1/28/2026

 Wednesday, January 28, 2026

D+82

2021 Bernie Sanders' mittens that he wore to Biden's inauguration raised $1.8 million for Vermont charities after the images went viral

2025 The Office of Personnel Management offered a "deferred resignation" scheme to the 2 million federal government employees to announce their resignation by February 6, while stating that employees who resigned would still receive salary and benefits until September 30, 2025. 

In bed at  9:40. up at 3:40.  3/-9/12/2 

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at  a.m.  Kevzara injection at  a.m.  

From "After Donations, Trump Administration Revoked Rule Requiring More Nursing Home Staff; Executives who donated to the president’s super PAC met privately with him and urged a repeal of the rule, which was intended to prevent neglect of patients" from this morning's New York Times, by Ken Vogel and Christina Jewett.

Starting in early August, the industry began making donations that over the course of weeks would eventually total nearly $4.8 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.

Later that same month, a handful of nursing home executives who had given the biggest donations joined industry lobbyists at Mr. Trump’s golf club in suburban Washington to plead their case, according to campaign finance filings and people familiar with the meeting.

Over light lunch fare, the contingent “urged the president to formally repeal the harmful minimum staffing mandate, which would have surely forced providers throughout the country to close their doors to new residents — or possibly close their doors altogether,” Bill Weisberg, the founder and chief executive of Saber Healthcare Group, recounted in a text message to The New York Times.

Less than one month after the lunch meeting, Trump administration lawyers quietly stopped defending the pending staffing rule in court against challenges from the industry.

Complete victory came a couple of months after that, when the White House approved a full revocation.  

The best government money can buy.  So it goes. 

1/27/2025

 Tuesday, January 27, 2026

1825 US President James Monroe urged Congress to approve the creation of Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi River, for the relocation of Eastern Indian tribes to 'promote their welfare and happiness" 

1945 Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps in Poland - now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day

1973 Paris Peace Accords signed, ending America's then-longest war and the draft.

1992 Presidential candidate Bill Clinton & Genifer Flowers accused each other of lying over her assertion that they had a 12-year affair

2025  President Trump signed an executive order eliminating "gender radicalism in the military", targeting transgender personnel in the military

2025  The Senate voted to confirm Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary, making him the highest-ranking LGBTQ official to run the U.S. Treasury and the highest-ranking LGBTQ person in the United States

2025 OMB acting director Matthew Vaeth ordered federal government agencies to temporarily pause all federal financial assistance programs, with the exception of Medicare and Social Security, that could be affected by select executive orders from President Donald Trump. 

In bed at 9:40, up at 5:30.  10/-12/14/2.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 10 a.m.  

1/26/2026

 Monday, January 26, 2026

1920 Amedeo Modigliani's fiancé Jeanne Hébuterne jumped out of a window a day after the artist's funeral killing herself and her unborn child

1934 Nazi Germany & Poland signed a 10-year non-aggression treaty

1962 Bishop Burke of the Buffalo Catholic diocese declared Chubby Checker's "The Twist" to be impure and banned it from all Catholic schools

1998 President Bill Clinton said "I want to say one thing to the American people; I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky"

2024 US Federal jury said Donald Trump must pay $83 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll after he denied raping her 

2025  Colombian President Gustavo Petro blocked two U.S. military aircraft carrying deported Colombians as part of U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown from landing in his country.   In response, U.S. President Donald Trump enacted a 25% tariff on all goods traded to the U.S. from Colombia, which will be raised to 50% in one week. Hours after Trump's announcement, President Petro orders the commerce ministry to raise tariffs on U.S. imports by 25%.

In bed at   9:10, up at 5:45.  0/-15/10/-1.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 11:30 a.m.

From this journal one year ago today.  I'm wondering if we all would have been better off if our parents, teachers, clergy, et al., had raised us to believe that all of us are basically selfish and inclined to take advantage of others for our own benefit, if we had been taught that man is a wolf/predator to other men.  Homo hominis lupus.  Fred Trump taught this to Donald and presumably, Donald has taught it to his children and they to theirs.  Instead, most of us are taught that Man is made in the image and likeness of God.  Similarly, would we be better off if we had been raised to believe that there is no God or at least no personal God and that we are 'on our own,'  Instead, most of us have been raised to believe that we are "children" of a personal, indeed paternal, God our Father, who loves us and created each of us to live forever in perfect happiness in Heaven with Him and his angels unless we fuck it up by disobeying his rules?  Catholics are taught that we are created good, but inclined to evil by Original Sin.  Protestants take a harsher, and truer? View, especially Calvinists, who believe that man is "bound to Satan" or "enslaved to sin."  And where did this idea of God being "loving" and desirous of our happiness come from?  The God who created Hell?  We, his children who act so often in accordance with our fallen nature, our enslavement to sin?  How can we not be angry with such a God?  Life becomes more endurable if we stop believing in God altogether rather than perpetually second-guessing Him and blaming Him.  Or if we believe that God is a mean prick rather than a loving father.  Or, like the Manichaeans, believe that there are 2 Gods, one good and one nasty.  Or, like the Hindus and pagans, believe that there are many gods with many different qualities that change from time to time  Instead we are taught to believe that there is only one God, that He is a person (or 3 persons, but in unitary way that we can't begin to understand because it's a divine "mystery"), that He loves us and that He he shows his love by giving us "free will" so as to make each of us eligible for Heaven - or Hell, depending on how things work out.  So the God of our fathers is kind of like King George III in Hamilton:

You'll be back / Like before

I will fight the fight and win the war

For your love / For your praise

And I'll love you till my dying days

When you're gone / I'll go mad

So don't throw away this thing we had

Cuz when push comes to shove

I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love

If there is no God, there is no one to blame for Life's shit, for evil, pain, suffering, for Putin, for Sinwar, for Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich, for Donald Trump, for January 6th, for childhood cancer and conjoined twins, for harelips and cleft palates, for hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes.  On the other hand, if "His eye is on the sparrow" "He's got the whole world in his hands," and "It's all in God's plan," I for one am plenty pissed, including for letting 21-year-old Jeaane Héburterne kill herself and her 8-month-old fetus.  Was His eye on those sparrows? 😡  

Text exchange with Andy:

Andy Clausen:

Hi dad, would you be free to drive Lizzie to gymnastics practice later this morning? She doesn’t have school, but they set a practice for 11:00.

Charles Clausen:

Sure.  When should I pick her up?

Andy Clausen:

10:45?

Charles Clausen:

Okey doke.

Andy Clausen:

She’ll let you know if she’ll need a ride home afterwards, too, and what time.

1/25/2026

 Sunday, January 25, 2026

1939 1st nuclear fission experiment (splitting of a uranium atom) in the US, in the basement of Pupin Hall, Columbia University by a team including Enrico Fermi

1949 First Israeli election was won by David Ben-Gurion

1959 Pope John XXIII proclaimed the 2nd Vatican Council

In bed around 10:30, up at 6:40.  6/-10/14/3.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 9:50 a.m.    

Murders in Minneapolis.   Minnesota voted against Trump in the last 3 presidential elections.  Minnesota's governor was Kamala Harris's vice presidential partner in the last election.  Renee Nicole Good and Alec Pretti have paid for this with their lives.  Thousands of other Minnesotans have had their lives turned upside down, and some perhaps forever.  

Who killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti?  Donald Trump killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti. J. D. Vance killed them.  Stephen Miller killed them.   Karoline Leavitt killed them. Steven Cheung killed them. Kristi Noem killed them.  Gregory Bovino killed them.  Tom Homan killed them.    Mike Johnson killed them.  John Thune killed them.  Pam Bondi killed them.  Todd Blanche killed them.  The Americans who put these people in power killed them.  We who fail to fill the streets of America in protest of Trump and Trumpism outrages killed them.  I killed them.

I can't write today. 

d

1/24/2026

 Saturday, January 24, 2025

1984 Apple Computer unveiled its Macintosh personal computer in a Super Bowl ad

2025  Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Secretary of Defense in a 51–50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote

In bed around 10, up from LZB at 6:40. -11/-17/+3//-12.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 8 a.m. 

I found this note from Tom while rummaging through the center drawer in my bedroom desk.  The envelope is postmarked April 9, 2022.  He died on January 18, 2023.

The latest ICE homicide in Minneapolis.  I'm too sickened to write about it now, but I am thinking of what so many Black Americans must be feeling, hearing how the federal government officials are characterizing the killing, how outraged so many White Americans are over this killing and Renee Good's killing, and how so many of us react when Black Americans are killed by law enforcement officers.  

d

1/23/26

Friday, January 23, 2026

1973 US President Richard Nixon announced an accord had been reached to end the Vietnam War

2023 Tom St. John's funeral

2025 United States federal law enforcement and ICE agents arrested nearly 500 undocumented migrants with arrest warrants in sanctuary cities, including in New Jersey and New York

2025  President Donald Trump signed an executive order to declassify files related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

2025  Federal judge temporarily blocked President Trump's executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship, calling it "blatantly unconstitutional."

The end of an era and the beginning of an era

In bed at 10:05, up at 4:10, but awake much earlier to move and half-sleep on LZB troubled by dreams of ICE becoming and being an American Gestapo, a well-funded, poorly disciplined gang of official domestic terrorists with a budget larger than the Marine Corps, purposefully recruited from demographic sectors oriented towards White Christian nationalists, i.e., nazis.  -11/-31/+1/-13.

 Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 9:20 a.m.  Yesterday, I removed the potassium pills and chlorthalidone from my pill box and replaced them with magnesium and new diuretic pills.

Wastrel.  Reading the Wall Street Journal this morning, I realized how much of my remaining life I am wasting, perhaps almost all of it.  How many days, weeks, or months do I have left?  I've lived 30,833 days, or 4,404.7 weeks (pace ChatGPT), with 213 days to go before my 85th birthday, and 5 years, 7 months, and 1 day till my 90th birthday.  My age cohort’s average expected lifespan at birth was ~70.5 years, which I have already far exceeded.  Only a minority (around ~30–35%) of similar white males in my cohort reach ages in the mid-80s and beyond.  For men of my current age, data suggests a remaining life expectancy of 5 to 6 years, but that is based on averages, not on my particular aggregation of chronic diseases and history of acute diseases.  Today's average lifespan is approximately 4, 000 weeks, so I've been playing with house money for more than 400 weeks.  How much time do I really have left?  What should I be doing in that shrinking time?  How should I live while waiting to die?

I should explore this in writing to stimulate, focus, and clarify my thoughts on such an important question, but again, I'm not up to it.  Out of steam, fading.

m

 Thursday, January 22, 2026

1938 "Our Town", Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer-winner of small-town life in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, premieres (NJ)

1973 The US Supreme Court legalized most abortions (Roe v. Wade

In bed at 10, up at 6:20.  11/-6/22/-4 SEVERE WEATHER: COLD, wind chills 34 to 42 below zero.

Meds, etc.   Morning meds at 9:30 a.m.  

China Wins as Trump Cedes Leadership of the Global Economy: The president used a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland to renounce the last vestiges of the liberal democratic order.  This is the lead headline on this morning's New York Times, on a piece by Peter S. Goodman.  Excerpts:

In a long, rambling address that was by turns bombastic, aggrieved, and self-congratulatory, President Trump pronounced last rites on American leadership of the liberal democratic order forged by the United States and its allies after World War II.

Mr. Trump used a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday — a pilgrimage site for adherents of globalization — to assert that the United States was done offering its markets and its military protection to European allies he derided as freeloaders. And he vowed to advance his trade war. He characterized tariffs as the price of admission to a land of 300 million consumers.

“The United States is keeping the whole world afloat,” Mr. Trump said. “Everybody took advantage of the United States.”

. . . .

A day before Mr. Trump’s address, his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, declared during a panel discussion in Davos that the world trading system — constructed largely on American designs — was part of history.

“Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America,” Mr. Lutnick said.

Also on Tuesday, Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, provided a counterweight to the worldview espoused by the Trump administration. He lamented the “rupture” of the world order and marked “the beginning of a brutal reality where the geopolitics of the great powers is not subject to any constraints.” 

I have lamented often over the last 10 years that, in my lifetime and within my memory, the United States has gone from the sole hegemon in unipolar world, admired and envied by most other non-communist countries and certainly the industrialized ones, truly 'the leader of the free world,' to an object of fear, derision, mockery, dread, dismay, and disappointment all around the world, even, and especially, to our closest neighbors Canada and Mexico.  If anyone had suggested such a future for this country at the end of Barack Obama's presidency, before Trump's ascendency,  I would have thought "Impossible." Alas, but we are where we are, with many years ahead.

The Jack Smith hearing is, as usual, alternatively disgusting and disappointing.  Disgusting when the Republicans were questioning Smith, and disappointing when most of the Democrats were doing so.  Especially disappointing was Jerry Nadler, who should have retired long ago, but most of them were disappointing.  An exception was Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania, who probed actual evidence in the case of the Pennsylvania election, as opposed to characterizing and making conclusory statements about the evidence.   

Another day with no desire to write, which means no desire to do much thinking or assessing my thoughts.  Plus, now I have both my MacBooks not working properly, either that or I've lost even more of my executive functioning.  It appears my journaling days are finally kaput, the end of a personal era, just short of 3 and 1/2 years of daily chronicles and records of an old man's looking at life and thinking about death.  I'll add the hard copies next to my memoir, flowers born to blush unseen.  Probably just as well because, like my step-mother Grace, I haven't lost all my marbles yet, but I seem to be working at it.

Life and death in our Bayside front yard.  A scraggly coyote lurked in our side yard eyed and then pounced on a squirrel feeding under our bird feeders.  He ate it under the locust tree.  I dread finding  and disposing of whatever he didn't eat.  A danger of bird feeders, attracting predator birds and varmints.