10/20/2026

 Tuesday, October 20, 2026

1998 Comedian Richard Pryor received the first-ever Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

2015 Vice President Joe Biden confirmed he will not run for President in 2016

2025 A severe Amazon Web Services outage occured in the United States, affecting many apps and websites. 

In bed at 9:10, up at 5; 203.2 1212/74/65 109; 47/63/44, dense fog early, then sunny all day.

Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Entresto at 5:45 a.m. and p.m.

It is a foggy morning in Bayside, reminding me of the morning 45 or 50 years ago when I heard the foghorn at Milwaukee's Lake Park lighthouse moaning throughout our East Side neighborhood, causing me to scramble out of bed, grab my Nikon camera, and get to the park to take this photo of a favorite crabapple tree.  A wonderful experience, a wonderful memory, a wonderful photograph.

A Rant: Despicable, loathsome, reprehensible, repulsive.  What words most accurately describe the current president of the United States?  Can I think of any other president in my lifetime, which began in the first year of FDR's 3rd term, who could be described personally by these words?  I was very angry and disappointed by Obama in some ways (the aftermath of the financial meltdown), as I was by "W" (the financial meltdown, Iraq, etc.) Clinton (NAFTA, Lewinsky), H.W. Bush (“By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all”), Reagan (Iran-Contra, Ed Meese), Nixon (where to begin?), and Johnson (Vietnam), but I don't remember thinking of any of them as personally despicable, loathsome, reprehensible, and repulsive, with the possible exception of Nixon.  Even considering Nixon, Trump stands out in a class by himself.  Nixon signed a lot of great legislation during his shortened presidency (expanded federal regulation in environmental protection, workplace safety, education, and health in addition to all of his malefactions.  What great accomplishments do we credit Trump with?  Slashing eligibility for Medicaid and Obamacare?  For food stamps? Reducing taxes on big corporations and billionaires while exploding the national debt?   Flooding the streets of America's "blue" cities with military troops?  Providing ICE roughly $75 billion in supplemental funding over five years—about seven and a half times its normal annual budget and turning a blind eye to its agents' depredations of both American citizens and immigrants?.  He has striven to destroy democracy and faith in democracy.  He has flagrantly ignored the nation's laws.  He has filled the most powerful federal offices with "yes men," rather than persons qualified and dedicated to carrying out the statutory missions of those offices.  He has demeaned the stature of the office of the presidency by his behavior and his language.  He has increased his own wealth, and that of his children and his company, immensely by dint of his public office.  He has sucked up to dictatorial tyrants and alienated our democratic friends and allies.  He has almost destroyed NATO, which has prevented wars in Europe for about 80 years. 

In 1988, New York’s Spy magazine, by its editors Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen, famously described Trump as "a short-fingered vulgarian,"  a person with coarse, vulgar manners despite his wealth and celebrity.  Have we ever had a more vulgar person than Trump as our president?   I suppose the closest we could come would be Andrew Jackson, who hailed from the early Tennessee frontier, but so far as I know, no one accused him of rape, as E. Jean Carroll did with Trump.  He's not reported as having slept with a sex worker, like Stormy Daniels, while his wife was tending her infant son.  Bill Clinton, of course, had multiple accusers of sexual assault that put him in a league with Trump, and I've never held a high opinion of his character, but he didn't publicly demean his high office by publicly and deliberately using words like "shit," "bullshit," "ass," "damn," and "hell."  He didn't encourage violence in his campaign rallies or offer to pay the legal bills of supporters to beat the shit out of opponents, or encourage an insurrection.  No, Trump is in a class all by himself as a vulgarian in the Oval Office, singularly despicable, loathsome, reprehensible, and repulsive. 

From Israel - What Went Wrong, 2026, by Omer Bartov:

Taking in the full picture, seven million Jewish Israeli citizens in effect now rule over seven million Palestinians, of whom two million are Israeli citizens whose rights are restricted in myriad ways by the state, while three million Palestinians in the West Bank and two million in the Gaza Strip have practically no rights at all. In the view of most Jewish Israeli citizens, those Palestinians do not even have the right to have rights. One can say that Israel was a full democracy for only six months, between December 1966, when the military rule imposed on the Palestinian citizens of the state after the war of 1948 was lifted, and June 1967, when Israel came to occupy territories to which many of the Palestinians expelled in 1948 had fled, most importantly the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. p. 20, Kindle ed.

Israel claims to be a Jewish and democratic state.  It is neither.  Why do we still support this regime?

On July 19, 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in its advisory opinion to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was illegal: “The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power,” noted the court, “through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful.” Consequently, the ICJ ruled that “Israel has an obligation to bring an end to its presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible.” 

The country most responsible for allowing the continuation of this undertaking was and remains the United States, without whose constant military and political support the fighting would have ended much sooner. The United States could have worked instead toward a deal that would have enabled the return of the hostages, the removal of the Hamas leadership from Gaza, the installation of a different Palestinian authority in the territory, and the launching of a political process geared toward resolving the conflict through negotiations rather than violence.  (pp. 25-26). Kindle Edition.  

[Re: the war on Gaza] The country most responsible for allowing the continuation of this undertaking was and remains the United States, without whose constant military and political support the fighting would have ended much sooner. The United States could have worked instead toward a deal that would have enabled the return of the hostages, the removal of the Hamas leadership from Gaza, the installation of a different Palestinian authority in the territory, and the launching of a political process geared toward resolving the conflict through negotiations rather than violence. (pp. 25-26).. Kindle Edition.  

Why are we politically and militarily joined at the hip with such a nation?  What does it say about us? 

Eastern bluebirds, a favorite of mine from 1957, when I turned 16 and was dating Maureen Boyle and listening to Marvin Rainwater sing his hit song on the radio - Gonna Find Me A Bluebird.

Gonna find me a bluebird

Let him sing me a song

Cause my heart's been broken

Much too long

Gonna chase me a rainbow

Through a heaven of blue

Cause I'm all through cryin' over you

There was a time my love was needed

My life completed, my dreams come true

Then came the time my life was haunted

My love unwanted, all for you

Gonna find me a bluebird

Let him sing me a song

Cause my heart's been broken

Much too long

Gonna chase me a rainbow

Through a heaven of blue

Cause I'm all through cryin' over you

I thought of this old favorite this morning as I watched a small flock (5, 6, or probably more) of bluebirds enjoying seeds and suet from our feeders, more bluebirds than I had ever seen together.  

This is one of my favorite photos from the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight on October 10th.  The squirrel was resting on top of one of the long horizontal panels listing the dead soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen killed in the Korean War. I can't say why it strikes me, but I suppose it is for the same reason I'm so fond of a photo I took of a robin resting atop a headstone at Wood National Cemetery.  Also, it reminds me of a self-portrait I stored under a basement stairway in our house outside Saukville.  When I retrieved it for our move to Bayside, it had a white streak on it which I think is mouse poop.  I left the poop as it was, a reminder that sic transit gloria mundi.