5/22/2025

 Thursday, May 22, 2025

D+176/121

1950 Richard Strauss' "4 Last Songs" (4 letzte Lieder) premiered in London

2016  President Barack Obama arrived in Vietnam for a 3 day tour

2022 Report released on sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, the country's largest Protestant denomination, detailed 20 years of suppressing many allegations 

2024 Ireland, Norway, and Spain announced they will formally recognize a Palestinian state on 28 May, joining nine other European countries 

In bed at 10, half-awake at 4:25, and up at 4:50.  46°, wind chill = 36°, high of 53°, cloudy.  

Prednisone, day 372; 1 mg., day 14/21; Kevzara, day 10/14; CGM day 5/15; Trulicity 6/7.  Prednisone at  5 a.m.  Other meds at 6 a.m.  Triamcinolone at 7 a.m.   Eye drops at 5 a.m., 2 p.m.,  and 9 p.m.

Thank God for birds.  I need something to lift my spirits this morning.  Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal are busy on the flat feeder.  A male goldfinch is on the niger tube while a female goldfinch is plucking nesting material from the big cotton ball atop it.  House finches are feeding on the sunflower/safflower tube, and a ruby-throated hummingbird has been visiting Geri's hummingbird feeder.  Red-bellied, hairy, and downy woodpeckers have been busy at the suet cakes, and I'm almost sure I just spotted an Eastern bluebird there.  An elegant mourning dove is looking for scraps on the ground while a robin is feasting on the worms that have emerged from the saturated lawn. The voracious chickadees are visiting all the feeding sites.  A Baltimore Oriole has shown up, not for the orange halves I put out, but for the hummingbirds' sugar water and for the cotton nesting!  A blue jay has taken his fill of suet. None of the birds has read the papers this morning or watched Morning Joe.

I posted this on FB this morning and received reactions from Caren 

G., David L., and Cheri B.

Murder at the Jewish Museum, Israel, and anti-semitism.  Last night, two young staff members of the Israeli embassy were shot to death outside a social function at the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.  The shooter, a man from Chicago, shouted "Free Palestine" as he killed them.   All the talk I am hearing this morning is about anti-semitism, not about anti-Zionism, or anti-Netanyahu/Smotrich/Ben-Gvir government of the State of Israel.  Is the murderer an anti-semite?  Most probably, but it may not be his anti-semitism that provoked the crime, but rather the actions of the genocidal government of the State of Israel.  There's a difference, though a great many won't believe or admit it.

The House has passed Trump's "big, beautiful bill."  Big tax cuts for the wealthy and even bigger for the super-wealthy.  Big cuts in Medicaid and food stamps.   The legislation is projected to cause around 10 million Americans to become uninsured, according to the Congressional Budget Office.  "There's nothing surer: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  In the meantime, in between time, ain't we got fun."  All the Democrats voted against it; all the Republicans, save 2, voted for it.  The vote was 215-214.  If it were to become law, the bill would increase annual deficit spending and add trillions to the national debt.  Additionally, another 13,000,000 Americans would become uninsured according to the Congressional Budget Office.  Madness.  We are being taken to the cleaners by the oligarchs and plutocrats. USA, USA, USA!!!

Another ambush in the Oval Office.  Trump ambushed South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, accusing his country of having a policy of White genocide, not Black-on-White crime, but government-sponsored genocide.  He even had a monitor present in the Oval Office so he could show a video of radical members of the SA legislature calling for the killing of White farmers, though the legislators are not members of Ramaphosa's government.  He also showed a video of white crosses lining a highway, placed there as a memorial to White farmer deaths, and falsely claimed they marked gravesites of White farmers.  This stunt, along with the expedited admission of White South African emigrants, is ample evidence of Trump's White Nationalism and his racism.

Geri has left for Kate's house in Urbana.  She had hoped to be on the road around 8, but didn't leave until 9:30.  I will be nervous until I hear from her.  I suggested that she consider staying at Kate's until next Tuesday to avoid the traffic on Memorial Day and the end of the three-day weekend.  I suspect I will be at 6s and 7s the whole time she is away, but I'll see.

Just when you think tings can't get any worse  . . . Of course, I don't really fool myself that things can't ever get worse with Trump and his minions in control of the federal government, but I hthought that this morning's bad news about the murder/assassination of the young Jewish couple in Washington plus the news of passage of Trump's "big, beautiful budget bill" was enough terrible news for one day. Dayenu.  This afternoon I learned that the Trump administration has revoked Harvard University's right to enroll foreign students.  This is a major blow, financially and programmatically, for Harvard and a terrible injustice.  “I am writing to inform you that, effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked,” according to a letter sent to the university by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary.  About 6,800 international students attended Harvard this year, or roughly 27 percent of the student body, according to university enrollment data.   “This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.”  This is a devastating blow to Harvard and its foreign students and a huge injustice, probably even more devastating than a revocation of its tax-exempt status.  I lack the words to express the outrage I'm feeling over this.  I think of those thousands of foreign students who have had their lives and educations so disrupted.