make about who got out and who stayed in. One of his goals was to rescue individuals of particular intellectual or artistic talent, and this has (like everything else) come under some criticism. In addition, she told the story of Fry’s hidden homosexuality (later confirmed by his son), something I believe was untold until that time and a surprise to many (Fry was married; his wife remained in New Jersey while he was in France); for this disclosure, Orringer was subjected to some criticism.

The Transatlantic series continues the fictionalization of the story. The villa where Fry hid some of the refugees did not belong to his homosexual lover, but was rented on the open market. The escapes from the German prison camp never occurred. His wealthy accomplice from Chicago, Mary Jane Gold, never had an affair with the U.S. consul. or with Albert Hirschman. Lisa Fittko, another co-worker, never had an affair with the desk clerk from the Hotel Splendide. Fry himself did not drive Marc and Bella Chagall from Marseilles to Lisbon in a stolen car filled with Chagall canvasses. Many of the characters (the American consul, the Hotel Splendide brothers, to name two) are completely fictionalized.

But the gist of the story is accurate and perhaps, in this case, this is enough, although it would be helpful to have more disclaimers of accuracy portrayed on Netflix, to let the viewers know that that this is a fictionalized version of a fictionalized version of a true story. At the end, there certainly could have been a listing of the major fictionalized aspects.

But there is a bigger problem with the series, I think. Although it is well scripted, and well photographed, and filled with a sense of adventure and tension…….the series is terribly acted. IMHO. I could be more specific, but, you know, lashon hara. (If you don’t……Google it)

Here are the numbers:

Civil War 655,000

WWII 405,000

WWI 116,000

Vietnam 58,000

Korea 37,000

Revolutionary War 25,000

War of 1812 15,000

Mexican War 13,000

Iraq War 5,000

Philippine War 4,000

Afghanistan 2,500

Spanish-American War 2,000

This adds up to approximately 1,355,000 Americans who have died in American wars.

I don’t know what to do with this number. Each was an individual with family, friends, etc.

The question most interesting to me is: Assume you have the ability to make a choice. You are told in 1861, for example, that we can bring an end to both secession and slavery, but the tradeoff will be 655,000 people will lose their life. Your choice. What would you do?

The same question can be asked about each war. Even World War II against the Nazis and Japanese with all of their atrocities. We can beat them. It will cost over 400,000 American lives. Should we do it?

On this Memorial Day, we remember these 1,355,000 Americans.

Or do we? Or do we instead go shopping, do errands, grill meat, maybe go to the beach or the zoo? Shouldn’t this one day be more serious than it is?

You know the National Moment of Remembrance Act, passed by Congress in 2000? Maybe it’s because I am 80, but I don’t remember it at all. Every Memorial Day at 3 p.m. (local time), things are supposed to stop for a moment, or sounds are supposed to blare (from military bugles, from Amtrak sirens, at baseball parks). We are to stop what we are doing and remember. Has this happened 22 years in the past; will it happen today? Will we (read: I) even remember at 3 p.m.?

Israel knows how to do this on its Memorial Day. Sirens blare all over the country. People even stop driving and get out of their cars in memory to those who have died in their country’s battles. One thing that Israel knows how to do correctly.

We hear about patriotism and America First and all that stuff all the time. Has anyone on the right told us how to act on Memorial Day? Anyone on the left? Looks to me like a bipartisan failure.

It’s become almost a tautology. The Democrats fight by the rules and the Republicans ignore the rules. And we are so used to the Republicans outsmarting the Democrats that it is hard to believe that, in the case of the debt ceiling negotiations, the Republicans might be left holding the bag. But that is the way it looks.

That the American government must determine whether it is going to pay its bills every year is, as most of us know, ridiculous. No other country goes through this exercise, and there is no reason we should. This is the way Donald Trump has run his business life (shorting his contractors), but why should the United States run its affairs the way Trump does? And, in fact, perhaps we don’t even have to go through this meaningless exercise. The 14th amendment to the Constitution says that the debts of the country cannot be denied. If a case came before the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court (literalists and originalists as the Justices are) might be forced to agree. But who wants to take that chance, I guess?

So now we have a “deal” that the President and the leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress support. My guess is that it will pass (I often guess wrong) Congress this week and be signed by President Biden. There will be many Republican objectors on the right because, truth be told, they didn’t get what they wanted at all. They wanted spending to go down considerably, and they wanted to show their power; this deal keeps spending where it is, and shows the weakness of the MAGA caucus.

Yes, there are some (maybe many) Democrats who wanted a squeaky clean debt ceiling bill, and this is not that. But, so what? They got most of what they wanted, and they know that they aren’t going to get any more, and they certainly don’t want to country to default. They also want to show a strong win against the right wing of the Republicans.

So I would guess that all, or virtually all, Democrats will support this bill. In the House, you only need a majority to pass it, so if almost all of the Democrats vote for it, even if half, or more than half, of the Republicans do not vote for it, it will pass. And, my guess is that the majority of Republicans, too, will support the bill. In the Senate, where there has not been a groundswell of opposition to a debt ceiling increase, you do need 60 votes. But that just means, if all Democrats vote for it and, say, ten Republicans out of their 49 vote for it, it will pass.

Now, both houses of Congress have arcane rules and procedures, and there may be ways for a minority of members to slow things down and get some leverage doing that. And that might happen. But if this results in a default, long or short term, and social security checks are not sent out in June (for example), it will be clear where the blame lies.

In other words, there is now a deal (I understand the exact language is not yet written), and if the deal is broken and a default results, it will all be on the Republicans. The Democrats win either way, whether the country does or not.

Of course, there may be another loser in all of this. That is Speaker McCarthy. He won his speakership on, what, the 15th vote, having to work out some details with the far right, who opposed him. There could be now an attempt to oust him from his position, and it could be successful, I guess, although I am sure he has calculated otherwise. We will see.

In any event, although there are a lot of devils and a lot of details, it appears that the debt service crisis will soon be behind us. If so, it will give the Biden administration another win and something to talk about. If not, it will still give the Democrats a leg up over the Republicans, at least on this issue.

Yes, Biden started by saying “no negotiations” and McCarthy started by saying “FY 2024 expenditures must be significantly reduced”, and neither achieved their goals. That’s OK – I think Biden can argue that he did not give up anything of import to his program, and McCarthy will say that he is keeping expenditures below where they otherwise might have been had the deal not been made.

But now comes the even tougher task – the appropriations process. Talk about devils and details.

Today is a special day in the household of Heinz (a/k/a Henry) Kissinger, as you may already know. Today, he turns 100. His only son wrote a piece that was published yesterday in the Washington Post. He said a number of things about his father.

First, he suggested that his father’s diet, which he said included a lot of bratwurst and wiener schnitzels, was not responsible for his longevity. Nor was his habit of watching a lot of sports, but never participating in any. And I don’t know how much Kissinger weighs, but svelte he is not.

Then what was? Maybe, it was his mother, who died at 97? His father who died at 95? They could also get credit for Henry’s brother Walter, who died at 96. Let’s assume it was that.

When I was in college at Harvard, Kissinger was a Professor of Government. That is not as surprising (it isn’t surprising at all) as the fact that when I, being 80, entered Harvard, Professor Kissinger was only 37 years old. A wunderkind, he had graduated Harvard summa cum laude in 1950 (I never did that), and his undergraduate thesis was over 400 pages long (and, according to Wikipedia, led Harvard to set a cap on the length of undergraduate theses (mine was 88 pages, not counting appendixes and end notes; I will ask Henry if his 400+ pages includes only text or more the next time I see him). Most of his books are more than 400 pages long by far, so I guess this is not surprising.

There were two competing Government professors at Harvard – both Jewish European refugees – Kissinger and Stanley Hoffman. Hoffman, who died at 86, was a few years younger than Kissinger, Austrian born and French educated. Kissinger, born in Germany, was able to come to the United States with his parents in the late 1930s, while Hoffman had to hide out with his parents in a small French village during the war. I never took a course from Kissinger (somewhat, I guess now, to my regret), but took two from Hoffman, who I thought was a brilliant lecturer (he was one of those who could start a lecture on time, make it appear that he had memorized it word for word – perhaps he had – and end it at the exact second the class was scheduled to end; and he could do that for each class).

Well, Kissinger – when he went to work for Nixon as National Security Director (was that the title then?) and then Secretary of State – was certainly controversial. In the first place, it was surprising to some, if I recall correctly, that he went to work for Nixon at all. But his theory of realpolitik, which had its dose of amorality, was put to the test when he became one of the architects of the Vietnam War for this country, and especially in his involvement in deciding to bomb a neutral country, Cambodia. (I remember at speech Kissinger gave at a DC Bar meeting that I attended. It was during that war, and that Kissinger was so unpopular with many that the then Bar president introduced him by telling the audience and the speaker that his invitation to speak before the DC Bar was by no means to be interpreted as if anyone in the room agreed with what he was doing as Secretary of State at all; I remember agreeing with that statement and being aghast at it at the same time.)

So, Kissinger was also involved in the conference that eventually ended the war. (We didn’t win it, you recall.) And he even got a Nobel Prize, speaking of controversy. His further involvement in world politics was massive, but had – as I suggested above – a sense of amorality. He helped end the 1973 Yom Kippur War in the Middle East, but he supported dictatorships in Latin America and in Pakistan. He was the guiding force opening up China to the United States.

After being president, 98 year old Jimmy Carter (18 months younger than Kissinger) created the Carter Center and did all sorts of good in the world. Henry Kissinger formed Kissinger and Associates, and made a lot of money for Henry Kissinger. And we should note that Carter is now in home hospice, while Kissinger is still running around the world giving quite lucid speeches.

At any rate, no matter what one thinks of Kissinger’s accomplishments, one must respect his longevity. He has been married to his 89 year old (and second) wife Nancy Maginnes (who is three or four inches taller than he is) for almost 50 years (next April will be 50) and he has two children and (I think) some grandchildren (most of his family is press shy for sure), which – on his big birthday – led me to the title of this blog post which, the more you think about it, makes absolutely no sense at all.

So today is the first day of the two day Jewish holiday of Shavuot. That means, for congregational rabbis, cantors and staff, these are big workdays with full services both days. But, except in the Orthodox communities, most Jews do not go to the synagogue on Shavuot, do not stay home from the office, and perhaps do not even know that it is Shavuot. Why this is the fact is something that Jews talk about. I guess you could speculate that people talk about why they don’t celebrate Shavuot so that they don’t forget that they aren’t celebrating one of the three major festival holidays of the Torah. But you’d need a special kind of mind to unravel that special kind of thinking.

Growing up, I knew nothing of Shavuot. At some point, I learned that there was such a holiday, but that was all. I then learned that, at least in the Reform movement, the rabbinical leaders were frustrated that they couldn’t get any of their congregants to recognize Shavuot, and that is why they invented the rite of Confirmation for middle school age children – the culmination of their religious school training. In those days, there were no bar or bat mitzvot in the Reform tradition for boys at 13 or girls at 12, so a Confirmation service at 15 or so was seen as a way to recognize passage into a form of adulthood and, at the same time, if it was scheduled for Shavuot, it would create a way to recognize the holiday of Shavuot. I don’t think it was a great success in this regard.

I have lived a fairly Jewish life now for 80 years, and I don’t think that I ever attended a Shavuot service. This year will be no exception. Our 2 1/2 year old grandson attends a Jewish pre-school which is closed for Shavuot today, and we have him with us all day, so at least now I am forced (not in a gun-at-your-head way) to recognize the holiday. But that will be it.

But I did listen to a lecture on the holiday, sponsored by the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies one night last week, and presented by Rabbi David Silber, founder of the Drisha Institute in New York. Here is the link to a video of the lecture if you are interested:

I found it interesting. Here are some of the points that I recall (with a little review):

1. While the holiday is celebrated as the day that the Jews convened at Sinai and received the Torah (not only the Ten Commandments) from God through Moses, the Torah doesn’t talk about this; it states that the pilgrimage holiday of Shavuot celebrates the Jews entering the promised land after 40 years in the desert. The connection with the Torah came later, as a rabbinic position. (If I had to guess, I would guess that the other two pilgrimage festivals, Passover and Sukkot did very well, but no one came to Jerusalem on Shavuot – so, just like the Reform Jews of the 20th century needed a hook to get people to participate, so did the rabbis of old and, as to all but the Orthodox who do whatever the Rabbi wants, no one paid any attention.)
2. The meeting at Sinai leading to the giving of the Torah contained three elements: (1) revelation – God was present; (2) the giving of the Commandments, the rule of how to live; and (3) the Covenant between God and the Jewish people.
3. This was actually God’s 3rd Covenant – the first given to all the people of the world of the Flood and Noah’s survival – that He would never again destroy humanity, and the second, giving to Abraham, saying that He will become the father of a great nation who will have the land of Israel, but that this would only occur after his descendants would be strangers, and slaves, and abused. And that this is what happened to the Israelites in Egypt.
4. That the rabbis say, as written in the Haggadah for Passover, each Jews should act as if he himself were redeemed by God from Egypt, and that this was necessary because those Jews who were actually redeemed really would rather have stayed in Egypt than wander in the desert so long, and that only Jews who had never been in Egypt could appreciate what it meant to be free because they were no longer in that interim, wandering stage.

Well, you can take all this as gospel (so to speak), or with a grain (or more) of salt, but at least I hope you find it interesting and important culturally, if not religiously. And maybe this is enough and you don’t have to listen to Rabbi Silber. Because if you do listen to him, you may discover that what he said, and that what I think he said, have little in common.

It really was not a pleasant dream.

I have had a lot of school dreams – most of them unpleasant. Last night’s was one of the worst.

Law school. Time for “final exams” after, I think, one year of study. You needed to take the finals in order to begin the second year of study, and it seems (in the dream) that there had been some time between the end of the first year’s classes and the finals. I had come back to my school for the finals – a special trip. I was staying in a room or suite with a married couple; I was there alone. I don’t know who they were, except we were all taking the finals.

We had only been there a few days when I innocently asked when we were going to find out the exam schedule. They looked at me strangely and said they were surprised I didn’t know. Didn’t you get your schedule yesterday? No, I said, I didn’t get anything. Then, they showed me that they each got a plate sent to our door the day before. Each plate had a piece of paper with their exam schedule, and three cupcakes.

I thought mine got misplaced, so I telephoned (land line, rotary dial) the law school office and told them that I hadn’t received the schedule, and I was shunted to three different people. The last one, a man, asked if I wanted to talk to the dean (he mentioned him/her by name – I knew that was the dean). I said that I didn’t need to if he could assist me. He then said a bunch of words that made no sense, so I hung up a bit confused.

The next day (I think it was the next day), my roommates knew what they were doing, but I had no idea. They then showed me a piece of paper that had the day’s schedule on it. I had not seen that, either. They pointed out that the first thing was a meeting of the entire class, so I went with them.

The meeting was held in a very large classroom. There were three or four people on the stage in front, like a panel. One man controlled the agenda. He called classmates up one by one. I didn’t pay a lot of attention. It seemed like preliminary stuff. Then he called my name.

I went up to the front and he said (loud enough for everyone to hear): “Art, I hear you are a very good student and have done very well in class.” I nodded a thank you, but there was something in his voice that I didn’t like. He went on. Handing me a piece of paper with a long list of things on it, he said “These are the class assignments over the year that you didn’t hand in. There are about thirty of them. If it was only one or two, or three, we would ignore it, and you would take the exams. But we can’t let you take the final exams with all of these assignments outstanding. Now, I know you are 26 years old, and [mumbled words]. When you come back next year, you can enroll in my second year class in __________; you don’t have to take that first year class again.” And he dismissed me to go back to my seat, only saying “Leibowitz, the same goes for you,” and a student in the first row got up and rushed out of the room.

I was really taken aback. I assumed that I had not handed in the assignments; I had been pretty lax. But no one told me that taking the finals depended on this, or that I shouldn’t bother to come halfway across the country prepared to take the finals. My first thought was to go back home and complete the missing assignments and ask if I could take the finals at the end of the summer before the start of the second year classes. But, looking at the list of missing assignments, I couldn’t tell what the assignments were, only that they weren’t handed in. I didn’t want my three year law school program to extend into four years. That was too much time, and cost too much.

I decided to pack up and go home. My car (which was the 1967 yellow and black Pontiac Firebird I once owned) was not far away, and I hoped everything would fit in it. I was still stunned, very embarrassed and needed time to get away and think. What next?

(For those who want to know, I did my law school training in the normal 3 years, I always knew where my classes were (even if I had to admit missing a large number of them), and I never failed to hand in an assignment.)

Four things can bring down the Democrats in 2024. First, if the government defaults on its debts. Second, the situation at the southern border. Third, Joe Biden. Fourth, Kamala Harris.

These three factors can lead the Democrats to defeat in spite of the fact that the Republican front runner is an indicted felon, owes a woman $5 million, is mentally disturbed and is supported by a bunch of crazies in office and out of office. While it is now said that the majority of independent voters now would vote for Biden over Trump, it may not be that way 18 months from now. And, if the GOP candidate turns out to be someone other than Trump, the independents may swing towards that new candidate quickly.

(1) The debt. Yes, there should be no question about the country paying debts it has already incurred. Yes, the Republicans are as responsible for those debts as are the Democrats and perhaps even more responsible. But it is equally true that there needs to be decisions on next year’s federal budget, and while ideally those are two separate issues, the Republicans have brought them together and the Biden stance of “we will not negotiate” is not, to me, a politically winning stance. Good faith budget negotiations would have either led the GOP to agree to the debt extension, or put the Democrats in a position where it was the Republicans that looked foolish. Now, I am afraid that it’s the Democrats who look that way to the moderates of America, who look, typically, arrogant, unyielding and dismissive.

(2) The border. Yes, Congress has absolutely failed to provide the country with workable immigration and border control laws. Yes, the world situation is such that millions and millions of people need to leave their homes for someplace better, and this is something that we cannot control. Yes, in holding back immigration during his term, Trump both broke existing laws and creating hardship for many immigrating families. And yes, Democrats have deported and turned back millions of people, perhaps more than Republicans have. Nevertheless, millions have crossed the border during the Biden years and are now dispersed throughout the country, though still concentrated in border states, and many of them will avoid further processing and vanish into thin air. And, yes, politically, this is terrible for the Democrats.

What to do (if it isn’t too late): Replace Secretary Mayorkas. I don’t know if he is doing a good job or not, but he certainly doesn’t inspire confidence even to those (like me) who are on his side. Why keep him in this position to that he can be a target (maybe even an impeachment target) of the Republicans? Second, stake out a better position on the Trump wall. Maybe it doesn’t help in real life to keep people from coming across the border, but maybe we should pretend that it does in certain places and make it clear that the country will expand the wall in those places. The wall is a political wall, whether or not it really works. Third, be more transparent to the public with regard to statistics: people crossing, people being turned away, people being deported, people be processed, where people are living, what jobs are being unfilled because of the lack of immigrants who can fill them, etc.

(c) Joe Biden. He is too old to run in 2024. Period. He should know that – he should not be the third of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Diane Feinstein, Joe Biden trio. What does it say in Ecclesiastes? There’s a time for this, and a time for that? And this is the time to say “Good-bye”.

(d) Kamala Harris. People do not see Vice President Harris and President Harris. Whether she would make a great or a terrible president is at this point irrelevant. She is not seen as presidential. And anyone voting for an 82 year old man in 2024 knows that there is a good chance that he will not live out his term in good health, and that the Vice President will be called upon to take over. Because of how she is perceived, Kamala Harris as Vice Presidential candidate will discourage people from supporting Joe Biden for President.

Unfortunately, the Democrats won’t listen to me. And they threaten their own future and the future of the country by just carrying on as they have been. There is now, as you probably know, a new movement afoot. The No Label movement, led by moderates who wish a pox on both parties. That group may in fact succeed in putting a third candidate on the ballot in most or all states. Undoubtedly, such a candidate will draw more from the independent voters and from dissatisfied Democrats than from ideological right wing Republicans. A strong No Label candidate would most likely assure victory for the Republicans in 2024.

To forestall all of this the Democrats must get their act together and act fast. But guess what? Those are the two things that are least likely to do.

Let’s see if I can say this in a way that makes sense to me. Not sure that I can.

A good friend is heavily involved in a new museum opening next month in Washington, a museum that we hope will become increasingly important. Tonight, in advance of the official opening, there was a “cocktail reception” by invitation only to view the opening special exhibit and see the building. We were invited and said we would attend.

We spent most of the day with out of town friends, having lunch and sitting on our back patio talking about the state of the world and everything in it. Most enjoyable. We then cleaned up, and freshened up, and got ready to go.

But for various reasons, we were ambiguous about going, and our ambiguity grew as we ventured forth. The museum is located in deep downtown DC, and we faced more traffic than we expected. We looked for street parking and found ourselves just losing out on two good spaces; none others appeared. We then saw the crowd moving into the museum (we were still in our car) and saw that they all seemed much more dressed than we were – men with suits, sport jackets, ties (I was in gray slacks and a blue button down shirt). We took all these as omens that we should turn around and go home, which we did. I was somewhat relieved.

OK, writing that part was pretty easy. Now it gets harder. The fact is that I like events like this only in two situations. First, if I know almost everyone there. Second, if I have a job to fulfill. This has always been the case – even in college (probably in high school), if I went to a gathering where I had neither function, nor friends, I would immediately turn into and remain a wall flower, unless someone, on their own accord, pulled me out of it. At gatherings such as this, as soon as I found a function (if I did), I would be fine. Was there a punch bowl? Let me stand behind the punch bowl and fill glasses. I will talk to everyone and feel right at home. But if the punch bowl runs out of punch……

Why was this? Why was it that I would feel that everyone there seemed to know everyone else…..but for me? Why was it that I would feel that everyone else knew the right thing to say, or had something to say, but me? Why is it that it would be clear to me that everyone there wanted to talk to everyone else, but no one was at all interested in talking to me? Even when I was talking to someone, I became certain in a moment or two that they wished they were talking to someone else.

This was not my reaction in any other situation. It was not my reaction where I knew many of the attendees. It was certainly not my reaction in, say, a school function. Or in a business function. Or if it was a gathering sponsored by, for example, a non-profit that I was active in. Or certainly not in a small grouping – say a dinner party. But put me in a stand up gathering with a bunch of people that I don’t know….

Tonight, this was compounded by the way others seem to be dressed. Since my retirement in 2012, and certainly since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, I have not dressed up very often. Jeans, khakis, shorts – that’s about it. A sport jacket, now and then, but only because there was a nip in the wind. A suit? Not even to a funeral.

Now for the first 40 years of my work life, I wore a coat and tie every day. Didn’t think anything of it. Seemed natural. Seemed the thing to wear. Now, though? Sure, I wore a jacket at my daughter’s wedding, and to a few funerals (there even with a tie), but that’s about it. Who are these folks who knew that a “cocktail reception” at 5:30 on a Tuesday called for a coat and tie? What do I have in common with them? I don’t see many coats and ties on the streets even during the week – so I can’t conclude that they were just coming from the office. No, I think they spruced up to look spruced up at this function.

Well, as you know, Art is 80. He has a pretty good sense of who he is. He spends a lot of time with other people – family, friends, people he works with in his not-for-profit endeavors. He feels comfortable everywhere. He feels he communicates well in all of these situations. He knows what to wear. He knows when he would rather be home and when he would rather be out and about.

But put him (or even think about putting him) in a crowd like tonight’s at an event like tonight’s and he is just as he was when he was 19 and in college. He mentally transforms into a completely different person. He sees himself differently and he is certain that others see himself differently as well. He is no longer someone to befriend; he becomes someone to ignore. And when this happens, he doesn’t fight against it. He just gives in to it.

Well, I told you that I wasn’t sure I knew how to write this to make sense to me. I still don’t.

Among other things yesterday (like attending my 8 year old granddaughter’s birthday party), (a) I watched a presentation by Rabbi Professor (or is it Professor Rabbi?) David Freidenreich, Professor of Jewish Studies at Colby College, in Waterville ME, entitled “Making it in Maine: Stories of Jewish Life in Small-Town America”, and (b) attended the Shakespeare Theatre’s production of “Here There are Blueberries”, a Holocaust play showing another side of the Auschwitz Death Camp (in Oswiecim) during the Second World War. Two very different stories, both interesting in very different ways. The Freidenreich presentation can be viewed at http://www.habermaninstitute.org, under Program Recordings and, then, Videos. The Blueberries play can be seen at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington through May 28.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

“Here There are Blueberries” by Moises Kaufman and Amanda Gronich is an example of that rare art form, a documentary play. It tells the story of a gift, originally anonymous (for reasons explained in the play) of a photo album with about 130 photos taken at Auschwitz in 1944. The album was found in an abandoned apartment in Frankfurt in 1946, after the war had ended, and was unique in that it didn’t show any of the inmates in Auschwitz, but concentrated on the Nazis who administered the camp. It showed them typically in uniform at official functions, and it showed them with family members and with female Helferin, young women 17-30 who acted as telegraph operators at the camp, at the camp resort, Solahutte. You learn that the camp itself was more than just the Auschwitz and Birkenau death and work camps, but also a residential community and a chalet-like resort, over several square miles of ground.

The National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington was given the photo album, after a discussion of whether it fit the mission of the museum of honoring victims and not memorializing perpetrators, and the gift led to a detailed exploration of many of the individuals pictured. It was apparently the only series of photos of this kind, showing the good life of the camp administrators, and it led to a significant amount of soul searching by the descendants of those pictured, as the play describes.\

Towards the end of the play the photo book of the camp administrators is compared to another photo book, found in an abandoned German army barracks at Auschwitz after the war, this one focusing on victims, not administrators, a book which found by chance by a prisoner in the camp at the time of liberation who is actually pictured, along with her family, in the album. Go figure.

The script (largely taken from interview and testimony transcripts) does follow some of those pictured, including the presumed owner of the book a man named Karl Hocker, who was for a period of less than a year in 1944, the assistant to the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, who lived to be 89, escaping the most serious punishment for his complicity in the Nazi crimes. His grandson features prominently in the play as a man who learned the worst things about his grandfather after the existence of the photo album was published by the museum in 2007 and who worked with the museum to track down and interview descendants of others who were pictured in the book.

The play, one act and 90 minutes, was well constructed, directed and acted. Although it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Nazi elite lived high of the hog, so to speak, the photo album does flesh out much of this life and is of much interest.

(Coincidentally, I saw this weekend that British author Martin Amis passed away. I quote from the lengthy New York Times obituary: “On the day he died, a film of Mr. Amis’ 2014 Holocaust novel, “Zone of Interest” – the title refers to Germany’s term for the 40 square kilometer area that surrounded Auschwitz – debuted to strong reviews at the Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Jonathan Glazer, the film (like the novel) is partly about the idyllic life of a camp commander and his wife, who live just outside the barb-wired compound”. Was this novel related to the Hocker photo album, which was given to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2007? I don’t know.)

Now what about Maine? This blog post is getting long, so I will only say a few things and suggest that you watch Prof. Freidenreich’s presentation at the Haberman website. Maine’s Jewish population today, approximately 20,000 apparently, may be concentrated in Portland, but is spread around the state in small communities, and has been since Jews first migrated to Maine in the 1840s and became peddlers, and then merchants and junk dealers, and then doctors, professors and lawyers.

The stories of some of the early settlers were interesting, along with some of the issues surrounding education in the state. Jewish quotas at all the private colleges through World War II, Jewish exclusion from coastal resorts, the change from a largely Orthodox community to one that today is largely non-denominational, and the degree of participation by Maine’s Jews in Jewish life today. Highly recommended.

The Jews of Maine and the Jews of Auschwitz. How different can they be?

We went to the ball game yesterday and saw the Nats beat the Tigers, 5-2. The weather was beautiful (threatened rain held off), our seats are good (if not perfect), and it was Star Wars Day, so we saw a lot of costumed folks, including the Presidents in the third inning race. But the best thing about the ball park was that there were no politics involved, everyone was in a good(ish) mood, and I didn’t hear any insults. Most people rooted for the Nats, but there were certainly many Tiger fans among the 30,000 present and guess what? They all got along. As for Star Wars, they were giving away shirts, and you had to choose between a Dark Side shirt and a Light Side shirt. And guess what? The two sides got along.

Why is it only baseball that brings out this “we can get along” feeling? Even during the shirt giveaway, when the people clamoring for the shirts were certainly not lined up in an orderly queue, and the booths were overwhelmed (sort of like getting bread during Soviet times, perhaps), all of the people scrounged together, big and small, young and old, giving each other every imaginable communicable disease, no one was throwing punches, taking out a hand gun or AK-15, or even pushing others out of the way.

(By the way, as an aside, everyone who has attended a Nats game knows how crowded the Navy Yard – Ballpark Metro Station can be after a game. Yesterday, it was doubly crowded – in an interesting way. Because at 6:30, as the baseball crowd, in jerseys, Nats Star Wars shirts, and red caps were heading down the escalators, there were just as many (or so it seemed) DC United fans, dressed in varying types of soccer outfits heading up the escalator going to a 7 p.m. DC United game at its close by stadium.)

Well, the remainder of the United States is not so peaceful and placid. And I, for one, am tired of it. So, I pray (because I am human) to the God that I have no way to know exists that he will intervene on earth, which I am sure he can not do, and rapture up all the right wing Republicans and their fellow travelers, along with Vladimir Putin and some of those crazy Israeli MKs, so that the rest of us can turn this country, and the rest of the world, into a humane living space. Yes, this is what I do, but I do it without assurance of success. Either there is no God, no God who cares, a God who likes the sport of it all, or a God with limited power. Yes, we are on our own. And, yes, that is apparently not a good thing.

In the meantime, I turn on the news. The Republicans want the U.S. to default on its debt, leading to who knows what, and it may really happen. Putin says that if the Ukrainians get F-16s, the world may end. And Marjorie Taylor Greene says that Congressman Jamaal Bowman is aggressive, and scary, and dangerous, and “should be watched”.

We all know (or think we know) that there is an old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times! I used to think that was a trade off, and that interesting times may be unsettled, but at least they are interesting. But, again, guess what? The times we live in our no longer interesting. They are just sad. And it’s nobody’s fault but our own.

You know – when bad or tragic things happen in this country, there is always a politician who says “This is not who we are”. But the fact is: this is exactly who we are. Sad, but true.

Next game, Nats v. Tigers: 1:30 today.

Sorry to do this two days in a row, but yesterday a read through another short Penguin titled “Two Satyr Plays”, one by Euripides and one by Sophocles. I didn’t know what a “satyr play” was (other than I figured it must involve satyrs), and was told that these were short plays that were performed in Greek theaters when tragedies were performed, and they were meant to be light and humorous. Very few remain extant. These are two that do.

The Euripides play “Cyclops” was a retelling of Homer’s story of Odysseus and the Cyclops, and it was fun to read. But the Sophocles play, which suffers by the unpronounceable name of “Ichneutai” (which probably explains why none of us have ever heard of it) is something else. Given a verse translation by Roger Lancelyn Green, it begins with a speech by the god Apollo as follows:

“I am Apollo! Hearken, all below,

To what a god proclaims! For you must know,

And gods above, what great Apollo vows:

A rich reward to him who finds my cows!

My heart is racked with pain: I’ve lost them all!

There’s not one single heifer in my stall,

Nor cow, nor smallest calf. Where they can be

Is more than this all-seeing god can see!

I really did not think that god or man

Would dare such treason, such stealthy plan

To steal my cattle, not leave a trace!

I have been hurrying from place to place

Since first I heard the news, and I proclaim

My loss to gods and men. All are to blame,

And here I give them warning clear and fair,

Those who pretend that they are unaware

That I have lost my cows: they tempt their fate

Who would deceive me – I do not prate!

For I’m Apollo, I would have you know

Where in the world did my poor cattle go?

(Now how much of this is Sophocles and how much Green?

The answer to me of this – unseen.)

Back to my Penguin collection. Today’s blog post will mention the six most recent books I have read. What could be more interesting?

I’m not keeping precise figures, but I think I have read, or read through, about 150 Penguins since I started doing this. It’s been interesting reading books I would not normally read, and being able to transport myself out of the 21st century morass back into the (equally horrific, I guess) 19th and 20th.

Anyway, here goes:

1. Tacitus on Britain and Germany. That’s the title, but the book actually contains two long essays/short books by the Roman writer Tacitus. One, called Agricola, is the biography of his father in law, who helped Britain gain control over much of what is now England, and who became the Roman governor of England in the first century C.E. Tacitus clearly liked his father in law and relished his accomplishments. The second essay, Germania, gives Tacitus’ opinions of the German tribes who lived in what today would be the north of Germany and were, by and large, not under Roman occupation (although some of the tribes were allied with Rome). He talks about a sparsely occupied country with nothing one could call a city or even a village, about people who love to fight (internally or against foreign invaders, and who when not fighting are just lazy as they sit around waiting for the next fight. Tacitus’ Germans are strictly moral and monogamous (the punishments for transgressing morality are severe and rarely needed), poor agriculturalists who wear out their soil and move on, and who live a simple (if alcoholic) life style. They are all attractive and strong, with blond hair and blue eyes, and value their independence and lifestyle. The book also contains a 50 page essay by the translator, H. Mattingly, which nicely sets the tone for Tacitus’ writing.
2. Salome and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde. These were enjoyable to read if a bit simplistic; probably better to see if staged well. The story of Salome is simply that – Salome is the god daughter of king Herod, is attracted to and frightened by John the Baptist. She is promised anything she wants by Herod, and asks for (and gets) the head of John on a platter. Weird story, to be sure. The second play – A Woman of No Importance – tells the story of a member of the British aristocracy who hires a young man, a protege, to be his secretary, although the man seems to have no qualifications for the job. It turns out that the young man is the aristocrat’s son (a fact long hidden from the son) with a woman whom the community thinks is widowed, but in fact is an old lover of the aristocrat. The young man – who himself is in love with a young American visitor – finds out, and a bit of chaos results. The third and last play in the book is An Ideal Husband, similar to the Women of No Importance, is also the story of British aristocrats. A woman married to an up and coming politician is proud that her husband is a paragon of ethics, and supports him in avoiding making decisions that would compromise his ethical standards even if they are unpopular. But she does not know that his entire rise as a politician is based on the lack of ethics in his early political life and when she finds out……
3. The third book is a book of Maxims by La Rochefoucauld. The books starts with a nice background piece by the translator, L.W. Tancock, on the status of French intellectuals of the 17th century during the time of Louis XIV. Theatre was big (Moliere, for example), there were salons with regular attendees each trying to outwit the other, one of whom was La Rochefucauld, who put together maxim after maxim (a popular written art form of the time). The maxims himself bored me to death, so I read a few pages and skimmed the rest. Times have changed, I guess. The book contains 641 maxims. Give me a number and I’ll tell you what it says.
4. The fourth book, Edmund Campion, by Evelyn Waugh. Not a novel, like most of Waugh’s work, but a biography of a churchman living during the time of Elizabeth I. England was in religious upheaval, with Elizabeth determined to have the Church of England pretty well completely displace the Roman Catholic Church in England. Campion was a brilliant student, attractive in every way, who became an Anglican priest as a result of his Oxford studies, but who grew more and more attracted to Catholicism. He left England and went to northern France where a Catholic seminary had been set up to train Englishmen as Catholic priests, as this training was no longer available at home (who knew?). Campion taught there and the went to Rome where the Pope designated him as one of a small number of English Catholics who would return to England, without publicity, to assure English Catholics that the Church was still alive and to attract more into the priestly training abroad. Campion did so and, after a fair amount of success, was arrested, refused to recant his religious affiliation and was hanged. A true story. Very well told.
5. Book five was a novel, Greenmantle, by John Buchan. It’s the second novel by Buchan I have read as a Penguin; the first – set in Scotland and telling the story of a bunch of young bored educated Englishman who wanted to have some daring fun to destroy their boredom and get them back into the swing of things – had a stupid plot (I thought), but was so well written that the plot could be excused. Greenmantle, set during World War I, involves a young Englishman recruited to be a spy by infiltrating first Germany and then Ottoman Turkey to interrupt a plot by the Germans to enlist the entire Muslim world as German allies. The book, very politically incorrect for 2023 reading, was, to me, not worthwhile.
6. Finally, Life in Shakespeare’s England, an anthology of short Elizabethan pieces (written when Shakespeare was writing) to give a flavor of England at the time. The chapter titles tell the story: Stratford, The Countryside (Folk, Sport, Festival), Superstition (Ghosts, Witches, Fairyland, Astrology), Education (Child and Parent, Grammar School, University, Travel), London (the Road to London, First Impressions, Disorders, Temptations, Dress and Fashion, and the Plague), Books and Authors, Theatre (Morals, Playhouses and Beer Gardens, the Audience, the Actor, Puritan Opposition), The Court (Queen Elizabeth, the Courtier, Masques, the Death of the Queen), House and Home (Houses and Furniture, Gardens and Orchards, Housekeeping and the Table, Sleep and Health), Rogues and Vagabonds, and the Sea. Interesting to read through (for the most part); interesting reference.

Today’s subject is belief. People want to believe; I think that is clear. There are so many questions that aren’t susceptible to factual answers, that they either must be answered by “I believe that ……” or left unanswered. Unanswered questions seem to bother a lot of people, so they fall back on belief. And the belief that they fall back on becomes so much a part of their thought process, and therefore their identity, that the belief itself becomes, to them, fact.

People want, to take a small example, to believe that there is a God. Some people need to believe in God in order to anchor their lives. What, they ask, would be the purpose of life without a God? Others, just take belief in God as something that is obvious. Still others don’t think about the God question at all, or even decide that there is, or probably is, no God at all……that is, until they are in serious trouble, when they say (to themselves, no doubt), “Oh, God, please help me”, or until they survive a serious situation and they say “God, thank you”.

Of course (I am sure that this is a case of “of course”), none of these “beliefs” are relevant to the question of whether there is or is not a God. And even this statement begs the question of – if there is a God – what does that even mean?

Western civilization (and now civilization even broader than that) is based upon the God first worshiped by the Israelites of 3000 years ago. This God is so ingrained in our thinking that, for most, the concept of worshiping, or even recognizing the existence of, gods other than this God is unthinkable, primitive, pagan. But, again, this ingrained belief has no relevance to the underlying question.

The elements of the Western God (if I may refer to him that way) is that he is basically anthropomorphic (or, to be more accurate, we humans are deimorphic – a word that does not exist), that he “thinks” in ways that we can understand even if his conclusions sometimes seem inexplicable, that he “cares” about us more than about any other creature or place, that he can (in varying ways) intervene in our daily activities, and that he has a plan for us both when we are alive and after we die. Try looking at this from the perspective of someone (or some thing) not raised in this Western tradition, and it might look a little ridiculous, yes? But here we are – stuck with our belief.

Are you religiously Jewish? You may believe that this God chose the Jewish people out of all the others for certain teachings and that he expects the Jewish people to worship him by living in certain ways (that these ways are very different from the ways of Jews 2000 to 3000 years ago becomes irrelevant), and that he gave the Jews the right to certain real estate on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea (like the American republic – if they can keep it). If you are not Jewish, the concept of a God as a real estate agent seems a little odd, right?

Are you religiously Christian? You may believe that this same God decided 2000 years ago to expand his “people” beyond the Jews, that people generally were born into sin and needed to be redeemed before they could expect a beatific afterlife, and that this redemption came with God’s chosen mate giving birth to a son who was crucified to wash away the sins of mankind, or at least of that portion of mankind who believed this general story. But if you are not Christian, it is pretty hard to give this tale any real credibility.

Are you religiously Muslim? Well, then you believe that this God told what he really stood for only to Mohammed, an illiterate Arab, whose followers spread this word of God and made it known that by following these precepts, but by no others, could people, and therefore the world, be saved.

All three of these story lines – the Jewish, the Christian and the Muslim – are clearly fantastic. Yet those who truly believe tend to think that they understand the true God, and no one else does. They believe that followers of the other two religious systems are in error and that, once they die, they will discover just how wrong they were.

Yet, and I repeat, all this means is that people have a need to believe, and that they tend to believe so strongly that they ignore the possibility that their belief is just that – just a belief. They believe that they have discovered truth or fact, not only for them but for everyone, and that it is their job to convert everyone to their cause. For non-Muslims all this brings about is fear.

OK, perhaps all of this is obvious. To me, anything about the creation of the world (where was it created, when was it created, why was it created, was it in fact ever really created?) is well above my pay grade. And that doesn’t bother me. Or, at least I don’t think it does.

So why do I bring this up? Only because this concept of “belief = truth” permeates more than one’s conception of God. I think that it is not an accident that most followers of Donald Trump or other right wing avatars tend to one or another form of religious fundamentalism. Or that most followers of Donald Trump or other right wing avatars tend to believe that their nation is the best, that it is exceptional and destined to lead the world. These are people who need beliefs to anchor their lives – the belief in a certain God (and acceptance of the presumed program of that God, the belief in the superiority of a certain nation (which just happens to be their nation) and the belief in a certain politician (and acceptance of that politician’s program) are primarily the same phenomenon.

And of course, this is not strictly an American phenomenon – you find it replicated world wide, in the past, the present and undoubtedly in the future. It’s the human condition, turning beliefs into facts, and relying on those facts to control one’s own life and the lives of others.

And so it goes.

Some days do lend themselves to diary entries more than others. Yesterday was one of them. Not that anything too exciting happened, but everything was interesting, and nothing was too personal to write about..

A day in the city:

I woke up at a normal hour, looked at all my normal smart phone apps, showered, dressed, came downstairs, read the Times, had breakfast (Heritage Crunch), and wrote yesterday’s blog post. I then had email and text correspondence with a number of people regarding both the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies and the Jewish Funeral Practices Committee, and then updated the sale registry for our on-line book business. At about 11 a.m., I left the house.

A beautiful walk to the Metro, down 32nd Street to Brandywine and out to Connecticut, marred only by someone cutting the grass with an oversized lawn more which covered me with grass chips. The walk is about 2/3 of a mile. The Metro, not very crowded, came about a minute after I arrived at the Van Ness station, and I got off at Farragut Square. I used to do this all the time because for 35 years of the 40 that I practiced law in DC, I worked within a block or so of Farragut Square (in four separate buildings). But I hadn’t got off there in several years, and this time my destination was not near Farragut Square, but at Metro Center, about a mile away and a 20 minute walk. But it was 11:45 and I had to be at my destination at 12:10, so I had plenty of time.

I walked down Connecticut Avenue, by the Army-Navy Club, the AFL-CIO, and St. John’s Church and through Lafayette Square, which looked very green and appealing except that the fountains were not turned on. There were people walking with a purpose, walking without a purpose, and sitting (ala Bernard Baruch) on the benches and, because this is Washington, after all, there was a big demonstration by the TRP Alliance, waving flags with butterflies on them and shouting in unison. The TRP alliance supports making the amnesty for people who have come from certain countries (like Cuba, Haiti and Ethiopia) a permanent one, not just a temporary one.

I walked by the White House lawn, the Treasury Department and a number of shops and cafes until I got to the Church of the Epiphany for its weekly Tuesday noon concert. As usual, an excellent program featuring flutist Carrie Rose, and pianist Szu-Yi Li, playing duets by Handel, Barber and Copland, and Szu-Yi Li playing a solo piece by Liszt. The Copland piece was a duo for piano and flute, written to honor the chief flutist at the Philadelphia Orchestra, William Kincaid, who had passed away. It’s interesting how Copland’s music is recognizable as Copland through the first two notes of the flute. The Barber piece, which I can’t say that I understood, was apparently the basis for the piano concerto that won Barber a Pulitzer Prize. I really don’t know Barber’s music at all.

At 1 p.m., I walked to the Martin Luther King main library, and went to the new cafe there, run by DC Central Kitchen. A first class chicken salad on a brioche sandwich and a glass of iced coffee, all for about $11.

From the library, I walked another block to the Gallery Place Metro stop and took the train back to Dupont Circle, getting off to look at the $4 books outside Second Story Books. For years, I have tried to figure out how they decide what they put on these bargain shelves, but there seems no rhyme or reason. Today, I bought (1) Susan Rice’s memoir, “Tough Love”, signed by Rice on the title page, and in top notch condition, (2) “The Carrot and the Stick: Israel’s Policy in Judaea and Samaria, 1967-68” by Major General Shlomo Gazit, also in top notch condition, signed in Hebrew and English lettering by the author, published by B’nai Brith, and (3) an even rarer volume, “Political Documents of The Jewish Agency, May 1945-December 1946, published in Israel by the World Zionist Organization in 1996, also in perfect condition.

I looked to see what these volumes were selling for. I found the first two listed each at $100 by, ta-da, Second Story. Are these the $100 volumes they decided to sell for $4? They are still listed for sale on their website, so I don’t know. Maybe these are second copies, maybe they were inadvertently pulled off the shelves? I just don’t know. As for the third volume, I cannot find it listed for sale anywhere. Perhaps it is in many research libraries, I don’t know. But it’s a treasure trove for anyone interested in the topic.

I lugged the books to the L-2 bus stop, about five blocks away. The bus (which let’s me off a block from my house, not 2/3 of a mile, like the Metro) came in about 15 minutes. I got on the bus, pulled out by Metro smart card and started to pay, when the driver said “you can just go and sit down”. Why did he do that? He liked me? He felt sorry for such an old man? His machine was broken? Who knows? But I saved $1.25.

Strangely, the bus was relatively empty for the entire 30 minute trip. Only one event worth noting. Sad and funny at the same time. I guess more sad than funny. There was a lot of paving work going on at 18th Street and Columbia Road, and there was fresh concrete poured into a raised mold which was broadening the sidewalk. A middle aged woman, wearing a skirt, was walking by and somehow (I did not see how) tripped and landed right in the fresh concrete. She was OK, except for the fact that she looked like she was in a Three Stooges film, covered from head to knees in wet concrete. The workmen tried to help her out, but I think succeeded only in spreading the concrete further all over her. I am sure it was extraordinarily upsetting – but I think six months from now, she’ll be laughing about it.

I got home, and got back on the phone on Funeral Committee business. Our treasurer and 30-year board member has announced he is resigning so we are working to replace him, and I think we are just about there. All would be set up for Board approval next month at our next board meeting.

Then came supper, and then we watched a disappointing baseball game. Well, it wasn’t disappointing until the last pitch of the game, which wound up in a walk off home run by the Marlins, who beat the Nats 5-4. Until that pitch, it looked like the Nats, who took the lead in the 8th, were sailing to victory.

The game was followed by Episode 5 of The Diplomat on Netflix. Three more to go – I will say I think it is getting better, although I still find it a rather shallow production of very limited worth..

Then, it was an hour or so of reading. Still going through my Penguins (about 3 years worth left), I am now reading, for the first time, some Tacitus. Last night it was the second half of Agricola, a biography of his father-in-law, who was the Roman governor of Britain from the year 77 to 85. Like a lot of these classics, I am finding out, it is interesting, easy to read, and not at all intimidating. The Penguin Tacitus I have contains one more long essay, Tacitus’ impression of the Germanic people of northern Europe.

I will start with an admission. I have not read all 300 pages of the Durham report released yesterday, and probably never will. But I am glad it was released, because it shows that John Durham, having spent four years investigating the issue of the FBI and Donald Trump, came up with nothing. Truly, he should be known as Bull Durham.

He was given this task by Trump (via Bill Barr) to counter the findings of the Mueller report. I think I have written about the Mueller report, stating my disappointment that Mueller felt bound by DOJ limitations on investigating a sitting president and therefore determined that, while he saw nothing to lead him to think that there were prosecutorial crimes committed by members of the Trump administration, he couldn’t say that such crimes hadn’t been committed because of the DOJ restrictions. (This is a paraphrase/my read)

But Durham’s job was to find that the crimes were committed on the Democratic side, not the GOP. According to Wikipedia, he “secured one guilty plea and a probation sentence for a charge unrelated to the origins of the Russia investigation, and two unsuccessful trial prosecutions”

His report showed nothing new. At all. He repeated a lot of the findings of the Mueller report and report of the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, and he made no recommendations for further investigations, prosecutions or even FBI procedural reforms. But he did go out of his way to defend himself, by (again, my read) twisting things around to make it look like the FBI was anti-Trump and pro-Clinton and that senior FBI officials acted accordingly.

I don’t understand. I did read the first part of the Durham report, where he repeated, and in fact emphasized, the disinformation efforts that the Russians employed during the 2016 presidential campaign, how the Russians clearly supported Trump over Clinton, how there were several documented contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russians, but how there was no evidence (or at least insufficient evidence) presented there was actual collusion or conspiracy between the Trumpists and the Russians.

He then went on to talk about how senior FBI officials relied on the Steele Dossier (I am still not clear why there hasn’t been a more definitive report on the contents of the Dossier), when there was insufficient corroboration for the conclusions presented in it. This, I think, is what DOJ IG Michael Horowitz wrote about years ago.

So to me, all Bull Durham did was try to justify his wasted four years. And I predict that, like the Mueller report, the Durham report will, not very many years from now, gather dust.

As to the FBI itself, a look at its history would show, that it has always done a very credible job in pursuing criminal activity, but has always destroyed that credibility when it reached, or reaches, into ideology or politics. For its first 48 years (!!!!), the FBI was run by J. Edgar Hoover, no friend of American liberals, who kept secret files on prominent Americans (other than conservatives and ultra-conservatives), for the purpose of having leverage over them and hog-tying even American presidents out of fear. Then, remember James Comey, the man I believe responsible for Donald Trump’s victory, having come out just before the 2016 election with a statement that he was reopening a theretofore closed investigation involving Hillary Clinton because of major new information. Was this only bad judgement on Comey’s part, or something even more insidious?

The FBI and its investigators have always had the reputation of being biased towards conservatives, as I recall, until perhaps the Trump years. I like to think that the senior FBI officials who led the investigation against Trump were patriots who saw the irregularities of the Trump administration and were seriously concerned about them. Again, as to the use of the Steele dossier, I am still uncertain and would welcome more information as to sources and process. But it appears we are not going to get that.

So, what we should be aware of, is that the Trump presidency, which all that it has led to, was helped by a major Russian disinformation campaign that perhaps did not even need again active collusion with Trump’s team, and then through the action of then FBI Director James Comey (whom also I would welcome more information as to his motivation). Were it not for these two matters, Hillary Clinton would have been elected president.

Russian disinformation also took place in 2020, but was not sufficient to give Mr. Trump (also known as “SIR!”) another term. And we can be sure that the Russians are active now and will be more so during the 2024 campaign, although I do not believe that today’s FBI will repeat the egregious errors of James Comey.

And that’s the way it is.

One thing that I didn’t consider when I started this blog last November? I didn’t consider that I wouldn’t remember what I have already written about. When I started, I assumed that the blog would be more a diary of an 80 year old. But it has turned out to be different – a bit more complex, I guess. And, because I don’t keep an index, and perhaps because my memory is that of an 80 year old, I may be prone to repetition. Of course, I realize that you don’t remember what I have written either, so even if I have discussed it before and if you have read about before, it will all be new for you. So, I can relax. No stress here.

Which reminds me of a digression I am about to make. I have given many, many tours of DC (the last one, last week – I think maybe, perhaps I wrote about it), and I have been asked how I remember what every building is used for. Just like Errol Garner admitted he hit a lot of wrong notes, and that his talent was knowing what note to hit after he hit the wrong one, I must admit that I have been asked “what is that building?” more than once where I had no idea. My answer typically is “That’s the Commerce Department”. The advantage of that answer should be obvious. No one cares where the Commerce Department is, and no one remembers that I identified a building as the Commerce Department. I figure I can call four buildings the Commerce Department before anyone realizes that I have no idea what I am talking about.

That was clearly a digression, apropos of nothing. Apropos is a weird word, no? Another weird word is okay. Where did that come from?

Okay, let’s proceed. I decided to write today about what I learned in Basic Training. I know I already wrote about what happened when we learned that Martin Luther King had been shot, and then Bobby Kennedy.

Which reminds me of another diversion – I do not like famous people or people with certain credentials called by their first name. And I blame this trend on fans of Martin Luther King who call him Martin (as if he was their brother or BFF) and the Catholic Church (Father John et al). But now, all the rabbis are called by their first name – but not by me. Okay, that was apropos of nothing…..

Living in Basic Training is in many respects similar to living under a totalitarian regime, which is something that everyone seems to be worried about. I learned three very important things. And they will be the main reason for this post.

(1) When you enter a totalitarian regime, it takes you about 4 seconds to acclimate to it perfectly. There is no learning curve.

(2) Being under a totalitarian regime, you seem to find people who think like you very quickly and very easily, and you become closer to them than you would if you met the same people while living under a relatively free regime.

(3) You think more than you do in a free society, and you discuss your thoughts more.

Of course, this assumes that you are not being targeted for special treatment.

Finally, baseball: I don’t think that baseball bats are manufactured to be used as weapons against Congressional aides in a Congressional office. I don’t know why the guy (now under arrest) attacked two of Rep. Conally’s staff today, but I bet he doesn’t vote Democratic. And, with their 10-3 victory against the Mets today, the Nats split the 4 game series. The Nats were supposed to be the worst team in the league(s) this year according to most critics. When we saw the first two Spring Training games in Florida in March, it seemed to us that they looked okay and wouldn’t embarrass themselves. After falling to 8 below .500 in the beginning weeks, they are now 5 games below .500, a better average than a half dozen other teams, and they are on the upswing. They aren’t going to win the pennant, but they will have a respectable season, I am certain.

The day after your daughter’s wedding, even if it is a small wedding, which this was, what you mainly feel is………tired. There were only 12 of us at the wedding, the bride, the groom, the bride’s parents, the groom’s parents, the groom’s two children, the bride’s sister and brother-in-law, and the bride’s niece and nephew. Is that 12?

The officiant was an old friend of the bride’s, as was the photographer (who came with a second). The ceremony was simple, and I think largely written by Michelle. The chuppah was glittery and made by three of Michelle’s friends. The glass for stomping was provided by your truly. The venue was in deepest Baltimore, about an hour from our house. The only others involved in the affair were three employees of the venue, who decorated, cooked, served, and cleaned up.

So that no one would drink and drive (especially from unfamiliar territory), we decided to rent a van and driver. Everyone (but the groom’s parents) met us at our house and Daniel the Driver (perhaps the only one of India’s billion plus natives named Daniel?) first drove to Laurel MD to pick up Michelle’s now in-laws, and then on up I-95 to Baltimore.

The venue, the Artifact Coffee House, is part of the Union Mill complex in the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore. Don’t know it? Neither did we. The mill, which Wikipedia (the source of all truth) says was once the largest producer of cotton duck fabric in the world, was built of locally quarried gray stone in the 1860s, and is now home not only to Artifact, but to offices for non-profit organizations, and rental apartments, which are primarily rented to teachers, who are given substantial rent discounts.

The coffee shop, once of the best ranked in the city, is a very popular place and serves very good, and healthy-looking, lunches, and closes every day at 3. It is a popular night time venue for small, private events.

The photos were taken outside before the event, and inside before and during the ceremony. Almost 8 year old Joan, Michelle’s niece, acted as photographer’s assistant, an unscheduled and unpaid gig. Thousands of photos seemed to have been taken. We can’t wait to see them.

The food consisted of appetizers served with a variety of liquids (Josh’s son said that the drinks included the best Shirley Temples he ever tasted), along with a cheese board, deviled eggs, pickled vegetables and more. The meal, elegantly served family style in a separate room with a long table, included salad, both rockfish and steak, pasta and grits, vegetables and potatoes au gratin. Desserts included strawberry shortcake, butterscotch puddings, brownies, and cookies. And of course there was coffee.

Shortly before 10:00, we re-boarded the van, and redid the trip, in reverse.

Could not have been better.

Come back tomorrow.

There was an op-ed piece in this morning’s Post written by (or in the name of) four United States Senators, two Democrats and two Republican. The subject was youth and social media. The premise was the young teenagers spend much too much time on their “devices”, that overuse of social media is an addiction, that this has led to a serious increase in mental health and suicidal thoughts, and that the social media companies recognize this, say they are fighting against it, but clearly are not doing enough. They are proposing legislation that they believe will help.

Although I cannot get into the mind of a 2023 teenager (at all), since their world is so different from my world, and since I am clearly excluded from their world if only because we are doing different things in different places (not to mention other obvious reasons), I certainly understand the problem. For I, too, probably spend much too much time on my “devices”.

Before I do anything else in the morning, I generally spend a half hour or so on my smart phone, looking to see what happened over night. I looked at my Google news feed, at the CNN website, and my Flipboard news feed, at the Times of Israel website, at the headlines on the Post, Times and Journal sites, at the Jewish Insider, and often Haaretz, the Forward, Al Jazeera, WTOP, the weather, and elsewhere. I check my three email accounts. And, of course, when looking at all of this, if something interests me, I will click on it and read it.

When I come downstairs, I turn on the TV and generally watch Morning Joe, while I am having breakfast and also glancing at the Post and Times in print. If I am then going to work in my home office, I will often leave the TV on for the rest of the morning. If I am not doing something that I can do with the TV on in the morning, and am having lunch at home, I will watch Andrea Mitchell while eating. Throughout the morning, I will check my phone for messages (emails, texts and FaceBook posts) every 15 minutes or so.

My work at home (generally personal stuff, or work with one of the two organizations with which I am active) includes a lot of email and text communication, reviewing material on my screen, and so forth. It also involves a number of Zoom sessions (probably in all I am on 5-8 Zoom sessions every week). I also look at some lectures or classes on line, and when I am riding the stationary bike in the basement, I generally watch a Netflix (or its equivalent program) for 30-60 minutes.

Around dinner, the TV goes back on for Nichole Wallace, Wolf Blitzer and the like. After dinner, it is usually more screen time (often with a book in hand simultaneously) while we watch a ball game, a film, or more Netflix. The, of course, I check all the websites before I go upstairs.

Oh, and of course, I don’t stay home all day – generally I have somewhere to go. And that means my car radio goes on while I am driving, especially if I am alone. And, yes, I spend 15-20 minutes each day writing this blog, and more time writing presentations or other things. And – I must admit – I often have dessert – no matter what I am doing on line, there is always time for several minutes of TikTok, or its equivalent – those little reels that make life so pleasant.

And there’s more. I keep all of our financial records on the computer on Quicken, and our entire used book business.

So when this morning, in the article I cited above, I read that the average teenager spends about 9 hours a day on devices, I was shocked. But when I looked at my day, I realized I probably do the same.

Now, the presumed teenager and myself do not do the same things on line. At least not for the most part. I assume that what I do is more educational, and more positive. (Of course, I may be wrong thinking this.) I don’t engage in group chats, and I don’t play any games (except morning Wordle and Quiz Daily, and these take less than ten minutes together, I would think). And we probably look at, for the most part, different things on TikTok.

And I don’t do anything that depresses me, or makes me think of suicide. But I can see how teenagers could easily fall prey to this. For one thing, being on a screen is different from being with people, and I see how it could make you feel lonely and rejected, especially as you might be seeing that others are doing things that you are not. Secondly, every one you connect with does not have to be your friend and if you find yourself at the wrong end of bullying (or maybe even the bully end), frustration and sadness and again loneliness can result). Thirdly, on TikTok and other reel programs, you can see young kids and teenagers who are extraordinary athletes, or talented musicians, or smart as a whip. You can see teenagers who have friends and friends and friends, who are as attractive and fit as can be, who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year putting together TikTok reels, or who travel the world, and seem to have unlimited funds and freedom (not to say sexual experience beyond one’s imagination). Of course, this can lead to unhappiness, to feelings of isolation and hopelessness, and to suicidal thoughts or temptations.

Like with everything else in this world, unfortunately, analyzing the problem is relatively easy. Solving it is another story.

Did you watch the Trump town hall on CNN last night? If you didn’t, let me tell you what I learned.

I learned that you should support Donald Trump in 2024 because:

1. He is going to end the Russia/Ukraine war within 24 hours of becoming president in January 2025.
2. He is going to reinstate the policy of separating families at the border, as a way to stop families from trying to come.
3. He is going to move us to energy independence by adopting a policy that he calls “Drill, baby, drill”.
4. He is going to attack the legitimacy of the 2024 election unless he decides there was no fraud involved.
5. He is highly supportive of abortion restrictions, and takes full credit for the Supreme Court passing the Dobbs situation.
6. He is going to pardon most (maybe all) of the people convicted of Jan 6 criminal activity
7. He is going to end inflation by approving more oil drilling.

I also learned that

1. He still believes he won the election in 2020.
2. He never even met E. Jean Carroll.
3. The country is falling apart and will continue to fall apart (with everyone laughing at us) unless he is elected in 2024.
4. Those who oppose the Dobbs decision would abort babies any times during the 9 months of pregnancy, and maybe after birth.
5. The strong military that he left the country with has been destroyed in the past two years.
6. He would reinstate Title 42 to keep sick migrants from coming into the country.

There was also a bit of ambiguity. Did you know that Trump finished the Wall, and that he wants to build more of the Wall because he hasn’t finished it. And that not only will he end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, but he will force Europe to provide more military funding for Ukraine to take the burden off of us (Europe, as usual, is taking advantage of us).

What is most clear, I think, is that Trump (and therefore his supporters) do not believe in the American legal system. They don’t trust the courts, which turned down over 60 attempts to find fraud in the election results. They don’t trust the New York State prosecutors, they don’t think that there can be a fair jury in either New York or Washington, and any judge who rules against Trump is corrupt. What could be more dangerous?

One more point:

Kaitlan Collins was a very unusual town hall moderator, and this was an unusual town hall. Most political town halls that I have watched have been designed to have audience members question the candidate, with the moderator acting as a neutral and generally keeping order and deciding when it was time for a new question. Last night, though, the moderator was there, in part, to fact check Trump; this itself was very unusual. And fact check she did, but fact checking meant that she made clear her own positions while she was challenging the “facts” stated by the candidate, and she did so not by waiting until Trump finished a comment (which admittedly could have taken a long time), but by interrupting him or trying to talk over him. And if you agree that this was her role, she did a fine job. But many – especially Trump supporters, of course – will not think this was her role and will not think that she did a good job. And she better watch her step and her social media, because she is now going to be a likely target of right wing hate.

And as for CNN. Was this a smart or proper thing for them to do? Most likely, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for the presidency in 2024, whether or not he kills someone on Fifth Avenue, and therefore cannot be ignored, as some would like CNN and other rational news sources to do. But this is so early in the campaign – and will this mean that CNN will need to provide other Republican candidates with a similar opportunity? DeSantis is not yet a candidate, but what about Asa Hutchinson, for example? And when will they do this?

But there is another question. What was the purpose of this town hall? Was it to give New Hampshire voters, or voters in other states, the opportunities to size up Trump redux? Or was it a “trick”, an event designed to allow CNN correspondents to slam and criticize him? If the latter (and that is what it seems like), even more questions arise? Will it help the reputation of CNN? Will it hurt the odds that Trump will become the nominee, or will it backfire? And is this the way the CNN executives planned this out, or was this the CNN journalists getting back at management.

Keep tuned. We may find out.

A good friend, about two months older than I am, passed away over the weekend. The third friend who passed away in the last six weeks. The funeral was yesterday.

It was an interesting funeral, for many reasons. There was a good sized crowd at Adas Israel for the funeral, plus many more who streamed the funeral on line. I would guess that I knew at least half of those present, and I knew everyone who spoke.

Many of those who attended are people I see on a fairly regular basis, and others included some I had not seen since the pandemic began three years ago. The most striking thing about all of these people is that they are old. Some are older than my 80 years, and some younger. But they all looked old, some looked a bit haggard, some struggled with mobility, some looked to have lost a considerable amount of weight. This is what happens when you near or pass 80. And of course, we are the lucky ones.

There were three speakers. One a rabbi emerita of the congregation, one another rabbi who was very close to my friend, and one a congregant whom he had known over 50 years. All spoke beautifully and very personally, much more personally than normal, because all had a long time personal friendship with my friend. They went through a lot of history – personal history, and they named a lot of names.

My friend, for example, belonged to a study group which has been in existence for over 50 years. We are not part of that study group – we have only belonged to this congregation for about 40 years. The members of that study group who have passed away were all named – probably about ten people, all of whom I had known. It certainly demonstrated the passage of time.

Often, I think about when I was very young, and how none of the adults whom I knew as a child are alive today. But yesterday, I realized how many of the adults I have known as an adult are also gone.

The burial was at one of the larger Jewish cemeteries in this area, in a portion of the cemetery which “belongs” to our congregation. The grave sites were mainly purchased years ago by Adas Israel and then resold to members. My wife and I have our plots in this location. Looking around, I realized I not only knew those of us who came to the burial, but I know many, if not most, of those who were lying under the ground. Was that frightening? I didn’t really look at it at fright – it was more comforting than frightening. Emotions are such strange things.

When I was very young, I felt very proud to know that scientifically, bumblebees could not fly. Clearly, they flew, but this was because they didn’t know that they couldn’t. This was one of the great mysteries of my young life. If bees, which could not fly, could fly, maybe there was a God after all.

Well, it wasn’t long after that when I realized that what I had heard was just plain wrong. Bumblebees could fly. (And that this whole question had little, if anything, to do with the existence of a God)

Today, it isn’t bumblebees, it’s the American economy. I can give you reason after reason as to why the American economy is doomed to failure. Yet, time after time, all this clear knowledge not withstanding, the American economy seems to prosper.

OK, not a great analogy. I know that. But there are similarities. And one major difference. Ask ten entomologists, and they will give you the same answer about bumblebees. If you can find two economists who agree as to the reasons for the success of the American economy, you are a better man/woman than I am.

In academia, you expect economists to disagree. But what about in government? Why is it that the Federal Reserve, with all of its power, believes that crushing inflation is the most important thing, and is willing to sacrifice American jobs, and consequently family incomes, to bring inflation into a reasonable range? And why does the Fed thing that the way to fight inflation is to increase borrowing rates to slow down the economy?

The economy itself seems to defy the Fed. Interest rates have risen dramatically, but every month, when the nation’s job reports come out (assuming that they are accurately reflective of the economy, which is a different question), hundreds of thousands of new jobs are created, and unemployment remains at a record low.

The reaction of governmental officials to these strong numbers is instructive. The Fed’s position is clear – we have to keep the pressure on, keep raising interest rates, the economy will soon respond and slow things down. The current jobs and employment statistics are unfortunate.

Meanwhile, the President and the executive branch is saying the opposite. Look at all the jobs we are creating!! Look how low unemployment is!! We are doing great!!

How is that little kid, who just learned that bumblebees really can fly, whether they know it or not, to process all of this? How is he to process a Fed, filled with experts, who can’t bring inflation under control? How is he to process a president, touting job increases, when inflation is destroying a family’s budget?

More importantly, how are all those American voters, who start with a suspicion of Joe Biden’s competence, and who don’t understand what the Fed is in any event, and who see prices rising and their incomes not rising, or rising more modestly, going to vote? We already see that the polls show that more voters, by far it seems, trust the Republicans (and specifically Donald Trump) more than the Democrats and Joe Biden on the economy.

Unless something changes, this trend will undoubtedly continue. In politics, the old saying “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know” does not seem to apply. Or, perhaps in this case, when you know both devils, you always hope the one out of power can do better.

I don’t look at every poll that’s taken, and I understand that a grain of salt must be added to each recipe. But the fact is that polls generally turn out to be pretty accurate.

For this reason, you can’t discount the new ABC poll that shows President Biden’s approval at 38%, or the other reason polls that according to the 538 website, shows Biden’s overall approval around 42%. You also can’t discount the same ABC poll that shows that Trump would beat Biden (at least by popular vote) in an election held today. And, finally, you have to respect the poll that says (in spite of what you might consider considerable evidence to the contrary) that Americans feel that Trump was much better for the economy than Biden.

You also can’t overlook the fact the Joe Biden is now 80 years old and, at the end of a second term, would be 86. Yes, the average 80 year old male may live another 7 years or so, but the average 80 year old does not work under the stress of the presidency or have the time demands put upon a president, and the average 80 year old does not live those additional seven years in perfect health.

There are other things you must keep in mind as well. For one thing, Kamala Harris is set to be on the Democratic ticket to serve an additional four years as Vice President, and (given the health and life expectancy statistics alluded to above) may wind up President at some time before the end of 2028. It is possible that she would be a terrific president, of course, but the fact is that almost no one thinks so. Apparently, with the end of COVID restrictions, there will be even more people crossing our southern border, and the Democrats have not shown a way to control border crossings in a way to give any assurance to the voting public. Finally, you need to take into account Hunter Biden and the additional stress his situation will probably lay upon President Biden over the next several years, as well as the grist for the Republican political mill that his situation will provide.

My conclusion is that the most important Democratic priority at this time should be to convince Biden that in fact he should not run for reelection, and to come up with a viable alternative in the near future. A viable alternative is not only someone who will support good policies (that is almost any Democrat), but one whose personality would allow these policies to be sold to the American public. There are many who could fit that bill – the Hessel household likes Cory Booker.

Of course, the Republicans have their own problem, as it looks more and more like Donald Trump again being their nominee. Yes, we know that some old-line Republicans want someone new, but the majority of Republicans don’t see it that way. They want Donald and by getting Donald, they may lose some of their usual voters. This is a different situation from that of the Democrats, the majority of whom would rather see someone new get the nomination, not Joe Biden.

Sensible people, it seems to me, should not want either Biden or Trump as the nominee. Trump, for obvious reasons, and Biden for the reasons stated above. You may agree with me that the majority of Democratic voters vote sensibly, and that the Trump portion of the GOP does not. Nevertheless, no one has ever accused the overall American population of being sensible. Or smart.

In the meantime, although Biden has done a good job over his first two years, the Republican House of Representatives can thwart much of what would otherwise be further progress. And the Republican voices seem to have the ability to turn Democratic victories into Democratic losses, contributing the overall feeling that the Democrats are bad for America. The next big test will be the debt ceiling increase. The position of the GOP (that we need to agree to future budgetary cuts as a condition to agreeing to pay bills we already owe) may be nonsensical (as well as dangerous), but for the not very sensible Republicans, it does sound good. And my guess is that, if the credit of the United States collapses, it will be viewed by most as a Democratic problem. And that it will end with a compromise viewed as a Republican victory. The blame will fall on Biden, the figures will show an economy in deep trouble, and the Republicans will be unscathed. Just you wait and see.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t retire and her death led to a Conservative super majority on the Court, a serious problem. Diane Feinstein is not retiring and we don’t yet know where that will lead, perhaps to a serious problem. Joe Biden is not retiring, and he is probably going to stick to his guns. This could be the most serious problem of them all.

Did anyone else catch any of Bill Barr’s remarks to the City Club of Cleveland this week? I caught part of the Q and A on C-Span radio while driving in my car, and mouth fell (to use a crossword puzzle word) agape. I now see that the entire speech is available at http://www.cityclub.org, and I think I will listen to it.

The gist of the Q and A was two fold. First, not surprisingly, that Bill Barr, during his time as Attorney General, did nothing wrong. But second, that Donald Trump is the worst of the worst.

Barr seemed quite critical of Trump in his answers to several questions, but the highlight was when he was asked if he thought that Donald Trump was mentally fit to be president. His answer (which you may see on Democratic party ads in the future) was extraordinary.

He didn’t answer the question with a straight yes or not. Rather, he said “If you believe in his policies – what he’s advertising to be his policies – he’s the last person that could actually execute them. He doe snot have the discipline, he does not have the ability for strategic thinking or linear thinking, or setting priorities, or how to get things done in the system……It’s a horror show when he’s left to his own devices. You may want his policies, but Trump will not deliver his policies. He will deliver chaos.”

Trump has responded in part, by calling Barr “a weak and slovenly man”.

It could be, of course, that they are both right.

As you know I am sure, this is not the first time that Barr has criticized Trump, and he has written a book “One Damn Thing After Another” that might be worth reading. I don’t know what he said in the book, but I do know that previously he has said that, although he was highly critical of Trump, he would vote for Trump if he were the nominee because even Trump is better than putting the nation at risk with four more years of the progressive Democratic agenda. Whether he still feels this way, I don’t know. I don’t think this question was directly asked of him in Cleveland. The question referenced above was the last question of the morning. It was, in fact, asked by reporter Geraldo Rivera, which makes one wonder if it was prearranged. Inquiring minds would like to know.

I only heard a little of what Barr said otherwise. He was clearly critical of what he called the Democrats attempt to tie Trump to the Russians before and during the Muller investigation. His claim seemed to be that there was no reason for the Democrats to even suggest such a possibility, other than a dastardly attempt to make political hay.

Now I admit that Barr knows, and was privy to, much, much more information than I was on this subject. But based on what I do know and have seen, I don’t understand that reaction for a number of reasons, such as (1) Trump was going to extremes to try to get permission and financial assistance to build a tower in Moscow and pave the way for further development across Russia, (2) Trump has always praised Vladimir Putin’s leadership of the country and even went out of his way to suggest that he valued Putin’s statements to him on Russian intent more than he valued the information provided by the American intelligence organizations, (3) it is clear that Russia created a disinformation campaign to help Trump get elected, (4) the Muller report did not conclude that Trump was not colluding with Russia – it said that there was not enough evidence at this time to reach such a conclusion and (5) Muller was apparently bound by an internal Department of Justice position not to bring charges against a sitting president. We also know that, prior to releasing Muller’s report, Barr – still then Attorney General – issued a brief summary, which distorted some of Muller’s findings. To me, Muller’s findings were not conclusive (and not meant to be), but rather, as the line of “Portnoy’s Complaint” says, “Now vee may perhaps to begin, Yes?”. Of course, with crisis upon crisis, the Muller report seemed to be the end, not the beginning it should have been.

I should conclude this, I guess, with a comment about the Steele dossier and the use of the Steele dossier to get the FISA court to issue a warrant against Trump aide Carter Page. The conclusion of the DOJ inspector general was that the FBI knew that the dossier could not be relied upon, and misrepresented its reliability to the FISA court. OK, I will accept that. But I don’t we ever learned why the Steele dossier was so faulty – and to say that the Clinton campaign paid for it does not answer that question. Am I right in thinking that Steele never resurfaced – does anyone know where he is? He was clearly deemed very reliable at one time. Was there an investigation as to how unreliable the dossier was, and what led to it turning out as it did? I don’t remember one. Was there one that was not disclosed to the public? Inquiring minds want to know once again. And as to Carter Page himself – do you remember when he was on all the cable news shows? He came across as a likeable buffoon, right? Not like someone whose antics should be taken as seriously as apparently they were.

So the whole thing is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Now, where have a heard that before?

(By the way, I watched zero of the King’s coronation yesterday. But I did see a picture of Camilla with a crown on her head. Talk about a duck out of water…..)