11/21/2025

 Friday, November 21, 2025

D+16

1967: General William Westmoreland told news reporters: "I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing."

2002 NATO invited Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.

2017 CBS TV host Charlie Rose is fired after allegations of sexual harassment by eight women

2024 Matt Gaetz withdrew from his candidacy for U. S. Attorney General

2024 Controversial artwork of a banana duct-taped to a wall by Maurizio Cattelan sold for $6.2million at auction in New York. The new owner Justin Sun says he will eat it.

In bed at 9:30, up at 6:30, after an hour on theLZB.  37°, high 46°, another cloudy November day.

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. Nothing is surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Trulicity injection at 11 a.m.

The video about "lawful orders." Democratic legislators Mark Kelly, Maggie Goodlander, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, and Chrissy Houlahan have released a video encouraging soldiers and other federal officials to disobey unlawful presidential orders.  President Trump has responded by accusing them of sedition or treason, liable to the death penalty.  One of his social media responses was simply "HANG THEM."  When CBS's Nancy Cordes asked Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt whether the President wanted to execute these members of Congress, she replied 'no', but accused them of encouraging soldiers to disobey lawful orders.  Cordes corrected her by pointing out that the video referred only to "unlawful orders," and Leavitt replied: 

They're suggesting that the President has given illegal orders, which he has not.  Every single order which this President has given to the United States military by this Commander-in Chief and through this chain of command, through the Secretary of War, is lawful.

The following is an excerpt from an interview with former President Nixon conducted by David Frost. It aired on television on May 19, 1977.

FROST: The wave of dissent, occasionally violent, which followed in the wake of the Cambodian incursion, prompted President Nixon to demand better intelligence about the people who were opposing him. To this end, the Deputy White House Counsel, Tom Huston, arranged a series of meetings with representatives of the CIA, the FBI, and other police and intelligence agencies.

These meetings produced a plan, the Huston Plan, which advocated the systematic use of wiretappings, burglaries, or so-called black bag jobs, mail openings and infiltration against antiwar groups and others. Some of these activities, as Huston emphasized to Nixon, were clearly illegal. Nevertheless, the president approved the plan. Five days later, after opposition from J. Edgar Hoover, the plan was withdrawn, but the president's approval was later to be listed in the Articles of Impeachment as an alleged abuse of presidential power.

FROST: So what in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston Plan or that part of it was one of them, where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.

NIXON: Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.

FROST: By definition.

NIXON: Exactly. Exactly. If the president, for example, approves something because of national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president's decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise, they're in an impossible position.

FROST: So, that in other words, really, you were saying in that answer, really, between the burglary and murder, again, there's no subtle way to say that there was murder of a dissenter in this country because I don't know any evidence to that effect at all. But, the point is: just the dividing line, is that in fact, the dividing line is the president's judgment?

NIXON: Yes, and the dividing line, and just so that one does not get the impression that a president can run amok in this country and get away with it, we have to have in mind that a president has to come up before the electorate. We also have to have in mind that a president has to get appropriations from the Congress. We have to have in mind, for example, that as far as the CIA's covert operations are concerned, as far as the FBI's covert operations are concerned, through the years, they have been disclosed on a very, very limited basis to trusted members of Congress. I don't know whether it can be done today or not.

FROST: Pulling some of our discussions together, as it were; speaking of the Presidency and in an interrogatory filed with the Church Committee, you stated, quote, "It's quite obvious that there are certain inherently government activities, which, if undertaken by the sovereign in protection of the interests of the nation's security are lawful, but which if undertaken by private persons, are not." What, at root, did you have in mind there?

NIXON: Well, what I, at root, I had in mind, I think, was perhaps much better stated by Lincoln during the War between the States. Lincoln said, and I think I can remember the quote almost exactly, he said, "Actions which otherwise would be unconstitutional could become lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the Constitution and the Nation."

Now that's the kind of action I'm referring to. Of course, in Lincoln's case, it was the survival of the Union in wartime, it was the defense of the nation, and, who knows, perhaps the survival of the nation.

FROST: But there was no comparison, was there, between the situation you faced and the situation Lincoln faced, for instance?

NIXON: This nation was torn apart in an ideological way by the war in Vietnam, as much as the Civil War tore apart the nation when Lincoln was president. Now it's true that we didn't have the North and the South—

FROST: But when you said, as you said when we were talking about the Huston Plan, you know, "If the president orders it, that makes it legal", as it were: Is the president in that sense—is there anything in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights that suggests the president is that far of a sovereign, that far above the law?

NIXON: No, there isn't. There's nothing specific that the Constitution contemplates in that respect. I haven't read every word, every jot and every tittle, but I do know this: That it has been, however, argued that as far as a president is concerned, that in war time, a president does have certain extraordinary powers which would make acts that would otherwise be unlawful, lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the nation and the Constitution, which is essential for the rights we're all talking about.

From the third Nixon-Frost interview, The New York Times, May 20, 1977, p. A16.

The legal fight over the extent of a president's authority and his right to ignore legal constraints in certain circumstances has been going on since the founding of the nation.  It is still going on, witness the public reaction to the Supreme Court's controversial, made-out-of-whole-cloth decision creating presidential immunity from criminal prosecution in Trump v. United States (1924).  It is being widely argued today that there should be no question about the accuracy of what the six legislators said about the right and duty of soldiers and others to disobey orders to engage in unlawful acts, but ought we not at least wonder whether this is still true under Trump v. United States?  Can anyone predict with certainty how this Supreme Court would rule on the issue argued by Richard Nixon in the famous Frost interview?  To date, the Court has been very deferential to exercises of presidential power.  It seems likely one of these days to formally bless the "unitary executive" theory, which, when combined with the reasoning of Trump v. United States, could produce some heretofore unthinkable new law. 

In any event, I wish the six legislators had not made and published the video, not because I don't agree with it, but because it is more likely to get some military guys in trouble than to save any from trouble from following orders.  How does a soldier or Marine distinguish lawful from unlawful orders?  Was the order sending Marines from Camp Pendleton to the streets of Los Angeles lawful or unlawful?  In Newsome v. Trump, U.S. District Court judge Charles Breyer ruled (in a 52-page opinion) that the deployment did violate the Posse Comitatus Act, a 19th-century law that generally prohibits the use of U.S. military forces to perform civilian law enforcement.  He wrote that the administration’s top-down, systemic effort to use troops for law enforcement went beyond what is allowed, calling it “a serious violation … of federal law.”  The 9th Circuit paused the lower court’s injunction, allowing Trump to keep control of the Guard in L.A. while the appeal proceeds, but the court did not fully reject judicial review; it did not say the President’s decisions are totally immune from court scrutiny.  

Are orders to blow civilian boats on the high seas out of the water and to kill their occupants, believed to be smuggling illegal drugs, lawful or unlawful?  The Trump administration has a legal opinion justifying the killing of 88 or more of these foreign civilians, but many experts and think tanks are raising red flags: striking vessels on the high seas may violate international law.  The UN human rights office has also said the use of force “violates the international law of the sea” and might amount to extrajudicial killings.  Is an individual pilot or drone operator able to decide whether the order is lawful or unlawful?  I suspect it is politically controversial presidential orders like these that the six legislators had in mind when they made the video.  Deciding whether these orders are "lawful" or "unlawful" is a crap shoot at best.  The video will do nothing to help the individual American military man or woman in the field, but it may encourage some scrupulous trooper to hazard a guess, guess wrong,  and risk his or her life or liberty.  

Nurimv

The FB post is so long that I don't expect anyone to read it, but I wanted to make my point 'for the record.'

Two years ago I listed my New Year's resolutions:

1.  I should live next year as if it is my last year, as well it may be.  Live next month, week, day, and hour as if it is my last, and accept that it may well be the last with no more warning than Tom had on January 18th of this year.

2.  I need to appreciate being alive and appreciate all the beauty around me - beauty in Nature, beauty in people old, young, and in between, and beauty in art through vocal and instrumental music, painted and written images, and fine writing. 

3.   I should write a letter each week to Sarah and Andy, to leave them some record of their father's thoughts and values as an old man.  I needn't concern myself with whether they read them or think much about them, especially now.  I wish my father had been more open with me during his last years.  On second thought, I suspect this is a delusional pipe dream.

4.  I need to be more mindful: (a) of the gift of Geri's presence in my life; (2) of the clouds above and the earth below, the birds all around, the squirrels, white-tail deer, wild turkeys, chipmunks, and all sorts of critters; (3) of the food I eat,  the water and tea I drink, and the air I breathe.

I've had some success on ## 1, 2, and 4, not so much on #3, which I need to reconsider.  When I wrote these, my sister Kitty and Tom St. John had died, and Ed Felsenthal was still alive.  Alas.

 Nuremberg.  I saw this movie at the North Shore Cinema this afternoon.  It was interesting, and I'm glad I saw it, but I didn't enjoy it very much.  I can't say I was disappointed because I didn't have any particular expectation about the movie.  I need to give some thought to this flick.

11/20/2025

 Thursday, November 20, 2025

1945 The Nuremberg war trials began as 24 Nazi leaders were put on trial before judges representing the victorious Allied powers

1947 Pope Pius XII published the encyclical Mediator Dei

1949 Jewish population of Israel reaches 1,000,000

1958 American puppeteers Jim and Jane Henson established Muppets, Inc. (now known as The Jim Henson Company)

2024 Trump chose TV doctor Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

In bed at 9:30, awake at 4:45, up at 5 with sad Thanksgiving thoughts.   40°, high of 49°, cloudy all day.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds sometime in the afternoon.

I spoke too soon and ignorantly.  Last year on this date, I wrote the following in this journal:

I don't believe in the God of the Bible, New Testament or Old.  I don't believe in the God of Thomas Aquinas and Summa Theologica.  I don't believe in the God of the Roman Catholic Catechism.  I don't believe in the God of the Pentecostals and Evangelicals, the snake handlers and speakers in tongues.  I don't believe in the God of Spinoza or of Thomas Jefferson.  Does this make me an atheist or an agnostic, or does it demonstrate the futility of the question "Do you believe in God?"  Whose God?  Which one?   

Nothing has changed in the past year except that I have come to understand more of "the God of Spinoza," i.e., Nature itself.  I think that last year, when I wrote the above, I was thinking of Spinoza as like Jefferson, a deist who believed in "God" as transcendent, but not personal, separate from the universe he created and not involved in it after he created it.  One he created the world, he was done with it, in effect decreeing, "You're on your own!  Good luck!"  Actually, Spinoza did not believe in a transcendent God, but rather Deau sive Natura, God as Nature itself, with its own laws.  His understanding of "God" wasn't fully expressed until his Ethics was published posthumously in 1677.  

Am I an atheist or an agnostic?  Does it make a difference?  No God, Deus absonditus, Deus otiosus, Deus sive Natura?   Any time I consider the question, I think back to the kitchen table discussion with Geri, her cousin Sue, and her husband Tom several years ago.  I remember saying that my religious life had become much simpler and easier to live with when I stopped believing in a personal God who created the universe and sustains it every moment, the God who is 'in charge,' the God I had been taught to believe in from my earliest memories.  Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. . .  He's got the whole world in his hands . . .  His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he cares for me, etc.  I don't think I've ever gotten past the challenge of theodicy, understanding why an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God created a world with so much evil, injustice, pain, suffering, and wretchedness.  I suggested that it would be much easier to make the case for a God who is a mean prick than the case for a God who is a loving Father.  Precious Lord, take my hand, / Lead me on, let me stand, / I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.  / Through the storm, through the night, / Lead me on to the light: / Take my hand, pre­cious Lord, Lead me home.  Millions of my fellow humans have found comfort in their belief in that God.  Millions of others aren't so lucky.  Who's right?  

"We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas, mais je les crains,—"I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them, nevertheless".  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)

Holmes's 'famous lady' could have been speaking of the Holy Ghost, or of God, rather than spectral spirits.  You can take the boy out of the Church, but you can't take the Church out of the boy.  Where, when, and from whom did I first hear that?  I think it's an Irish Catholic adaptation of the older, more generalized saying, You can take the X out of the Y, but you can't take the Y out of the X.   In any event, it surely applies to me, raised by a 1st generation Irish American mother, schooled and socialized in Catholic schools owned by my Catholic parish run by an Irish Catholic monsignor, high school run by the Irish Christian Brothers, in an archdiocese run by an Irish Catholic cardinal, in a national Catholic Church and culture dominated by Irish Catholic prelates.  Is there any 'fallen away Catholic who doesn't harbor some permanent residual fear of Judgment Day and eternal Hellfire?  When I worried about my sister Kitty being alone in the middle of every night with her insomnia, I sent her a red votive candle holder and a box of votive candles, asking her to light a candle as she sat alone and to know that I was with her in spirit.  Every Catholic church in our youth had a wrought iron votive light stand with rows of candles to be lit when a believer had a petitionary prayer for the soul of a "faithful departed' soul or some other wish.  We would put a dime or a quarter in the alms box to cover the cost of the candle and the taper used to light it, light the candle, and send our prayer up to Heaven, hoping that our wish would be granted.  I still regularly light a votive candle in my bedroom at bedtime.  Why?  Memories of Kitty?  of all my dearly beloved, faithful departed, and my dearly beloved, unfaithful departed?  or for myself?  It ís the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for. . . .   Send not to know / For whom the bell tolls, / It tolls for thee.  I frequently light a votive candle in the predawn hours.  I call it my Kitty candle.  I have what I call my goyishe yahrzeit candle that I light on anniversaries of the deaths of my family and friends.  Wazupwidat?  You can take the boy out of the Church, but you can't take the Church out of the boy.  

I watched Dick Cheney's funeral for two hours this morning.  It stirred up lots of memories and some sadness.  The sadness came mostly from watching his grandchildren eulogize their Grandpa.  The eulogies all appeared to be heartfelt, and from them it was clear that he was a terrific grandpa.  I was especially touched by the words of his granddaughter, "Gracie," who had been a rodeo contestant at some time.  She related long drives in which Cheney would drive her and probably her quarter horse to rodeos to participate in barrel races.  Her voice cracked a couple of times, and it was clear she dearly loved her grandpa and had good reason to love him.  A grandson related that he was a running back on his high school football team, as Cheney had been years before. and how Cheney would attend as many of his grandson's games as he could.   His daughter Liz delivered a eulogy on behalf of herself and her sister Mary.  It was also touching, as was George W. Bush's.  Bush is 79 years old, the same as Donald Trump, and I was struck by how clear, coherent, and thoughtful Bush's delivery was, unlike any of Trump's speeches.  You could tell his advanced age from the way he walked, especially descending the stairs from the altar and choir level of the sanctuary to the level of public seating.  "W" and Laura Bush sat next to Joe and Jill Biden.  Next to them were Mike and "Mother" Pence.  Neither Donald Trump nor J. D. Vance was invited to the funeral by the Cheney family - no surprise.  Al Gore and Kamala Harris were supposedly present but I didn't see them anywhere in the nave of the cathedral.

One of the memories that was triggered by the funeral was the time Geri and I attended a mass at the National Cathedral in 1995, when I was in Washington to testify in favor of Herb Kohl's "Sunshine in Litigation" bill, which would have severely limited the use of secrecy or non-disclosure provisions in product liability and toxic tort litigation.  The homily that day was delivered by a female priest and it was terrific.  I remember saying to Geri as we left the Cathedral grounds, "See, that's why the Catholic Church doesn't want women priests.  They can't stand the competition."

There was very little religious liturgy during the service, despite its location: a few pro forma prayers, a reading from the Old Testament's Isaiah, a reading from Paul's epistle to the Philippians, the gospel reading from  Matthew ("You are the light of the world . . .", a forgettable homily, the recitation of the Creed, and the Our Father.  It sounds like a lot, but most of it came at the end of the long deliveries of eulogies and the long, slow processions of the casket, of the family, and of the clergy down the long main aisle of the Cathedral.  The service took 2 hours, and I would estimate that the prayer and readings portion took about 15 minutes, though quite a bit of time was taken up with choir and chorale singing.

Not pleasing to me was the union of Church and State, and of Church and Military, in the service.  The passbearers were not family and friends, but junior enlisted men in the services.  The military participants all did the military close order drill bit, moving like toy soldiers or wind-up dolls.  I suppose it was because he was a former Secretary of Defense under George H. W. Bush, or perhaps just because he was a former vice-president.  In either case, I'm never comfortable seeing representatives of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth hand-in-hand with representatives of our forces of death and destruction, aggression against socialists, and defense of capitalists.  It's an unnatural fit.  On top of that, there's some irony in it since Cheney received 5 draft deferments before turning 26 in January 1966, and aging out of the draft system.  He was 7 months older than me.  He never spent a day in uniform and avoided service during the Vietnam War era.  

I was never a fan of Dick Cheney.  I pretty much despised the triumvirate of "W," Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld.  It was during their reign that I started writing long, pretty thoughtful screeds to the Washington Post, and eventually saving them on what became in 2022 this journal/blog.  I remember sitting in a pizza joint or somesuch in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California, when "W" gave his speech to the nation about the need to invade Iraq in 2003 to replace Saddam Hussein and seize his 'weapons of mass destruction,' or WMDs.  I remember being pretty despondent about it, thinking, 'here we go again, more Vietnam.'  Of course, it ended up tragically, almost farcically, and Dick Cheney was assigned most of the blame for the disaster.  He was thought to have forced George Tenet's CIA to opine that Hussein had the WMDs, 'a slam dunk.'  Of course, we heard none of that at Cheney's funeral, nor should we have, but some of us remember, and still wonder what to make of him.

Here is one of my intemperate rants from those days:

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Sun Rises in East, Heat Rises and Pope a Catholic!

Ex-Commander In Iraq Faults War Strategy

'No End in Sight,' Says Retired General Sanchez

By Josh White

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, October 13, 2007; Page A01

Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who led U.S. forces in Iraq for a year after the March 2003 invasion, accused the Bush administration yesterday of going to war with a "catastrophically flawed" plan and said the United States is "living a nightmare with no end in sight."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Finally, the truth comes out: Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, our homegrown axis of evil, were grossly incompetent in leading the United States into an invasion and occupation of Iraq. Surely it is a slow news day for both the Washington Post and New York Times to make this a front page story. Is there any sentient soul in the world who does not realize that the BushCheneyRummy plan (we use the term loosely) was "catastrophically flawed"? Is there anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear who does not realize that the United States is "living a nightmare with no end in sight'? Sanchez Sez: Bears Poop in the Woods!!!

What makes the Sanchez story newsworthy of course is simply the fact that it is the former top military commander in Iraq who is publicly uttering what is obvious to everyone. Sanchez Admits 'Water Runs Downhill"!!! Sanchez will undoubtedly be blasted by the likes of Rush, Sean, Laura, Glenn and the rest of the Fox News crowd. He will be blamed for everything from Abu Ghraib to the embarassing executions of Saddam and the guy who was decapitated by the noose. The Decider will magnanimously stay above the fray while his henchmen and apparatchiks busy themselves calumniating Sanchez the Failure. Nonetheless, the nation and the world know that Sanchez speaks the unutterable truth: the Republican, neocon, Israel-pushed adventure in Iraq is another American failure much like (dare we say it?) Vietnam. Are the generals to blame? Sure. Is the press to blame? Sure. Is the Department of Defense to blame? Sure. Is the State Department to blame? Sure. Are Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and their neocon diehard supporters and apologists to blame? Sure. We would need more arms than an octopus and more fingers than Shiva to point out all who are to blame for this catastrophe. Alas, all we need is a mirror to see that we too are to blame for following silently and meekly as the criminals in Washington led the nation into this Slough of Despond.

Posted by P. Bosley Slogthrop at 5:50 AM No comments: 

11/19/2025

 Wednesday, November 19, 2025

1863 Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg address

2021 A Kenosha jury cleared Kyle Rittenhouse (18) of murder for fatally shooting two people and injuring a third during racial justice protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin

In bed at 10, up at 5:30, with nasty pain in my right hip joint, wondering whether I should get the steroid injection.   33°, high 43°.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 7 a.m.  Kevzara injection at 9:45 a.m.  

LOD last night opined that DJT's vice-grip hold on every congressional and Senate Republican was broken by Thomas Massie's and MTG's success in gaining near-universal support among Republicans for the Massie/Khanna bill to release the Epstein files.  I suspect he is overly optimistic, but time will tell.  I still can't believe that either the Congress or the public will see nearly all of those files, even with victims' names redacted.  Trump has notoriously said that 'Nixon should have destroyed the tapes,' and I can't help believing that some of the materials in the Epstein files have moved from some FBI reviewer to Kash Patel and then either to Pam Bondi or directly to Trump for destruction.  Or, perhaps they were destroyed by Kash or Pam and never made it to the Oval Office, but in any event, they're gone.  "National security," and all that.   So it goes.   'Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.’

Geri's hunch/insight.  She notes Jeffrey's relationship with the modeling business and Melania Knauss Trump's entry into the US as a model.  Epstein’s closest associate in the modeling world was Jean-Luc Brunel, a French model scout and agency owner, accused by multiple women of rape and of procuring girls for Epstein. Epstein invested approximately $1 million into Brunel’s agency in the mid-2000s, which allowed Brunel to open offices in New York, Miami, and Tel Aviv. Victims (including Virginia Giuffre) have stated that Brunel supplied Epstein with girls as young as 14, sometimes flown in from abroad on visas arranged through his agency. Brunel was charged in France with rape of minors and organized sex trafficking tied to Epstein in 2020; he died in jail in 2022 (officially ruled a suicide). Epstein was friendly with Donald Trump in the late 1980s–early 2000s when Trump ran his own short-lived modeling agency (Trump Model Management.  Melania Knauss first entered the US on August 27, 1996 on an H1B visa, based on "extraordinary ability," and started dating Trump in 1998.  They married in 2005.  Trump owned and managed Trump Model Management (a/k/a 'Trump Models') from 1999 to 2027, when Trump started his presidency.  Geri's theory is that somehow, Melania is at the center of Trump's resistance to the disclosure of the Epstein files.  Did she have a relationship with Epstein?  Did she steer girls to him?  Were  Donald and Melania in a 'foursome' relationship with Jeffrey and Ghislaine?  Geri's theory is simply that somehow, Melania is significantly involved in the relationships with Epstein.  It seems reasonable to me, perhaps even likely.

Epstein was friendly with Donald Trump in the late 1980s–early 2000s when Trump ran his own short-lived modeling agency (Trump Model Management)

Morning readings:  (1) NYT: Tom Friedman, On Republican Neo-Nazism, Hamas and Israel: An Epidemic of Moral Cowardice:

I write today about an epidemic. It’s not biological. It’s an epidemic of cowardly, immoral and unprincipled decisions by leaders across the political spectrum. . . Three examples preoccupy me personally: The Republican Party today has a neo-Nazi problem that it refuses to confront. The progressive left today has a pro-Hamas problem that it refuses to confront. And the Jewish people and Israel have a radical Jewish settler problem that they refuse to confront.

The anti-Nazi Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was hanged by Hitler’s henchmen shortly before his concentration camp was liberated by the Americans, is often said to have described the moral implications of this kind of behavior: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

. . . . 

Unfortunately, too many Israelis and diaspora Jews have put on similar blinders. A day does not go by without a report like this recent one from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

“The attacks of October 7 and Israel’s subsequent devastation of Gaza also ignited a lethal conflagration of settler violence in the occupied West Bank. Over the same two-year period that Israeli forces killed more than 68,000 Palestinians in Gaza, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank. New settler outposts have been constructed with rapid speed, displacing entire Palestinian communities — a process often facilitated by Israel’s army. … In the face of this reality, there appears to be a concerted campaign on the part of the pro-Israel right to deny it.”

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his fellow travelers — and here I include the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, which has flown air cover for Netanyahu in Washington, D.C., for his 18 years in office — have done more to undermine the long-term security of Israel and the Jewish people than any Hamas fighters.

And then there’s us. Politico recently broke the story about what was being said in a Telegram group chat involving leaders of Young Republican groups in four states: “They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. . . . Ho hum, said Vice President JD Vance, nothing to see here: “The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys,” Vance said. “They tell edgy, offensive jokes.” . . . Of course, President Trump also didn’t even whisper a hint of condemnation. . . How far we have fallen. 

Heart problem.  I received a call from Nurse Kim Kitzke relaying a message from my PCP Kali Kisro, about a ventricular irregularity  (premature ventricular contraction) showing up in my stress test.  I think it's the 'bigeminy' or something like that and I'm not sure what it means, but apparently nothing in terms of medication or anything I should be doing.  The electrocardiogram showed an ejection fraction of 70% vs. 71% in 2020.  So no congestive heart failure.  Good news or bad news?

 

11/18/2025

 Tuesday, November 18, 2025

1961 JFK sent 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam

1966 US Roman Catholic bishops ended the rule against eating meat on Fridays

1978 In Jonestown, Guyana, 918 members of the Peoples Temple were murdered or committed suicide under the leadership of cult leader Jim Jones

2019 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reversed US policy regarding Israeli West Bank settlements as illegal after 24 years

2021 US judge exonerated Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam for the killing of Malcolm X in 1965, saying they were "wrongly convicted", after 55 years 

2024 Alex Jones posts on X : "Trump pledges to use military on land and sea to dismantle drug and human trafficking networks in the United States. 

In bed at 9:30  and up at 5:40.  41°, wind chill 30°, high 42°, rainy day.  

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

Ken Burns' The American Revolution, and George Washington.  We have watched, as best we could, this terrific documentary on PBS.  I say 'as best we could' because we watch it as it is broadcast, from 7 to 9 p.m., after dinner and during the time our old bodies start to nod off at the end of the day.  The tendency to nod off is encouraged by the calm, steady voice of the series' principal narrator, Peter Coyote, Burns's favorite.  So we miss parts of the story.  Last night and the night before, I said to myself, 'I need to watch this again when I'm more alert.'  We have both learned a lot from it, much more than we learned from school books.  Burns and his co-creators put flesh and blood on the bare bones of history.  They paint vivid portraits of the characters in the drama and pictures of the conditions in which they operated.

I was particularly interested in the portrayal of George Washington.  Physically, he was 6 feet, 2 inches tall, towering over John Adams who was the average male height of 5 feet, 7 inches for that era, and James Madison, who was 5'4".  Washington, like many of the Founding Fathers, was rich, not in liquid assets, but in land and slaves, the two principal sources of wealth in the era, at least in the Southern slave states.  He derived his wealth from his marriage to the widowed Martha Dandridge Custis.  Martha was widowed at age 26 and thereby inherited 17,000 acres of land and about 300 slaves.  Marrying George relieved her of the burden of managing  5 plantations and overseeing all those slaves, while she was grieving the loss of her first husband, two of their children, and her father.  George was an experienced military commander from his service to the British crown in the French and Indian War, and he commanded respect from all, but it's hard to respect him as a human being because of his slaveholding.  We speak of his home at Mount Vernon as a farm or a plantation, but it was a slave-labor camp, as were all the 'plantations' reliant on forced labor from enslaved workers.  Washington, like Jefferson and Madison and many others, bought and sold slaves.  He used overseers to control them, to derive the greatest advantage from their forced labor.   He used them as collateral for debts.  He broke up slave families when it suited his purposes.  Some, like Jefferson but apparently not Washington, used them to satisfy their sexual desires.  Washington came to question the rightness of slavery in his old age and ordered that his slaves be freed upon Martha's death, but throughout his life, he was an enslaver, treating his slaves as assets to be managed so as to produce the greatest profit for him.  Wikipedia has an interesting section titled "Washington and slavery," which is worth reading.  It's hard for me to think of Washington as a champion of human rights or of democracy, knowing his history.  (Martha was even worse!)  

I commend the makers of the series for pointing out that the forces fighting the British were not just White colonists, but also Free Blacks and Native Americans, and that there was resistance to the Blacks serving from the enslavers, who were, even then, always worried about Black Independence, and slave uprisings.  The wealth of the plantation owners depended on White Supremacy and Black enslavement.  I also commend the series honest treatment of the horrors of battle for the soldiers and militiamen involved.

Two years ago, I wrote: 

Is it really so hard to imagine the U.S. as a fascist nation, controlled by contemporary Confederates, neo-Nazis, homegrown SA, SS, and Gestapo?  Is it really so hard to understand why most Democrats want Joe Biden to get the hell out of the race, why his age, his negative charisma, his VP, his mumbling and bumbling scare the shit out of anti-Trumpers?  He turns 81 on Monday.  Can we even imagine what he will be like at age 82, 83, 84, 85, or 86?  I despair.

Cassandra in Aeschylus's Agamemnon: “Apollo himself was the one who laid hands on me, desiring my bed.  I promised him my body, then cheated him.  Therefore, he gave me this gift — that though I see all things clearly, no one ever believes me.”   But, everyone and his brother believed that Biden needed to get out of the race, everyone but Biden, and Jill, and Hunter, and the 'inner circle'.  Will he ever be forgiven for enabling Trump's second term?

Three years ago, I rewatched Ken Burns's The Vietnam War, and wrote:

It was 57 years ago, and my head is still haunted by Vietnam.  So many feelings, survivor's guilt, Moon Mullins and Jay Trembley and 58,000  more, shame at cowardice in avoiding the direct killing MOSs, confusion at my what? ambivalence about those fighting there and the protesters, relived anxiety about CACO duty in Philadelphia, cynicism about politicians and the Pentagon, Kent State, Cambodia, Sterling Hall bombing on my 29th birthday, turbulence at secular Madison, quietude at Marquette, religion and God and Catholic culture, how many dead, how many injured, physically, emotionally, genetically, ignorance, indifference, red pill blue pill, go along to get along, complicity, and it all resurfaced with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Classified memo from Robert McNamara to LBJ: "The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 non-combatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny, backward nation into submission, on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one."

McNamara's infamous memo was written on November 7, 1967, when I was 5 months out of the Marines and we were a few months before the start of the Tet Offensive and the beginning of the end of our losing effort "to pound a tiny, backward nation into submission, on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed."  What fools we were.  What fools we are.  And now it's almost 60 years ago that I left Vietnam, and my head and soul are still haunted by it.  

Trump hosts MBS, the Saudi crown prince and murderer, in the White House.  Mohammed bin Salman is coming to the White House to visit with his fellow spirit, Donald Trump, today.  MBS was found by America's intelligence community to be the guy who ordered the death and dismemberment of Jamal  Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and critic of the Saudi regime.  This is to say, our government has identified this guy as a murderer of a troublesome newspaperman affiliated with the Washington Post, and he'll be a welcome, red carpet guest of our government.  How low can our government sink?

Mary Bruce of ABC asked the crown prince, "Your royal highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust—”  Trump responded, "“Who are you with? . . . “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial.  A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him, or didn’t like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”  So much for the CIA.  So much for the American intelligence community.  Memories of the Helsinki Summit in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, 2018.  ""I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be... I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."  Unbelievable?  If only.

The House voted 427 - 1 to order the administration to reveal the Epstein files.  The Senate is expected to follow suit, and Trump has said he would sign the bill.  He and his apparatchiks have had 10 months to scrub the files of incriminating and embarrassing documents, videos, and photographs.  And to classify stuff they want to withhold.  And to liberally redact portions of texts to hide, not only the names of victims but also the names of 'Johns.'  Larry Summers has issued a public mea culpa and announced that he is leaving public life, all of which suggests that he may well be one of those to whom Epstein and Maxwell trafficked underage girls. Sic transit gloria mundi.  Who else?  How did Donald Trump know to name him for investigation?  How long has he known?  What is the source of his knowledge?  Is Bill Clinton shaking in his boots?  Who else?  Alan Dershowitz?  Why was he not named by Trump?  Could it have anything to do with the fact that Dershowitz was one of Trump's lawyers in the first impeachment trial, in January 2020, and wrote a book with the catchy title "The Case Against Impeaching Trump" (2018).

So proud

11/17/2025

Monday, NOVEMBER 17, 2025

1894 Serial killer H. H. Holmes was arrested in Boston after being tracked there from Philadelphia by the Pinkertons

1993 US House of Representatives approved NAFTA

2024 Biden approved Ukraine’s use of long-range U.S. weapons inside Russia, reversing policy

2024 President-elect Donald Trump picked senior GOP Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr to lead the agency, "a hero of Free Speech

In bed at 9, up at 5.  

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 6:30  a.m.     

Cardia stress test & echocardiogram this morning.

   Orangeman has something up his sleeve: "Trump urges House Republicans to vote to release the Epstein files."  Maybe he has the Senate locked down.  Maybe he, Bondi, and Patel will keep the files locked up because of 'an ongoing investigation,; but we know there's some mischief afoot.   

Extraordinary sky this morning.  I can't describe the stunningly beautiful cloud coverage floating over the county this morning.  I enjoyed it while driving to the VA but couldn't get a photo of it.  Drat.

Posted this on FB on November 5, 2020 as a reply to a FB friend’s posting: 

I texted this to Kitty on 11/5/2020:

 I'm afraid I think that "American values" stuff has always been mythical. Hasn't the most enduring American value been white superiority? And male hegemony? And guns and violence? The evidence of how enduring these real 'values' are in our society and culture is awfully (literally) convincing. As an ancient who has benefitted from white male privilege all my life, as I look back on 8 decades of life in the real America, the most hopeful times were also among the most contentious, the late 60s and early 70s when the government was able to pass the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Voting Rights Act and the Medicare Act in 1965, all under President Johnson, and the Environmental Protection Act, the OSHA Act, and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, and other progressive legislation under President Nixon. During much of that time, there were massive demonstrations and even riots in the streets protesting the nation's actions in Vietnam (in which I played a minuscule but guilty role) and our shameful discrimination against our Black fellow citizens. Donald Trump represents the long-simmering pushback against all the progress made in those years and not surprisingly, he can hardly find enough American flags to serve as a backdrop to his fascistic authoritarianism. As Sinclair Lewis wrote: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." Or, in Donald Trump's case, a bible.

Anniversaries:  H. H. Holmes was a serial killer whose exploits were the subject of Erik Larsen's 2003 book The Devil in the White City.   The hotel he built across the street from his pharmacy at 63rd and Wallace in my Englewood neighborhood was where he committed some of his murders.  It was a block or two east of where our family friends the Raschke's lived and had a Mom and Pop grocery store.  The hotel was razed sometime after Holmes's crimes were discovered.  Now the site is occupied by a local post office.

NAFTA is in large measure responsible for the crime and poverty situation in Milwaukee.  Shame on Bill Clinton for signing it.  Shame on the Democratic and Republican legislators for passing it.  The best government money can buy.  

A text I sent to Kitty four years ago today:

Good Morning, Sweetheart,

      Two nights ago, for no reason known to me, I lost all the text messages saved on my laptop.  Hundreds, thousands just disappeared overnight.  And now I can’t type new messages so I am now using my phone with my clumsy fingers on the tiny keyboard.  I’m very displeased by this, very very displeased.

    I got a call from Kelly yesterday and I am always eager to hear from her but. She is not very informative.  I wish I could be with you in Arizona but I don’t think it’s in the cards.  I’m not in very good shape myself these days, feeling like I’m 90 years old rather than 80.  Long distance travel just about does me in.

    I am hoping beyond hope that Michael and especially Chrissi will be able to provide all the help you need but this COVID situation sure makes life more difficult for all of you.  I have the sense that neither Jim nor Chrissi is very symptomatic and I sure hope that is true.

    Geri learned yesterday that her good friend who lives across the street is building a new house and will be moving away, not all that far but still not in the neighborhood.  Its a big disappointment for Geri and will be a big loss.

 I hope you are bearing up under all your challenges.  I’m sure you know you are in my thoughts and prayers every day, every night, and every in between time.❤️🙏🏻❤️ 

What a blessing she was to me; what a blessing she still is in my memory.  I'm thankful that I've been able to save years and years of messages we share with each other every morning for so many years.  More blessings.  I'm reminded to back up this laptop again tomorrow as I try to do every Saturday now (wow, that's some awkward sentence.😝)  [Actually, I've gotten better about backing up, doing it every night now.  I dread the thought of losing those text messages between Kitty and me, thousands of photos,  my memoir in digital form, journal in digital form, etc.]  Kitty has been gone about 3 years and 8 months now.  Irreplaceable loss. 

11/16/2025

 Sunday, November 16, 2025

1969 British House of Commons voted 343-185 to abolish the death penalty

In bed at 9 and up at 5.  Geri's already up with some insomnia.  36°, wind chill 22°, high 45°, NW winds at 13 mph, gusts to 30 mph   

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 8 a.m.  No coffee or caffeine after 8 because of a chemical stress test tomorrow morning and an echocardiogram tomorrow afternoon. 

Legal and illegal drugs, addiction and overdose risks, pain, trauma , and despair, and WWJD?  There is a long guest essay in this morning's Sunday New York Times titled "I Am a Drug Historian. Trump Is Wrong About Fentanyl in Almost Every Way."  It's written by David Herzberg,  a professor of history and director of the Drugs, Health and Society program at the University at Buffalo.  It's an excellent reminder of the historical ubiquity of drug use in our society and culture and the often, even usual, fecklessness of our attempts to deal with its common dangers, i.e., overdoses and addiction. most notably by Richard Nixon's "War on Drugs." The sentence that most caught my eye, however, was this:  

The only place we can see real policy creativity in action is in ad hoc innovations by drug consumers themselves and the pragmatic harm reductionists who know and care about them. 

The author barely develops the fact that drug users and drug 'abusers' are human beings, that they ingest drugs for a reason, and the reason is often the reduction of pain of some sort.  For many, the pain is physical and persistent; for others, the pain is spiritual, psychological, or emotional and persistent.  Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, starting in 2015, came up with the term "deaths of despair" to describe the significant increase in deaths from suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related liver diseases among middle-aged, non-Hispanic, white Americans without a college degree.  We know, too, that drug use, legal and illegal, and drug-related deaths are relatively widespread in minority communities.  In short, drug use and 'abuse,' addiction, and overdosing is a problem throughout American society, and it's because of the unmet need for relief from pain or some sort.  The people with these unmet needs are us, our friends and family, our fellow Americans, or, as Jesus put it, our "neighbors," those we are to love as we love ourselves.  How much of our national drug policy is driven by love of those particular neighbors?  Of helping to meet their needs for pain relief?  Of giving them some hope of a life worth living?  I suspect that the answer is not much.  We, and our political power holders, are inclined to view drug 'abusers' as weak, self-indulgent, pleasure-seeking, social deviants.  I think of the crackhouse scene in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever and the meth houses in Winter's Bone.  Is it foolish to wonder "what would Jesus do" if he were designing American drug policies?  What are the Christian Nationalists' drug policies?  The Evangelical churches' drug policies?  

I reacted to this op-ed essay for a couple of reasons.  First, I think of the boats and crews we are blasting out of the water in the Caribbean and on the Pacific because they are allegedly carrying illegal drugs to the U.S.  Official reports tell us 80 men have been killed,- murdered - by these attacks.  I think of the armada Trump has assembled in the Caribbean and in Puerto Rico.  Will Trump attack Venezuela, using "narco-traficking" as a pretext, a "wag the dog" act of war to deflect attention from his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein?  I believe such an act is clearly possible from both him and his regime - Vance, Bondi, Hegseth, Noem, et al.  Ideally, destructive raids could be accoplished with no loss of American lives, only Venezuelan casualties, all the better for Trump.  Need I wonder what Jesus would do in this regard?

Second, I think of all the days and nights when I contemplated suicide over the last 15 years, when I suffered severe pelvic pain from interstitial cystitis and lesions in my bladder, and severe multiple joint pain from polymyalgia rheumatica. How I ached, literally, for anything to relieve the pain.  How I willingly and gladly would have ingested OxyContin or some other opioid if any had been available to me.  How I would have chosen addiction over the pain, and would have consciously risked death by overdose rather than the pain.  I never did go seeking fentanyl or some other illegal analgesic - where would a ferkrempter old White guy go? - but would have if I could have.  So I put myself as a wannabe in that class of drug abusers, and sympathize with others in that class.  

I also sympathize with my fellow drug abusers who turn to illegal drugs not because of physical pain, but because of spiritual and emotional pain brought on by trauma in their lives, or by hopelessness, despair.  I try never to lose sight of the truth of William Blake's Every morn and every night, some are born to sweet delight. / Every night and every morn, some to misery are born. / Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night.

He wasn't really known for breaking the rules
When he arrived in the second year of my high school
He wasn't so much of a twist of fate
As a short turn up from a Southern state
He was born with a sweet tooth he couldn't beat
Always trying to find himself something sweet
All that he found was a trouble and me
Or maybe trouble just found him

It was hard to hide that his heart had scars
He would stay up late talking to the stars
People tried to blame him for making bad choices
When he was only listening to the voices
He's searching for some kind of deeper truth
Between the lines in the Bible and living proof
There's no point now to judge him in vain
If you haven't been there, you don't know the pain

He was a liar, but not a fraud
Living proof that there was no God
Just the Devil, stiff as a rod
A slave to a sugartooth

His life became more than he could take
He found a bad habit he couldn't break
Nothing could tame him and nothing could hold him
He only took the pills when the doctor told him
Looking too hard for the something sweet
To make his life feel less incomplete
What in the hell are you going to do
When the world has made its mind up about you?

He was a liar, but not a fraud
Living proof that there was no God
Just the Devil, stiff as a rod
A slave to a sugartooth

He wanted to be a better man
Then life kicked him down like an old tin can
He would give you the shirt on his back
If not for a sugartooth

They found him lying on his bed
With a gun in his hand and a quiet head
His broken heart now is finally gone
But I know that he had the hurt for too long
To think he had fought it all on his own
Just to lose the battle and die alone
After so many years of feeling the loss
He finally made his way back home

And I helped put what was left in a box
And took it to a place called Jesus Rock
And scattered him all over the jagged mound
As a symbol to all that the peace had been found
But not for a sign is left behind
With a hand stuck reaching back in time
To a place in which you can never unwind
I hope he found something so sweet

He was a liar, but not a fraud
Living proof that there was no God
Just the Devil, stiff as a rod
A slave to a sugartooth

He wanted to be a better man
But life kicked him down like an old tin can
He would give you the shirt off his back
If not for a sugartooth

   "Sugartooth" by Brandi Carlile, Phil and Tim Hanseroth

I took a drive to Port Washington this afternoon to pick up some bird seed at Walmart.  I got off the freeway at Highway 60 and took CTH C from there into Port.  I was struck again and I always seem to be with how interesting a ride that is, admiring so many unique homesteads and the farm fields, the curious houses once I get into Port proper, and of course, the painted ladies and other beautiful homes on Grand Avenue.  I have the feeling that I'm not long for this world and that is why the world looks so different to me this past year, so grgeous, exciting, and vibrant, like I'm in a place I've never been before, that I've never seen before, and that is so different from everything I'm used to, althought it is precisely what I've been looking at and not seeing for much of my entire life.  I got to thinking as I left Walmart that my Dad died at 86 and I am 84, wondering if I will outlive him, and believing that I won't.  We all thought he would be the first of our small family to die, with his chronic blood pressure problems and his abusive drinking during much of his adult life.  It looks to me now that he will have outlived all of us unless I manage to live another couple of years.  Perhaps tomorrow's cardiac tests will give me a clue.

Geri in the sunroom with the $20 two-seater she found at the Home Depot, preparing for the Thanksgiving Day dinner crowd.

11/15/2025

Saturday, November 15, 2025

1969 An estimated 2 million people took part in the Vietnam War Moratorium demonstrations across the United States

2022 The world's population reached 8 billion, just 11 years after passing 7 billion, though slowing down (9 billion expected in about 2037), according to the UN

2024 President-elect Trump selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services

In bed around 10 and up around 58°, wind chill 50°, high of 62°. 

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

The side-eyed grimace from Mr. "I run the world."  Until he unveiled his plan to order the Justice Department to start a criminal investigation of Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, a fat cat Democratic donor, and J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, the man who claimed in an Atlantic interview to "run the country and the world" was uncharacteristically silent about the Jeffrey Epstein emails suggesting a close relationship between Trump and the notorious sex criminal.  This photo, taken yesterday in the Oval Office, shows Trump ignoring questions from the press about the emails and about his long relationship with Epstein.   It's revealing, showing him surrounded in the rear with smiling, applauding supporters, suggesting him surrounded in the front by aggressive reporters throwing unwelcome Epstein questions at him, with him in the middle, squirming.  Did he ever partake of the pleasures available from his buddy's underage odalisques?  We'll probably never know.  If there were any documents in the FBI files tending to incriminate Trump in this way, we can be reasonably sure they have been purged, deep-sixed, incinerated, or somehow destroyed.  There may, however, be documents that are otherwise embarrassing to Trump, perhaps revealing a fling with Ghislaine, or a relationship between Melania and Epstein, any number of things.  As Stormy Daniels and E. Jean Carroll showed, we can't put any sexual behavior beyond the realm of possibility for Donald John Trump.  The Epstein files will probably never be revealed during Trump's term of office since he is able and willing to order one investigation after another, like the current investigation of Clinton, et al., enabling the DOJ and FBI to decline to reveal the files because disclosure could interfere with "an ongoing active investigation."  So it goes.  USA, USA, USA.

What do we know for sure about Donald Trump and sexual degeneracy?   (1) The Access Hollywood 'grab them by the pussy" and "they let you do it because you're a star" tape.  (2) The verdict and judgment in the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault case.  (3)  The Stormy Daniels one-nighter and payoff. (4) His multiple adulteries. (4) The 50th birthday card to Epstein. (5) Accusation by Ivana Trump of non-consensual sex forced on her. (6)  At least 27 women have publicly accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct, including allegations of rape, sexual assault, harassment, non-consensual kissing or groping, and other intrusive behaviors, with incidents reportedly dating back to the 1970s.  (7)  Epstein said in an email "Trump knew about the girls."

Busy afternoon.  Picked up burlap and wrapped arbor vitae trees in the back yard.  Picked up a $119 two-seater for $20 at the Capitol Dr. Home Depot.