Friday, October 9, 2026
1845 Anglican priest John Henry Newman left the Anglican Church of England and was received into the Roman Catholic Church
1991 George H. W. Bush declared "total confidence" in nominee Clarence Thomas
2019 Turkey launched airstrikes on Kurdish forces in Northern Syria after US President Donald Trump announced the decision to pull back US forces
2023 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched an independent bid for the US Presidency
2025 The attorney general of Trinidad and Tobago said that the United States granted permission yesterday to the country to negotiate a gas deal with Venezuela without facing U.S. sanctions related to its relationship with Venezuela.
2025 The United States Department of Justice indicted Attorney General of New York Letitia James on a criminal bank fraud charge in Alexandria, Virginia.
In bed at 9, but unable to sleep until 2, up at 7:10; 0725 201.0 131/82/63 113; 50/66/47, cloudy, perhaps rain near 3 p.m.
Morning meds at 8 a.m. Entresto at 7:50 a.m. and p.m.
What struck me most, however, was the history of the cooperation between the Zionists and antisemites, especially the Nazis, and the history of the willingness of the Zionists to sacrifice Jewish lives when doing so advanced the cause of the establishment of the Jewish State, i.e., "[The State of] Israel above all." At a meeting of the Mapai Central Committee on December 7, 1938, shortly after Kristallnacht, Ben-Gurion posed a hypothetical choice: rescuing all the Jewish children in Germany by taking them to England, or rescuing only half by bringing them to Palestine. He said he would choose the second alternative, invoking not only the children's lives but the historical future of the Jewish people. The statement has generated considerable controversy. Critics see it as evidence that Ben-Gurion prioritized Zionist national objectives over individual Jewish lives. Defenders emphasize the historical circumstances and argue that the quotation, taken alone, misrepresents his wider efforts to rescue European Jews. In any case, it raises the thorny question: At what point does national self-determination cease to be a means of safeguarding a people and become an end to which the welfare, or even the lives, of members of that people may be subordinated?
Moser offers other examples of Zionists actively opposing efforts to relocate Jews from Europe to England and to the United States that made me shudder. In the preceding chapter, he relates how Avi Schlaim discovered evidence of Zionists planting bombs in Baghdad in order to cause the Iraqi Jews to flee to Palestine/Israel. Overall, it's a pretty ugly picture.
Fall, Leaves, Fall by Emily Bronte
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.
A Facebook post by JJA:
A live streamed firing squad execution - WTF are we doing???!
The Romans had panem et circenses - bread and circuses. We have this.
There's a distinction between administering a punishment under law and deliberately staging a killing for public consumption. The latter raises profound questions about who we are as a society, as a species.
When political leaders make vengeance a public performance, cruelty can become a badge of strength, empathy can be portrayed as weakness, and the suffering of another human being becomes a show.
The question isn't whether Hasan deserves to be held accountable for his crimes. It's whether the government of a democratic republic should turn the act of killing a prisoner into a livestreamed lesson for the masses.
The Romans had the Colosseum.
We have screens in every pocket.
And perhaps the most unsettling part is that we no longer need to gather in an arena. We can watch from our sofas, between commercials, and scroll on to the next spectacle.
A comment I posted on Facebook one year ago today:
Here is an entry from my journal this morning. I wrote it to blow off steam, but also for anyone who read the recent Washington Post article about fraudulent VA disability claims:
I'm feeling a little dirty after reading the long 'investigative reporting' on VA disability benefits in the October 6 /7 Washington Post by Craig Whitlock, Lisa Rein, and Caitlin Gilbert. Here are some excerpts:
"Taxpayers will spend roughly $193 billion this year for the Department of Veterans Affairs to compensate about 6.9 million disabled veterans on the presumption that their ability to work is impaired."
"The easy-to-manipulate regulations have turned the disability program into a rich target for con artists, who are typically prosecuted only in the most egregious and flagrant cases."
"Disability payments to veterans are tax-free and typically last for life. Last year, disabled vets received $25,046 on average, VA figures show. The money comes on top of free or subsidized medical care provided by the VA."
"VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz provided a statement. “The extraordinarily liberal Washington Post never met a government program it didn’t love — until now,” he wrote. “Unbelievably, the far-left Washington Post believes many Veterans don’t deserve the VA benefits they’ve earned."
"The current disability program was designed 80 years ago to provide a safety net for unemployable veterans wounded or injured during World War II. Today, the vast majority of disabled veterans under age 65 still work and collect paychecks from full-time jobs, records show."
"According to the most recent available figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for disabled veterans last year was 4.1 percent, about the same as the population at large. In 2023, more than 100,000 disabled veterans — roughly 1 in 60 — reported an income of $250,000 or higher, according to a Post analysis of VA and census data."
"Other public disability programs help only people who certify that they are incapacitated or severely impaired in their ability to work. The Social Security Administration, which provides disability aid to more than 15 million people, limits benefits to those who cannot hold a job or are unable to earn more than $19,440 a year."
"The Post’s investigation found that Congress and VA have made it easier to cheat and take advantage of the system."
"Authorities have known for years that some veterans who don’t genuinely need help are gaming the disability program, according to documents and interviews."
"Embellished and bogus claims are clogging the system and making it harder for veterans with bona fide injuries to get the help they deserve, according to judges and prosecutors who have handled fraud cases."
"Veterans categorized as 100 percent disabled often still hold normal, full-time jobs. Most have an assortment of ailments — such as arthritis, diabetes, scars or a deviated septum — that by themselves are not incapacitating but that add up to a 100 percent rating under VA rules."
Here are some of my thoughts:
Whether intended or not, the tone of this article tends to smear all VA disability pay recipients, of which I am one. It clearly suggests that only those who are unable to work, whose income potential is diminished, or who were injured while serving and genuinely need help, should receive payments, something like SSI or SSDI. Under the suggested eligibility standards, I would not be entitled to a disability rating or compensation, but those are not the VA standards. Neither VA health care nor disability pay is based on need. Neither is a welfare program, and veterans are not 'welfare queens.' These programs were created by Congress as benefits available only to military veterans in fulfillment of Abraham Lincoln's call to the nation in his Second Inaugural, "to care for him who shall have borne the battle," those who, usually early in their lives, answered the call to military service with all the risks that entails.
I was 75 years old and retired before I enrolled in the VA health system. As part of the enrollment, I was givena thorough physical examination by a government physician and was assigned a disability rating based on my diabetes and related medical problems, and on my exposure over many months in Vietnam to Agent Orange and other toxins. I didn't ask for a disability rating or disability pay, but was provided both. The assignment of a disability rating is part of the enrollment process and determines whether a veteran will be charged co-pays for VA medical services. I received no "injury" in Vietnam other than the toxic exposures. My ability to earn an income as a lawyer and a law professor was not impaired by my medical problems. Nonetheless, I surprisingly found myself entitled to a monthly disability check, which I gladly accepted, not because I needed it, but because Congress had provided it to me in return for my months of service in Vietnam. I was not collecting on a commercial disability insurance policy, based on loss of income and earning capacity; I was receiving a government benefit based on service, not need.
Exact numbers are not available, but there are approximately 18 million living American military veterans, 9 million of whom are enrolled in the VA health system. Only about half of those eligible to participate do so. Of those who do, many like me enroll late in life, and others enroll at varying times after their discharge from service. My father, who had severe PTSD after service on Iwo Jima in WWII, never took advantage of whatever services were available after the war. He, my mother, my sister, and I all paid a price for that, but my point is that most veterans, for most of their lives, make no claim whatsoever for post-service medical care or disability pay from the VA, even though they are entitled to it. I went almost 50 years after my discharge before enrolling with the VA.
The Washington Post article suggests that disability payments should be available only to those vets who suffer an 'injury' during service, one that affects their ability to work. Many conditions that are compensable under the law don't fit neatly under the term 'injury.' Many develop only long after military service is completed. What "injury" did my father incur on Iwo Jima that affected him throughout the rest of his life? He wasn't wounded nor did he receive a Purple Heart. Ditto all the other vets who suffer from PTSD or the pernicious medical effects of exposure to carcinogens, like the water at Camp Lejeune, or the defoliants in Vietnam, the burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the depleted uranium in armor-piercing ammunition or vehicle armor.
The article says that veterans in the VA receive free or subsidized medical care. Though that is generally true, most of the veterans that I regularly encounter at my VA medical center are elderly veterans of Vietnam and even Korea. The costs of services provided to them are charged to Medicare and to their Medicare supplemental policies. We veterans are encouraged to keep our Medicare supplemental policies in place because VA health care is a benefit program, not an insurance program. If we need medical services away from VA provider facilities, we're on our own. The premiums we pay for Medicare coverage and for Medicare supplemental protection directly subsidize the VA benefits.
Lastly, a political note. The spokesman for the VA chastised the Washington Post for investigating fraudulent disability claims, calling it "the extraordinarily liberal Washington Post" and "the far-left Washington Post." This article, slurring the VA and veterans receiving disability payments, in Jeff Bezos's personal newspaper, is an attack from the Right, not the Left. The VA medical system is socialized medicine, i..e, government-provided health care. Conservative powers have wanted to privatize it for decades, in large part because it works so well. It can be challenging to get enrolled, but once enrolled, the veterans who use it are very satisfied with the care they receive. Their/our satisfaction with it is anathema to opponents of government-financed and/or provided health care. Bezos is a friend of and supporter of our current commander-in-chief, neither of them a veteran, and neither of them a supporter of the VA, notwithstanding Trump's protestations to the contrary. Soon after he assumed office, he and his DOGE whiz kids proposed cutting the VA workforce by more than 80,000. He installed far-right former Georgia congressman Doug Collins as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Bezos's Washington Post article is unmistakably part of the campaign to weaken and ultimately privatize the VA. Don't believe what they say; watch what they do.
Geri's college and lifelong buddy Tuz stopped to visit this morning for about a half an hour on her way back to Evanston, where she'll visit with her sister-in-law. The visit was so short because the sister-in-law has a CT scheduled this afternoon and Tuz is driving the sister-in-law's car. She and Geri will spend 3 days together in Urbana next week.
Tomorrow is D-Day, the Honor Flight. After my insomnia last night, I am, as my faculty colleague Shirley Wiegand used to say, "dragging major butt," but hoping that I'll get a decent night's sleep tonight and that I'll hold up 'honorably' tomorrow. Memories, emotions.
