Thursday, January 23, 2025
D+77
1973 US President Richard Nixon announced an accord had been reached to end the Vietnam War
In bed by 9, awake and up at 3:13. The temperature is 21° with a wind chill of 7°, but the temperature will decline throughout the day and night to 3° tomorrow morning. Geri came into the kitchen at about 3:45 to get ice packs for her painful knee. I got them for her, one for under the knee and the other for on top,, so she could return to bed. I brought her iPhone out to charge it.
Prednisone, day 279, 5 + 2.5 mg., day 16. Prednisone at 4:30 with Caren's banana bread. Again, my shoulders seem to be virtually pain-free. Other meds in midafternoon and 2.5 mg. prednisone at 5 p.m.
Pardons blowback. From Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter:
How are we not Germany in 1933? Italy in 1922? Chile in 1973?The country’s largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, has spoken out against the pardons, as has the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote: “Law and order? Back the blue? What happened to that [Republican Party]?” “What happened [on January 6, 2021] is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy,” it wrote. “By setting free the cop beaters, the President adds another.”
One of the pardoned individuals is already back in prison on a gun charge, illustrating, as legal analyst Joyce White Vance said, why Trump should have evaluated “prior criminal history, behavior in prison, [and] risk of dangerousness to the community following release. Now,” she said, “we all pay the price for him using the pardon power as a political reward.” On social media, Heather Thomas wrote: “So when all was said and done, the only country that opened [its] prisons and sent crazy murderous criminals to prey upon innocent American citizens, was us.”
MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin reported that Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, who was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 18 years in prison, met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill this afternoon.
West Side Story: Everything's right in America, if you are White in America. More from Heather Cox Richardson:
n his determination to get rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) measures, Trump has shut down all federal government DEI offices and has put all federal employees working in such programs on leave, telling agencies to plan for layoffs. He reached back to the American past to root out all possible traces of DEI, calling it “illegal discrimination in the federal government.” Trump revoked a series of executive orders from various presidents designed to address inequities among American populations.
Dramatically, he reached all the way back to Executive Order 11246, signed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in September 1965 to stop discriminatory practices in hiring in the federal government and in the businesses of those who were awarded federal contracts. Johnson put forward Executive Order 11246 shortly after Congress passed the Voting Rights Act to protect minority voting and a year after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, both designed to level the playing field in the United States between white Americans, Black Americans and Americans of color.
In an even more dramatic reworking of American history, though, the Trump administration has frozen all civil rights cases currently being handled by the Department of Justice and has ordered Trump’s new supervisor of the civil rights division, Kathleen Wolfe, to make sure that none of the civil rights attorneys file any new complaints or other legal documents.
Congress created the Department of Justice in 1870…to prosecute civil rights cases.
Today, Erica L. Green reported for the New York Times that Trump’s team has threatened federal employees with “adverse consequences” if they refuse to turn in colleagues who “defy orders to purge diversity, equity and inclusion efforts from their agencies.” Civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill commented: “Can’t wait until these guys have to define in court a ‘DEI hire’ and ‘DEI employees.’”
Thinking & writing is difficult this week with Geri on the mend and normal life disrupted, and with Sue visiting. Some random thoughts.
1. I've been thinking about Trump's worldview. Wikipedia: "A worldview (also world-view) or Weltanschauung is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view. A worldview can include natural philosophy; fundamental, existential, and normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and ethics." Trump's worldview is not merely transactional, but 'dog eat dog.' He believes, deep down, that every encounter is transactional and a zero-sum game in which one party is a winner and the other party is a loser. He clearly picked this up from his father. He lives this worldview not only in his personal relations but also in his business relationships and in his political and governmental relationships. It, among other reasons, is probably why it appears, or at least as far as anyone knows, he has no real friends, i.e,, people who have affection and loyalty to him for who he is, not just for what a relationship with him will get them in terms of money, profits, power, status or some other perceived good. It's how he has historically dealt with creditors where every bill or invoice is a challenge to whittle, regardless of the underlying agreement or the satisfactoriness of the promised performance. If I pay the bill in full, the creditor is a winner and I'm a loser. If I don't pay it or pay less than it calls for, I'm a winner and he's a loser. He applies this competitive worldview in his national and international political and economic relationships as well. It's all a form of 'my dick is bigger than your dick'
2. Geri is not doing well today; she is having a rough time, not feeling well at all. She appears to be moving much better than a couple of days but is experiencing considerable pain and discomfort and feels very crappy.
3. I drove Sue to Geri's Mequon yarn shop this afternoon to pick up some knitting needles. Then we took a little tour around Mequon including looking at Newcastle Place where Jimmy A. lived for almost 4 years. We picked up some hamburgers at the Mequon McDonald's and brought them home for lunch with Geri. Her walking partners Shirley and Barbara are going to be bringing over a dinner for us this evening.
4. The banana bread Caren baked and brought for Geri is delicious and loaded with chocolate chips. I've eaten half of it.😋😳
5. Shirley and Barbara brought tonight's dinner at about 4: lasagna, salad, garlic breadsticks, a homemade cake of some sort, and ice cream.
Years ago, while eating lunch with my partners in our law firm's library, long before I had ever heard of George W. Bush or Saddam Hussein or of the neoconservative movement, I opined that the greatest threat to world peace was the United States because the U.S. is (1) extremely and intentionally militarily powerful and (2) extremely and increasingly dependent on foreign resources to sustain our standard of living which we consider "ours" as a matter of right. I am a former Marine officer and Vietnam vet and considered the opinion I offered as almost self-evident. My partners (and friends) however reacted to my statement as if I had questioned the legitimacy of their births. The U.S. 'defense' budget now is roughly equal to the combined military budgets of all the world's other nations and our dependency on foreign resources is even greater than it was when I shocked my partners. Can there be any surprise that much of the rest of the world considers the US a threat?
FEBRUARY 15, 2007 7:25 AM
"Richard Nixon, Vice-President at the time to President Eisenhower, explained the [Domino] theory in more detail: “If Indochina falls, Thailand is put in an almost impossible position. The same is true of Malaya with its rubber and tin. The same is true of Indonesia."
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