4/7/2025

 Monday, April 7, 2025

D+152/78

1541 Spanish missionary Francis Xavier left Lisbon for the Portuguese East Indies as the first Jesuit missionary

1943 Adolf Hitler & Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg

1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a news conference, was the first to voice fear of a "domino effect" of communism in the Indochina region

1968 Riots continued in over 100 US cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

1971 US President Richard Nixon ordered Lt. Calley (Mi Lai) free

In bed at 9:15, awake and up at 3:20, thinking about how the VA's medical care has already been affected by Trump/Musk/Doge.  It takes the better part of 5 minutes to connect with the general switchboard at the medical center.  When I had to reschedule my PM&R clinic appointment on 4/21, the earliest I could get in was 6/12, and the next available date was July.  When the Reverend Doug Collins says the DOGE cuts won't affect medical care to the veterans, he's pissing on our shoes and telling us it's rain.

Prednisone, day 352; 3 mg., day 11/21; Kevzara, day 6/14; CGM, day 5/15; Trulicity, day 4/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at  5 a.m. and 3:10 p.m.  Other meds at  8:20.

I went to the VA for a podiatry appointment.  On my way into the building, I met an old Marine who saw my 1st Marine Air Wing cap and said something I could barely hear.  He seemed much older than me, and I suspect he was perhaps a Korean War veteran.  In any event, I said 'Semper Fi, brother' to him, and he returned the greeting and patted me on the arm.  Then we shook hands and exchanged ''God bless you's.  It took place in only a few moments, but it moved me.  It touched me, as I am so often touched when I encounter another Marine or Vietnam vet and have a chance to talk with him.  Then, as I waited for my appointment in the Podiatry Clinic, I chatted with another vet, this time an Army medic who served with Marines on the Vietnam-Cambodia border.  We chatted about his and his wife's knee replacements and some other things.  He urged me to get involved with the Marine Corps League, the members of which meet monthly for Saturday breakfasts at a restaurant in West Allis.  His wife wrote out the name of the group's president, Tim Beranzyk, and his phone number, (414) 628-7081, and then she and I chatted about Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address till I was called in for my appointment.  They were both gone when I came back out to the waiting room.  I was reminded again of how usual it is that I feel better leaving the VA medical center than I did when I arrived.  I was also reminded of regularly seeing acts of kindness and brotherhood or fellowship there.  . . I talked with Tim Baranzyk this evening and found out the next meeting of the MCL is the last Saturday of April at 10 a.m. at the Palace Restaurant on Hy. 100 south of Greenfield. 

    When I left the medical center, I drove to 84th and National, where the Army medic said the MCL members gather for their breakfast meetings, but I couldn't find any restaurant there.   In driving through West Allis, I had the feeling I have so often now of greatly appreciating the homes, businesses, and other structures I see.  West Allis is an old suburb, contiguous with Milwaukee and West Milwaukee, and it's loaded with interesting architecture with so much history.  The warm feeling I get admiring these old dwellings and other buildings reminded me of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, which I read many years ago.  It's the tale of an old man who is dying, a lawyer and, for most of his life, a distinguished, highly respected judge.  It's a novella with a happy ending inasmuch as Ivan realizes as death approaches that he had lived an empty life, valuing the wrong values, and that love and compassion are the important things in life.  I suppose it's a stretch to see any similarity between me and my newfound appreciation and delight in the most ordinary, everyday people and things around me and Ivan Ilyich's epiphany, but perhaps not.  I hope that, like him, as I approach my inevitable death, I have a deeper appreciation of the primacy of love and compassion in life, but in addition to that, or perhaps intrinsic in that is appreciating trees and clouds and old homes and other structures.  It's like seeing the world through new eyes.

Last year, this year.  Last year at this time, I was experiencing severe pain and disability and engaging in daily suicidal ideation. 4/9/24:  I'm feeling blue this morning, wondering how long I can live like this.  Just about every night and every morning I deal with crippling joint pain, struggling to get out of the recliner, to walk, or to lift a cup of herbal tea."  4/7/24: " I would like to light a log in the fireplace but I can't deal with lifting the log and placing it on the grate... Am I catastrophizing, or is this what the rest of my life will be, living with spreading pain, sleeping as best I can on a chair instead of a bed, relying more and more on Geri, or others, for help with ordinary activities of living?"  It was on April 15th of last year that Geri did something to her left knee that resulted in 3 surgeries on May 30, August 29, and January 16.  Now, approaching the anniversary of the initiating injury, she is still seeing the physical therapist 3 times a week, the orthopedic surgeon every two weeks, and spending hours each day on the continuous passive motion machine and other PT stretches.  She is making good progress but hasn't reached the flexion/extension goals yet and she still has some stiffness in the knee and walks with a slight limp, especially when the knee is stiff.  I still have shoulder and hip pain, but it predominates on my right side, not bilaterally as with PMR.  I see the rheumatologist in two weeks, and a blood draw will reveal whether my inflammation markers, c-reactive protein and sed rate, are elevated.

This year,  we are two and one half months into the second Trump administration and all hell is breaking loose.  In two days of trading since his "Liberation Day" Rose Garden speech, the markets have lost between 5 and 6 trillion dollars.  That was on Thursday and Friday of last week.  Yesterday, his chief economic advisors, the Treasury and Commerce secretaries, and the head of his economic advisory council appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows and did nothing to calm the waters.  Headlines in this morning's Wall Street Journal:

Market Turmoil Deepens as Asia Suffers Historic Routs

U.S. stock futures, European equities, oil tumble after Trump stands firm on levies

Trump Golfs, Fires Off Social Media Posts as Markets Convulse

The VIX, Wall Street’s 'Fear Gauge', Is Soaring. Here’s Why..

Wall Street’s fear gauge is heading skyward.  The Cboe Volatility Index, or VIX, recently stood nearly 18% higher at about 53.  It had jumped above 60 in earlier trading Monday.

There have been only two periods in the last two decades when the gauge has ended the day above 50: late 2008 and early 2009, during the trough of the global financial crisis; and early 2020, during the coronavirus-induced market selloff.

The VIX is closely watched during market turmoil. It tracks expectations for stock swings over the next 30 days, based on what investors will pay for options tied to the S&P 500 index.  When fear is rising, traders are typically more likely to turn to—and pay up for—options to protect their portfolios. That means the VIX tends to move inversely to the stock market, spiking when the market swoons.

Over the last 10 years, the VIX has averaged a little over 19. It hit a record intraday high of 89.53 in October 2008. 

Mitt Romney, 3/3/2016:

Let me put it plainly, if we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.  Let me explain why.

First, the economy: If Donald Trump’s plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into a prolonged recession.  A few examples: His proposed 35% tariff-like penalties would instigate a trade war that would raise prices for consumers, kill export jobs, and lead entrepreneurs and businesses to flee America. His tax plan, in combination with his refusal to reform entitlements and to honestly address spending would balloon the deficit and the national debt. So even as Donald Trump has offered very few specific economic plans, what little he has said is enough to know that he would be very bad for American workers and for American families.

But wait, you say, isn’t he a huge business success that knows what he’s talking about? No he isn’t. His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who worked for them. He inherited his business, he didn’t create it. And what ever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there’s Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks, and Trump Mortgage? A business genius he is not. 

Is This Even More Frightening?  Yesterday's New York Times:  

  When President Trump abruptly fired the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command on Thursday, it was the latest in a series of moves that have torn away at the country’s cyberdefenses just as they are confronting the most sophisticated and sustained attacks in the nation’s history.

The commander, General Timothy D. Haugh, had sat atop the enormous infrastructure of American cyberdefenses until his removal, apparently under pressure from the far-right Trump loyalist Laura Loomer. He had been among the American officials most deeply involved in pushing back on Russia, dating to his work countering Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election.

His dismissal came after weeks in which the Trump administration swept away nearly all of the government’s election-related cyberdefenses beyond the secure N.S.A. command centers at Fort Meade, Md. At the same time, the administration has shrunk much of the nation’s complex early-warning system for cyberattacks, a web through which tech firms work with the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies to protect the power grid, pipelines and telecommunications networks.

Cybersecurity experts, election officials and lawmakers — mostly Democrats but a few Republicans — have begun to raise alarms that the United States is knocking down a system that, while still full of holes, has taken a decade to build. It has pushed out some of its most experienced cyberdefenders and fired younger talent brought in to design defenses against a wave of ransomware, Chinese intrusions and vulnerabilities created by artificial intelligence.

“At a time when the United States is facing unprecedented cyberthreats — as the Salt Typhoon cyberattack from China has so clearly underscored — how does firing him make Americans any safer?” Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Thursday night after General Haugh’s ouster.

Mr. Warner was referring to an operation in which Chinese intelligence bored so deeply into American telecommunications networks that it had access to the Justice Department’s system for lawful interception of calls or text messages and could listen in on some conversations, including Mr. Trump’s during his campaign last year. 

The President's most influential advisors are Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, Laura Loomer, Peter Navarro, Howard Lutnick, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Pete Hegseth, and Tulsi Gabbard.  Laura Loomer, 31 years old, ran twice for Congress and lost twice, and now is a racist, bigoted, whacko, right-wing, conspiracy theorist podcaster. Trump calls her 'a good person and a great patriot. On her advice, Trump fired General Haugh and his top assistant, depriving the U.S. of their expertise in protecting us against election interference from enemies and ransom attacks on our businesses and vital infrastructure.  We keep wondering how much damage Trump can do to this country, and every week, he shows us.