8/13/2026

 Thursday August 13, 2026

1942 The Manhattan Project commenced with the aim of developing an atomic bomb

2004 Hurricane Charley devastated Punta Gorda

2025 Israeli forces launched a massive aerial bombardment on Gaza City, killing 123 people across the Gaza Strip, amid reports that the Israeli Army was about to enter the city.

2026 Settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank continued, aided by the IDF.

In bed at 9:15, awakened by the alarm at 6:20;  0635. 202.6  120/75/64 135; 67/77/66, Cloudy with dense fog, visibility 1/4 mile or less till 10 a.m.  Rain is expected most of the afternoon.

Morning meds at 8:15 a.m.  Eliquis at 6:45 a.m. and p.m.

Nikki Onorato (Kevil) wearing the bishop's mitre that Steve received at yesterday's Chicago White Sox game honoring Chicago native and White Sox fan Robert Prevost.  The Sox management distributed thousands of them, calling them 'Pope hats',  to the fans who attended the game, including Steve.  Below is one of my favorite drawings, a graphite pencil drawing I did from a photo I took of Nikki 2 years ago.

Six Degrees of Separation.  I thought of this play that Geri and I saw at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center in New York decades ago.  The play was based on the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of "friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.  I think of it when I see Nikki in Steve's "pope hate" from the Sox game.  Pope Leo XIV and I share some connections.  He was raised in Dolton, Illinois, which is next door to Riverdale, IL, where my sister and her husband and my Mom and Dad owned townhouses.  His family and mine attended the same Catholic Church in Riverdale, St. Mary of the Assumption.  His parents both graduated from DePaul University, which I would have attended had I not won the NROTC scholarship to Marquette.  Geri attended DePaul for a while.  His mother taught and was a librarian at Mendel High School, a Catholic boys' school on the South Side that I would have attended had I not chosen Leo, which was walking distance from our home(s), whereas Mendel, at 250 E. 111th St., would require 2 bus rides each way.  Mendel was taught by the Augustinians, Prevost's order, whereas Leo was taught by the Irish Christian Brothers, the "ICBs" or, as we called them, the International Child Beaters.  Prevost attended the Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park, near the University of Chicago, where I was sent by Brother Coogan, the best and most influential teacher in my life, to do English literary research in my senior year at Leo.  Prevost and I were both altar boys in grade school and attended only Catholic schools.  With those kinds of backgrounds, not surprisingly, we each considered taking up a religious life.  He followed through with it; I gave it up when I discovered girls and lust, though two of my best friends in high school joined the ICBs, Johnny Flynn and Jack O'Keefe.  Both of Prevost's parents were immigrants.  My maternal grandparents and paternal great-grandparents were immigrants.  I was surprised to learn that Prevost has some Creole ancestry on his mother's side and that among his ancestors were both Black slaves and slaveowners.  His family history may explain much of his solicitude towards migrants and minorities.  Of course, that solicitude is wholly consistent with Christ's teachings.

An interesting comparison.  In today's NYTimes, a guest opinion piece by Trump aide Peter Navarro:

The recliner really is made in Vietnam. The plant, just north of Ho Chi Minh City, is legit — it’s got thousands of workers making real furniture. The motor inside the recliner is another story.

The motor arrives from China finished, branded and boxed, shipped by the container load from a factory in the same corporate family as the furniture maker. Workers unbox it and bolt it into the recliner. Within 90 days the recliner sails from Vung Tau and lands at Norfolk, Va., where the Chinese mechanism is declared as Vietnamese. If the paperwork holds, that “Made in Vietnam” claim erases 25 percentage points of American tariff that would otherwise be levied.

It is not an isolated case. On Thursday, the White House is releasing a report documenting the great transshipment scam: a shadow network of more than 40 countries enabling sleight of hand to deceive American consumers and customs officials about where their exports really originate. In the process, these countries are robbing the United States of tens of billions of dollars a year and countless manufacturing jobs.

From the NYTimes on August 6, 2026, an article by Jesse Drucker and Dylan Freedman, Crocs Has A Trick For Dodging Taxes, A Tiny Office in Malta. 

Welcome to Malta. The tiniest country in the European Union, with roughly the population of Milwaukee, it is home to turquoise water beaches and a raging nightclub scene. It is also the world’s hot new corporate tax haven.

The accounting firms KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and EY are aggressively marketing the strategies that Crocs and other companies are using to push profits to Maltese units with ghost offices and no employees. A KPMG presentation reviewed by The New York Times laid out a byzantine arrangement for prospective clients to slash their tax bills by arbitraging U.S. and Maltese rules.

“The choreographers are the Big Four,” said Michael Hamersley, a former tax lawyer at KPMG and EY. “They seek out the opportunity to exploit the tax system.” 

The leak of offshore law firm records known as the Panama Papers linked Maltese politicians to companies enabling tax evasion and money laundering. In 2017, a remote-controlled car bomb killed the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in her driveway after she exposed those connections.

After Malta said in 2023 that it would delay joining an international tax crackdown for six years, American companies including Victoria’s Secret, Kraft Heinz and PepsiCo flocked to the island, setting up hundreds of shell companies to exploit its near-zero tax rate. The number of Maltese subsidiaries established by U.S. companies has soared, up nearly 70 percent over the past three years, according to U.S. securities filings and Maltese corporate records.

The Trump administration turbocharged Malta’s tax appeal. On his first day back in office, President Trump withdrew the United States from the international effort to enforce a 15 percent global minimum corporate tax. This past January, the United States completed an agreement with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development largely exempting American companies from the pact. With more than 130 countries signed on to enforcing a minimum tax, Malta’s tax laws became particularly attractive.

Officially, Malta levies a 35 percent corporate tax, but firms can drive that rate to nearly zero. Accounting firms supply local tax advisers to serve as board members for the shell companies, while colleagues at the same firms audit the entities’ financial statements.

Navarro, a Trump lackey, condemns the avoidance of tariffs, which are sales taxes, while enabling the avoidance of income taxes.  What a surprise!

Crime and Punishment.  I'm making slow progress into the novel, only getting in Part I, chapter 4 at midday today.  In chapter 3, Roskolnikov received the very long letter from his mother that serves as a counterpart to Marmelodov's long, drunken, woebegone rant in the tavern in chapter 2.  The latter gave us the background story of Marmelodov's family, especially the plight of poor Sonya, and the mother's letter gave us the background of Roskolnikov's family, especially the plight of his sister, the poor Dunya.  Sonya's poverty reduced her to prostitution, and Dunya's poverty was forcing her into a loveless marriage to the lout of a lawyer, Pyotr Luzhin.  Both the tavern rant and the letter are literary devices used to establish concisely the backgrounds and plights of principal characters in the novel, and to reinforce Raskolnikov's motive to murder the pawnbroker, which hasn't happened yet.  Both devices strike me as contrived and melodramatic, perhaps excessively desperate, plighty, and exaggerated, but I'm probably too harsh in my judgments.