1/7/24

 Tuesday, January 7, 2025

D+63

1948 Harry Truman raised taxes for the Marshall Plan to assist in rebuilding Europe after WWII 

1953 Harry Truman announced the American development of the hydrogen bomb

1972 Lewis F. Powell Jr. became a US Supreme Court Justice

1980 Jimmy Carter signed legislation to bail out the Chrysler Corporation with a 1.5 billion dollar loan

1999 Bill Clinton's impeachment trial began in the Senate after the House impeached him for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky

2021 Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla, became the world's richest person, worth $186 billion, overtaking Amazon founder Jeff Bezos

2022 Three men were convicted of murdering black jogger Ahmaud Arbery and sentenced to life in prison in a Georgia court

In bed at 9:20, awake and up at 4:10, after dreaming of George W. Bush during the night.  14° and 3° wind chill outside. Geri got up at 6:45 and I fell asleep on the recliner until 8:10, dreaming about a Vietnam observance.

Prednisone, day 238, 7.5 mg., day 53.  Prednisone at 5.  Other meds at 9:45. 

Master Sergeant Matthew Livelsberger.  In this journal on January 4th, I wrote

Nota bene.  Special Forces Master Sergeant Matthew Livelsberger, who shot himself as he blew up the Tesla cybertruck he was in in Las Vagas this week, wrote in a note "“Why did I personally do it now? I needed to cleanse my mind of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.”  How much attention will be devoted to his need to "relieve myself of the the burden of the lives I took"?  What lives did he take during his time in the Army?  On his three tours in Afghanistan?  Elsewhere?  How did he take them?  What were the circumstances?  We have to believe that information about his service, including combat deaths he was involved in, is available in his Army records or from interviews of fellow Special Forces soldiers he served with.  Will the Army look into this?  Will anyone in the Mainstream News Media?  Anyone?  

Of all places, yesterday's Wall Street Journal has at least made a start. 

Livelsberger also seemed haunted by what he had witnessed during his deployments, and in the last days of his life sought to call attention to what he said were “war crimes.” He reached out to several veterans with prominent social-media platforms or podcasts, saying he wanted to blow the whistle on a 2019 U.S. strike in Afghanistan that killed at least 30 civilians. 

A U.N. report described the U.S. strike in Nimruz province, which was targeting a drug facility, as unlawful. In his message, Livelsberger said he conducted targeting for over 60 buildings “that killed hundreds of civilians in a single day.” 

“I needed to cleanse my mind of the brothers I’ve lost,” he wrote, “and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.”

I wonder whether there are many American military men and women,, currently serving or veterans, who feel "the burden of the lives I took."  I wonder when I started to feel the burden.  It came to me later in life.  I didn't feel it while I was in Vietnam, except for the crew of the C-130  refueler shot down after some confusion during a shift change involving my crew at the TACC.  The mission of F-4s that were scheduled to be refueled by the 130 was canceled and the word never got to the 130.  There was no culpability found on anyone's part, but I felt some and remember it now almost 60 years later.  But I don't remember feeling any "burden" from the Vietnamese lives that were taken by our lethal operations in North and South Vietnam.  I moved from the tent I lived in for about 6 months into a corrugated steel Quonset hut, where someone had placed a sign over the entry door: "Better dead than Red."  Did I feel that way?  I had voted for Goldwater in 1964, the year before I went to Vietnam.  Goldwater was a strong supporter of the war and urged a stronger military effort than Johnson and McNamara were making, even the use of nuclear weapons if necessary.  He saw Vietnam as a vital part of the worldwide fight against communism, the Cold War.  Did I feel that way?  On June 8, 1967, one week after I was discharged from the Marine Corps, 400 buses brought over 30,000 protestors from New York City to the White House.  The Johnson family acknowledged that they could hear the protests from inside the White House. The chant, “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” was particularly hard to ignore.  Much of the killing occurred from the air, from missions out of DaNang dropping high explosive bombs, napalm, white phosphorus, and Agent Orange.  Did I feel the burden of all that killing in 1967?  What I remember now is being emotionally numb in those years after I left Vietnam, deep down depressed, withdrawn, right up to April 30, 1975, when the Marine helicopters lifted terrified Vietnamese off rooftops in Saigon.  Did I become more conscious of the burden of my participation in the war when Andy started dating and ultimately married Anh?  When I had Vietnamese in-laws?  Grandchildren?  I felt the burden more intensely when Russia invaded Ukraine, bringing home to me the fact that we invaded Vietnam.  Putin and his people didn't like it that Ukraine was moving closer to the West; the United States powers didn't like it that Vietnam might be moving closer to China and Russia.  Putin invaded in a 'special military operation", LBJ invaded under the pretext of 'helping a small democracy's struggle for freedom.'

    Back to Master Sergeant Livelsberger:  he claimed to have helped in targeting buildings destroyed on May 9, 2019, in Nimruz province.  The buildings, or some of them, were involved in the opium trade.  The US claimed that the Taliban profited from the opium trade, but so did the Afghan government supported by the US.  Opium poppies were a cash crop in Afghanistan, providing a livelihood for a great many Afghans.  Earlier in the war, U.S. troops had realized that they had to leave opium farms alone to gain Afghan farmers' trust.  In any case, quaere whether, in Afghanistan, opium farmers and processors are legitimate military targets because the Taliban derive income from them, as did the Afghan government.  The attack killed an unknown number of men, women, and children, perhaps as many as 89, none of them Taliban combatants.  The buildings that Livelsberger claimed to have helped target were full of people and included residences.  In one of his emails discovered by the FBI addressed to "Dear Fellow Service Members, Veterans, and Citizens," Livelsberger "claims to have been involved in "war crimes that were covered up during airstrikes in Nimruz province Afghanistan in 2019 by the [administration, Department of Defense, Drug Enforcement Administration] and CIA….The [United Nations] basically called these war crimes, but the administration made them disappear."  

    Livelsberger was another casualty of the U.S.'s 20-year folly in Afghanistan.  Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were all American tragic misadventures since America became the world's economic and military hegemon after World War II and then the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The high and mighty, the 'best and the brightest,' get us involved in these wars while guys like Master Sergeant Livelsberger fight them and live with thoughts of "the brothers I've lost" and "the burden of the lives I took."

Trump's Mar-a-Lago Press Conference today was almost beyond belief - almost.  More lies than I could count.  I have thought for awhile that Trump's second presidency will be more damaging to the country than any of us could imagine.  We on the Left and even in the middle have expected it to be terrible in terms of mass deportations, increased inflation, greater income and wealth inequality, greater annual deficits and total national debt,  loss of civil rights, abuse of power, cronyism, conflicts of interest, deregulation in areas needing regulation for public health and safety, where does the list end???  Trump declined to rule out the use of military force to acquire Greenland from Denmark and the Panama Canal from Panama (or, in his view, from China.)   

Panama Canal,; Greenland, Denmark, and NATO.  The initial commentary after the press conference was about the threat to use 'military or economic force' to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal, I suspect he would use military force if he doesn't get what he wants from the Panama government.  The big question is what does he want to counter China's de facto power over traffic in the Canal.  Respecting Greenland, what is most stunning is the threat of using military force against a fellow member of NATO, a military ally and a friendly nation.  He is presumably laying the groundwork for at least hard treaty negotiations with Denmark about permanently stationing American military units and facilities in Greenland for control of opening Arctic trade routes and, in his view, preferably to outright purchase Greenland.  All of Greenland has a population of about 56,000 people, about the size of Casper, Wyoming, or 1/10th the population of the city of Milwaukee.  The United States government wants unrestricted control over Greenland at least for military, and national defense purposes and beyond that for access to its natural mineral resources.  Trump and his people have 4 years to make that happen.  One question is what pressure this effort will place on NATO unity, already stressed at least by Hungary and Turkey.  Teddy Roosevelt said "Speak softly and carry a big stick."  Trump believes in the second half of that advice, not the first.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, Instagram, Meta.  Zuckerberg announced today that Facebook and Instagram will do away with fact-checkers and that we should expect a lot more harmful material to appear on these social media platforms.  Trump was informed of this during his press conference and was asked whether he thought his threats against these platforms had anything to do with this significant change.  He replied "Probably."  

lAnniversaries thoughts.  First, we have been taught that the Marshall Plan was a great charitable and magnanimous gesture by the victorious, hegemonic United States after WWII.  More than anything, it was designed to forestall the adoption of communism in Western Europe.  We forget, if we ever knew, that the communist parties in France and Italy especially were popular after the war..  Self-interest and the need to preserve capitalism drove the Marshall Plan.

Second, the U.S. led the world in developing, and spurring other nations to develop, weapons of mass destruction.

Third, Lewis Powell made it to the Supreme Court in large measure because of his memo to the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, dated August 23, 1971, regarding the defense of American Capitalism.  Excerpt: 

No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility.

There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism). Also, there always have been critics of the system, whose criticism has been wholesome and constructive so long as the objective was to improve rather than to subvert or destroy.

But what now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.

Sources of the Attack

The sources are varied and diffused. They include, not unexpectedly, the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic. These extremists of the left are far more numerous, better financed, and increasingly are more welcomed and encouraged by other elements of society, than ever before in our history. But they remain a small minority, and are not yet the principal cause for concern.

The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.

Moreover, much of the media — for varying motives and in varying degrees — either voluntarily accords unique publicity to these “attackers,” or at least allows them to exploit the media for their purposes. This is especially true of television, which now plays such a predominant role in shaping the thinking, attitudes and emotions of our people.

. . . 

We in America already have moved very far indeed toward some aspects of state socialism, as the needs and complexities of a vast urban society require types of regulation and control that were quite unnecessary in earlier times. In some areas, such regulation and control already have seriously impaired the freedom of both business and labor, and indeed of the public generally. But most of the essential freedoms remain: private ownership, private profit, labor unions, collective bargaining, consumer choice, and a market economy in which competition largely determines price, quality and variety of the goods and services provided the consumer.

In addition to the ideological attack on the system itself (discussed in this memorandum), its essentials also are threatened by inequitable taxation, and — more recently — by an inflation which has seemed uncontrollable. But whatever the causes of diminishing economic freedom may be, the truth is that freedom as a concept is indivisible. As the experience of the socialist and totalitarian states demonstrates, the contraction and denial of economic freedom is followed inevitably by governmental restrictions on other cherished rights. It is this message, above all others, that must be carried home to the American people. 

Lastly,  Ahmaud Arbery was murdered outside of Brunswick, Glynn County, Georgia where I was stationed between January 21 and March 25, 1964, at the Naval Air Technical Training Center, NAS, Glynco, learning air defense control, my primary MOS or military occupational specialty, a skill I never used against enemy aircraft during my Marine Corps career. 

1/6/25

 Monday, January 6, 2025

D+62

1494 The first Mass in the New World was celebrated at La Isabela, Hispaniola

1946 Pope Pius XII published his encyclical Quemadmodum

2021 Trump rioters stormed the Capitol

In bed at 9:15, awake at 4:99, and up at 4:10.  20°, wind chill 1°,  WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY.  Lake effect snow up to 3 inches and wind gusts up to 32 mph, wind chills around 1°.  Noon appointment with Dr. Ryzka, yech. . .  The advisory turned out to be a false alarm.   

Prednisone, day 237, 7.5 mg., day 52.  Prednisone at 5 with banana bread I baked yesterday afternoon.   Other meds around 7.

4th yahrzeit of the Insurrection is marked by the certification of the votes electing as the nation's chief executive and commander-in-chief of our military the man who summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of the attack on our government.  Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate)   In this morning's Times, Jonathan Alter wrote:' 

 “Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem,” Donald Trump said the day after the riot he inspired. Mr. Trump appeared to have crossed out the line in his statement addressed to the rioters: “You do not represent me. You do not represent our movement.” Even then, he couldn’t bring himself to say that. But he did say that they did not represent the country, and the guilt of those who ransacked the Capitol hardly seemed ripe for revision.

Of course it didn’t take long for Mr. Trump to move from condemning the rioters to celebrating them. And with his victory in November, the narrative of the most serious threat to the American Republic since the Civil War is suddenly up for grabs.

Back then, many of us comforted ourselves that for all the trauma, at least Mr. Trump was gone for good. Now he’s back, his election to be certified a second time on the same date in the same chamber desecrated by his insurrectionists.

NY Times series on regret.  I read Ariel Dorfman's contribution to the NY Times series "How to Live With Regret, a series exploring the nature of regret and the role it plays in all our lives."  On August 8,, 2024, in the introduction to the series, the writer asked "Who among us hasn’t spent at least one fitful night thinking over something we said or did that we wish we could take back — a cruel comment made in a moment of anger, the not-so-white lie we told our partner, the knee-jerk decision to quit a job or end a friendship."  One fitful night? If only!

No longer in Lethean foliage caught

Begin the preparation for your death

And from the fortieth winter by that thought

Test every work of intellect or faith,

And everything that your own hands have wrought

And call those works extravagance of breath

That are not suited for such men as come

proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.

. . .  

Things said or done long years ago,

Or things I did not do or say

But thought that I might say or do,

Weigh me down, and not a day

But something is recalled,

My conscience or my vanity appalled.

W. .B. Yeats, Vacillation, stanzas 3 & 5

A fleeting but related thought at 7:54 a.m.,: My appointment with Dr. Ryzka is at noon so I have 3 hours before I have to leave the house and go into the 'winter advisory' weather.  These are 3 hours of my life that I will never have again, as precious as any other 3 hours in my life.  Each moment, each hour, each day.  Once we've lived in it and through it, it is gone, spent, exhausted, expired, unique and never to be repeated. 

I had this thought as I read the first essay in the Times' regret series, "The Emotion I Didn’t Expect as a New Parent: Regret" by Miguel Macias, a Spanish journalist.  He wrote

But life is long, and it has many chapters. We open new doors and close old ones. We change jobs, we marry, we divorce; we move to other neighborhoods, other cities, other countries. Friendships start, end or change over time. We are healthy, we are sick. We lose people we love. At every turn we leave behind versions of ourselves that we will never be and versions of our lives that we will never live. How can we possibly not second-guess anything? Not wonder how things might have been if we had made that other decision, taken the other job, gone on a date with that other person? If we don’t allow ourselves to feel regret — really feel it and come to some sort of peace with it — we risk being haunted by it.

 I am not a 'no regrets' guy.  I have regrets.  At the top of my list, I deeply regret not being more attentive to my mother after I left home at 18 especially after I married and had children.  I regret going 13 years without speaking to my father.  I regret letting good friendships lapse, especially Vicky Conte and Ara Cherchian.  I regret causing pain to those close to me.  I have deeply mixed feelings about some things, including my first marriage and divorce, my service in the Marine Corps and in Vietnam, becoming a lawyer, accepting the offer of a full-time position on the MU law faculty right out of law school, resigning my tenured position, declining to reseek tenure on my return, leaving the House of Peace and St. Francis parish, the list could go on but I don't want to dwell on it.

When My Dead Father Called by Robert Bly

Last night I dreamt my father called to us.

He was stuck somewhere. It took us

A long time to dress, I don't know why.

The night was snowy; there were long black roads.

Finally we reached the little town, Bellingham.

There he stood, by a streetlamp in cold wind,

Snow blowing along the sidewalk. I noticed

The uneven sort of shoes that men wore

In the early Forties. And overalls. He was smoking.

Why did it take us so long to get going? Perhaps

He left us somewhere once, or did I simply 

Forget he was alone in winter in some town?

August Third by May Sarton

These days

Lifting myself up

Like a heavy weight,

Old camel getting to her knees,

I think of my mother

And the inexhaustible flame

That kept her alive

Until she died.

She knew all about fatigue

And how one pushes it aside

For staking up the lilies

Early in the morning,

The way one pushes it aside

For a friend in need,

For a hungry cat.

Mother, be with me.

Today on your birthday

I am older than you were

When you died

Thirty-five years ago.

Thinking of you

The old camel gets to her knees,

Stands up,

Moves forward slowly

Into the new day.

If you taught me one thing

It was never to fail life. 

Dr. Ryzka.  Bottom line - stay on 7.5 mg./day of prednisone for now.  He will Prescribe Kevzara/sarilumab for me and hope it is approved by the VA.  It's an injectable, like Trulicity, and is expensive, $4,582.80 cash price for 2 pens, 1 month's supply.  If the prescription is approved, after the 2nd injection, I should drop to 5 mg. of prednisone/day.  Next appointment in 2 months.

1/5/25

 Sunday, January 5, 2025

D+61

1531 Pope Clement VII forbade English King Henry VIII to remarry

1886 "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson was published

1895 French Captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason

1957 US President Eisenhower asked Congress to send troops to the Middle East

1968 Dr Benjamin Spock was indicted for conspiring to violate draft law

In bed at 9, awake at 2:30, up at 3:10, lit my Kitty candle thinking of her and of Tom's upcoming 2nd yartzeit.  9° outside with a wind chill of  -3°.  As usual, the thermostat shows 71° but I am cold even in my sweat pants and long-sleeved turtleneck. . . Now I've wrapped my green ngingey around my shoulders like some old geezer (oh, wait, I am an old geezer) and I'm still cold.  I brought up two thermometers/hygrometers from the basement to put in the TV room and my bedroom, which seems to be the coldest room in the house.

Prednisone, day 236, 7.5 mg., day 51.  Prednisone at 5 a.m., with some soda bread.   Other meds at 4!!!

Ann Telnaes has resigned from the Washington Post after Jeff Bezos spiked this editorial cartoon she submitted for publication.  It shows Bezos and other billionaires on their knees groveling at the feet of an imperial Donald J. Trump.  Mickey Mouse, i.e., Disney Corporation, owner of ABC television network which cravenly settled Trump's defamation suit against it for $15 million, is shown prostrate.  The editorial page editor cravenly denied that the cartoon was spiked because it offended Bezos and said it was rejected simply because it was repetitious of stories it had run and was about to run, as if editorial cartoons aren't always related to current news stories.    

Europe Against the Jews I started reading on Kindle this book by German historian Götz Aly. I am reminded of the excellent Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews by James Carroll.  Both authors are non-Jews and both honestly relate the sorry history of Christendom's centuries of persecution of Jews.  The two books remind us of Mankind's capacity for cruelty, savagery, and evil (homo hominis lupus) and that Christianity did nothing to prevent it; indeed, Christianity was a precipitating cause of it, the main point of the book by Carroll, a former Catholic priest in the Paulist Order.   “If you think of religion as a great lake,” he warns, “it’s a lake of gasoline, and all it’s going to take is someone to drop a match into it for a terrible conflagration.”

On a related note, this afternoon I watched two items on YouTube about Winston Churchill, Jews, Zionism, and the Palestinians.  The first was a dicussion by a British commentator on the book "Churchill: His Times and His Crimes."  He focused his comments on the book's chapter dealing with Hitler's admiration for Jews generally, not an attitude widely shared by his peers in England, and his disdain for Arabs.  

Even though he was wary of communist Jews, Churchill strongly supported Zionism and he described Jews as "the most formidable and the most remarkable race", whose "first loyalty will always be towards [Jews]". . ." We owe to the Jews a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all wisdom and learning put together."

Churchill described the Arabs as a "lower manifestation" than the Jews, whom he viewed as a "higher grade race" compared to the "great hordes of Islam"

Regarding Zionism and Jews controlling lands occupied for centuries by Arab Muslims, he said:

I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, though he may have lain there for a very long time I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race or at any rate a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the Red Indians had any right to say, 'American continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here'. They had not the right, nor had they the power."

This statement is of a piece with William F. Buckley's statements in 1957, when he wrote National Review’s most infamous editorial, entitled “Why the South Must Prevail.” Is the white community in the South, he asked, “entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically?”  His answer was crystal clear: “The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because for the time being, it is the advanced race. " . . . “It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.” He added: “The claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage.”  It is in large measure this kind of thinking and this value system that we are still fighting about in 2025, but referring to the conflict between "voter fraud" and "voter suppression."

In any case, the other YouTube video I watched was a speech by Andrew Roberts titled "Winston Churchill - The Great British Zionist" at the Jewish Learning Conference in 2019.  Roberts is a conservative historian, journalist, and member of the House of Lords.  He wrote a biography of Churchill, Churchill: Walking With Destiny.  Before his Jewish audience, he extolled Churchill's long and early embrace of Zionism, which comported with his British and White European imperialist values.  I stopped listening to his lecture before its conclusion, but I suspect he did not make a point of Churchill's racist contempt for Arabs.

David came over to help his mother disassemble the Christmas tree and get it and other Christmas paraphernalia down to the basement.  He is a blessing.  I drove up to Sendik's to get some white vinegar to put in the dishwasher running the 'sanitize' cycle after Geri cleaned out the machine's filter.

Anniversaries.  The high and mighty pope told the high and mighty king he couldn't do something.  We know how much good that did.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde reminds of my 'monster story' binge-reading phase.  I read the classics: Mary Wollstonecraft's 1818 Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, and Bram Stoker's 1897 Dracula and lastly, Stevenson's 1886 Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde.  Poor Frankenstein was just a lonely guy looking for love in our cruel, rejecting world.  Dr. Jekyll thirsted for power and Mr. Hyde was his raging libido.  Dracula of course lusted for blood.  I enjoyed each of the books, perhaps Dracula the most of the three.  I had other binge-watching era, like whale books after reading Moby Dick, and an epic saga period, with El Cid, Chanson de Roland, and Beowulf after reading The Iliad.  I think I enjoyed all of them, but probably The Iliad the most.

Captain Dreyfus was yet one more victim of vicious European, Catholic, anti-semitism.  He and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are distant, indirect relatives. 

In 1957, President Eisenhower, himself a 5-star general, asked Congress to send troops to the Middle East.  How quaint.  How far we have moved from those days in terms of presidential powers.

1968, the world was falling apart and the United States was indicting the nation's baby doctor for conspiracy because of his, and much of the world's, opposition to the Vietnam War.  I was about to start my second semester of law school, trying to forget about Vietnam but reading about it, hearing about it, and watching it every night on the nightly news from Walter Cronkite on CBS, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC, or Peter Jennings andFrank Reynolds on ABC.  There was no escaping Vietnam,  There is still no escaping Vietnam.

1/4/25

Saturday, January 4, 2025

D+ 60

1965 LBJ's "Great Society" State of the Union Address

1974 Richard Nixon refused to hand over tapes subpoenaed by Watergate Committee

1975 Boston Bruins Dave Forbes became the 1st athlete indicted for criminal assault for excessive violence during play; stick butt-end the face of Minnesota North Star Henry Boucha caused permanent vision damage; court case ended in a hung jury, and a civil settlement was eventually reached

1995 Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House of Representatives

2007 The 110th United States Congress elected Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House

2010 The Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building at 829.8 m (2,722 ft), officially opened in Dubai, with exterior lighting provided by Sarah Clausen et al.

In bed by 9, awake and up by 4:10 with a nasty dream of a school year starting and missing the first two classes of the semester, disorganized, out of touch.  By 6 a.m., I've emptied and refilled the dishwasher & gotten the kitchen shipshape.  It's 10° outside, wind chilll -7° .  By 7:30, it's down to 9° and a wind chill of -8°, and a cold week ahead.     

Prednisone, day 235, 7.5 mg., day 50.  Prednisone at 5 a.m.   I've been on this steroid for 8 months now and will see Dr. Ryzka on Monday.  Both shoulders have been sore for the last two months and my hips are stiff.  Is the PMR returning despite the prednisone?   

Obscenity in America.  de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America; I wish he were around to write Obscenity in America.  Our daily newspapers and other media provide plenty of examples.  Here's one from this morning's NY Times:  "Trump Has Reeled in More Than $200 Million Since Election Day: The president-elect has boasted about the donations for his inauguration, library and political activities from those seeking favor or perhaps in some cases, atonement" by Kenneth P. Vogel, Maggie Haberman, and Theodore Schleifer.  "The total haul for the committee financing his inaugural festivities — at least $150 million raised, with more expected — will eclipse the record-setting $107 million raised for his 2017 inauguration . . . Inaugural committees can accept unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations, but not foreign nationals. . . Donations of at least $1 million grant access to the top package of perks related to several days of festivities in the run-up to the inauguration on Jan. 20, including what are touted as “intimate” dinners with Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance, though often with many attendees, as well as black-tie balls after the swearing-in."

Nota bene.  Special Forces Master Sergeant Matthew Livelsberger, who shot himself as he blew up the Tesla cybertruck he was in in Las Vagas this week, wrote in a note "“Why did I personally do it now? I needed to cleanse my mind of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.”  How much attention will be devoted to his need to "relieve myself of the the burden of the lives I took"?  What lives did he take during his time in the Army?  On his three tours in Afghanistan?  Elsewhere?  How did he take them?  What were the circumstances?  We have to believe that information about his service, including combat deaths he was involved in, is available in his Army records or from interviews of fellow Special Forces soldiers he served with.  Will the Army look into this?  Will anyone in the Mainstream News Media?  Anyone?  

Alicia Arritt, a former Army nurse who dated Sergeant Livelsberger in 2018 and was a friend of his until he died, said that he had been a generous person who leaned conservative but was rarely overtly political.  After years of deployments, she said, he struggled with mental health issues that he tried to conceal so that he could continue to serve in the Special Forces.  “He needed help, and he was afraid to get it," she said, “which is very common for guys who do his job.”  Will the Army look into this?  Will anyone in the Mainstream News Media?  Anyone? 

My wife is a blessing in my life.  Her cousin Sue, who, God bless her, has purchased a ticket to fly up from North Carolina to help Geri during her first week after knee replacement surgery, called her this morning to schmooze.  Just listening to Geri on the phone with Sue, or with other good friends, reminds me of how alive she is, how much she lives in the moment and is engaged with day-to-day life, unlike me who spends so much time ruminating about the past or fretting about the future.  When I started keeping a list on my iPhone of what I love about her, the first item was her mellifluous laugh which I so often hear when she is on the phone with Sue or another friend.

18 Questions, 40 Israeli thinkers.  Yesterday and today I've listened to the interview of Haviv Rettig Gur, an Israeli journalist.  Like the others in the series, at least so far, he is very knowledgeable, intelligent, and articulate.   Today I started listening to Einat Wilf, an Israeli-born, IDF veteran, former Labor member of the Knesset, and writer.    She received a BA from Harvard, an MBA in France, and a Ph.D. at Cambridge University.  She is a 'hard-liner' about the War in Gaza, asserting that the Netanyahu government has made 4 mistakes.  First, accepting Biden's fiction that Hamas does not represent the Palestinians and "Palestinianism" the position that Jews have no right to a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland. Second,  we should not be resupplying our enemy until they surrender.,  Third, we should not have dealt with Qatar as some useful or benevolent element rather than realizing that they are an enemy. Fourth, Egypt's role vis-a-vis Gaza, with their common border.  She is brilliant.  I want to listen to this interview again.  I have had somewhat similar thoughts about other interviews I have listened to if for no other reason than because the thoughts, assertions of facts and opinions, and analyses are expressed so rapidly that it is hard for me to follow and assimilate them.  She has me rethinking the Gaza War issues.

   

1/3/25

Friday, January 3, 2025

D+59

1972 Andrew Charles Clausen was born

In bed at 9, awake around 1, and unable to sleep with bait bucket thoughts, up at 1:40.  It's a cold day, 17° at 8 a.m., wind chill of -2°.   

Prednisone, day 234, 7.5 mg., day 49.   Prednisone at  5:30.  Other meds at 7:30.   

Again?  So soon?  A story in this morning's NY Times reports that if human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 bird flu virus becomes commonplace, experts fear a pandemic that could be far more deadly than Covid-19.   In mid-December, the C.D.C. confirmed the nation’s first “severe case” of H5N1 in a southwest Louisiana patient who was exposed to sick and dead birds in a backyard flock. Last month, California declared a state of emergency over bird flu in dairy cows.  Scores of people in the United States have contracted bird flu over the past year, most of them from infected cows or poultry. The overwhelming majority of the cases have been mild.

The case involving the Louisiana patient, however, was followed by an unsettling finding. Some of the genetic samples from the patient contained gene mutations that might help H5N1 infect people more easily. The patient remains in critical condition.

Experts know that each time the virus infects another person, it has another opportunity to mutate in a way that might increase its capability of spreading among people. In another troubling finding, one of the mutations identified in the Louisiana patient also turned up in a viral sample taken from a teenager with a severe case of bird flu in British Columbia. 

There can be little doubt that funding for research on bird flu detection, testing, therapeutics, and vaccines will be cut under the Trump administration, especially if RFK, Jr., becomes Secretary of Health and Human Services.  Trump 1 brought us the Covid-19 pandemic; will Trump II bring us a bird flu pandemic?   Should I stop filling the bird feeders?  Should I start another set of watercolor notebooks for Trump II?

 The End of the Golden Age.   Last night and early this morning, I listened to this article in The Atlantic by Franklin Foer from the April 2024 print edition.  As one would expect from him and from anything printed in The Atlantic, it was an excellent piece of writing, loaded with historical information and analysis and triggering many memories.  The golden age of which he wrote was a period when American Jews were widely accepted within American society and culture and anti-semitism was low.  It was also a period when Liberalism dominated political and cultural life in the country and the State of Israel was widely accepted as legitimate, democratic, and allied with America and Western Europe in values and international allegiance.  Today American Jews are vulnerable to increasing anti-semitism from the Left and the Right and Israel, identified by many Americans with Benjamin Netanyahu, is increasingly considered a fascist, racist, apartheid state. 

Lunch with CBG was wonderful.

1/2/25

 Thursday, January 2, 2025

D+58

1905 Conference of 23 industrial trade unionists in Chicago issued the "Industrial Union Manifesto," calling for a convention to be held in June, laying the groundwork for the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

1999 A brutal snowstorm caused 14 inches of snow in Milwaukee and 19 inches in Chicago, where temperatures plunged to -13°F; 68 deaths were reported

2018 US Senator Al Franken resigned

2021 President Donald Trump said to Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger "I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have” 

2023 Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin collapsed in cardiac arrest and was revived by CPR on the field in an NFL game against the Bengals in Cincinnati

In bed at 9, awake around 3, and up around 3:30, thinking about Daniel Gordis and Michelle Fraenkel on Eighteen Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers speaking faster than I could follow.  I lit a log in the fireplace and my Kitty candle thinking of loneliness and age-related vulnerabilities.  Dozed off at some point and woke up near 8. 

Prednisone, day 233, 7.5 mg., day 48.   Prednisone at 4:45 with some pretzels.   Other meds at 10 a.m. 

Alice Munro's Passive Voice is a very long essay by Rachel Aviv in the December 23, 2024, online edition of The New Yorker and in the December 30, 2024, and January 6, 2025, print edition. The title in the print edition is You Won't Get Free Of It.  I listened to it online because of my decreasing ability to read print, even with adjustable font size on my laptop, and read along parts of it.  It has knocked me for a bit of a loop because it describes the sexual abuse of Alice Munro's then-9-year-old daughter Andrea and reminds me of my having learned late in life of the childhood sexual abuse of someone dear to me.  She had also been subject in her childhood to other forms of emotional abuse and neglect.  She never told her mother of the sexual molestation by a relative for many reasons.  She was very young.  She didn't know how.  She was frightened and confused.  She knew her mother loved the molesting relative and didn't want to hurt her mother.  All the abuse and neglect in her childhood had an effect on her personality development and thus she carried the effects of it throughout her life.  Despite the damage done to her, she became a good and loving person, a blessing to all around her. How many women have been sexually abused or somehow traumatized in childhood?  How little we know of the formative experiences in the lives of others, even those close to us.  How little men know of women's lives.  A year or more ago at a family gathering, I mentioned feeling vulnerable walking to or getting into my car in a supermarket parking lot and a young female in-law said "Now you know what it's like being a woman."  Women are so much more vulnerable than men because most predators are men and they prey on those who are vulnerable.  The strong do what they will; the weak suffer what they must.  Who is weaker than a child, especially a female child preyed upon by a powerful and sometimes trusted adult?  Hard thoughts to think in the predawn darkness.

Phil Klay, Pete Hegseth, J.D. Vance, Suckers & Losers.  Phil Klay was a Marine officer in the invasion of Iraq.  In 2004, after graduating from Dartmouth, he went through Officer Candidate School in Quantico, or what was called Training & Test Regiment or T&T when I went through it  42 years before him.  After his discharge from the Marines, Klay wrote two award-winning books, Redeployment, a collection of short stories, and Missionaries, a novel.  In this morning's NY Times, he has an op-ed titled "Trump, Hegseth and the Honor of the American Military."  Excerpts;

In September 2016 I went to a televised forum with the two leading presidential candidates and asked Donald Trump about military policy in Iraq, where I’d served with the Marine Corps several years earlier. He told me America should “take the oil.” Then he said it again: “Take the oil.” . . . A few years later, explaining our military presence in Syria, Mr. Trump said he was keeping troops there “only for the oil.” What a thing to ask soldiers to fight for.

When it comes to articulating a vision of American warfare, Donald Trump is the least hypocritical president of my adult life. He does not promise to spread democracy, or human rights, or a liberal, international rules-based order. He does not claim we’re a shining city on a hill. “We’ve got a lot of killers,” he’s said instead. “What? You think our country’s so innocent?” 

But [Trump's] sort of amoral pragmatism, especially in matters of war, has its limits and dangers. It will inevitably run up against a core belief in America’s identity as a nation, the belief in the moral obligation to strive to conduct and fight wars honorably. It’s a belief I still hold, and that millions of Americans do, too. 

 Later, Klay assesses Trump's nomination of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense which is:

most notable to me because it strikes at the core of the honor of the American military, is his signature achievement as a political advocate — helping persuade Mr. Trump to intervene in the cases of three men accused or convicted of war crimes. Afterward, Mr. Trump publicly heralded the men as “great warriors,” and later invited two of them, including Clint Lorance, onstage at a private fund-raiser.

Here’s how Mr. Lorance earned that invitation.

In 2012, he was sent as a new commander without combat experience to lead a platoon of young soldiers deployed to Afghanistan with the largely hopeless mission of defeating the local Taliban and winning over the local population. One day he threatened to kill a farmer and his son, a 3- or 4-year-old boy, and a day later ordered his men to shoot within inches of unarmed villagers, including near children. “It’s funny watching” the villagers “dance,” he said. Mr. Lorance’s men, combat veterans, eventually balked at his orders, and refused his instructions to make a false report about taking fire from the village. The next day he ordered fire on unarmed Afghans over a hundred yards away from the platoon, killing them, and radioed a false report claiming the bodies couldn’t be searched.

And here the difference between an idealistic and an amoral vision of America becomes concrete. Because those soldiers, who’d seen combat and watched their friends suffer terrible wounds, turned Mr. Lorance in that same evening, 14 of them eventually offering testimony against him in the court-martial that found him guilty of second-degree murder.

That testimony meant nothing to the elite media personalities like Sean Hannity and Mr. Hegseth who took up Mr. Lorance’s cause, though. Mr. Trump’s pardon of their former leader was a final betrayal for the troops who served in that platoon.

When I was in Vietnam I heard stories of American soldiers and Marines collecting body parts of dead VC, mostly noses and ears.  I heard rumors of captured VC being taken up in helicopters and pushed overboard if they wouldn't provide information sought by ARVN intelligence agents.  I had no way of knowing what was true and what may have been fanciful 'scuttlebutt,' bullshit.  One thing I know for sure is that we Americans have committed war crimes in every major conflict in which we have participated.  Some of the crimes have been prosecuted by military courts; most have not.  See the article in The New Yorker, "The War Crimes That the Military Buried" by Parker Yesko in its series "In The Dark," Series 3.  I also know for sure that the United States has refused to submit itself to the International Criminal Court where war crimes are prosecuted by an international tribunal.  Five other countries are not members: Russia, China, Israel, Libya, and Qatar.  I also know that Trump and Hegseth by their actions have virtually encouraged the commission of war crimes by American combatants.

One of the Eighteen Questions for Forty Israeli Thinkers is "Is the IDF the most moral army in the world?"  The responses I have heard so far though only from a small minority of the 40 thinkers,  have been intelligent and thoughtful.  I can't summarize them but I suspect that, if the same question were put to most Americans, their immediate inclination would be to answer affirmatively.  In a real sense, the question isn't a serious one, but rather one that invites other questions.  It's hard to think of any organization whose primary purpose to to kill people and destroy stuff as 'moral' but that's the world we live in, one in which nations must maintain such organizations.  In any event, we Americans are brought up to think of our military as comprised of heroes, guys (mostly) who protect us from evildoers who would steal our wealth, destroy our freedoms, violate our women, and corrupt our children, not as guys who kill and destroy to protect the major economic interests in the country.  They wouldn't agree with Marine Medal of Honor winner General Smedley Butler who wrote that "War is a Racket" designed to protect Wall Street and corporate America.  I note that while Israel has seized and occupied land immediately adjacent to the 1948 UN-created borders of Israel, they have not sent the IDF to lands thousands of miles away from Israel proper.  Over 156,000 active-duty US troops were serving overseas as of March 2024.

"Thoughts and prayers"  Many, perhaps most, of the political and law enforcement officials who have spoken at press conferences about the terrorist slaughter in New Orleans have uttered what has become the trite words "Our hearts go out to the families" and "our thoughts and prayers" are with the victims and their families.   The words have become clichés, worse than clichés.

1/1/25

 Wednesday, January 1, 2025

D+57

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.  I start this new year - perhaps my last, perhaps not - reflecting on how much beauty surrounds me, beauty in nature, beauty in things, beauty in people.  In searching for this photo of an exquisite mushroom that I espied serendipitously in our front yard one day, at one moment, I passed hundreds of other photos of things and people of beauty, of Geri, or Geri and Lilly, of Andy and his children, of Sarah and Christian, of Ed Felsenthal, of birds, of trees, and so much more.  As I type this, I also watch a gray squirrel with his beautiful white belly and ear tufts performing an acrobatics show for me on a suet cake holder.  Extraordinary! and common!  I think of Mary Oliver's When Death Comes: "I think of each life as a flower, as common / as a field daisy, and as singular."  My hope is that, despite my cynicism, pessimism, and dejection at the wrongs and miseries of the world, I remember that, as I've told my children and still believe, we are surrounded by saints and miracles.  We just have to open our eyes wide enough to see them.

1946 Emperor Hirohito of Japan announced he was not a god

1950 Ho Chi Minh began the offensive against French troops in Indo-China

1951 Chicago broadcaster Paul Harvey began his national radio program "Paul Harvey News and Comment" from WENR-AM for the ABC network

1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect

In bed at 10, awake and up around 5:10.      

Prednisone, day 232, 7.5 mg., day 47,  Prednisone at 5:30.   Other meds at 8:15.  

Our New Year's Eve was quiet, as usual.  I managed to stay awake until 10 o'clock watching Random Hearts, starring Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas with minor luminaries in supporting roles (Edie Falco, Kate Mara, Bonnie Hunt, Peter Coyote, and even the great director Sydney Pollack [Absence of Malice, Out of Africa]).  I baled out at 10, a half hour before the end of the movie because I was already an hour past my target bedtime of 9.  I looked up reviews of the movie and its Wikipedia entry to learn of its ending and found it got pretty bad reviews, surprising for a Sydney Pollack film with a good cast.  Roger Ebert noted that Harrison Ford showed the emotional range of a brick, as usual. . .  Our New Year's Eve dinner was weisswurst, German sauerkraut, and green salad. followed by much Sendik's popcorn during the movie.  I was up and about around 5, Geri at 8, and back in bed before 9.   

Recent history of resolutions: 

2022:   This year I should try. 1. Try not to be a jerk, selfish, self-centered, judgmental, supercilious, intellectually vain,  pity partyer.   2. Try to be kinder, more understanding, more open, more accepting of differences (except for MAGA types and dangerous Republicans.) 3. Try to paint more, be more communicative,  draw more, walk more.  OTOH: Emily Dickinson "In this short life that only lasts an hour  / How much - how little - is within our power?"

2023:  Stay more in touch with Ed Felsenthal and Larry Anderson.  Try to maintain some semblance of the Clausen/Lowe/Goldberg dinners.  Those resolutions (or goals) came to mind quickly but I got to thinking more about the passing year and the upcoming one on the way to Costco with Geri.  The past year saw two good, very long-term friends leave us - TSJ by his unexpected death and DPL by moving far away.  It had me move one year closer to my own death, and all of us marching along the same route.  I'm thinking about my life this past year and my reflections on some of it as reflected in this journal.  How much of this year have I wasted with negativity?  How many opportunities to do some good, both for others and for myself, have I squandered?  How much, by sins of commission and more by sins of omission, have I lived out the words of Yeats' Vacillation?  Things said or done long years ago, / Or things I did not do or say / But thought that I might say or do, / Weigh me down, and not a day / But something is recalled, / My conscience or my vanity appalled.  Today and tomorrow are days for some self-reflection.

2024:  1. Make a new friend or revive an old one.  Why?  Reduce loneliness, improve my outlook on life, mental health, and mood. 2. Try chair yoga again.  Why?  Improve mobility, flexibility, agility, mood. 3. Work on living, not dying before I die.  Why? Why not?  "I'm gonna live till I die! I'm gonna laugh 'stead of cry.  Before my number's up, I'm gonna fill my cup.  I'm gonna live, live, live, until I die!"  Mickey the Mope.  4. Work on kindness and forgiveness, including for myself.  Why?  Kindness and forgiveness make life better, easier, brighter, more tolerable even on hard days.  I can't undo my sins and failures but I can try to atone.

On New Year's Day last year, I wrote:

I'm grateful that 2023 is finished.  It was in some ways a rough year, starting with TSJ's death and the long ordeal of the eulogy.  Considerable pain challenges, IC, CPP, RP, Meijer's parking lot, the 11/25 visit to VA ER and Dr. Uilein, visits to Dr. Chatt, Dr. Cheng in PM&R, Dr. Shankar in the Pain Clinic, visits to the Urology Clinic, PT Jennifer Garrison in Physical Therapy, OT Melinda Matusewic in Whole Health Clinic. LPN Jody Kressin with Healing Touch, Lou and Mary with the Mindfulness Meditation group, etc.  This month alone starts the year with Jody on 1/8, hypnotherapy on 1/9, Eye Clinic on 1/11, Urology on 1/25, acupuncture on 1/29, PM&R on 1/31, plus 5  separate 'video connects', some with Melinda, some with I'm not sure whom.  I'm grateful to the VA for the comprehensive medical care they provide and for Ed Felsenthal's help in enrolling me.  I look at a list like this and wonder if I'm a hypochondriac, a Munchausen misfit, but I don't imagine the pain and discomfort, the failing eyesight, diabetes, etc.  As my Dad used to say, "My parts are failing."  If we were cars, the parts could be replaced.  As it is, they can realistically only be treated, but nonetheless, I'm grateful.

Today is a bit similar, in some ways a rough year, including Ed Felsenthat's death and my inability to attend his funeral, though Tom Devitt flew i.n from California for it.  Again I experienced considerable pain challenges but also considerable relief.  The chronic pelvic pain/interstitial cystitis that has been a recurring challenge for years was resolved, for a time at least, by fulguration of lesions in my bladder on March 5th.  That surgery was followed however by persistent crippling pain in both shoulders, both wrists, and hands that had me sleeping on my recliner rather than in bed for a couple of months  The pain was severe, intense, a 10 out of 10.  It was finally diagnosed as polymyalgia rheumatica or PMR by the VA rheumatologist, Dr. Ryzka,  on May 13th.  He put me on prednisone which finally provided pain relief after about 10 days, but the shoulder pain returned on November 11th and has been with me ever since. I see Dr. Ryzka next Monday and I expect that he will order another blood draw to look for heightened markers of inflammation.   If it's PMR again, I suspect he will increase my dosage from the current 7.5 mg./day, which I have been on for a month and a half.  If it's not PMR, it looks like osteoarthritis.  Last year in January, I had 5 visits to the VA medical center plus 5 video visits.  This year, I have only 2 visits scheduled, Dr. Ryzka and a regular eye exam for glaucoma, macular degeneration, etc.

Our Town, Our Country.  A man identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a native of Texas who had served with the U.S. Army, drove a rented pickup truck into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans early this morning, killing at least 10 of them and injuring more than 30.  He also shot 2 NOPD officers and was himself killed in the exchange of gunfire..  The occurrence is being described as a terrorist incident.  An ISIS flag was found on the vehicle and two IEDs were found on the flatbed.  Grover's Corners.  Bedford Falls.  Riverdale.  USA!  USA!  USA! 

Eighteen Questions, Forty Israeli Thinkers.   I watched and listened to Daniel Gordis answering the questions today...  Brilliant, articulate speaker.