Thursday, April 10, 2025
D+155/81
1963 USS Thresher, a nuclear powered submarine, sinks 220 miles east of Boston, killing 129 men, including 17 civilians
2006 Hundreds of thousands protested against US immigration reforms contained in H.R. 4437, also known as the "Sensenbrenner Bill"
2019 First-ever photo of a black hole was announced, taken by The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration in 2017 in galaxy M87, 6.5 billion times the mass of earth, 55 million light-years away
2019 New York declared a public health emergency and compulsory vaccinations after a measles outbreak in Brooklyn with 285 cases
2023 The Dalai Lama apologized for a video showing him asking a boy to suck his tongue, after widespread criticism [1]
In bed at 10, up at 4:10, and put a big load of laundry in the washing machine.
Prednisone, day 355; 3 mg., day 14/21; Kevzara, day 9/14; CGM, day 8/15; Trulicity, day 6/7. 2 mg. of prednisone at 4:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Other meds at 10:30 . Painful right hip and shoulder during the night.
"Getting yippy." One of Donald Trump's articles of faith is that a strong man, an übermensch, admits he was wrong. When dealing with an error, a mistake, or a lie, his normal response is to "double down," like a losing gambler at one of his bankrupt casinos in Atlantic City. Reportedly, he picked this up from his mentor Roy Cohn, but I wonder whether it was also consistent with his dis father's modus operandi. On Tuesday night, Trump was confronted with clear evidence that he had made a huge mistake with his irrational tariff policy announced on April 2nd. International investors, including nations led by Japan, were selling off their U.S. treasury bonds. The safety and stability of the American bond market undergirds the American economy and much of the world economy and, of course, financial markets. As news came in Tuesday night that foreign investors were dumping their 10-year treasuries, Trump knew, or he was reliably informed by Treasury Secretary Bessert, that he was in trouble. It wasn't only the American stock market that was in a tailspin but also the bond market, a double whammy. His response was to post on his Truth Social platform that he was "pausing" the extremely high tariffs on countries that had not retaliated against them but was increasing the tariff on Chinese goods to 125%. His explanation the next day used the golf metaphor "the yips." He told reporters:
I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid, No other president would have done what I did. . . I was watching the bond market. The bond market is very tricky. I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy, I was watching the bond market, but if you look at it right now, it's beautiful. The bond market is beautiful.
The main person with 'the yips' was Trump himself. The sell-off in the bond market was his equivalent to the failure of the Bear Stearns investment bank that precipitated the financial crisis in 2008. The announcement of the "pause" led to a huge swing in the stock markets - S&P up 9.5%, NASDAQ up 12%, Dow up 7.9%. However, the S&P is still 10% off its 52-week high, and the NASDAQ is 15% off its high. We are clearly not out of the woods. There is still vast uncertainty in the financial and business worlds and an understandable lack of confidence in Trump's economic leadership. Quaere: How many White House insiders knew the "pause" was coming and engaged in insider trading?)
I watched the first segment of Lawrence O'Donnell's program last night before going to bed. I think he correctly analyzed the situation over the last week. First, Trump was listening to the lunatic Peter Navarro and his confrere Howard Lutnick and ignoring Scott Bessent and other 'adults in the room.' After the bond market started crashing, he listened to Bessent. We haven't seen either Navarro or Lutnick on the air in the last couple of days. O'Donnell credited Elon Musk as the behind-the-scenes force driving Trump's retreat. He did it through public comments by his brother, Kimbal Musk who published tweets on "X" calling Peter Navarro "a moron." O'Donnell's argument, which I buy, is that if the Musks believe Peter Navarro is a moron, then they must also believe Donald Trump, who has followed Peter Navarro's advice, is also a moron.
Last year this date:
Losing interest in the journal? Much of the writing, and of the cutting and pasting, that I've done in this journal over the last 20 months or so, I have done, or at least started, in the morning hours. I'm feeling so wiped out in the mornings now, and often so unable to type without some pain, that I wonder if it's worthwhile continuing to engage in this activity. I'm pretty sure I've been experiencing some cognitive decline over the last few months with the pain challenges and the sleeping challenges. Perhaps I should literally make a note of evidence of executive function mishaps as I notice them, but to what end? As I said to Geri the other day, I think I, and therefore we, am/are at 'an inflection point' in life. Perhaps I'll know better after meeting with the geriatrics folks, and with Dr. Chang at the PM&R Clinic, and with Dr. Chatt, all coming up.
Unfortunately, I didn't know about my polymyalgia rheumatica until I saw Dr Ryzka on May 6th. By that time, Geri had to push me into the VA Medical Center in a wheelchair.
Trump's televised cabinet meeting this afternoon reminded me of the scene n the original Bedazzled movie starring Paul Cook and Dudley Moore in which Cook, playing Satan, sits on top of a mail box as God and has Dudley Moore, as an angel, endlessly chant "You're so good, you're so great, you're so magnificnent,", etc. The fawning over Trump by his appointees was almost embarrassing, with their adulatory reports frequently including forced deprecations of Joe Biden and his administration. I was also reminded of David Brooks's essay in The Atlantic in which he said Trump is making the world "a playground for gangsters."
A big outing. I drove out to Mike Crivello Cameras at 18110 W. Bluemound Road in Brookfield with a selection of photographic slides I had taken in Vietnam in 1965. I wanted to get them printed so I didn't have to use my slide viewer to see them. I also wanted to be able to photograph the prints and load them onto my computer, perhaps to use them later in this journal. It takes a half hour to drive out there from Bayside, and of course, another half hour to get back, and that's in non-rush hour traffic. The prints. The clerk said it might take 2 weeks to get them back.
I finally mailed the Wisconsin tax return at the North Shore post office on my way back from Brookfield.
Yesterday, Tom Friedman and David Brooks; today, Tim Snyder. Professor Snyder, whom we see frequently on television interviews speaking of authoritarianism and dictatorships, delivered the Silver Lecture at the New York Public Library, which I started to watch on YouTube. The lecture is titled "The New Paganism - A Framework for Understanding our Politics: He started his lecture by saying that he would try to address the larger questions surrounding 'our politics,
'Why is it that categories that seemed so important for so long, like rationality or interests or even the stat e and the nation no longer seem to be very important. Why is it that there is so much pain in our politics? Why is it that pain has become normative. Pain has beccome something that we seek after, somethiing that peopple have a kind of voyeurism about. Why is it that there are so many negative sum games? Why is it that we are doing things where everyone involved ends up being worse off at the end? Why is it there is such a state of futurelessness? Whydo we seem to be in a world which is - the Germans have a word for everything, so there's zukunftlosigkeit. Why are we in this world sans avenir? Why is it that it seems likek there's just a void in the futute? . . . The way to understand what is happening now is by reference to paganism.
If ever I needed reassurance that my deep pessimism about the state of our nation and, indeed, of the world isn't crazy, I received more than enough yesterday and today from Tom Friedman, David Brooks, and Tim Snyder.
A painting of a young Vietnamese woman, a student with her briefcase, done many years ago
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