2/6/2025

 Thursday, February 6, 2025

D+91

1951 Radio commentator Paul Harvey was arrested for trying to sneak into Argonne National Laboratory, a nuclear test site located 20 miles (32 km) west of Chicago, Illinois

1956 University of Alabama suspended African-American student Autherine Lucy claiming that it could no longer provide for her safety

2018 Elon Musk's company SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket

In bed at 9:45, awake at 3:40, from a dream of shared activities with JPG and MH, thoughts of ASC, and up at 4 to fill the humidifier, and the dishwasher, and empty Geri's cooling device.  

Prednisone, day 293, 5 mg., day 2, Kevzara, day 2/14.  2.5 mg. prednisone at 5 a.m. and again at 5 p.m.  Other meds sometime in the morning.     

The Scorpion and the Frog: Trump and the Future of Gaza.  We have known since at least his 2015 speech announcing his presidential candidacy that Trump is a bad man.  We have known since at least then that he is an inveterate liar, a fabulist and a fantasist.  We have known that he is a playboy and a philanderer, a man to whom vows, oaths, promises, contracts, and loyalty are meaningful only as they benefit him and never as they burden him.  We have known that he is a sociopathic tranactionalist in his relations with others, viewing them as zero-sum games in which each transaction produces a winner and a loser and the object is always to be the winner, never the loser.   He had turned 69 two days before the 2015 announcement speech.  He is now a few months away from his 79th birthday.  In 2015, we could be confident in his self-serving judgment, that is, that he would never intentionally do anything hurtful to himself and always be ready to do anything hurtful to others so long as it benefitted him.  Can we have the same confidence in his judgment in 2025 after his bizarre proposals about the United States acquiring ownership of Gaza, displacing about 2 million Palestinians, and creating a "Riviera of the Middle East"?  He stood in front of the world and pitched his proposals like a private real estate developer, not as the head of state of the world's most prosperous and militarily powerful nation.  He claimed, falsely, that Middle Eastern leaders loved his proposal.  He claimed, falsely, that it would be good for the displaced Palestinians.  He claimed, falsely, that there were neighboring countries that were willing to accept the displaced Palestinians.  He claimed that the United States would "take over" and "own" Gaza using the American military 'if necessary,' without recognizing the imperial and settler-colonial nature of what he was saying.  He showed no recognition of the immediate and long-term danger he created for the American military and other interests in the Muslim world, and elsewhere.  Did he realize how Putinesque hh looked and sounded?  Or was that his purpose?  His proposals were bone-headed, ham-handed, and worse.  He made them before the whole world without seeking any information or counsel from the State Deparment, the Defense Department, or any other part of the federal government which may have  information or insight that any prudent decision-maker would want before making such a radical proposal.  This call into question not his character, which has been well-known since at least 2015, but his judgment 10 years later.  Has he become at last not simply a wicked man, but a wicked old fool?

Anniversary thought.   Two thoughts about Paul Harvey.  First, from my memoir:

Over the next few months, the Chicago newspapers carried many stories about Hartmann and his murder of Mrs. Bush and sexual assault on my mother.  The Chicago Sun seemed to take particular delight in the story, running many, many photographs of Hartmann day after day, one with his visiting parents in the office of the warden at the Cook County Jail, one with his lawyer, another with his step-father, even one of Hartmann resting on his bed in his jail cell, with an accompanying story about his crying in his cell and being bothered that he wasn’t the focus of attention of reporters and photographers.  The text of the news stories referred to Hartmann as a “sex pervert” who confessed to “a degenerate attack” and “a fiendish attack” on my mother, but the photos all seemed calculated to generate sympathy for “pudgy” 15 year old and his family, with nary a word about the families of Gracelyn Bush and Mary Clausen.

Paul Harvey, then 29 years old, reported the crime against my mother on his radio show on WENR, with the spin “Wife of young Marine, veteran of Iwo Jima . . .” My mother’s name, address, and photograph and the nature of the crime against her were publicized to everyone in Chicago who could read a newspaper.  

Second, for a period of time, Geri worked as a personal assistant to Paul Harvey's wife, Lynne, better known to Harvey's listeners as "Angel."