9/262026

 Saturday, September 26, 2026

1983 Soviet military officer Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov averted a worldwide nuclear war by judging a supposed missile attack from the US to be an error

1984 President Reagan vetoed sanctions against South Africa

2019 US income inequality was the widest it has been in over 50 years, with the worst levels in California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, and New York, according to new census figures

2020  Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg

2023 Donald Trump was found guilty of fraud for inflating his assets in a civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James

2025. Médecins Sans Frontières suspended its activities in Gaza City citing security concerns due to the Israeli offensive

2025  A fire at a South Korean government data center in Daejeon disrupted more than 600 e-government systems after an explosion in a lithium-ion battery triggered the blaze.

2025  Slovakia passed a constitutional amendment stating there are only two genders. Only married couples have the right to adopt, which prevented same-sex couples from adopting, while also banning surrogacy.

2025. Vietnamese activist Trịnh Bá Phương, already serving a 10-year sentence for anti-state propaganda, is sentenced to an additional 11 years after being convicted of writing statements against the Communist Party while in prison.

2025 Former FBI director James Comey was indicted by a federal grand jury on two charges in a prosecution led by Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

In bed at 9, up at 6:40; 0700 203.4  124/74/64 117; 54/64/52; sunny morning, mostly cloudy afternoon.

Morning meds at 8:40 a.m.  Entresto at 7:20 a.m. and p.m.

There is plenty of bad news today, and there was plenty of bad news a year ago today (see anniversaries), but I withhold ranting, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and renting of garments as part of my campaign against doom and gloom.

The sky is blue today.  It is often, and perhaps usually, thought that this is a good thing, and indeed it is, but it means the sky is without clouds.  Is that a good thing or a deprivation?    I have become a keen appreciator of clouds ever since my old friend Janine Geske began posting photos of the sunrises she sees each morning from her home on Lake Michigan in Door County.  The sunrises are wondrous on clear mornings, and often more wondrous on cloudy mornings.  It's all good.

Favorite poems.  Two days ago I wrote about some favorite movies, part of my effort to avoid focusing on doom and gloom.  Continuing the campaign, today I'll mention some favorite poems.  I'll start with a poem that is a favorite only inasmuch as it is one that I have re-read so many times.  It's T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.  Unlike so much of modern poetry, it's easy to read.  Eliot uses ordinary language and doesn't try to conceal his points.  

Prufrock is a very unhappy guy who worries about growing old, and dying, and about his own meaninglessness and the emptiness of all the people who surround him.  He is intensely self-conscious of himself as a misfit, of not belonging anywhere or to anyone.  He sees social interaction as Kabuki, everyone wearing masks.  "There will be time, there will be time, / To prepare a face to meet the faces you will meet."  Everyone a persona, no one a person.  Prufrock lives in a lonely, unknowable world.  He reminds me of some characters in Elizabeth Strout's novels, unable to fully know, understand, or communicate with others, nor to be known or understood.

It's a tale of indecision or indecisiveness.  [There will be time left] 'for a hundred indecisions, / And for a hundred visions and revisions, / Before the taking of a toast or tea."  And of fear of what others will say about or think of him:

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

 Why do I enjoy this dolorous poem so much?  I suppose that, in part at least, I sort of identify with poor J. Alfred.  I have considered myself a misfit in many of my life's settings.  I never quite fit in as a typical Marine, nor as an academic on the law school faculty, nor as a lawyer in a private practice boutique litigation firm, nor as one of the faithful filling the pews on Sundays and holydays.  And, like many or most (?) people, I've been concerned about what others think of me.  I'm reminded of one day decades ago when I was teaching at the law school; as I drove to work one day I experienced what I came to call my 'asshole epiphany.'  I would be at a faculty meeting later, and I intended to make a motion that I knew would not be well received by my very conservative elders.   I thought to myself: (1) "They're going to think I'm an asshole," (2) "Maybe I am an asshole on this point," and (3) "So what? So I'm an asshole, so what?"  It was a liberating insight, simply accepting the fact that there are or may be areas in which I am just an asshole, and so what?  But another reason that I enjoy reading the poems is just enjoying Eliot's great mastery of the diction of the poem, the rhythm and meter of the lines. 

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

and

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table; 

You can easily recite these words singsongy, but if you avoid the affectation, the words flow beautifully.

It's a sad poem, a dejected one.  Eliot wrote it when he was 22 years old, in 1911 and 1912, before the beginning of the Great War.  (I grow old . . . I grow old???) Yet it speaks of isolation, alienation, social fraudulence, and meaninglessness as if it were written after the Great War or after WWII by a Beatnik or Existentialist, by a Ginsberg or a Camus.  In any case, I like reading it and probably have read and re-read it more than any other poem.

More happy photos

Nona and Elllis

The Goldberg, the Lowes, and the Clausens

My mother at Kitty's wedding in October, 1967

Andy, Anh, Peter, Lizzie, and Drew

Sarah at Glacier National Park on our second camping trip to national parks

9/25/2026

 Friday, September 25, 2026

1981 Sandra Day O'Connor was sworn in as the first female US Supreme Court Justice

1986 Antonin Scalia was appointed to the US Supreme Court

1988 Pope John Paul II beatified Friar Junípero Serra (founder of 1st California missions)

1996 Last of the Magdalene laundry asylums for "fallen women" closed in Dublin, Ireland

2015 Caitlyn Jenner officially changed her name from Bruce and her gender to a woman

2017 Ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner sentenced to 21 months in jail for sexting underage girls

2017 First-ever woman graduated from the US Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course

2018 Bill Cosby sentenced to 3-10 years for 2004 sexual assault

2018  Donald Trump criticized Globalism and Iran, speaking at the UN General Assembly

2025  The Italian and Spanish navies deployed frigates to assist and protect the Global Sumud Flotilla on its way to attempt to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip after it was allegedly attacked by Israeli drones off the coast of Greece.

2025 The Slovenian government formally banned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu from entering the country, linking the ban to his International Criminal Court arrest warrant.

In bed at 9:45, up at 5:15, after half-sleeping last hour; 0630 203.4  127/75/62 117; 57/67/56, a little rainy, cloudy all day

Morning meds at 9 a.m.  Entresto at 6 a.m. and p.m. Trulicity injection at 10:45 a.m.

Continuing yesterday's anti-gloom-and-doom campaign.  Three and a half years ago, on April 23, 2023, I started making notes on my iPhone about why it is that I love my wife.  What was and is it about her that made and makes me want to bond and partner with her, and only her, out of the 8,000,000,000,000 people in the world?  I omitted from my list the obvious but irrelevant point that she is an uncommonly pretty woman, with an uncommonly beautiful face and smile, but I admit that I started my list by noting, of all things, her infectious laughter.  It was listening to her laughing on the telephone during a conversation with one of her many friends on that April day, and realized that her laughter was making me smile, even though I didn't know what she was talking or laughing about.  That moved me to make a note of it on my phone and to start a list of her lovable characteristics.  Here are some of the other items on my list, not listed here in any chronological order or order of importance, but each of them a matter of significance.

She is uncommonly devoted to duty, in all the contexts in which she holds herself to be duty-bound.  As a parent to her children as well as a child to her parents.  As a sister to her brothers.  As a wife to her husband.  As an employee to her employer.  As a volunteer ombudsman at a nursing home.  As a family court mediator and investigator to the court and to the parties before the court.  As a poll worker during elections.  As a volunteer winter hat knitter for children helped by a nearby synagogue.  As a friend to her many friends.  She is responsible, reliable, loyal, loving, and dutiful, and I love that about her.

She is remarkably tolerant and forgiving of my peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, and eccentricities.

A notable example: many years ago, not long after we were married, we took a trip to France. It was in December, sometime before Christmas. We were staying in Paris, but I wanted to make a trip to the village of Solesmes, in the Loire River region in northwestern France, to visit the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Pierre, famous for its monks’ Gregorian chanting.  She agreed to join me.

To get there, we had to rise at what seemed like the middle of the night and walk through the cold and darkness from our hotel to the Gare Montparnasse, where we caught a train that would get us to Sablé-sur-Sarthe in time to reach the abbey for the 10 a.m. Mass. Solesmes lies about three miles from the station, and the plan was simple enough: take a taxi from the station to the monastery.

There were three problems. First, there were no taxis when we arrived. Second, it was raining steadily. Third, there seemed to be no one around to ask for directions.

So we started walking, with me confidently leading the way.

After perhaps half a mile, we finally saw a man on the street. In my halting college French, I asked him how to get to the abbey. He informed us that we were going in the wrong direction. So we retraced our steps and then walked another three miles through the cold rain toward Solesmes.

By the time we reached the abbey, Mass had already begun. Worse, we could not find the entrance. I was ready to give up and retreat to the Grand Hôtel across the road, but Geri persisted. She found a small, inconspicuous door that led into the chapel where Mass was being celebrated.

We slipped in, although the Mass was already half over, and I finally got to hear the monks chanting.

It was lovely, though perhaps less enchanting than I had imagined. By then we were nearly immobilized. After that long walk in the December cold and rain, we stood in a rear pew like a pair of Frankensteins—stiff, wooden, and barely able either to sit or kneel. Our winter coats were soaked, and so were we.

When Mass ended, we repaired to the Grand Hôtel, where a gracious concierge brought us hot coffee, helped us with our wet outer garments, and gave us a place to thaw out, dry off, and rest until the restaurant opened for lunch.

After a superb lunch in the elegant dining room, I returned to the abbey for either Sext or None—I no longer remember which—and listened again to the monks chanting, this time in considerably better physical condition and much better able to enjoy it. Geri, having understandingly heard enough Gregorian chant for one day {and perhaps for a lifetime), stayed at the hotel.

When I returned, the concierge called us a taxi. Ten minutes later we were back at the Sablé-sur-Sarthe station, and eventually back in Paris.

I included this particular memory on my list of reasons why I love my wife because it illustrates a little-celebrated and ill-named virtue: long-suffering—the gracious endurance of hardship, inconvenience, and even provocation without anger or retaliation.

During that entire cold, wet, exhausting misadventure through Sablé and Solesmes, Geri never blamed me, never berated me, and never reproached me for dragging her halfway across rural France in December merely because I wanted to hear some monks sing.

How many people would have been so gracious?

Happy Time Photos

Beautiful Wisconsin farmland: A view from the crest of Hilltop Road in the Town of Fredonia, between Cty E and Camp Awana Road, my current favorite country road drive destination

This is a 24"x 36" canvas on which I hope to paint a halfway decent portrait of my beautiful granddaughter Lizzie using an edited photo of her on the first day of her 3rd year at Nicolet High School.  I'm terrible at drawing, so I have to first put grid lines on the 8 1/2 X 12" printer paper with the photo, and then appropriately scaled grid lines on the canvas.  Even using the grid lines as an aid, I can't come up with a decent likeness, but at least I have a likeness of some human being.  My big challenge with this effort is that, in the photo, Lizzie had her head tilted to her right side, which, for some reason, makes sketching her features much more difficult.

ChatGPT-generated sketch from the photo

9/24/2026

 Thursday, September 24, 2026

1938 Adolf Hitler issued an ultimatum demanding Sudetenland be ceded to Germany

1950 Operation Magic Carpet concluded after having transported 45,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel

2015 Pope Francis became the 1st pope to address the US Congress, naming Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day as his American heroes.

2015 A stampede during the Hajj killed 717 people during the symbolic stoning of the devil

2024 Joe Biden addressed the UN for the last time, calling on Israel and Hamas to come to a ceasefire in Gaza, saying, "I truly believe we’re at another inflection point in world history."

In bed at 9:05, up at 4; 0420  115. 115/69/65. 132  203.4; 57/52/67/57 BEACH HAZARDS, 3-5' waves, dangerous currents, mostly cloudy day ahead.

Morning meds at 7 a.m.   Entresto at 6:45 a.m. and 5:45 p.m.

Thoughts on Iran.  Trump has long been saying that the Iranians are begging to make a deal to end the war; the opposite is true.  Trump is begging to make a deal.  That has seemed clear to me for some time now, but the belief is reinforced by the story in this morning's NYTimes about the US, behind the scenes, trying to "jump-start" negotiations with Iran.  The war, with high gas and diesel prices and total wr costs, is killing Trump politically at home, not only with Dems and independents, but within his own base. It's his tar baby.  Second thought: Trump is accurate when he says the war will end after our November elections.  It will end with Trump fulfilling his TACO reputation.  He will cut a deal with the Iraqis that gives them control of the Strait of Hormuz, plus a bunch of money, either by way of reparations, unfreezing Iranian assets held overseas, or some combination of giveaways that will further hurt the U.S.  We'll know soon enough.

8 Sailor on USS Lincoln attempted suicide during last cruise.  This information was provided to Sen. Gillibrand by SecNav Cao.  Trump and Hegseth both have dismissed concerns about the mental health of sailors (and Marines) having spent more than 300 days at sea with no port calls.  They should try living on a Navy ship at sea, even outside a combat zone, to see what its impact on one's mental health is.

Can I write about anything other than gloom and doom?  I'll try by writing today about some favorite things, starting with movies.   I watched a YouTube video about Woody Allen's list of the 5 greatest movies, which makes the selection process easier.  His ## 3, 4, and 5 were movies that I also think are great (Wild Strawberries, Rashomon, and Bicycle Thieves),  For many years, I had his #5 as my personal #1.  I've watched it many times, which I can't say for Woody's ## 1 and 2, Citizen Kane and 8 and 1/2.

Bicycle Thieves is a Vittorio de Sica Italian neorealist film made in 1948.  It's a film about the human condition, set in post-war Italy.  It is a story of a poor father who relies on his bicycle to earn a living for himself, his wife, and his young son, Bruno.  When someone steals his bicycle, the father and son search for it through the streets of Rome.  He receives no help from the police.  At the end of the day of futile searching, he sees an unattended bicycle, tries to steal it, and is caught by the neighbors and the police.  His son sees his father arrested and publicly humiliated.  The owner of the bicycle declines to press charges; the father is released, and the film closes with the father and son, hand in hand, walking away from the camera toward home. This description doesn't nearly do justice to the emotional depth of this film, which is heartbreaking.  It deals with the effects of the recently ended war on the Italian people. It deals with the effects of poverty and joblessness on individuals and families.  It deals with the wide circle of victims of criminal acts.  It deals with the ineffectiveness of government in protecting us from many devastating harms.  It deals with sacrifice.  It deals with what children learn from watching their parents.  It is about Life writ large, especially among the powerless.  I feel the film pulling my heartstrings just from writing about it.  It's a profoundly powerful, moving film.  I was surprised to find it streaming on HBOMax and will watch it again, probably today.

As I recalled this great movie and started to write about it, I found myself wondering how it would have been received if, instead of featuring the poor Italian family in Rome at the end of WWII, it had featured a poor Black family in Milwaukee or East St. Louis.  I don't pursue this thought because I'm working on avoiding doom and gloom today, but I think too of how my childhood in a 3-room basement apartment on the South Side of Chicago with my war-impaired father after WWII affected me.  

I better stop with my canon of favorite flicks, at least for now, because, over several years, as an inveterate list-maker, I have compiled a list of favorite flicks.  It was one of the things I took up as I became more and more sedentary in my old age.  I stopped adding to it years ago, but it's nevertheless long:

Just looking at the list, I wonder why I hadn't added Bob Fosse's All That Jazz and Out of Africa.  Where is 2001?  The Godfather? Schindler's List?  What else am I missing with my weak memory???

9/23/2026

 Wednesday, September 23, 2026

1955 An all-male, all-White jury found Roy Brant and John William Milam not guilty of the murder of Black teenager Emmett Till in Sumner, Mississippi; the two later sold an interview admitting to the murder

1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered US troops to support the integration of nine Black students at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas

2020 President Donald Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the US November election at a White House press conference

2025: The United Nations reported that Russian authorities subject civilian detainees in occupied Ukrainian territories to widespread torture, including sexual violence, while also documenting cases of ill-treatment of detainees held by Ukrainian authorities.

2025 Thousands of people across Italy held rallies and a general strike to protest against the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the recent ground offensive into Gaza City.

In bed at 9:30, up at 5:35; 0550 121/74/64 122 203.4; 54/47/65/54, mostly sunny pady; BEACH HAZARDS, 3-6' waves, currents.

Morning meds at 7:30 a.m.  Entresto at 6:20 a.m. and p.m.

This is a gouache portrait of DJT on paper that I did three years ago, with some of his telling quotes written alongside it.  If I had the energy, I would attempt a second one, depicting him as even more monstrous and deranged with quotes from his frightening speech yesterday to the General Assembly at the United Nations.

The United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere — and if necessary, we will use our unmatched military might to secure the vital national interests of the United States… We are reasserting American power, including American military power where necessary, in our region and around the world . . . 

Like ISIS, [forign drug cartels] should be killed, exiled, or detained as enemy combatants without the possibility of release, which is what we’re doing. To that end, the United States has carried out dozens of strikes on cartel drug boats

 “The United States totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme of control for the Artificial Intelligence — hereinafter officially called ‘Super Intelligence.’”

And to our NATO allies, if Russian aircraft violate your airspace, shoot them down. Simple as that.

No more funding terrorism disguised as humanitarian aid.

We’ve recently begun using the supreme power of the United States military to destroy Venezuelan terrorists and trafficking networks led by Nicolas Maduro

El Salvador’s President Bukele is a hero for locking up our deportees in terrorist prisons.

As you know, [Venezuela]was a 48-minute war, it lasted 48 minutes. And we paid for the war with what we’ve taken out many, many, many times…That’s the old -fashioned way. To the victor belong the spoils, right?” 

 “I have a big decision to make: Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East?  Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness for generations?”

He might as well have stood before the General Assembly and physically torn up the UN Charter, largely drafted by the United States.  As I type this, I feel like Max Mustermann must have felt like in 1932 Weimar Germany, on the eve of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933 and accession to dictatorial power 53 days later.  Eleanor Roosevelt must have wept in her grave yesterday.

More on why I despair, from Tom Friedman's column in this morning's NYTimes:

[W]hen I think back on the biggest disaster stories I have covered — including 9/11 and Covid-19 — I am struck that they have one big thing in common: a failure of imagination. . . .So today, when it comes to the possibility that artificial intelligence, which is falling into the hands of rogue actors and is beginning to manifest a will of its own, could become incredibly destabilizing, my imagination is fully engaged.

Here is what my imagination is telling me. It is telling me that the big A.I. companies in America and China are not being candid with us about how little even they understand the power and reach of the models they have developed, like sorcerers, in their labs. It is telling me that the Trump administration, headed by a man who so often governs by social media post, is uniquely unsuited to the kind of comprehensive, sustained, coordinated governance that keeping A.I. safe demands. And it is telling me that there is so much at stake — economically, militarily and technologically — and so little trust between Washington and Beijing that it would take a miracle for the United States and China to agree on the kind of deep collaboration needed to defuse the most nightmarish threats posed by A.I. . . . 

Stanford political theorist Francis Fukuyama argued in the Substack publication Persuasion on Monday: “A.I. is a tool that can be used for good or bad purposes — and at the moment we have few mechanisms for regulating the bad uses other than the good intentions of the people creating the technology.”

The last time we trusted the good intentions of the tech bros of Silicon Valley, when they told us to “move fast and break things” — regulations be damned — we unleashed social networks that helped fracture our society. I do not trust for one second that these people will put the national interest ahead of their own on A.I. 

More on why I despair.  I am slowly plowing through The Nerd Reich by Gil Durán.  It's very interesting and informative, but scarier than I had anticipated.  What really troubles me is the political affiliation that has occured between the weird tech titans (Thiel, Andreeson, Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos), the far-right conservatives, and Trump's MAGA movement/constituency.  I just finished reading Duran's chapter titled "The New Reality," about the cultish and anti-democratic futurist theories of transhumanism, extropianism, singulitarianism, cosmis, rationalism, effective altruism, and longtermism.  The far-right conservatives, Trump, and the techbros all mean BIG MONEY, and the techbros are the guys who combine BIG MONEY and BIG TECH.  That combo = mind control, thought control, POWER.  The chapter following "The New Reality" is titled "The Unicorn" and is all about J. D. Vance, who represents the nexus between the big tech whackos, the far-right, Trump, and MAGA.   In reading many of Vance's statements, I couldn't distinguish between him and Trump.

“I tend to think we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left, right?” said Vance. “We need, like, a de-Baathification program—a de-wokeification program—in the United States, right?” . . . 

“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024, I think he’ll probably win… he will be the president of the United States in January 2025, I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. And when the courts—because you will get taken to court—and when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.’ Because this is a constitutional-level crisis. If we continue to let bureaucrats control the entire country, even when Republicans win elections, then we’ve lost, we’ve just permanently lost, we’ve permanently given up.”

Another passage: 

But once Trump crushed his competitors, Silicon Valley’s right-wing zealots had no choice but to line up behind him. They wanted something in return and put intense pressure on Trump to choose Vance as his VP, with even the reluctant Thiel lobbying Trump in multiple phone calls. The effort paid off. Two days after the failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump announced that he had chosen Vance as his running mate. . . . 

No one could savor the triumph more than [Peter] Thiel, the man who had fished Vance out of obscurity and shepherded his journey to fame, wealth, and power. And with Musk alone spending nearly $300 million—plus major contributions from tech venture capitalists and the crypto industry—Thiel’s public decision to withhold his personal millions hardly mattered. In fact, there was something poetic about Thiel’s decision to keep his financial fingerprints off the campaign that would put his former employee and protégé in the White House. Thiel had already done his job, almost singlehandedly transforming a random Yale Law student into a venture capitalist, a Catholic, a right-wing radical, a US senator, and a vice president. And if Vance manages to succeed Trump, Thiel—his benefactor, mentor, and maker—will become the most powerful man in the world.  Durán, Gil. The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy (p. 146). (Function). Kindle Edition.  

Many say they hope that Trump will die in office, or be effectively ousted using the 25th Amendment, or be impeached and convicted this time.  I don't share these hopes, because instead of having Roy Cohn/Donald Trump in the Oval Office, we would have Peter Thiel/J. D. Vance.  It's a beggar's choice, but I prefer to roll the dice with Roy/Donald.  Roy had, and Donald has, Achilles' heels.  I'm not at all sure that the same can be said of Peter/J. D. 

Frick and Frack

 

 

9/22/2026

 Tuesday, September 22, 2026

1915 Xavier University, the first Black Catholic College in the US, opened in New Orleans

1970 President Richard Nixon requested 1,000 new FBI agents for college campuses

2006 Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed "Divine Victory" over Israel in a speech to supporters in Beirut after the last Israeli soldiers withdrew from southern Lebanon 

2015 Volkswagen admitted that 11 million cars were wrongly programmed to appear to emit fewer emissions than they do

2019 President Donald Trump admitted he spoke to the Ukrainian President about Joe Biden's son after news that a US intelligence officer made an official complaint about the call

2025.  Disney announced that Jimmy Kimmel will begin airing again on Tuesday after it was "indefinitely suspended" last week following pressure from the Trump administration

2025  Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the FDA will advise doctors against recommending acetaminophen to pregnant women, alleging a link between the drug and autism.

2025 Singapore announced targeted sanctions on leaders of Israeli settler groups, citing concerns over settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In bed at 9:30, awake at 5:30, up at 6:05; 0620 202.2 117/72/67 117; 55/45/61/55, BEACH HAZARDS WARNINGS, waves 4 to 7', currents. A windy, cloudy, cold day ahead.

Morning meds at 8:30 a.m.  Entresto at 6:50 a.m. and p.m.

Scoundrel(s) in America.  I saw a television reviewer of this Kai Bird biography comment that, in reading about Roy Cohn's life, he was reminded of Donald Trump's behavior on almost every page; he suggested the book could have been titled Scoundrels in America, referring to Cohn the mentor and Trump the mentee.  In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, one of my favorite essayists, Fintan O'Toole, has titled his review of the book Devils in America, which seems even more apt.  Excerpts:

F]rom beyond the grave, Cohn has forced himself into American history. Kushner gives us Cohn as a kind of anti-Christ, his drawn-out, agonizing death a physical and mental crucifixion. Cohn rose from the dead, resurrected not only in Angels in America, Citizen Cohn, The Simpsons (where he recurred frequently as the Blue-Haired Lawyer), and Jeremy Strong’s rivetingly reptilian embodiment in the 2024 movie The Apprentice, but as the evil spirit that possesses Donald Trump.

In 2017 Trump famously asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” The answer stares at him from the mirror: he is his own Roy Cohn. Though the influence of his lawyer and fixer on the young Trump is common knowledge, not the least of the virtues of Bird’s punchy, racy, and appropriately nauseating new biography is the renewed force it gives to this cliché. There is something eerie about the thoroughness of Trump’s mimicry of Cohn’s way of dealing with the world: lie relentlessly, refuse to pay small bills, respond to all criticism with smears and threats, claim all defeats as triumphs, sue everybody all the time, weaponize the law and, when you can, the entire justice system, learn from the Mafia, use the phone to avoid leaving a paper trail, always present your highly privileged self as a victim of the elites, divide the world into allies to be used and enemies to be abused, into the winners who must be flattered and the losers who are there to be exploited in every imaginable way.

. . . 

[Cohn] became the American right’s prince of darkness, the man who did things that could only be hinted at, who knew things that could not be acknowledged, who had unique access to the great mysteries of power.

For the rich and famous, Cohn thus combined the magnetic attractions of both obscenity and obscurity. Everyone knew at some level that he was a very nasty piece of work but everyone believed that, like some black magician, he was able to command the forces of darkness. It was always better to have Satan in your corner—even if the devil was as likely to defraud you as to help you.

And “everyone” means an astonishing range of the rich and famous: from the Catholic archdiocese of New York (Cohn was close to Cardinal Francis Spellman and his successor, Cardinal Terence Cooke) to Mafia hoodlums like “Fat Tony” Salerno and Carmine Galante; from his great friend Si Newhouse, the owner of Condé Nast, to Bianca Jagger (whose divorce from Mick he handled); from Rupert Murdoch to Estée Lauder, from the Yankees owner George Steinbrenner to the owners of Studio 54, the nightclub at which he himself was a fixture. Nancy Reagan called him often from the White House because he could supply a fix of her favorite drug: gossip. Cohn became the connective tissue of New York society: at his parties Andy Warhol could meet Trump (whom he called “really good-looking…. He’s a butch guy”) or Chuck Schumer.

In all of this, Cohn brings to mind not just Trump but another undead figure of contemporary American politics: Jeffrey Epstein. Cohn was long gone by the time Epstein built his own dazzlingly complex network of influence, connection, and mutual obligation. But the most revolting revelation in Bird’s biography is that Cohn, like Epstein, preyed on underage victims.

Again, we are reminded of the man that the American electorate twice chose to lead the nation.  According to FBI interview records released by the Justice Department in 2026, a woman the FBI interviewed said Epstein introduced her to Donald Trump when she was between 13 and 15 years old and alleged that Trump later attempted to force her into a sexual act. Reuters reported that the FBI interviewed her multiple times in 2019.

There is also a separate, older allegation involving a woman who used the pseudonym “Katie Johnson” or “Jane Doe.” In 2016, she filed civil lawsuits alleging that Trump and Epstein sexually assaulted her at Epstein’s Manhattan residence in 1994 when she was 13, not 14. Those suits never reached trial; the final one was voluntarily withdrawn shortly before the 2016 election. Trump denied the allegations.

And a third matter concerns an anonymous 14-year-old girl whom Epstein allegedly introduced to Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 1994, allegedly asking Trump, in effect, whether she was “a good one.” The public records describing that episode do not themselves accuse Trump of having sex with or assaulting that girl, but we can guess what Epstein's question implied.

9/21/2026

 Monday, September 21, 2026

46 BC Julius Caesar celebrated the first of four triumphal processions in Rome - over Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and Africa - with the leader of the Gauls, Vercingetorix, led in chains

1915 Cecil Chubb bought the prehistoric monument Stonehenge for £6,600

1922 US  Warren G. Harding signed a joint resolution approving a Jewish homeland in Palestine

1949 Mao Zedong and Chinese Communist leaders proclaimed the People's Republic of China

2015 Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, pulled out of the Republican Presidential race

2022 Vladimir Putin announced  the partial mobilization of the Russian population, drafting between 300,000 and 1.2m men to fight in Russia's invasion of Ukraine

2022 New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump and three of his children, alleging widespread fraud through inflating his personal net worth by billions

2025 Australia, Canada, Portugal, and the United Kingdom formally recognised the State of Palestine as a sovereign state, with Canada becoming the first G7 country to do so.

2025 The Taliban said that Afghanistan would not cede control of Bagram Air Base to the US following threats by Donald Trump, who warned of consequences if the Taliban did not release control of the base. 

In bed at 9ish, up at 6:35;  0645 202.6  124/76/67; 58/48/62/56.  Beach hazards warning: life-threatening waves 6 to 8 feet, dangerous currents, windy, cloudy, cold day.  Last night was interrupted by a low glucose alarm at 2:10, reading of 53 mg/dL, the lowest I've seen; 2 cough drops.  Was the low reading the result of sleeping on top of my CGM sensor on my left arm, or something else?  Who knows?

Morning meds at 9:10 a.m.   Entresto at 7:15 a.m. and p.m

The end of the earth, the extinction of us.  I remember, when I was a little kid, the entire student body being crammed into the big corridor on the ground floor of St. Leo Grammar School at 78th and Emerald Avenue, and being told to scrunch down on the floor, on knees and elbows, with hands on top of our heads, practicing how we would defend ourselves if the Russians dropped an atomic bomb on Chicago, the way we had on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I don't remember what I thought about the drill, but I remember doing it.  I assume it was in 1949 or early 1950, after the Russians had exploded their first A-bomb in Kazakhstan, when I was 8 years old and in 3rd grade.

We were off to the races then, the arms race, with the Russian communists and eventually the Chinese communists.  We developed the hydrogen bomb in 1952, and the first deployable one in 1954.  The Russians did the same in 1953 and 1955.  I grew up and lived most of my life in the era of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD(ness).  

I learned in watching the Oppenheimer film a few years ago that some of the scientists on the Manhattan Project (where my Uncle Bud Healy was stationed for part of WWII) worried that setting off the first atomic bomb might set the Earth's atmosphere on fire and do us all in.  Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago is said to have jokingly wondered whether the event would destroy the world or only New Mexico.

Now we have a different race, the Artificial Intelligence Race, between the U.S. and China, and internally between OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, SpaceXAI, and I suppose any number of "startups", staffed by mathematically brilliant young AI pioneers, all striving to be the next Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and/or any of the other tech billionaires.  Instead of being concerned about mutually assured destruction by the exchange of inconceivably powerful weapons, we have "progressed" to being concerned about the extinction of the human species (and I suppose other species of living things as well) by evil or rogue AI agents. Even if AI doesn't destroy the human race, it will become a creature or creatures of "super intelligence" far beyond the ability of any humans to control it.  We have been warned for years by knowledgeable people that AI presents the most dangerous development in the history of mankind.  We have the leaders of the industry (is it an industry?) begging each other and the government to slow down the developments before it's too late, and governments do nothing.  I wonder if our government is doing nothing because it's already too late, that we have passed a tipping point on the road to perdition, or because our government is largely beholden to the tech giants.  Is it because we are led by a 'short-fingered vulgarian' who worries more about the stock and bond markets, which are buoyed by the AI data center race,  and their effects on his retention of power than he does about the welfare of his constituents?  Or is he waiting until he can figure out how he and his family can make big bucks from regulating or pretending to regulate these giants?  What should we expect when we have put Roy Cohn in the Oval Office?

On the other hand, in this morning's NYTimes, Helen Toner, head of Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a former OpenAI board member. wrote:

There’s little settled science about how A.I. works and how to ensure it’s safe, so it’s nearly impossible to set regulatory standards for what exactly A.I. developers need to do.

We only know details about the Hugging Face attack, when a self-described “swarm” of roughly 700 A.I. agents plotted together to infiltrate the A.I. platform, because OpenAI permitted an independent team to investigate and report on what happened. But even that investigation was incredibly limited in scope, time and manpower. A real investigation would go much further. There are probably many more incidents that we haven’t heard about yet — and may never hear about. 

Is she saying, sotto voce, that we're screwed?   That it's already too late?  I kinda think so.

I wonder about these questions, and similar questions, as I read The Nerd Reich.  I think back to Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel Bonfire of the Vanities, about Wall Street bond traders in the 1980s who considered themselves "masters of the universe" because of their power and wealth.  The 2020s masters of the universe are the "broligarchs," Elon Musk, Steve Altman, Dario Amodai, and others.  I think, too, of George Carlin's stand-up routine, They Own Us, available on YouTube.  I try not to be so cynical.  I try not to be so pessimistic.   I try not to despair, but it's a real struggle.

9/20/2026

 Sunday, September 20, 2026

1961 African-American student James Meredith was refused enrolment for the first time to the segregated University of Mississippi

1969 John Lennon privately announced to Paul and Ringo (George was not there) that he was leaving "The Beatles" at a London business meeting

2001 In an address to a joint session of Congress, George W. Bush declared a "war on terror"

2023  Homeland Security announced plans to grant special status on humanitarian grounds to 472,000 Venezuelans already in the US, allowing them to work; terminated by Trump, 2025

2023  Senate confirmed US Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Q. Brown as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by a vote of 83-11; removed by Trump on 2/21/2025.

In bed at 9:15, up at 4:20; 0440.203.6. 119/73/66 117;  63/55/66/61; FLOOD WATCH, BEACH HAZARDS

Morning meds at 6:45 a.m.  Entresto at 5:25 a.m. and p.m.

Geri returns today.  I suspect she will be very happy to be at home after most of the week visiting cousin Sue.  She didn't enjoy the weather in Charlotte where it's been in the mid-90s all week, but she won't be crazy about the weather here either, where it's about 30 degrees cooler, rainy, and damp.  In any case, I'll be glad to have her home again.  As I type this at 12:20,  American Airlines shows the flights as delayed and as not having taken off yet.  She arrived around 2:10 to a miserable, cold, rainy day.

A portrait of Lizzie.  I spent part of this morning drawing grid lines on a 8 and 1/2 by 11" print of Lizzie's face and upper torso on the first day of school.  I did a pencil drawing of the photo a few weeks ago and it came out OK except for her smile.  That smile will be the major challenge as I attempt an acrylic portrait on the 24" x 30" canvas I used for the grid lines, at a 3:1 scale.

I've started The Nerd Reich by Gil Duran.  The first two chapters focus on Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin, two very scary guys, each with serious connections to J. D. Vance.  The third focuses on Balaji Srinivasan, whom Thiel tried to get Trump, in his first term, to appoint as head of the Food and Drug Administration.  It is frightening how powerful, and how full of contempt for liberal democracy, these tech guys have long been.  Even more frightening is how dominant the tech moguls have become in Trump's second term, starting with their front row center seats at Trump's second inauguration.   Most scary, I suppose, is that half of the American electorate chose to put Trump back in power in 2020, knowing all that we all knew of him from his first term.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised since the American electorate kept George W. Bush in power after the tragic fiasco of his invasion of Iraq.  We were rewarded with the tragic fiasco of the collapse of the financial system in 2008.  I was struck by this pre-publication praise for Duran's book on its back cover by Wajahat Ali, author of The Left Bank:

The Nerd Reich is a clarion warning about the rise of technofascist sociopaths who seek to profit from our collective misery.  In clear, compellling, and meticulously researched detail, Gil Duran sounds th ealarm about this incestuous cabal of broligarchss.

The book reminds me of a simple truth that I've known for some time: not everybody is a fan of democracy.  I am reminded of a notion forwarded by a political scientist or sociologist that democracy is most people's second choice; most (maybe all) of us would prefer a government that was always responsive to our own values, judgments, and policy choices.  Since we can't get our own way all the time as a practical matter, we accept democracy where we can get something like our own way some of the time.  Just as I thought of Donald Trump and his myrmidons throughout the American Scoundrel book, so too I keep thinking of him and his government as I read through this book.  I thought of him often as I read Kurt Andersen's The Breakup, which is what the technofascists encourage, i.e., the breaking up of America's (and the Western World's) liberal democratic society into much smaller entities joined into a network by digital technology, to wit, them.  Though Trump doesn't have anywhere near the smarts of Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, Elon Musk, or March Andreeson, he surely considers himself a superman, with better genes than the rest of us little people and entitled to rule over us.