#1,045: Zelig Eshhar: A Giant Amongst Us

July 27, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for British writers Aldous Huxley (best known for Brave New World and The Doors of Perception) and C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters and his 7-volume The Chronicles of Narnia). Not because they were unknown, unsuccessful or unread, for such is certainly not the case. Both men sold tons of books, saw many of them turned into motion pictures, and one - Huxley - was honored with having a seminal rock group (The Doors) take its name from one of his books by a grateful a turned-on fan named Jim Morrison.

The reason I feel sorry for them is pretty much the reason I feel badly for the recently-deceased Israeli Immunologist Zelig Eshhar. “Who in the hell is Zelig Eshhar?” I can hear you ask, “ . . . and what does he have in common with two British authors?” The answer to the first part of the question forms the basis of this week’s post; the answer to the second part is pretty simple. Both Huxley and Lewis had the bad fortune of passing away on November 22, 1963: the day JFK was assassinated in Dallas. On just about any day ranging from, say, April 12, 1945 (the death of FDR) to June 5, 1968 (the day RFK was assassinated in Los Angeles), Huxley’s and Lewis’ deaths would no doubt have been frontpage-above-the-fold headlines, all across the globe. But no: their passing barely received notice on the back page; that which Grandpa Doc would have playfully referred to as being “beneath the truss ads on page 97.”

Zelig Eshhar, PhD, had the bad luck to pass away during a month in which more than a half-dozen celebrities shuffled off this mortal coil; the list includes such well-known people as:

The “Prince of Darkness,” John Michael “Ozzie Osbourne”,
Singer Concetta Rose Maria Franconero (Connie Francis),
WWE wrestling legend Terry Gene Bollea (aka “Hulk Hogan”),
Cosby Show alum Malcolm Jamal Warner,
Jazz legend Chuck Mangione,
Composer Lalo Schifrin (“Mission Impossible”),
60’s teen idol Robert Cabot “Bobby” Sherman,
Brian Wilson, the front man for “The Beach Boys” and
M*A*S*H actress Loretta Swit, aka “Hot Lips Houlihan.”

Whereas the vast majority of people have no problem identifying the celebrities listed above, most folks - with the possible exception of Epidemiologists, Immunologists, Oncologists or those who engage in Medical Ethics - have the slightest idea of who Zelig (Lipka) Eshhar was. And while Professor Eshhar’s contributions to society were neither entertaining, hummable nor particularly understandable, they did affect the lives of millions upon millions of people all over the world . . . and perhaps for the rest of time.

So just who was this man, and why do I refer to him as a “giant amongst us?”

Zelig Lipka was born on Feb. 25, 1941, in Petah Tikva (Hebrew for Door of Hope), in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, and grew up in Rehovot (Hebrew for Wide Expanses). His parents were both from Poland; his father, Jacob, was a truck driver who brought agricultural products to market, while his mother, Sarah, was a teacher. At age 18, Zelig, (now named Eshhar [אשחר], Hebrew for the Buckthorn plant, which is found all over northern Israel) enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.) and joined a brigade on a kibbutz. After his military service he stayed on at his kibbutz, where he started his scientific career as a beekeeper.

Between 1963 and 1968 Eshhar earned his B.A. and M.A. in biochemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and a PhD in chemical immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. His doctoral dissertation was on the role of T-cells. (T cells are a type of white blood cell called lymphocytes. They help the body’s immune system fight germs and protect us from disease. There are two main types: Cytotoxic T cells destroy infected cells. Helper T cells send signals that direct other immune cells to fight infection.) Dr. Eshhar went on to study at Harvard Medical School under Baruj Benacerraf, who would share the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery that the strength of an individual’s immune response is controlled by a group of genes.

While at Harvard, Dr. Eshhar began to focus on cancer as a target for T-cells. In an interview he gave to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2017, Dr. Eshhar was quoted as saying “Benacerraf discovered a distinctive molecule that characterizes the cancer cells, and he wanted to get a handle on it. That was my task, and I gained recognition when I succeeded because no one had done it previously.”

After years of doing research at both Harvard (Dana Farber) and the National Institutes for health, Dr. Eshhar returned to the Weizmann Institute. In his research, Dr. Eshhar learned that by enlisting the help of “a receptor that sits on the T-cell and binds with molecules of the foreign invader (e.g. a cancer cell), the binding activates the T-cell’s killer mechanism, which eradicates the alien cell. Eradication occurs, for example, when a virus invades a body cell.”

T-cells and antibodies in patients and animals are part of the immune system, capable of distinguishing tumor cells from normal cells. These cells, however, are not enough to fight the cancer cells, which manage to “evade and avoid them,” as Dr. Eshhar explained it. The end result is cancer and an immune system that is not efficient enough to thwart it.

Dr. Eshhar’s eureka moment came when he decided to combine the antibodies with the T-cells, he said: “Two are better than one.”

Dr. Eshhar turned what had been a theory into a reality. He wound up extracting the T-cells and genetically engineering them to include a molecule that has the cancer recognition skills of both the antibodies and the T-cells. The modified T-cells are then injected into patients.

In making this combination, he was able to produce a hybrid known as a “chimeric antigen receptor T-cell . . . the short version of which is “CAR-T”, which essentially grabs onto the antigens (proteins) that appear on cancer cells. When reintroduced in to the bloodstream of a subject who has a blood cancer (such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma or multiple myeloma) these newly-created T-cells have the ability to target and destroy cancer cells. To date, the process has shown itself to be extremely effective.

According to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “Eshhar’s invention was no minor tweak in the lab; it was a conceptual leap. The notion that these genetically engineered immune cells could be re-engineered to home in on cancer,transformed what once seemed a distant vision into an imminent reality.” Dr. Gottlieb, (himself a survivor of Hodgkin’s Disease) currently sits on the board of on of the American Enterprise Institute and various pharmaceutical companies. Next year, HarperCollins will be publishing his new book, “The Miracle Century: Making Sense of the Cell Therapy Revolution” in which he writes extensively about Dr. Eshhar and the creation of CAR-T therapy. I for one am excited about reading his book.

Ever humorously humble, when asked to describe himself during an interview, he answered, simply: “I am a PhD and a doctor of mice.” When asked to estimate how much money he thought he might make from selling the rights to his patent for CAR-T therapy, he flatly stated: “I am not a banker and I don’t know the laws,” I don’t know how much I will get. I prefer not to relate to this. Research is what interests me, to improve the treatment and make it more effective.”

May Zelig Eshhar’s memory be a blessing for all those who worked with him and all those who will find hope and health in the future.

Indeed, there has been a giant amongst us . . .

Comment 0 Likes

categories / The Giants Amongst Us

#1,044: First They Came For N.P.R., Then They Came for P.B.S . . .

July 21, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

It goes without saying that in his day, Lyndon Baines Johnson was a terribly unpopular POTUS. Back then, student protestors were as apt to be shouting “Hey, hey, LBJ: how many kids did ya kill today?” in the campus quadrangle as were singing “Go ask Alice, when she’s 10 feet tall” at a spontaneous gathering of singing stoners. One will recall that LBJ’s approval rating was so toxic that he was forced to announce he would not be running for reelection in 1968 . . . a man who had, just 4 years prior, annihilated his Republican opponent, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, by nearly 16 million votes, winning 44 of the 50 states. Never in the history of American politics had an incumbent president suffered such an precipitous fall from grace.

If it were not for the Viet Nam war, LBJ would likely have gone down as one of our most successful, most progressive of all American presidents. Consider just a few historic measures enacted during his 5 years in office:

July 2, 1964: Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed discrimination based on race or color, sex, religion or national origin.
August 30, 1964: Johnson signs the Economic Opportunity Act, creating the Office of Economic Opportunity and beginning the War on Poverty.
July 30, 1965: Johnson signs legislation creating Medicare and Medicaid.
August 6, 1965: Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law.
November 7, 1967: LBJ adds a monumental new institution to his Great Society: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

At the signing of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, LBJ referred to it as “. . . a miracle of communication.,” and compared it to the United States’ first telegraph line.: “This Corporation will assist stations and producers who aim for the best in broadcasting good music, in broadcasting exciting plays, and in broadcasting reports on the whole fascinating range of human activity,” Johnson remarked, as he approved the nonprofit that would give quickly give birth to both National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. “Today,” he said, “we rededicate a part of the airwaves—which belong to all the people—and we dedicate them for the enlightenment of all the people.”

But not all was beer and skittles, as the Brits would have it. Shortly after succeeding LBJ, Richard Nixon sought to cut the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s (CPB) budget by more than 50% (from $20 million to $10 million); he found it to be a waste of taxpayer’s money and likely anti-American. At this point, Rhode Island Senator John Pastore (1907-2003), the legislative father of the Public Broadcasting Act and chair of the powerful Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, held a hearing in which his main witness was America’s “best neighbor,” the beloved Mr. Rogers who, in his quiet folksy way, sent Nixon to his room without supper. And yes, by repeatedly referring to the need for first-rate children’s programming, Mr. Rogers succeeded in his task; the moneys were left intact. It is a maddeningly true fact the urge to cut funding - if not completely dismantle - CPB, PBS and NPR was already present at its creation. (It should be noted that Senator Pastore’s main motivation in creating PBS and NPR was to directly counter the violence seen on commercial television, and unbalanced reporting done by corporate news agencies. . . hence Mr. Rogers going up to Capitol Hill.)

For nearly 60 years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - through both PBS and NPR - has been providing the American public with the very best in public programming, performance, British comedy, documentary film and news broadcasts that would make Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters jump up and give a standing ovation. National Public Radio is one of the last news agencies which still maintains embedded journalists and bureaus all over the world.Despite what the regime would have their cultists think, All Things Considered, National Public Radio’s flagship program is the most listened-to, afternoon drive-time, news radio program in the country. Likewise, Morning Edition, NPR’s morning drive-time 3-hour news show has a daily audience estimated at more than 13 million Both of these news shows have earned many of journalism's highest honors, including the George Foster Peabody Award, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, and the Overseas Press Club Award.

Just last night we spent our television time enjoying the hell out of 3 laugh-out-loud comedies from the BBC (Are You Being Served?, Keeping Up Appearances, and As Time Goes By), followed episode 4 [of 7] of Ken Burns’ brilliant miniseries The Roosevelts: An Intimate History.) And while I will admit that British humor (or should that be humour?) is an acquired taste and that Ken Burns’ documentary series about the Roosevelts, Thomas Jefferson, The “Dust Bowl,” The U.S. and the Holocaust and Jackie Robinson (to name but a few) might not be everyone’s cuppa tea, they are really, truly both entertaining and educational. Many will recall that the original collective term for PBS has been doing so well for the past 57 or so years was Educational Television. Today, I fear, for many that is an opprobrious term, meant to tar the entire enterprise with the feathers of snotty, leftist elitism.

If you ever watch or listen to a program on either PBS or NPR, you will see or hear a rendering of who its sponsors are. And while the litany generally begins with “The Corporation for Public Broadcasting” and ends with “ . . . and supporters like you,” in between there are numerous corporate and philanthropic underwriters. Truth to tell, NPR and PBS receives just a small amount of direct federal government support; less than 2% of its annual revenue. And yet, ever since its creation in 1967, there has been a slow but constant demand to have the feds turn the spigot off.

This demand finally became reality this past week when, by the narrowest of partisan margins Congress gave final approval to Felon47’s request to claw back about $9 billion for public broadcasting and foreign aid. The legislative or legal term for what IT demanded and Congress delivered, is called rescission; the cancelling of a contract. In the context of the U.S. Congress, rescission refers to the process where Congress formally cancels previously appropriated budget authority, effectively reversing a spending decision. This means Congress can retroactively cut funds that have already been approved for a specific purpose. Rescission bills proposed by POTUS are considered under an expedited process that cannot be filibustered in the Senate, thus allowing it to pass with 51 votes instead of 60 (the number it takes to end a filibuster . . . an act called “cloture.”

The vote marked the first time in decades that a president had submitted a rescission request to Congress/ That POTUS was Bill Clinton way back in the 1990s. Ominously, the current White House has made it clear that this current rescission won’t be the last. Some Republicans who expressed discomfort with the cuts ($1.1 billion for CPC, and $8 billion for foreign aid) behind closed doors, nonetheless supported them, wary of crossing the regime or upsetting ITs agenda. “We need to get back to fiscal sanity and this is an important step,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson. By what stretch of anyone’s imagination can clawing back a paltry $9 billion in already approved funding be considered an “important step?” Yes, most of us know Lao Tzu’s axiom about “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” but this . . . this is the height of idiocy. Lopping off $9 billion from a budget that will easily top $7 trillion and calling it “an important step” shows the Speaker (and the boss who gives him his marching orders) to be either the biggest fools or most craven cowards in American political history. And what is even worse, Speaker Johnson - like his boss - thinks there are enough idiots in America to pull it off. Just do the math: $1.1 billion is precisely 0.0157142857% of the federal budget.

At this point, it should be obvious - not to all, but to many - that the rescission has virtually nothing to do with the budget; it does have everything to do with getting back at any individual or institution that finds fault with IT, points out his lies or questions his leadership abilities. And while POTUS may sit in his gilt-encrusted office smugly chuckling over what he has accomplished and making plans for getting yet another media outlet to toe the line and show him the fealty he believes is due him, he is, I would imagine, beginning to have some sleepless nights. Yes, he can privately take all the credit in the world for getting Steven Colbert kicked off the air, and for forcing out numerous top-flight columnists and editors from their positions at the Washington Post and New York Times, but I predict that one of these days, he is going to start feeling the wrath of his most loyal, least educated and least urban supporters. For ironically, it will be the farmers of the Dakotas and the Midwest - those who rely heavily on their local NPR affiliates to bring them their up-to-the-moment local news and weather forecasts - who will turn the dial and find nothing but dead air. It will be the working-class who find prices beginning to skyrocket . . . only to discover that it wasn’t Biden, Obama, Schumer, Pelosi or AOC who are/were responsible for all the economic misery, but rather tariffs . . .which are taxes, levied on the working class. People living in small rural towns are daily waking up to the fact that their local hospital has closed its doors due to the fact that they no longer receive assistance from the Feds. . . or that when there’s a natural disaster, there’s no one answering the phones at FEMA. The most zealous of his Christian Nationalist supporters will come to see that their leader, far from being a redeemer is, in fact, a decadent, merciless oligarch who is lining his pockets with billions of crypto dollars, while denying that he was ever been friends with Jeffrey Epstein. Is it any wonder that just the other day, the White House Press office issued a report informing the public that Pumpkin Punim has been diagnosed with Chronic Venous Insufficiency “after he noticed swelling in his legs.” How’s that for shifting public attention away from the realities of the moment? Perhaps It can garner a bit of sympathy from his cultists, thus turning their attention away from how poorly they are doing.

Going after the CPB, NPR and PBS isn’t going to make America “great again.” Forcing out or firing such top-flight journalists and editors as the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus, Ashley Parker, Eugene Robinson and executive editor Sally Buzbee won’t show how powerful Felon47 is; it will strengthen MSNB and the Atlantic, where most of the above found new, more challenging positions.

Suing Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal for $10 billion for malicious libel over the newspaper’s report that POTUS’s name was on a 2003 birthday greeting for Jeffrey Epstein (that included a sexually suggestive drawing and a reference to secrets they shared) cannot and will not make IT any richer or more popular with the cult. Remember: Rupert Murdoch, who just a little over 2 years ago agreed to a $787 million settlement in the Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit, also owns and controls Fox News, which is already beginning to tone down its positive reporting of the current administration. Although now in his mid-nineties and fighting with his children over who will control his media empire, Rupert Murdoch has a long memory . . . and knows more about revenge than IT can ever begin to imagine.

Yes, the 47th POTUS is an ass but, to paraphrase former President William Howard Taft’s takedown of William Jennings Bryan, “ . . . he’s an ass with a lot of opportunity for mischief.”

The “mischief” that IT, his puppet masters, toadies, and cultists are fobbing off on America and indeed the world, is being done in plain sight. This is the good news. The bad - very bad - news is that one of these days, there may be no news to broadcast the news . . . if they get their way. Unless and until the lower courts and SCOTUS find the courage to rein in these despoilers of democracy, we are going to wake up one day and find that too much has been taken away from the many in order to further enrich the few. As I write this concluding paragraph, I am reminded of the late German Pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) who, despite being an early and ardent supporter of Adolf Hitler, emerged as an outspoken public foe in the late 1930s. He is remembered for one particularly haunting and prescient piece of writing known to history by the title “First They Came.”

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Indeed, now, as never before, we must all speak out.

For those who want to help undo the harm done to public access media by the rescission, please consider making a contribution to either National Public Radio, PBS or both. Together we can help keep the public airwaves in the hands of the public . . . which belong to US.

1 Comment 0 Likes

categories / Education

#1,043: Misreading the Bard of Avon

July 14, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

It’s simply amazing how many epochal, history-making events can pile up when you stay away from the news for a single week - a mere 168 hours. First and foremost, there was that horrific storm surge that took the lives of oh so many children, along with their parents and camp counselors in a tiny Texas county, not to be overshadowed by the boorish, nonsensical response from Felon47 . . . praising state leaders for their heroic efforts, all the while telling the nation that no one could have predicted a “once-in-a-thousand-year storm.” (n.b. Yes, I know, it now seems that we suffer through a “once-in-a-thousand-year storm” about twice a year.)

Next came the meeting of two world leaders (‘47 and Netanyahu), the latter of whom gave his full-throated endorsement of the former, for the Nobel Peace Prize. Upon hearing this, my morning tea literally started dripping from my nose. I mean, ANYONE nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Bibi Netanyahu has got to have a snowball’s chance in Hades of winning. (President T, I would remind you that only 4 of the Nation’s Chief Executives have ever won that award, and despite what you may think of yourself and your actions, you are neither Theodore Roosevelt nor Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter nor Barak Obama. Can we get a bit of agreement on that salient point?)

Things were so bad during this past week when I was paying attention to nothing but my wife’s cardiac surgery that even my beloved Dodgers went on a 7-game losing streak . . . their longest since 2017. C’mon guys you really didn’t have to do that. I mean, getting outscored 52-17 over the 7 games, including an 18-1 drubbing by the Houston Astros? And at Dodger Stadium in front of more than 50,000 fans?

Getting back to the news I missed, there was also

IT turning on President Putin for being a bully (in other words, finally realizing that the Russian dictator has long considered him to be nothing more than a “useful fool”);

The utter idiocy of Secretaries Noem and Hegseth, both of whom should find a hallowed spot in the Guinness Book of World Records;
The now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t rise and fall of tariffs against our supposed friends;
Threatening a 35 percent tariff on many goods from Canada, in part because of the country’s role in allowing the flow of fentanyl into the United States. (FACT: Canada makes up just 0.2% of US border fentanyl seizures.)
The number of lower court judges who have ruled against the regime on every move under the sun ranging from POTUS’ right to singlehandedly eliminate “birthright citizenship” to using ICE to pick up people of color and jail them without any due process;
The DOJ’s move to sit on (and utterly deny) the -called “Epstein Files,” which would implicate IT (and a swarm of very, very famous, salacious men) in sex trafficking and having a grand and finally,
SCOTUS inoculating POTUS with a legal shield that makes Pumpkin Punim all but immune to any FEDERAL legal charge(s).

It’s this last issue - SOCTUS’ voting 6-3 (so what else is new?) to indemnify their all-time favorite tyrant from any legal trouble - that brings to mind perhaps the best-known (and least understood) line from Shakespeare’s 38 plays, 154 sonnets and 3 long narrative poems . . . this one coming from Henry VI, Part II, Act 4, Scene 2 . . . where one of the enemies of King Henry, Jack Cade, is told by one “Dick the Butcher” that the solution to all their problems is “The first thing we must do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

I cannot tell you how many times I have read or heard people quote this verse without know either:

Its source of origin, or
What Shakespeare is doing his very best to say. Is he really, truly in favor of rubbing out all lawyers . . . or is he being ironic . . . or is it something that few people get?

**The Family’s Avon Edition of Shakespeare (1878)**

Before we get into Henry VI, Part 11 and what that famous line of Dick the Butcher means in terms of today’s politics, a bit of transparency: while I am not what you would call a Shakespearean scholar, the Bard has been a part of our family’s life for several generations. In each generation, one member of the Hyman/Kagan/Schimberg/Stone clan is given the honor of holding on to (and reading) our family’s one-volume Avon Edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare. It has been in the family for precisely 147 years. I received the honor of holding on to it a little over 40 years ago. And so, while I can claim to have read much of what the Bard of Avon wrote, taken numerous classes, seen quite a few stage productions, and screened what I consider to be the best of his filmed works for my students, I am nothing more than an extremely avid amateur.

The context in which Dick the butcher utters this most famous (or infamous) of all Shakespearean phrases is key to understanding its true meaning. And there still are several possible readings.

This is where the quote lies, in dialogue:

JACK CADE: Valiant I am.

SMITH [aside]: A must needs; for beggary is valiant.

JACK CADE: I am able to endure much.

DICK [aside]: No question of that; for I have seen him whipp’d three market-days together.

JACK CADE: I fear neither sword nor fire.

SMITH [aside]: He need not fear the sword; for his coat is of proof.

DICK [aside]: But methinks he should stand in fear of fire, being burnt i’ th’ hand for stealing of sheep.

JACK CADE: Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hoop’d pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass: and when I am king,– as king I will be,–

ALL. God save your majesty!

JACK CADE: I thank you, good people:– there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.

DICK: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

**Jack Cade and Dick the Butcher (The BBC)**

Dick is a villainous character—he is a large, threatening murderer, and he is also the right-hand-man of Jack Cade, who is leading a rebellion against King Henry. Cade and Dick are aggressively anti-intellectual; they kill anyone who can read and burn all the books and documents they encounter. They know that they’ll be able to take over an ignorant population with greater ease than one where everyone understands their rights.

One reading of this strange quote suggests, therefore, that society could not exist in a state of fairness and peace without the protectiveness of both the law and its staunch guardians. Dick is suggesting that, in order for their coup to prevail, they must eradicate society of the very defenders of justice who could both stop the revolt he intends to help spur, and then remove the power he hopes to grab for Cade. Understood in this way, Dick the Butcher is a combined Stephen MIller/Pam Bondi to Jack Cade’s IT. Cade is so warped that when his personal thug (Dick the Butcher) rapes a Sergeant’s wife, and the Sergeant reports it to Cade, Cade orders the Butcher to kill the Sergeant as well. This is one bloodthirsty dude.

All this suggests that when the Bard puts the words “. . . let’s kill all the lawyers” in the mouth of Dick the Butcher, Shakespeare is actually representing lawyers as the most fundamental defense against the grossest manifestations of power-hungry antics wrought by the scum of humanity.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens actually shared this reading of the line, even analyzing it in a 1985 decision: “As a careful reading of that text will reveal, Shakespeare insightfully realized that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.”

But, as scholar Daniel Kornstein notes in his book Kill all the Lawyers: Shakespeare’s Legal Appeal, this quote could also have been a class-focused criticism of lawyers, a group of professionals committed to securing the interests of the wealthy. Cade is a laborer and longs to overthrow the oppressive upper-classes, and Dick recognizes that lawyers stand in their way. This is a far more obvious (though IMHO incorrect) interpretation of what Shakespeare had in mind.

It turns out that “Let’s kill all the lawyers” is a terribly convoluted phrase that (somehow always) refers to the importance of maintaining a fair rule of law that protects the people. But whether lawyers are mere symbols for evil or good is almost irrelevant; the most important thing about this quote is the upholding of a fair and just legal system, itself. Today many are striding (while others are goosestepping) down a perilous pathway in which lawyers can be protectors of justice and enemies of both anarchy and autocracy one moment, then protectors of the hyper-wealthy and enemies of both democracy and the entire legal system itself the next. It is all so damnably difficult to understand. Honesty, empathy and civility are in short - or near nonexistent - supply. A misguided sense of fealty has made voiceless, irresolute cowards of far too many.

After taking a week off from the news to attend to my wife’s health, I am also reminded of another Shakespearean character: Ariel, the free spirit in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, who famously said, “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

Nonetheless, as we say in Hebrew, גם זה יעבוֹר (gahm zeh ya-ah-vore), meaning “This too shall pass.” It is said when times are terribly difficult and filled with anxiety. And we mean it. Interestingly, however, it is also said when things are going swimmingly. It proclaims a balance; nothing lasts forever. Make no mistake about it: this evil era will one day pass; when, no one knows. But we can help make it happen not by “killing all the lawyers,” as Dick the Butcher would have it, but rather by girding ourselves with greater civility, empathy and inner strength. And by keeping our mouths open . . .

For those who want to express themselves, this coming Thursday, July 17, 2025, there will be nationwide protests. If you would like to join in the fight to uphold the Constitution and end executive overreach (and perhaps make the TACO and his gang squirm and shiver, go to FiftyFifty One and find where the closest protest to your home, school, or work will be happening.

Good Trouble Lives On!

Comment 0 Likes

categories / The Regime, All Politics All the Time

An Important Correction About Anna's Surgery . . .

July 06, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Good Morning: Throughout all the years we’ve been together, Annie has been more than meticulous in reading what I write . . . going back to both the first and second volumes of The Congressional Minyan: The Jews of Capitol Hill, more than a quarter century ago.

Well, once again, she’s put me straight about something I wrote and emailed yesterday. It turns out that the surgical procedure she will be undergoing tomorrow is not a Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TVR), but rather something that goes by the far simpler "The Miami Method,” which Dr. Lamelas pioneered some 20 years ago. If you will click the link above, you will read that Dr. Lameslas’ Miami Method is “a minimally invasive technique involving a right lateral thoracotomy that enables the surgeon, with the help of specially developed tools, to access the heart via an incision between the ribs instead of via a sternotomy."

While I regret leading you astray, I am, as always in awe of my wife . . .

I wouldn’t be surprised if she refuses to be anesthetized so she can assist Sr. Lamelas in her own surgery!

We’ll keep you up-date.

Thanks for all the good wishes and prayerful, loving emojis .

KFS

9 Comments 2 Likes

A Note to You, Dear Reader:

July 05, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Dear Reader:

For the first time since the beginning of February, 2005, I regret to say that there won’t be a blog post this week. The reason is both simple and troubling. My dear wife, Anna Zamosc (known to many as Moreh - Hebrew for “teacher) Chana, will be undergoing heart surgery this coming Monday. The specific procedure is known as TVR (Transcatheter aortic valve replacement) a minimally invasive procedure used to replace a narrowed aortic valve. The underlying cause is not - as with most people - aortic stenosis (a narrowing of the aortic valve), but rather a sequela (a condition which is the consequence of a previous disease) of her lifelong problem with Osteogenesis imperfect (O.I.), frequently called “Brittle Bone” disease.

People with this rare disease cannot undergo the “regular” surgical procedure, known as Aortic Valve Replacement (AVR) because it necessitates first cracking open the patient’ sternum (breastbone) prior to replacing the problematic valve; this procedure (sternotomy) really shouldn’t be done when the patient suffers from O.I. as well.

Anna should be in the cardiac intensive care unit sometime on Monday afternoon, and then moved to a regular room either late Tuesday or early Wednesday. If all goes well, she should be returning home in time for this coming Shabbat. We are very optimistic; her cardio-thoracic surgeon, Dr. Joseph Lamelas, pioneered this surgical technique. He isn’t merely world-class; we prefer to think of him as galaxy-class.

For anyone in a praying mood, Annie’s Hebrew name is חנה חוה בּת נעמי (Chana Chava bat Naomi). (Please note: it is an old Jewish custom that when praying for someone’s recovery, we mention their mother’s name.

Surgery will be taking place at the University of Miami.

Thanks in advance for your care, concern and prayers. As many of you know, Annie is a galaxy-class human being who deserves nothing but the best . . . and then some!

KFS

12 Comments 2 Likes

#1,042: Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus

June 24, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

The Latin expression falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus is a vintage legal principle found mostly in English common law. Literally translated as “false in one thing, false in everything,” it was long the basis for a trial strategy which held that if a witness or defendant was found to have been untruthful about one part of their testimony, the reliability of their entire testimony could then be called into question. In a sense, falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus sums up in just 6 words what Aesop’s fable “The Boy (or Shepherd) Who Cried Wolf” was getting at. (n.b. Many contemporary jurisdictions have abandoned the principle as a formal rule of evidence, applying instead the rule as “permissible inference that the jury may or may not draw.” So far as I know, the last time falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus was applied in a major case was back in 1995 in The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James [O.J.] Simpson, where Judge Lance Ito instructed the jury that a “witness who is willfully false in one material part of his or her testimony is to be distrusted in others.”)

Despite the paragraph above, this post is not about the history of common law, Latin phraseology, or the O.J. Simpson case. Rather, it seeks to explore the world’s leading epitomization of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus: the 47th POTUS. While a heck of a lot of the American public is effusively praising him for Saturday night’s pinpoint Operation Midnight Hammer bombing raid on Iran’s 3 major nuclear facilities (Isfahan, Natanz and Fordo), there are just as many Americans (both Jewish and non-Jewish) who are asking Why now?, What’s next?, Is there an exit strategy? and What role did/does political optics play in the attack?

The main target of the bombing operation was the Fordo nuclear site, which is located roughly 300 feet under a mountain about 100 miles south of Tehran. It's a move that Israel has been lobbying the U.S. to carry out for quite some time, given that only the U.S. has the kind of powerful "bunker buster" bombs capable of reaching the site. Known as the GBU-57 MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator), the bomb can only be transported by one specific U.S. warplane, the B-2 stealth bomber, due to its (i.e. the MOP’s) immense 30,000 pound weight. In his address to the nation announcing the operation, It was accompanied by the V.P, the Sec. of State and the Sec. of Defense. Chillingly, not a single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were present . . . a clear indication that political optics were more important than strategic concerns. He also called the operation a "spectacular military success” and claimed that Iran’s nuclear capability “has been obliterated.” I may not know sprat about military tactics or weaponry; what I do know is that it is virtually impossible to make such a robust judgment within a matter of hours. We have every right to be dubious. Remember, falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

Not only did POTUS give his patented “thumbs up” to the mission; he did so without consulting Congress. I guess he isn’t aware (or even worse, care) that there’s been a War Powers Act on the books for the past half century. This resolution, passed by congress in 1973, limits POTUS’s ability to initiate or escalate military actions abroad. As part of our system of governmental “checks and balances,” the law aims to check the executive branch’s power when committing U.S. military forces to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. Already, some lawmakers in both parties are questioning the legality of the mission. Remember back in late 2024 when IT repeatedly claimed that if Kamala Harris were to win the election, that she’d get the U.S. embroiled in a war within a year? Well, he managed to do it within 6 months. One Republican House member, Kentuckian Thomas Massie, responded to POTUS’s announcement of the strikes in 4 words: “This is not Constitutional.” Massie also introduced a bipartisan resolution seeking to block U.S. military action against Iran “unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force against Iran” passed by Congress. ITs response? “[Rep. Massie is] a lazy, grandstanding nonproductive” politician.

In a penetrating response to the president’s action, Atlantic columnist (and former Bush 43 speechwriter) David Frum noted: Trump did the right thing, but he did that right thing in the wrongest [sic] possible way: without Congress, without competent leadership in place to defend the United States against terrorism, and while waging a culture war at home against half the nation. Trump has not put U.S. boots on the ground to fight Iran, but he has put U.S. troops on the ground for an uninvited military occupation of California.

While ITs air attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities may have been, from a strategic point of view, both flawless and precise, it leaves one feeling “we’ve all seen this before.” One up-and-coming political influencer, Glee Violette, noted in a recent online post: “When Kamala Harris roared on the scene, and Trump's campaign flagged, he had a ‘miraculous‘ incident, thanks to God himself. But it was only miraculous for HIM. A fan of his died. A family was destroyed. . . Still, later in the campaign there was a second such incident. Inside his own golf course. The only real result of this was that the head of Trump's Secret Service detail, who had total control of BOTH venues, and who should have been fired for gross incompetence, was instead promoted to head the entire Secret Service for Trump after his inauguration.”

In other words, when things start swirling around Felon47’s toilet bowl, he and his puppet masters do everything in their power to turn public attention away from reality. Think about it: in the week just prior to Operation Midnight Hammer, ITs reputation and polling numbers started swirling and spiraling downward. His birthday parade was shunned and shamed and he ended up looking ridiculous. Meanwhile millions upon millions of Americans gathered in places both metropolitan and rural for peaceful “NO KINGS DAY” protests. If that wasn't bad enough, two days later he got shut down at the G7, and his exit, rather than looking like a show of strength, looked like a childish tantrum.

He immediately went on the defensive, huffing that he had left the G7 because he was NEEDED back in Washington. He had something even BIGGER than the Mideast crisis to deal with. “This is not about IRAN”, he said. “Much much BIGGER. Wait until you hear about it!” And so, the next day he had contractors erect two HUGE flagpoles on the South White House lawn, thereby making helicopter take-offs and landings next to impossible. When he was reminded that by law, no American flag can be flown after dark unless it has a source of electric light, it made him even more of a laughingstock. Then he - who had run in 2024 pledging to never get America in to a war - announced that he would make a decision as to what our response would be to Israel’s air attack on Iran within 2 weeks. instead, it took him all of 2 days. I guess this means that he’s as bad at math as he is at telling the truth. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________,

it is now more than 2 1/2 hours since I wrote the words falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. During that time I took my daily walk where I attempt to take no less than 10,000 steps. Mission accomplished. Upon returning, toweling down and chugging a bottle of Gator-Aid (grape is my favorite) I, like you, learned that POTUS had gone on TV to announce a “complete and total” ceasefire between Israel and Iran. I myself am fascinated - though not overly surprised - that POTUS’s announcement caught his own top officials off guard. He really wants to have the world see him as the second coming of Theodore Roosevelt, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1906, for having negotiated peace in the Russo-Japanese war in 1904-5. Sir, there’s a big difference: Theodore Rex worked hand-in-glove with his State Department; he wasn’t a one-man show. The only thing you have in common is that both of you were born in New York State.

As good and hopeful as this truce sounds - and I for one pray that IT is telling something resembling the truth - I am adopting a "wait and see” attitude. Middle East politics, especially when it involves such powerhouses as Israel and Iran, isn’t a feel-good movie with a requisite happy ending. It isn’t some treacly comedy plotted by the likes of a Neil Simon or Mel Brooks; rather it is more akin to the convoluted, absolute absurdism of a Luigi Pirandello, Samuel Beckett or Eugène Ionesco. While we can - and likely should - applaud the possibility of this ceasefire, we should, at the same time, be painfully aware of what diplomacy is: the process and practice of communication and negotiation between actors in the international system with the aim of achieving their goals and resolving their historic conflicts, disputes and utter lack of mutual trust. Let’s face it: DJT ain’t no T.R.; Bibi Netanyahu ain’t no Itzhak Rabin.

The U.S. will not - and likely cannot - be totally honest and impartial brokers in the diplomatic process between Israel and Iran. Remember: IT, in one of his first acts during his first term, formally (and loudly) withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal (a.k.a. the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”) in May, 2018. In announcing his decision to end U.S. participation in the deal, the White House Press Office quoted him as saying “The Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.” How’s that for a hyperbolic statement?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It is now Tuesday morning, June 24. I decided to wait another several hours until continuing this essay, so I could be as up-to-the-minute as possible. Right now I feel like a sportswriter attempting to write about a tennis match that’s in progress; the height of futility. Overnight the “truce” between Israel and Iran proved to be extremely fragile. In the hours before the cease fire was to go into effect, Tehran was pounded by the most intense and sustained airstrikes since the war began 11 days ago. Close to sunrise, the attacks came to an end, according to four residents in different parts of the city. POTUS responded by lashing out sharply, criticizing Israel for firing on Iran “right after we made the deal” and said that the two adversaries didn’t know what they were doing. In his late-night communication with the White House, Israeli PM Netanyahu’s office said that Iran had fired missiles after the cease-fire took effect. In a Truth Social post, IT said that Israel “is not going to attack Iran” and that “all planes will turn around and head home.”

And so it goes.

The world waits, watches and prays. If the cease fire holds, I will be happy to give Pumpkin Punim his props. But . . . and it’s a big but . . . the proof of its efficacy won’t be known for decades . . . or until the I.A.E.A. can send in a team of inspectors to do a comprehensive assessment of Iran’s nuclear program and determine what it has done with all its fissionable material.

I just hope we will be alive to sing Oseh Shalom bimromav with conviction and glee . . .

2 Comments 0 Likes

categories / The Middle East, The Regime

#1,041: Every Day is Father's Day

June 17, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Henry Ellis Schimberg, Age 20, Upon Arriving in Hollywood

I would imagine that most - if not all of us - when, as children celebrating Mother’s or Father’s day, asked their parent(s) “Why isn’t there a ‘Children’s Day’?” For those who did ask that question, the answer was likely "Every day is ‘Children’s Day’.” And, unless you grew up in an emotionally straitened family, that answer was true . . . even if, as youngsters, it went in one ear and out the other. I begin with this memory we all have in common as a bit of an excuse for sharing my Father’s Day post two days after - not precisely on - the one day in the year when we “officially” honor our fathers. From a (or an) historic perspective, Father’s Day was the brainchild of one Sonora Louise Smart Dodd back in 1910. That year, Dodd (1882-1978), the daughter of Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, heard a sermon in her Spokane church about Mother’s Day, which had recently become a recognized holiday. After hearing the sermon, she found herself wondering why there was no Father’s Day. On June 6, 1910, she suggested establishing such a holiday to both the Spokane Ministerial Association and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane on June 19, 1910, fourteen days after her father’s birthday. Despite being recognized (and observed) by Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge, it wasn’t until 1972 that President Richard M. Nixon made Father’s Day a permanent national holiday to be observed annually the third Sunday of June.

Ernest Hemmingway once noted that Every man has two deaths: when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. To my way of thinking, this is one of the very best (and most hopeful) definitions of immortality. It tells us that so long as we tell stories about those who have shuffled off this mortal coil (found in Hamlet’s To be or not to be soliloquy) they are not truly dead. Perhaps - just perhaps - this is the purpose of Father’s (and Mother’s) Day: to keep them amongst the living . . . warts and all.

Our father, Henry Ellis Stone (nee Schimberg) was born in Baltimore, Maryland on January 21, 1915, the first of Isaac and Sheva Schimberg’s 3 children. His father, our “Grandpa Ike,” (who my slightly-older-sister Erica and I barely knew), was a clothing cutter. Depending on the season, the family would live either in Baltimore or Richmond Virginia, where grandpa plied his trade. Grandma Shiva, so the story goes, was so intent on her first-born attending the about-to-open Forest Park High School, that she actually camped out overnight on the newly-built school’s cement steps at 4300 Chatham Road in order for “Hen” to be the first to enroll. He graduated at age 16, spent 2 years at the University of Richmond, and then, filled with dreams of becoming a movie star, moved 3,000 miles away from home to Hollywood. (That’s Dad in the picture above; newly arrived and already an Adonis who dressed for success).

There is an old adage in Hollywood which goes “If you can’t act well, then at least know how to behave.” Although Hen (never “Hank”) had a lot going for him, acting ability just wasn’t in his satchel of talents. And so he wound up making ends meet doing a lot of things . . . including being a jeweler for Kays. As a memory of those days, I have, hanging on my living room wall, a shadow box with parts of watches he may or may not have taken apart, ready for repair. (The shadow box was fashioned by Fred Kaplan our mother’s “significant other” for many years after Dad passed away in 2002). One thing that Hen was learning about himself in these early years is that he was a pretty good salesman; the only thing he was missing was what to sell. In its own way, salesmanship is just another form of acting . . . selling yourself. Dad’s most successful job of selling came about when he attended a party in Beverly Hills, given by a friend named Mitzi. While at the party, he met an absolutely stunning teenager named Alice Kagan, who was visiting from Chicago and happened to be Mitzi’s first cousin. Alice had been a student at the Chicago Art Institute and an actor with the Chase Street Players. She had recently played the role of “Linda Seton” in a production of Phillip Berry’s romantic comedy Holiday (the role which had catapulted Katharine Hepburn to fame a decade earlier), and after being complimented by the luminous Lillian Gish (who was starring in a historic 66-week run of Life With Father at Chicago’s Blackstone Theatre), decided to move to Hollywood and give it a try. Alice met Hen, Hen met Alice and before you knew it, he had sold himself; they would be together for the next 61 years . . . 59 of them as husband and wife.

By the time Mom and Dad got married on July 27, 1943, Hen was already a Tech Sgt. in the United States Army Air Corps (the precursor to the Air Force). Realizing that he would likely be drafted for a two-year hitch, and smartly determining that the war would last a heck of a lot longer than 2 years, he decided to enlist, thereby foregoing the agony of being merely assigned to an MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) and instead be afforded to take a series of tests to see what he was best suited to doing. As things turned out, he was assigned to become a weather forecaster. As such, he (and Mom) went from one post to another in the United States, all the while learning how to forecast different climates. One of their postings was the Scottsbluff Army Airfield where Mom got a job in an Italian prisoner of war camp and Dad learned everything you needed to know about forecasting weather in a frigid climate. The one thing we remember Mom telling us about their time there is how she used to carefully remove the labels from Campbells soup cans, frame them, and hang them on the wall . . . long before Andy Warhol! Their basement apartment also came with a retriever named Sandy.

Having learned all about sub-zero weather and snow, snow, snow, the military, in its infinite wisdom, sent him to India, where he spent the remainder of his military service forecasting weather for planes flying over what was known as “The Hump.” To fly the "Hump," transport aircraft would take off from just 100 feet above sea level in India and climb at a drastic rate of 300 feet per minute until they reached 18,000 feet to navigate the Himalayan Mountains. The descent into the mountains of China at roughly 6,000 feet completed the route.

Dad never, ever talked about his time in India. Finally, when he was in his 80s, we asked him why, unlike many other of our friends’ fathers, he never spoke about it. His answer was pure Hen: “You know something? I feel sorry for the guys who are still talking about something that occurred more than half-a-century ago . . . as if that was the high point of their life. And besides I have found that the more they talk, the farther away from the truth they get. And personally, I don’t want to remember India . . . I lived well in the midst of so much poverty, starvation and disease. My life was great before the war and fantastic after it. That’s really all I care to remember . . . “

After the war, Alice and Henry returned to Southern California had their “mismatched twins” (Erica and myself . . . we are a mere 19 months apart) and Dad, kept looking for precisely what he should be selling. He had a visionary streak. In the early 1950s he created “Flash TVs,” a store that sold color television sets. Problem was, there weren’t any television shows in color back then. He sold one of the earliest series of visitor guide books that were placed in hotel rooms all over the country (“Guest Informant”) and then . . . he immersed himself in the world of Mutual Funds. Along with a partner named Stanley Ross, they created what was probably the first firm that specialized in this type of investment. Dad and Stan created “California Investors,” in the 1950s; mutual funds really did not capture the attention of American investors until the 1980s and 1990s. Although the first fund was founded back in 1924, California Investors was essentially there at the creation. Eventually they would have offices all over California and a client list that included lots of Hollywood folks. Eventually Dad moved into financial and estate planning.

I actually got a chance to work at his central office on Olympic Blvd., shortly after graduating from high school. The job didn’t pay all that well, and I spent most of my time filing "CIPs,” Comprehensive Investment Plans.” The only promise I had to make was that I wouldn’t tell anyone that I was Mr. Stone’s son; Dad didn’t want me treated with kid gloves. It turned out to be a wonderful decision; I got to hear what people really thought about "the boss.” They loved him and thought him one of the finest gentlemen they had ever met. . . . which of course made me silently kvell. Dad’s firm was probably the first that hired and trained women, Hispanics, African Americans, Asians and gay people to become licensed brokers. Dad’s reason was as logical and practical as you could imagine: people tend to trust those who look like them and share a common experience. Within a few years we moved to a bigger house . . . right next door to Mr. Greene, the man who owned Orange Julius.

Dad was quite a visionary in his own way. When we had a math project involving graphs and charts, we were instructed to find a marketable item and track its ups and downs. Hen recommended that we “invest” our imaginary dollars in something brand new called “Xerox.” By the end of the term I was - at least on paper - ready to retire! In the early 1960s he also began putting his clients into a company called “Finger Matrix,” the first developer of electronic fingerprinting technology. When he and Stanley Ross first started out, Dad had a business card that contained the name and number of every Mutual Fund manager in the world. By the time he "retired,” it would have taken a telephone book-sized document to list them all. Dad tried to retire in his early sixties. By that time he and Madame had sold their house and moved to a condominium in downtown Sherman Oaks. He quickly grew tired of just sitting around, and decided to take a walk down Ventura Blvd. He told Mom that if by the time he returned he hadn’t found a job, he would retire. A couple of hours later he returned with the good news that he was now the "senior account executive” for a firm called “Beneficial Standard,” and thus would keep on working. When asked how he could so quickly become their "senior” executive, he quietly responded "Oh, I’m the oldest person there.” For Hen, that passed for riotous humor.

In 1968, Mom and Dad celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. They took over the Sportsman Lodge in Studio City . . . the place for cast and crew during Hollywood’s Golden Age. Surrounded by lots of family and friends, Dad toasted Mom and Mom toasted Dad. Those toasts are, some 57 years later, still etched in my mind, for they showed, better than anything, the essential character differences that made them an ideal couple. First, Dad held a glass of champagne and gave a pretty romantic toast to his bride . . . which had most of the women in the room poking their husbands in the ribs and muttering "Why can’t you be more like Hen?” Then it was Mom’s turn. Holding her glass aloft and turning on her best "Auntie Mame” megawatt stage voice, she said: “Here’s to Henry: In 25 years of marriage, we’ve never considered divorce once. . .” Then taking a carefully-timed pause that would have made Phyllis Diller proud, concluded " . . . BUT MURDER? MANY, MANY TIMES!” That quip had the “people in the cheap seats” laughing and rising to give Madame a standing ovation. Indeed, two very different kinds of people whose marriage lasted through thick and thin.

Hen, unlike Alice didn’t really have a fully-developed sense of humor . . . except once . . .

At one point, when I was away at school, Dad called and asked if I would like to fly to Las Vegas and spend a couple of days with him, his youngest sister, my Aunt Jackie and her husband, my Uncle Marty at Caesar’s Palace. Of course I said yes, packed some clothes drove to the airport and found a roundtrip ticket waiting for me. In those days, Las Vegas was a pretty small town lacking the million-watt brilliance it is so well known for today. (Erica and I remember the days when we would pack up the family car, rent a portable air conditioner for the Pontiac, and then drive for a couple of hours through the desert heat. In those days, there were a only a couple of hotels and casinos; it was so small that it seemed like “Welcome to Las Vegas” and “Come Back Soon” were on the same side of the sign.)

Well, we had a grand old time, eating ourselves silly, lying out by the pool (you could do that back then) and seeing Sammy Davis, Jr. do his thing. On the last night, as Aunt Jackie and Uncle Marty were heading up to their room Dad said “Let’s go downtown and see another show.” And so we did. Unbelievably, he took me to what can only be described as an old-fashioned burlesque house . . . complete with slightly underdressed showgirls, and baggy-pants comedians who were bluer than blue. The show on stage wasn’t nearly as captivating as the man sitting next to me at the table: it was Hen, loudly laughing until there were tears in his eyes and mucus dribbling from his nose. And this went on for nearly a half-hour! I had never before - and would never again - see Dad in such state of utter hilarious delight. To this day, I remember thinking “Where in the hell did that come from . . . ?”

Like all fathers and sons of that era, we had our disagreements. Our politics were a bit different, to say the least; he was a proud veteran and I was militantly anti-war; he was all business and I was all philosophy. He couldn’t understand why in the world I was taking so many courses in classic literature, Latin, Greek and other assorted liberal arts. “What are you training yourself for?” he asked time and again. “To be an educated person,” I would always respond. I remember that in 1968 he told Mom that he was considering voting for Richard Nixon, rather than Hubert Humphrey. She was a staunch liberal who had given a brief moment’s thought to voting for comedian Dick Gregory. Instead of arguing with him, Mom “pulled a Lysistrata” on him; he wound up voting for Humphrey.

Dad wasn’t too happy with my long hair and beard, although both were kempt and clean. I remember once he grew a magnificent blindingly snow-white mustache and goatee. He looked like a million dollars after taxes. One day he came home and had Mom shave it off. “Why did you do that?:” I asked. “It looked so good on you.” His answer was both simple and quintessentially Henry: “I couldn’t live up to its reputation.”

Dad lived a long life filled with everything good. On our last night together, we watched our Los Angeles Dodgers playing the reviled San Francisco Giants. The love of baseball - especially DODGER baseball - was the one thing Mom, Dad, Erica and I shared from the first game they ever played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (April 18, 1958, when they beat the Giants 6-5 before a then-record crowd of 78,672) until that last night, when once again, they beat them by the same score in the 11th inning. By the time the game ended, Dad had slipped into a deep sleep from which he never awakened. I remember thinking “There’s nothing like going out on top.” He was 87 . . . Mom would continue on for nearly a quarter century more, finally passing away a week before her 97th birthday in 2021.

Thanks for the memories Hen. You provided us with a set of standards and guidelines for how to live lives of decorousness, good taste and restraint; you taught us by example that there is a whale of a difference between being proud and being prideful. We hear your voice daily and continue to tell stories about you and Mom. Hemmingway was right: you are immortal . . .

And that’s why everyday is Father’s Day.

5 Comments 2 Likes

categories / Just Ruminating

#1,040: The "Best and Brightest" Are Now "The Bottom of the Barrel"

June 09, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

There is no absolute certainty as to where the expression “the best and brightest” comes from. Most sources believe it was originated by the former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916-2009) who served under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson at the height of the Cold War. Prior to his 7+ years (1961-1968) as head of DOD, McNamara worked for the Ford Motor Company, eventually becoming the first president from outside the Ford Family since its initial leader, John S. Gray, in 1903. When McNamara took over as chief of production at Ford, he created a staff of whiz kids who shook up what was then a dying corporation with modern business and analytical methods. He then brought many of these young people (among whom were Harold Brown [himself a future Sec. of Defense], Adam Yarmolinsky and Wiiiam Kaufman) into government.

McNamara used the phrase “best and brightest” when talking about his tenure at Ford in the 2004 Oscar winning documentary The Fog of War. The phrase became a pejorative because of David Halberstam’s 1993 book of that title, which detailed how the best and brightest nonetheless got us into the quagmire of Viet Nam. Sadly, after that book, the phrase was mostly used ironically . . . or sarcastically. (n.b. It has long been my belief that the phrase goes back to best of all British comic novelists, author P.G. Wodehouse, in his 1921 wheeze, Jeeves in the Springtime. I for one still use the term in its non-sarcastic Kennedy-era meaning . . . indicating the most capable people to work with.”

Which gets us to the current era.

One will recall that during the presidential campaign of 2016, Pumpkin Punim repeatedly boasted that if elected, he’d “surround myself only with the best and most serious people” - adding; “We want top-of-the-line professionals.” We know how that solemn oath turned out: during his first 18 months of his presidency, myriad members of his cabinet and senior staff departed - often under suspicious circumstances (remember Paul Manafort, General Flynn and Carter Page?). Less than 2 years after taking his first oath of office, nearly half of ITs cabinet and close advisors had either resigned or been fired . . . leaving in their wake a panel of “acting” secretaries who did not require Senate approval.

His second term can easily be summed up by a silly line from Herman’s Hermit’s 1965 smash hit I’m Henry the Eighth I Am (which, unbelievably, dislodged the Stone’s I Can’t Get No Satisfaction from the top of the billboard chart): Second verse, same as the first. . .

Felon 47’s second cabinet is, if anything, even more incompetent and less reflective of the American public than the first. The tie that binds them together is neither prior governmental experience nor the urge to serve; rather, it is lucre and loyalty . . . and ofttimes, a link to Fox News. Unlike JFK’s and LBJ’s “best and brightest” these men and women are the bottom of the barrel. Just consider that:

His initial pick for Attorney General, then-Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, withdrew his name from consideration after facing intense scrutiny of allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. in late May, the disgraced Gaetz said he was considering a run for Governor of Florida.
David Richardson, the person named to head FEMA baffled his staff after admitting he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season. Richardson, who has no disaster response experience made this comment on the second day of hurricane season. Before joining FEMA he was assistant secretary of DHS’ (Department of Homeland Security) office for countering weapons of mass destruction, which has told staff he will continue to lead.
The DHS secretary, former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem botched a question about habeas corpus - the legal right, guaranteed in the constitution, that allows people detained by the government to challenge their detention. I. Testifying during a recent Senate hearing, she claimed habeas corpus was the president’s “constitutional right” to deport people.
While discussing artificial intelligence, Education Secretary Linda McMahon referred to it as “A1” - like the popular steak sauce. Speaking at a summit hosted by Silicon Valley investors, the learned Secretary (who is a former professional wrestling promotor), said “I wish I could remember the source, but there’s a school system that’s going to start making sure that first graders or even pre-Ks have A1 teaching every year starting that far down in the grades.” More recently, when asked by Representative Summer Lee (D-PA) “Would it be ‘illegal DEI’ for a lesson plan on the Tulsa Race Massacre?” was, responded that she intends to “look into it more.”
Its Social Security Commissioner, Frank Bisignano, a Wall Street billionaire, told his staff that he didn’t even know that Social Security had a commissioner, and had to Google the job when he was offered it.
Sean Duffy, a former MTV reality television star (Road Rules: All Stars) and now the new head of the Dept. of Transportation won’t let his wife fly in or out of the Newark Airport due to safety concerns.
Thomas Fugate, a 22-year old former grocery clerk with zero government experience of any kind, was tapped to be the head of an $18 million terror prevention team, replacing William Braniff a U.S. Army veteran with more than two decades of national security experience and the former Director of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) within DHS. CP3 staffers have expressed shock at how little Fugate knows about the basics of his role and likened meetings with him to “career counseling.”
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Need we say more? And last but certainly not least,
Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who is a drunk who knowingly texted war plans and emailed them to his family and friends. Hegseth is a graduate of Princeton (class of 2003) who became a frequent contributor to The Princeton Tory, the school’s conservative newspaper. For a time he served as publisher, and he was responsible for articles that, as he wrote, “strive to defend the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity.” Among these pieces, which stirred controversy at Princeton, was an editorial he cowrote that declared that “the homosexual lifestyle is abnormal and immoral.” In other editorials he criticized Halle Berry for accepting the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Monster's Ball (2001) "on behalf of an entire race", and The New York Times for announcing that it would print gay marriage announcements, arguing that it would justify publishing marriage announcements for incestuous, zoophilic, and pedophilic relationships.

After his military service (during which he was a guard at the Guantanamo Detention Center in Cuba, and worked as a civil affairs officer first in Baghdad, then in Samarra), Hegseth returned to his native Minnesota, ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate, ran a political PAC, and then spent 10 years (2014-2024) as a regular commentator and presenter for Fox News. In his inaugural press release after being approved by the senate, the secretary stated his goals and philosophy: “We will revive the warrior ethos and restore trust in our military. We are American military warriors.” Just recently, grafting this military modus operandi onto his abject phobia of anything smacking of DEI (and anything gay), he announced that he was stripping the name Harvey Milk (a Korean War veteran and the first openly gay man to win elected office in the United States), off of a USNS (United States Naval Ship) . . . a highly unusual and deeply disturbing act. And, to make things even worse, Hegseth added a hateful exclamation point to his homophobic deed by making his announcement on the first day of “Pride Month”, the monthlong observance of the LGBTQ+ community.

There is no timeline for the renaming or what new name the ship (a fleet replenishment oiler) will be. The Navy referred all comments to SECDEF Hegseth’s office, which provided a brief written statement: "Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief's priorities, our nation's history, and the warrior ethos. Any potential renaming(s) will be announced after internal reviews are complete." Moreover, officials at the DOD say that other ships under review for possible name changes include:

USNS Thurgood Marshall (the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court);
USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg (named after the late Supreme Court Justice, the first Jewish woman on the court;
USNS Harriet Tubman, named for the woman who helped slaves escape to freedom in the 19th century;
USNS Delores Huerta and USNS Cesar Chavez, both Hispanic labor leaders;
USNS Lucy Stone, a 19th century suffragette and
USNS Medgar Evers, a 1960s-era civil rights leader who, like Harvey Milk, was assassinated.

The above are all John Lewis-class ships, meant to be named after civil rights leaders and activist icons. The lead ship in the group is named after the noted American politician and civil rights leader.

In essence what SECDEF Hegseth and his Command-in-Chief have done is to offer a one-finger salute to the LGBTQ+ community. It’s all part of a larger effort to whitewash the accomplishments and arguably, the humanity of women and minorities in the U.S. Military . . . and American life itself.

If you are concerned . . . or weary . . . or frightened by all the totalitarian dreck that is making America less and less small-d democratic on an almost daily basis, I recommend that the majority of us not retaliate in kind (e.g. not giving back a one-finger salute to the MAGA maniacs and their delusional, self-anointed defenders), but rather by taking to the streets this coming Saturday, June 14: the day of the nationwide "NO KINGS” protests.

There are any number of trustworthy online sites where you can get information about what is happening in your community and across the country:

Newsweek

The “NO KINGS” website

Simply Google “NO KINGS DAY PROTEST” + THE NAME OF YOUR COMMUNITY Here’s an example

In the words of the late Rep. John Lewis: “Speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”

Here’s hoping that the best and brightest can put the bottom of the barrel back where they truly belong . . .

1 Comment 1 Likes

categories / The Regime, All Politics All the Time

#1,039 The Ketamine Kid Has Left the Building, But RFK, Jr. Just Might Be Here to Stay

June 03, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

We begin the month of June with a bit of good news: Elon “The Ketamine Kid” Musk has taken his shiny chainsaw and moved out of both the White House and Mar-a-Lago. His stint as co-president and leader of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) has been, by any reasonable measure, an abject failure; in the language of Space-X, (his privately-owned, federally-funded [$3.8 billion in 2024 alone] version of NASA), his dream of shrinking the federal government workforce has had a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” While he originally claimed that he would save the taxpayers $1.6 trillion through cutting out “waste, fraud and abuse, and irrelevant programs” his most recent estimate is a paltry $175 million; experts believe the real number is significantly lower. And, in addition to seeing sales of his Tesla automobiles and cybertrucks (the ugliest looking vehicle in history) tank by as much as 50%, his personal net worth has shrunk by more than 25%. Poor fella!

Truth to tell, the Ketamine-addled Musk (who has also admitted to using Adderall, Ecstasy and psychedelic mushroom [Psilocybin]) has done real damage to both the federal government and the nation’s ability to do good for the impoverished masses at home and around the globe. Our reputation as a caring partner has been shattered. To my way of thinking, one of the very worst things Musk did during his unsupervised tenure was the shredding of the United States Agency for International Development. Though a rump operation is operating inside the State Department, the administration says that it has terminated more than 80 percent of U.S.A.I.D. grants. Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, has estimated that these cuts have already resulted in about 300,000 deaths, most of them of children, and will most likely lead to significantly more by the end of the year. That is what Musk’s foray into politics accomplished.

So that’s the good news . . . the Psychopath from Pretoria has left the building.

Now for the bad news: we’re still stuck with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is potentially an even greater threat to the nation’s health (physical, psychological, educational and financial) than the Ketamine Kid. Even before he was approved by the United States Senate, more than 17,000 members of America’s medical establishment signed a letter from the Committee to Protect Health Care, urging senators to reject his nomination, saying he was “unqualified to lead” and was “actively dangerous”.

RFK, Jr., once known as a highly successful and respected environmental attorney has, over the past many years, morphed into a dysphonic demon who holds dangerous, medically medieval views on everything from vaccines, pesticides, prescription drugs to a description of America’s children as being overmedicated and undernourished. He still contends that the MMR (Measles, Mumps & Rubella) vaccine is a contributing cause of autism in children . . . a decades-old lie which has been disproven by virtually every epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist on the planet. In matter of fact, the few “medical people” who agree with RFK seem to be working under him at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which was headed from 1984 to 2022 by Dr. Anthony Fauci, M.D. and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, whose administrator, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who promoted the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid.

Kennedy’s cuts in research funding are absolutely mind-numbing. As but one example, just last week HHS pulled millions of dollars in funding for a human bird flu vaccine developed by Covid vaccine-maker Moderna. Before IT took office for his second term, the Biden administration had awarded $766 million to the Massachusetts-based drugmaker. They invested $176 million last summer, and tacked on another $590 million in January. According to Moderna CEO Stėphane Bancel “While the termination of funding from HHS adds uncertainty, we are pleased by the robust immune response and safety profile observed in the interim analysis of the Phase 1/2 study of our H5 avian flu vaccine. . . . These clinical data in pandemic influenza underscore the critical role of mRNA technology has played as a countermeasure to emerging health threats.”

Moreover, RFK’s call for a blanket requirement for placebo-controlled trials threatens research ethics and vaccine access. HHS says the new plan will “promote transparency” in vaccine research. In matter of fact (and from my decades of experience vetting clinical trials through an Institutional Review Board [IRB]), I can state that it would affect vaccine access and diminish the public trust. The change would require all new vaccines to undergo placebo-controlled trials before approval, which means that some people would receive the vaccine and others would get an inert substance, like a saline injection, before the results are compared. If this had been the case with the initial COVID-19 vaccine, tens - perhaps hundreds - of millions more people would have died during the pandemic for the simple reason that the vaccine would still not be available to the public.

Now mind you, these - and many other - medical and research policy changes are coming from a Cabinet Secretary who is not an MD, never (to the best of my knowledge) served on an IRB, and who, while telling mothers and fathers not to trust what medical experts say about vaccines one moment, then tells Congress “ . . . people shouldn’t take medical advice from me” the next. I don’t know, perhaps that’s what comes from being a recovering heroin addict who had his brain partially eaten away by a Taenia solium - a pork tapeworm. Whatever the case, he and his entire department represent a clear and present danger to the health and welfare of the American public.

Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), the Regime’s signature omnibus health program, was created by Executive Order (EO) 14212 on February 13, 2025. It established the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission, whose stated purpose was/is “to improve the health of Americans, particularly children.” From day one, medical professionals took a “We’ll believe it when we see it” stance. A week ago, HHS and its leadership issued their first report, a 73-page “assessment” of the program. According to Los Angeles Times’ business columnist Michael Hiltzik, “A sloppier, more disingenuous government report would be hard to imagine.“ At least seven sources cited in the report do not exist. HHS hastily reissued the report with some of those citations removed, but without disclosing the changes — an extremely unkosher action in the medical research community. The MAHA report attributes the rise in childhood obesity and diabetes in part to ultraprocessed foods (UPFs). But it’s silent on what experts call the “social determinants of disease,” which are heavily related to economics. And although the report mentions that safety net programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — SNAP, or food stamps, school lunch and breakfast programs, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, could play a role in promoting healthy eating, it doesn’t mention that those programs face severe budget cuts from the White House.

There can be no doubt that RFK. Jr. and his medical conspiracists - who are also in favor of giving children raw milk and getting fluoride out of our drinking water - pose an even greater danger to society than the Ketamine Kid. For while Musk’s chainsaw approach to reducing the federal spending footprint will undoubtedly cost far more than it saved, Kennedy’s “remedies” will likely affect the health and wellbeing of everyone . . . regardless of how rich or poor they are. Being a multibillionaire (or even a multimillionaire as is RFK, Jr., one of the “poorest” members of the Cabinet) cannot save you from succumbing to a disease for which clinical trials no longer exist. This is an issue that the vast majority of the American public should understand and get behind: that conspiracies cannot heal the sick, and that properly, ethically-run clinical trials do save lives.

To paraphrase the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof, “May G-d bless and keep RFK and his conspiracists . . . far away from us.

Comment 1 Likes

categories / The Regime, Conspiracies

#1,038: Everything's in the Mouse Print

May 26, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Audio Block

Double-click here to upload or link to a .mp3. Learn more

While I haven’t the slightest idea how many print, radio or TV ads and commercials the average person sees, hears or reads each and every day, it’s got to be in the dozens. For the most part, the purpose of each and every one is to sell us something; that if only we will purchase their product, inform our physician that they really should be prescribing a particular medicine, or sign up for their weight-loss program or pre-payday-no interest- loan, we will be happier, healthier and wealthier; we’ll all have smiles as we sit around the family table for dinner . . . mother, father, 2 children and a dog. The use of false or misleading advertising is probably as old as the earliest cave paintings of the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Whether or not our earliest ancestors used what today we call “fine” or “mouse” print to hide important details, terms, and conditions that might contradict the main message is, of course, both unknowable and an obvious use of tongue-in-cheek humor on my part.

For those not familiar with the term, “Mouse print” is defined as “The fine print in advertising, in a contract, or on a product label, often buried out of easy sight. In the worst cases, the mouse print changes the meaning of, or contradicts the primary claims or promises being made. Sometimes, the catch is not even disclosed. Mouse print can also be verbal. We all have heard commercials containing the 11-words-per-second rat-a-tat-tat delivery of John “Motormouth” Maschitta who, in less time than it takes to pop a tab on a Coors Lite, could undermine everything said or promised in the commercial he was starring or featured in. Then too, there are all those medicine commercials which, by law, must contain verbiage that discloses some - not all - of the adverse events (bad side effects) which taking said medicine could cause. Frequently, those disclosures are not delivered verbally; they are contained in Mouse print at the bottom of the screen. And unless you have the ability to either tape or freeze that part of the commercial, you will never know what the possible risks are.

TV commercials and print ads are by no means the only places where Mouse Print can make what amounts to obfuscatory appearance (i.e. intending to conceal the truth by confusion). And here, I am referring specifically to Congressional legislation. For endless generations, members of both the House and Senate have larded appropriations measures with so-called "riders” (also known as stealth legislation or Christmas Tree bills) that serve to benefit an individual representative’s or senator’s district or state. A Christmas tree bill consists of many riders. The amendments that “decorate” the main legislation often provide special benefits to various groups or interests; a new post office, a bridge named for an individual, etc. The term refers to allowing each member of Congress to hang their pet decoration on the proposed legislation. Then there are other riders, known as “wrecking” or “poison pill” bills, which are used not to actually be passed, but merely to prevent the passage of the parent bill or to ensure its veto by the president. And while both houses have rules regarding the “Germainess” of an amendment or rider, there are always ways to get around them. (n.b. Riders are more commonly associated with the Senate, while the House just has to use fancier footwork in order to append their “gifts.”)

A staggering example of an omnibus bill larded with riders, “Christmas Trees” and “poison pills” is the recently-passed (and childishly-named) One Big Beautiful Bill Act. This 1,000+ page monstrosity, which passed by a single vote (215-214) and is now headed for the Senate where its future is uncertain, represents a major step forward on IT’s agenda. The bill combines tax breaks, spending cuts, border security funding and assorted surprises. Through this bill, Republicans look to make permanent the individual income and estate tax cuts passed in 2017 during Pumpkin Punim’s first term, plus enact promises he made during the 2024 campaign to not tax tips, overtime and interest on auto loans.

Buried deep down in the welter of legislative verbiage are a minyan’s-worth of what we might term “sleeper provisions”, including:

More Savaging of Migrants. The bill adds $45 billion to build immigration jails—more than 13 times ICE’s current detention budget. The bill would allow indefinite detention of immigrant children. It also adds several fees intended to harass. The measure charges families $3,500 to reunite with a child who arrived alone at the border, and a person seeking asylum will have to pay an “application fee” of at least $1,000.
Terminating the Tax Status of Nonprofits. The reconciliation text gives the administration the power to define nonprofits as “terrorist-supporting organizations” and expedite the ending of their tax status. This is ostensibly directed against pro-Palestinian groups, but could be used to suppress the free speech and activism of climate organizations and others.
Blocking State Regulation of AI. The bill prohibits any state or subdivision from passing “any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.” It requires the repeal of any such laws already on the books. According to The Lever, the language could be stretched to block efforts by local governments to regulate private equity firms and other landlords using AI software to jack up rents.
Weakening the Child Tax Credit. The bill nominally increases the current Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $2,500 per child. But it also lowers the eligibility income threshold, making millions of children ineligible. The bill also excludes from the credit 4.5 million children who have a parent without a Social Security number but who pays taxes with a tax identification number. These children are predominantly U.S. citizens with an immigrant parent.
Expanding School Vouchers. The bill gives $20 billion in the form of tax credits to donors who give money to voucher schools. It also creates a tax shelter from paying capital gains taxes to donors who give appreciated stock to voucher schools. These two provisions amount to a direct federal subsidy to voucher schools using wealthy individuals as a pass-through. This government support for voucher schools comes at a time when Department of Education support for public schools is being slashed.
Stealth Cuts in the Affordable Care Act. The bill allows tax credits that subsidize ACA premiums to expire at the end of 2025. The result will be that out-of-pocket costs for insurance under the ACA will become more expensive and millions of people will lose coverage, and one in particular which is perhaps the most dangerous of all:
Crippling Courts. The bill, hiding behind the premise that it is an appropriations measure, prohibits any funds from being used to carry out court orders holding executive branch officials in contempt. This is designed to enable Felon47 and his officials to continue defying court orders. It is almost certainly unconstitutional if (and it’s a mighty big IF) courts have the בּיצים (bay-tzeem) to say so.

What this means - if it escapes unscathed - is that federal judges will have their power to hold people in contempt severely limited, thus potentially shielding Pumpkin Punim and members of his regime from the consequences of violating court orders. Do yourself a favor: read that last sentence again: “Federal judges will have their power to hold people in contempt severely limited, thus shielding both POTUS and members of the regime from the consequences of violating court orders.” If that doesn’t send an agonizing shiver up and down your spine you have either imbibed far too much Kool-Aid, or are afflicted with CACIP (Channelopathy-Associated Congenital Insensitivity to Pain).

In tucking this provision into what is supposed to be an appropriations bill, Republicans are seeking to use their major policy bill to weaken federal judges. Under the rules that govern civil lawsuits in the federal courts, federal judges are supposed to order a bond from a person seeking a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction. The amount of the bond, as I understand it is supposed to be set at what “the court considers proper” to cover any costs that might be suffered if that injunction is later found to have been incorrectly issued. But up till now, federal judges have wide discretion to set their bonds, and often refrain from doing so. According to Samuel L. Bray, a law professor at Notre Dame, many judges do not order injunction bonds in cases where people are seeking to stop government actions that they claim are unconstitutional. “It doesn’t wind up getting used when people sue the federal government,” he said in a recent interview.

The language in the House-passed bill would block federal judges from enforcing their contempt citations if they had not previously ordered a bond. Democrats have argued that House Republicans’ measure would rob the courts of their power by stripping away any consequences for officials who ignore judges’ rulings. That’s the whole point of the House Republicans’ planting their legislative IED in the midst of a tax-cut measure.

I find room for optimism in the fact that the bill - even with all its warts, wens and necrotic vesicles - passed by a single vote, and that already, several Senate Republicans have excoriated both the House and White House for proposing and passing such an “immoral bill.” For those who live in states with Republican senators (like Florida, which has 2), please be prepared to do some emailing, texting and the leaving of voice messages at either their Capitol Hill or district offices and urge them to vote against this measure. Remind them to read (or have a staff member read and report to them) about what the bill contains . . . especially the hidden mouse points that would hamstring the federal courts from doing its constitutionally mandated job.

For mice - whether four-footed or rhetorical - are deadly creatures.

3 Comments 0 Likes

#1,037: Thumbs Down on Thumbs Up

May 19, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

As you, my dear faithful readers know. for the past year or so, I’ve gone out of my way not to mention the 47th POTUS by name . . . .but rather by a couple of non-4 letter word epithets. It’s not that my vocabulary is bereft on nasty curse words or imprecations; rather it is something I learned from my father. To wit, that the best way of expressing disgust and/or condemnation is through what one might call “linguistic misdirection." I learned it from my Dad, who, rather than call a thoroughly disgusting person a momser (Yiddish for “bastard”), would likely refer to him (never her) as “an acquired taste.” That is why I have intermittently used the terms IT and "Felon 47”) to identify the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Try as I may, I just don’t have an easy time with terms of abuse or foul invective. Nonetheless, I have decided to add yet another identifier: “Pumpkin Punum” The first word (pumpkin) is obviously descriptive of the shade of tanning solution he wears; the second word, (punum) is the Yiddish way of pronouncing a Hebrew word (pah-NEEM) which means, simply, “face.” And so, Pumpkin Punum, is yet another non-4 letter epithet we will be using from time to time.

Having brought you up to date on monikers that can be used in public, let’s move on to a particular hand gesture: the omnipresent “thumbs-up” sign used both by pumpkin punum and his most fervent followers . . . whether inside Congress or outside on the rope line. To me, it has become about as disgusting, omnipresent and emblematic of his regime as the Roman Salute was to both Mussolini and der Führer. Starting a couple of months ago, I went against my natural instinct and, whenever an idea, event, or statement might be worthy of a “thumbs-up” of agreement, began using the "A-OK” sign (often referred to as the "OK gesture”) made by joining the thumb and index finger to form a circle, with the other fingers held straight. In medicine, if the circle formed by one hand appears more pinched or less round than the other, it may indicate weakness in the nerve. A similar medical test, known as Froment's Sign, is used to test for palsy on the ulnar nerve, a major nerve in the arm that runs from the neck all the way to the hand. But for me, (and hopefully one day soon for you) it will have two meanings: “I agree,” and “I refuse to use the Pumpkin Punum’s favorite hand gesture.”

Yes, it is a rather simple - perhaps even trivial or symbolic - gesture. Nonetheless it serves in a small - hopefully self-satisfying way - to remind us and others that IT’s reality is not our reality; that his Weltanschauung (world view) is not ours; that his egomaniacal mien sickens us.

Of course, as with just about everything these days, even the “A-OK” gesture has come in for a cultural shellacking. Back in 2017, the Anti Defamation League (ADL) website ran a piece questioning whether or not the ages-old hand sign had in fact been highjacked by white supremacists. 2 years later, National Public Radio aired an article on the ADL’s “Hate Symbols Data Base” which had grown exponentially. Turns out, the original “A-OK sign as White Supremacist Rallying Symbol” turned out to have originally been a hoax perpetrated by an anonymous English-language imageboard website called “4Chan,” created by a 16-year old known online as “moot” (Christopher Poole). But the original 4-Chan thread struck a chord with teenage boys, and over the years, the A-OK symbol took on a life of its own. As P.T. Barnum supposedly said a long time ago, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

For those who may fear that the use of the A-OK sign may be misconstrued as a symbol for hatred and bigotry, there is always the 2-finger salute that was popular both in the 1940s and again in the 1960s and 70s. In the 40’s it stood for victory over fascism; in the 60s and 70s it stood for peace and understanding. To use either the A-OK or the peace sign in today’s troubled world instead of Pumpkin Punum’s “thumbs up” requires a bit of rewiring (albeit minor and doable) of an old habit. It also recognizes that just as we we will no longer speak his name, we won’t even imitate his meaningless gesture.

Let the movement grow . . .

10 Comments 0 Likes

categories / Just Ruminating

#1,036: Unquiet Thoughts

May 13, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

When I started writing this blog back in early February, 2005, I believed it would serve several purposes. First and foremost, it would force me to discipline myself to research, contemplate, and most importantly, write about contemporary events on a weekly basis, thus creating a chronicle-in-brief of the early 21st century. Little did I know then, that a hefty percentage of these posts would highlight a man and a movement I truly execrate . . . so much so that I have done my level best to skirt even having to write his name.

But alas, another week, another post dealing with the treacherous buffoonery of POTUS and his cowardly enablers. But what aspect of this past week’s category of sins and outrages should I write about? That’s the problem I face every weekend: so many villainies and outrages to consider, so little time and space. I mean, in just the past 168 hours (i.e. one week), IT has:

Given refugee status to white South Africans, giving the reason that they are victims of “genocide,” a claim not supported by police data. At the same time, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem formally announced that the regime is ending Temporary Protected Status for Afghans in the United States. Sec. Noem justified the policy change by saying that Afghanistan “. . . has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent them [the refugees] from returning to their home country.”
Publicly said that he would be “stupid” not to accept a luxury 747 that the Qatari royal family planned to donate as a temporary Air Force One . . . and then be handed over to his presidential library after his term was over. Estimated cost of this gift? $400 million before retrofitting. Seems to me to be a case of “One man’s gift is another man’s bribe.”
Unless there will be an act of G-d - or an act of Congress - IT will get his $92 million parade on his 79th birthday (June 14) which also happens to be “Flag Day,” and supposedly, the 250th anniversary of the United States Army. This is what autocrats, not small-d democrats do. He has been lusting after a parade in his honor ever since, during his first term, e proposed having a parade after watching the two-hour procession along the famed Champs-Elysees in July 2017. After witnessing it, he began saying he wanted an even grander one on Pennsylvania Avenue. Here’s an idea: get his billionaire friends who are making out like bandits purchasing his STRUMP meme coins to cough up the $92 million AND guarantee to cover the costs of repairing and repaving all the streets that will be mangled by the tanks and transports moving through the streets of the Nation’s Capital.
Fired Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress . . . the first woman and first African American to hold the post. According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, “There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.” (It should be noted that the Library of Congress does not lend books to adults or children.) As her temporary replacement, POTUS named Todd Blanche, the No. 2 official at the DOJ, who, who defended IT at his criminal trial last year.
IT withdrew the nomination of interim U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. Ed Martin, a former conservative podcaster after he came into the cross-hairs of Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who said he would refuse to vote for him, citing “friction over how Martin viewed those involved in the January 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol.” POTUS quickly replaced Martin with Fox News host and former New York prosecutor Jeanine Pirro. Pirro is perhaps best known for making repeated false statements about the 2020 election . . . which led to her employers being sued and settling with a voting machine company for more than $787 million. And, by no means last, an act which is likely to have repercussions for both IT, his allies in Congress, and ultimately, the future of America:
Just a few days ago, Felon47 fired several members of the board that oversees the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The fired members included Doug Emhoff, the husband of former VP Kamala Harris; Ronald Klain, former President Joseph Biden’s first chief of staff; Tom Perez, the former Secretary of Labor; Susan Rice, the national security advisor to former POTUS Obama and Mr. Biden’s top domestic policy adviser who led a major strategic effort to combat antisemitism; Anthony Bernal, a senior adviser to FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden, and David Cicilline the former 6-term representative from Rhode Island who is both Jewish and gay. What they all have in common, obviously, is that they were appointed by President Joe Biden.

New York Times writers Katie Glueck and Tyler Pager noted: “While it is not surprising that Mr. Trump would look for any chance to remove senior Democrats from positions of influence, the moves underscore the extraordinary power he is exerting over traditionally apolitical institutions as he carries out a campaign of retribution.” Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, urged a full explanation and “even a reconsideration” of the decision, stressing that the museum must remain nonpartisan. One of former President Biden’s museum board appointments, Kevin Abel circulated a scathing letter to his colleagues, invoking the Holocaust as he denounced the museum’s silence on ITs firings of board members. In the letter, Abel, a highly successful businessman from Georgia and former Congressional candidate, wrote that ITs “campaign of retribution” had been met with troubling “public silence” by both the museum and members of Congress:

"At this juncture of rising threats and a swirling atmosphere of hatred, it is ever more imperative that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the one institution that can most credibly call out the administration’s attack of its Council for what it is, not choose to remain silent.”

On the ensuing email chain, board member Daniel Huff - who was one of ITs board appointees from his first term - objected to Mr. Abel’s invocation of Dietrich Bonhoffeur (picture above), a German pastor and theologian who was one of the earliest and most vehement critics of the Nazi regime - and paid the ultimate price: he was hanged (along with his brother Klaus and his brothers-in-law) at the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria. He was just 39. The Bonhoeffer quote (his best known) that so riled board member Huff simply stated “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” In his letter, Mr. Huff also alluded to another prominent Lutheran pastor of the Nazi era, Martin Niemöller, whose most famous quote is on the wall of the Museum’s permanent exhibition.

It seems to me the trenchant words of Pastors Bonhoeffer and Niemöller, as well as the exiled German novelist (and 1929 Nobel laureate) Thomas Mann should adorn the walls of every office on Capitol Hill . . . as well as the Oval Office. Mann (1875-1955), best known for the novels Buddenbrooks (1900), Death in Venice (1912), The Magic Mountain (1924) and Joseph and His Brothers (published as a tetralogy between 1933 and 1943), was exiled from Germany in the early days of the 3rd Reich. In 1943, then living in California, Mann delivered anti-Nazi addresses on the BBC as part of the Allied propaganda effort, which were then broadcast in Germany. These addresses were collectively called “Listen, Germany!” and were aimed at demoralizing the German population and encouraging them to reject the Nazi regime. In one of the broadcasts . . . each of which ranged from 5 to 8 minutes in length . . . Mann told his former landsleute (countrymen) “Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.” Nobody ever said it better.

At a time when our politics seem more like a boulder careening lethally down a hellish escarpment than a balloon gently wafting its way into the heavenly skies, we do well to remember - and put into practice - the wisdom of Herren Bonhoeffer, Niemöller and Mann. To wit, that sitting on our hands and keeping our eyes, ears and mouths tightly shut provides the fuel that energizes evil; that the so-called “leaders” who, like the three monkeys “see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil” (unless it is against what they claim is necrotic liberalism) are, by their very silence and cowardly reticence, part of that lethal boulder. When leaders employ fear to buy silence, they are then able to incrementally isolate, demonize and then remove those who are standing in their way. This, at last, is the lesson of Bonhoeffer, Niemöller and Mann.

We do not have to wait until November 2026 to express our disgust and revulsion with the regime. On the same day (June 14, 2025) that IT will likely be sitting upon his throne, watching the tanks and troops pass by, there will be another series of parades and gatherings across the United States . . . and Canada and Mexico and only G-d knows where else. It is called “NO KINGS!” On that day literally hundreds of thousands of people will be gathering in all 50 states to declare that the United States is US . . . . a representative democracy, and neither an autocracy or a monarchy. Just follow this link to find out what’s going to be happening in your community.

This is not the time for unquiet thoughts . . . We need LOUD DEEDS.

2 Comments 1 Likes

#1,035: Another Day, Another Decree

May 04, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Was it really only a couple of months ago that you could get up in the morning and look at the headlines without cringing or feeling nauseous? Remember when the POTUS wasn’t the top (and second and third) story covered on the evening news? When was the last time that “flooding the zone” (wherein receivers flood one side of the field at different levels) was a term known mostly to football aficionados? Today, it is the province of snarky, weirdly-wired political strategists, and connotes overwhelming the opposition (whether political or media) through a determined bombardment of off-the-wall initiatives . . . day in and day out.

One day it’s Felon47 ousting the entire Kennedy Center board, replacing them with his loyalists and then being voted in as Chairman; another day, his press office creates a new media policy, taking credentials away from any reporter/journalist/wire service he feels has treated him poorly. Then there’s HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s announcement that his fiefdom . . . uh, department will soon begin to amass the private medical records of millions of Americans in his new effort to study autism, as well as announcing that “new” vaccines will undergo placebo-controlled trials . . . both of which fly in the face of scientific reason and medical ethics. (n.b. I will be devoting a future piece on placebo-controlled studies in the next several weeks. I’m still trying to figure out how to take on RFK’s utterly troglodytic daydreams without using 4-letter words . . .)

And just when you thought IT and his merry pranksters couldn’t get any further away from reality, it would seem that the White House is planning a massive military parade to celebrate their vaunted leader’s 79th birthday on June 14. If it actually happens, it will include armored vehicles and several thousand troops parading past a reviewing stand on Constitution Avenue near the White House. According to a report published in U.S.A. Today, “Parade units will mark critical mileposts in the Army’s history from soldiers in Revolutionary War attire to Army Rangers and Stryker armored vehicles to commemorate the Global War on Terror.” Plans call for 6,686 soldiers, 50 aircraft, seven bands and 152 vehicles, including 92 categorized as “heavy.” Those include M-1 Abrams tanks and vintage World War II Sherman tanks. Yesterday, in a posting on his TRUTH SOCIAL media platform, he announced that he planned to change the name of Veterans Day on November 11 to “Victory Day for World War I” as well as declaring May 8, the date that Nazi Germany surrendered in 1945, “Victory Day for World War II” instead of VE Day, as it is commonly known in the United States. If this were to take effect, it of course would mean that the vast majority of living veterans would be left out in the cold (there are, to the best of my knowledge no surviving veterans of the “Great War” [the original name for WWI] and less than 1% of the 16.4 million Americans who served during WWII still with us today.)

Those who follow the news closely (and there seem to be far fewer these days) know that many, if not most, of IT’s executive orders are being challenged in the courts. Moreover, many of these federal courts have issued stays or injunctions on his proposed actions. In one recent case, SCOTUS unanimously ruled that the regime “try to release” a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to a mega-jail in El Salvador. In their unanimous decision, the justices declined to block a lower court’s order to “facilitate” bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Moreover, the lower court judge, Paula Xinis, directed the White House to provide her with daily updates on what steps they are taking to bring Senor Garcia back to the U.S. As of today, the White House has failed to budge . . . despite freely admitting that he was deported due to an “administrative error.” This has all the makings of a constitutional crisis; it brings to mind President Andrew Jackson’s comment on the court’s 1832 decision in Worcester v. Georgia: “ “Justice John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” (It should be noted that this quote first appeared twenty years after Jackson’s death in newspaper publisher Horace Greely’s 1865 two-volume history of the Civil War. Nonetheless, the sentiment has come down through the ages.)

IT’s flagrant ignoring of judicial fiats is not only leading the United States to a potential Constitutional crisis; it is also having a chilling effect across onthe courts as more and more judges and their families are becoming targets of a new MAGA war. As noted in a report published by Reuters just yesterday, The families of at least 11 of the jurists [who have ruled against the Trump administration] have been targeted with threats and harassment.”

Another day, another decree. Just yesterday, IT signed an executive order that makes me madder than a mosquito in a mannequin factory. Say what? If IT gets his way, he is going to end federal funding for both National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) - two of this nation’s greatest public treasures. Felon47’s stated reason for wielding the executioner’s axe (and it may be anywhere between terribly difficult and unconstitutional for him to do this) is that the two (NPR & PBS) produce biased coverage and what he calls “left-wing” propaganda. in his order, IT instructed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds public broadcasters in the United States, to end federal funding for NPR & PBS, to the extent allowed by law. Truth be known, the outlets receive only a small portion of their funding from Congress, with the lion’s share coming from donors and sponsors. (Annie and I have long been major contributors to both our local NPR and PBS outlets. I mean, what would an early a.m. be without Morning Edition, a lunchbreak without Fresh Air, a late afternoon-early evening without All Things Considered or a Saturday night without our favorite British comedies (Are You Being Served?, Keeping up appearances, Mr. Bean, Still Open All Hours, and As Time Goes By?)

And lest we forget, most PBS stations air both Sesame Street and the ever-popular (though long gone) Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. NPR is especially important in the rural parts of America; frequently it is the only source of information during weather emergencies.

FYI: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a taxpayer-backed private entity created by an act of Congress, is funded two years in advance to protect it from political maneuvering. It was created in 1967 to “promote and help support public broadcasting. It’s mission is to ensure universal access to non-commercial, high-quality content and telecommunications services.” In issuing his executive order calling for the CPB board to “cease federal funding for NPR and PBS,” IT claimed that the two entities were ideologically biased: “Neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to tax-paying citizens," the order says. "The CPB Board shall cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding." It should be noted that it is not clear that POTUS has the authority to make such orders to CPB under the law.

CPB is already suing the Trump administration over his executive order seeking to fire three of its five board members; on Friday, it dismissed the validity of the president's new order. "CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President's authority," the corporation wrote in a statement issued this past Friday. "Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government."

The CPB noted that the statute Congress passed to create it "expressly forbade 'any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors."

On his social media platform, IT recently blasted the two national public broadcasting networks, posting in all caps: "REPUBLICANS MUST DEFUND AND TOTALLY DISASSOCIATE THEMSELVES FROM NPR & PBS, THE RADICAL LEFT 'MONSTERS' THAT SO BADLY HURT OUR COUNTRY!"

Will these national treasures - NPR and PBS - survive? I believe they shall. Members of Congress should start hearing from their constituents - especially those who live in places where information is scarce - and let them know just how important these two entities are to both their sanity and their safety. Please, if you haven’t made a contribution to your local PBS or NPR station, consider doing so. It is one of the easiest and best investments you can make; the return on your dollars is incalculable. Every civilized democracy in the world has its version of the CPB. . . whether it be the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, Radio France and the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG-SSR) which broadcasts in more than 30 languages . . . to name just a few.

People on both sides of the aisle often mourn and and moan about the debasement of the press . . . often asking “why can’t there be people like Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) “the most trusted man in America” reporting the news anymore?”

If Walter were still alive (he passed in 2009 at age 92) and still presenting the news, he would, no doubt, end his nightly broadcast with the familiar words “And that’s the way it is,” and hopefully one of his most important thoughts . . . one that is right up there with Thomas Jefferson:

Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy . . . it IS democracy.

1 Comment 0 Likes

#1,034: Pope Francis: Requiescat in Pace

April 29, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

In the 2005 conclave that elected German-born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger Pope, the second-place finisher was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the cardinal priest of San Roberto Bellarmino, and former Archbishop of Buenos Aires. After Ratzinger’s election (he took the Papal name Benedict XVI), Cardinal Bergoglio left Rome, intent upon returning to Argentina where he assumed he would live out the rest of his life (he was nearly 75 at the time) engaging in study, prayer and good deeds. There was little reason for him - or indeed, anyone in the Vatican hierarchy - to believe that he would have another chance at the papacy. And, as one of his biographers noted: There was little evidence that he even wanted the job.

But as is said in the Jewish rabbinic tradition: All things are foreseen, but free will is given . . . basically meaning that the various twists and turns of life and history are known only to The Almighty. As things turned out, on February 11, 2013, the Vatican confirmed that Pope Benedict would resign the papacy on February 28 as a result of advanced age (he was nearly 86 years old and the fourth-oldest person to hold that office). Benedict’s papacy was of the old school; conservative, highly Latinized, European and oligarchic. It was also beset with turmoil, intrigue about top secret lobbies and financial chicanery.

The conclave that gathered after Benedict’s resignation (the first in nearly six centuries) sought a reformer with a strong administrative hand. No one thought that Cardinal Bergoglio would be voted in; given his age (75 at the time) he wasn’t even on the shortlist. But when the white puff of smoke wafted its way upward from the Sistine Chapel, the Catholic Church - and indeed the world at large - immediately saw how different a path they had chosen. For the future Pope Francis set many firsts:

· The first Jesuit to serve as Pope. (Jesuits have often been called "The Rabbis of the Catholic Church,” due to their deeply scholastic bent);

· The first Pope to come from Latin America;

· The first pope to take as his papal name "Francis,” after Saint Francis of Assisi, the austere friar who dedicated his life to piety and the poor and who, according to tradition, received instruction from God to rebuild his church.

Pope Francis’ journey from the Flores barrio of Buenos Aires to the Vatican was a long eventful one. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on Dec. 17, 1936 to Italian immigrants. Young Jorge, the first of 5 children born to Mario and Regina (Sivori) Bergoglio, was deeply influenced by his grandmother Rosa Bergoglio, who in Italy had joined Catholic Action, the 1920s movement that defended the church against the encroachment of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist state. The rise of Fascism had helped push the family to leave. When his mother Regina was bedridden after the difficult birth of one of his sisters, Jorge, then 12, was placed in a school run by Salesian priests. The Salesians helped imbue him with a sense of duty toward the poor, as well as a realization of his own responsibility for improving the state of the world. The teenage Bergoglio enjoyed sports and dancing the tango at local clubs. After graduating high school in 1954, he announced to his family that he was going to attend a Jesuit seminary . . . not precisely what his parents thought would be his path.

In 1972, the then 36-year father Bergoglio took charge of the Argentine Jesuits. Argentina was in the throes of a “dirty war,” with a brutal military government killing and torturing thousands of opponents. And the Latin American church was sundered, as many senior prelates remained close to the ruling classes while many Jesuits embraced liberation theology, which called on the church to press for social change on behalf of the poor. Conservative church leaders denounced that theology as Marxist.

During the country’s 2001-02 economic crisis, he organized food kitchens, tripled the number of priests assigned to the slums and built schools and drug rehabilitation centers as state services retrenched. He converted his official residence into a hostel for priests and lived in a modest room in the diocesan building in central Buenos Aires. Before every Easter, he visited prison inmates, AIDS patients or older people, a practice he continued during his papacy.

Cardinal Bergoglio also had chilly relations with the Vatican. It represented “the heart of everything that he believed the church should not be: luxury, ostentation, hypocrisy, bureaucracy.” By this time in his career he had already adopted as his motto miserando atque eligendo, translated roughly as “ . . . by having mercy and by choosing." True to form, when the Cardinal came back to Rome in late February 2013 to be part of the papal conclave, he paid his own bill at the Vatican hotel where he stayed, rode about town in a modest Ford Focus, lived in a Vatican guesthouse rather than the ornate papal apartments and, in a Holy Week ritual performed at a youth prison, washed the feet of a young Muslim woman.

His first public pronouncement upon being elected Pope showed just how different the man and his papacy would be. “Buona sera,” good evening, Francis announced to the faithful from the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, breaking the ice with unaffected style. He joked about being from Argentina, noting that in fulfilling their duty to produce a pope, “it seems that my brother cardinals have gone almost to the ends of the Earth to get him.”

His humility could be disarming. When asked about a priest who was said to be gay, he responded, “Who am I to judge?” Over the next dozen years, he tried to move the church away from divisive issues like abortion and homosexuality, and shifted its emphasis to global problems like climate change, poverty and migration. He tirelessly traveled the world, often visiting places that had but a handful of practicing Catholics . . . like China. His vision, expressed in major documents like the encyclical “Laudato Si,” (“Praise Be to You”), linked Catholic theology to protecting the environment and championing those on the margins, while denouncing the excesses of global capitalism in exploiting the poor. He repeatedly denounced violence and, after an initial reluctance to take sides in the war in Ukraine, spoke out in support of Ukraine.

Pope Francis could be scathing toward the prelates in the Vatican. He once compared the hierarchy to a “ponderous, bureaucratic customs house.” He accused some church officials of deluding themselves as being “indispensable” and afflicted by the “terrorism of gossip.” In his Christmas speeches he railed against “peacock priests” and “airport bishops,” who drop in when convenient, see themselves as superior to their flock and have become out of touch. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Francis suggested that Donald J. Trump was “not Christian” because of his preference for building walls rather than bridges. IT responded: “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian.” The battle lines were drawn. (Perhaps that is why IT, unlike the rest of the world leaders who gathered for Pope Francis’ funeral, wore a blue suit and blue tie instead of the traditional black and black.)

On some issues, the Pope could make it difficult to understand where he stood. He rejected same-sex marriage yet called on priests to be welcoming to people in nontraditional relationships, such as gay men and lesbians, single parents and unmarried couples who live together. He supported civil unions for gay couples but approved a Vatican decision to bar priests from blessing them — a decision he later said he regretted, and then reversed.

His most enduring legacy may well be the transformation of the clerical ranks and the reshaping of the College of Cardinals, once dominated by conservatives appointed by Benedict and John Paul II. Indeed, the vast majority of the Cardinals who will be gathering for the next Conclave are his appointees; men of every color from all over the world.

When asked if he would accept the Papacy back in 2013, the future Pope answered: "I am a sinner . . . but I shall accept.” This is not to paint the man as a saint, for he had his enemies - both within the church hierarchy and among many of the planet’s worst autocrats. As an administrator (one of the Pope’s most important behind-the-scenes jobs) he could be a tyrant; to many liberals within the Church he was a disappointment, not going far enough on cultural issues. And yet, for whatever faults he may have had, he was one of the most humble, compassionate and forward-thinking Popes of the past century.

Francis did not stifle views he disagreed with and believed in a patient process — he called it discernment — in which ideas and proposals could be weighed before going forward. “Bosses cannot always do what they want,” he told Reuters in 2018. “They have to convince.”

Less piety, more compassion. Less pontification, more engagement. Less judgment, more acceptance.

May we all learn from this great man’s legacy.

Requiescat in Pace, Papa

4 Comments 0 Likes

#1,033: There But For the Grace of G-d . . .

April 22, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

I swear by everything holy that the next time I hear a לאַנדסמאַן (lahtzmahn - Yiddish for, roughly “a fellow Jew”) proclaim that IT is “the best friend the Jewish people ever had,” I’m going to ברעכן (brechen - e.g. “vomit”) all ever the White House lawn. “Why?” you may well ask. Simply stated, he is the bipolar opposite of a friend or supporter. Whenever I ask what proof the person has for making such a statement, I regularly hear one or more of the following: “He moved the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem”; “He has provided more defense materiel to Israel than any other POTUS,” “How can he be anti-Semitic when his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren are practicing Jews?”, and most recently, “No POTUS has ever focused more on punishing elite universities for being tolerant of anti-Semitic activities.”

Oy! We aren’t going to take the time or space to explain ITs motives behind most of these actions save, of course his daughter and her family, who, in accordance with the old dictum חזקת לאדם כשר (chezkat l’adam kashayr - Hebrew for “the presumption of being Jewish”) we will give a nod of acknowledgement. Otherwise what I’m hearing from this pro-MAGA folks is, what in Yiddish is called די זעלבע מיד אַלטע געשיכטע (di zelbe mid alte geshikhte - '“the same old tired story”).

The one area of ITs presidency I will touch upon is anti-Semitism. Although he certainly did not create the hatred which transcends most of human history, he has not outside of rhetorically - done a hell of a lot to confront of quell it. Much to the contrary, he has actually weaponized it. At this time of the year, when the Jewish calendar is book-ended by Purim and Passover when real antisemitism — and redemption from it — are top of mind for Jews, we would be wise to see Trump’s rhetoric and policies on antisemitism for what they really are: gaslighting that will further endanger American Jews.

By publicly linking federal funding for research to combating antisemitism — and cynically appropriating the Hebrew word “shalom” to announce ICE’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil — Trump has actually fed nasty tropes about Jews wielding financial leverage and pulling the strings of government to protect perceived “Jewish” interests. Meanwhile, the Departments of Justice and Education (or what’s left of it) have launched antisemitism investigations into dozens of universities nationwide, singling out Jews as worthy of federal protection while simultaneously dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that support countless vulnerable and underprivileged Americans. In other words, for IT, the concern about the horrific rise in anti-Semitic acts isn’t a project; it’s a pretext.

Sometime in the early hours of Sunday, April 13 - the first day of Passover - the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion was set on fire by an arsonist while Governor Josh Shapiro and his family slept inside. Ironically, the greatest damage occurred in the very room (see photo above) in which the governor, his wife Lori, their 4 children and other family members had partaken in the traditional Passover seder. There but for the grace of G-d they escaped harm. When arrested on charges of terrorism, attempted murder aggravated arson and aggravated assault, the alleged arsonist, 38-year old Cody Allen Balmer told police that he used two Molotov cocktails to set the residence on fire. According to authorities, Balmer told them that he had also brought a small sledgehammer with him for the purpose of killing Governor Shapiro had he encountered him. Balmer, who actually had turned himself in to state authorities, said he attacked the mansion because of Governor Shapiro’s stance on the war in Gaza and that “needs to know that he will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

Exactly how the murder of a Jewish Governor and his family (the alleged perpetrator’s stated intent) could save Palestinian lives half a world away is anyone’s guess. Fortunately, many Republicans, including V.P. Vance, A.G. Pam Bondi and Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry issued statements deploring the arson attack, calling it, variously, “inexcusable,” “deeply disturbing” and “horrifying.” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said, “Political violence of any kind is never acceptable, and it is especially unconscionable to attack a Jewish family during the first night of Passover.”

Not all responses were so mixed with angst over, concern about and condemnation of the attack. Republican Rep. Dan Meuser (Penn.), a potential challenger to Josh Shapiro in the 2026 gubernatorial race, suggested that .Shapiro was “asking for it” when an attacker burned down part of his house after his Passover celebration and that he needs to “tone it down” with actions against President Donald Trump. “This guy is a psycho of course,” Meuser said of the attacker during an appearance on a local radio show on Tuesday, April 15. “And our hearts go out to the Shapiro family on this. But you know, they’ve got to tone it down, too. I mean, every action Josh Shapiro has taken so far against the president has either been a lawsuit or a falsehood.”

When asked for his response to the crime, IT, who, during his last campaign referred to Shapiro as a “highly overrated Jewish Governor [who] has done nothing for Israel and never will” said that he “wasn’t aware of a motive for the man accused of setting the fire,” and sloughed it off as nothing more than being the act of someone who was “probably just a whack job.” As of today, IT has yet to issue a public statement or contact Governor Shapiro about the arson attack. When Jonathan Martin, senior political columnist at Politico criticized IT for staying silent (except for his “whack job” comment) after the Passover blaze, he was faced with quite a bit of backlash from conservatives online, many stating that when IT was the target of an assassination attempt at a Butler, Pennsylvania campaign rally on July 13, 2024, Shapiro did not contact their standard bearer. (n.b. in truth, before thatday was out, Shapiro’s office issued a heartfelt statement wishing the then-former President a speedy recovery while condemning the attack and mourning the death of former firefighter Corey Comperatore, a native Pennsylvanian).

Eerily, Its “whack job” response came during a quicky presser held in the Oval Office with the president of El Salvador, one of this hemisphere’s most brutal dictators. (n.b.: It never ceases to amaze me that IT, who is forever yakking about taking over the Panama Canal, making Canada the 51st State and turning Greenland into the newest American territory [à la American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam] claims he doesn’t have the power to get Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to send back the more than 200 men illegally kidnapped and currently residing in this hemisphere’s most notorious mega-prison, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo [CECOT]).

We conclude with two thoughts: one for the POTUS, the other for/about the Shapiro family.

First for POTUS: From time to time, I am angrily attacked by readers wanting to know why I never say anything nice about the man they consider to be the best president in the history of the United States. I’ve given this a bit of thought, and have concluded that there is one very nice thing I can write about him:

Donald Trump is mortal!

And second, a thought for the Shapiro family: In the Jewish world, when someone - or a group, like a family - survive a traumatic, potentially life-threatening episode, it is customary. to recite a blessing known as Birkat Hagomel, which goes:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה הׇ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם הַגּוֹמֵל לְחַיָּבִים טוֹבוֹת שֶׁגְּמָלַנִי כָּל טוֹב

namely,

“Blessed are You, O G-d. ruling spirit of the universe, Who rewards the undeserving with goodness, and rewarded me (us) with goodness.”

To which we, who have heard them say this prayer. respond

אָמֵן מִי שֶׁגְמָלְךָ כָּל טוֹב הוּא יִגְמָלְךָ כָּל טוֹב סֶלָה

namely:

”Amen. May the One who rewarded you with all goodness, continue to reward you with only goodness, Selah!”

3 Comments 1 Likes

categories / anti-Semitism, The Coming Autocracy

#1,032: This Land Is Mine - Part 2

April 15, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Last week’s essay, also entitled This Land Is Mine, was posted on my Tales From Hollywood & Vine blog. In it, I wrote about - and reviewed - a 1943 RKO film by that name, starring Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Hara, and George Sanders. Taking place “somewhere in Europe,” it told the story of a small town under Nazi control and how a timid, “mamma’s boy” school teacher (Albert Lory, brilliantly played by Charles Laughton), discovers the inner strength he never knew he possessed, and uses that new-found backbone to publicly call out the Nazis for what they are - tyrannical beasts - and even denounce the local mayor (Thurston Hall) for being a craven capitulator hiding behind the mask of a patriot. At the end of the essay, I even included a live link to the film, urging readers to watch it in preparation for the following week’s post. As of this week, I really have no idea how many of you took the time to indulge in this truly meaningful cinematic experience. In matter of plain fact, the essay didn’t receive a single comment. Ah well, sometimes you score, and others, you’re rained out.

Even if you didn’t watch the film, you likely figured out what the tie-in would be for this week’s post: the necessity of identifying and growing a spine in a time of peril. Make no mistake about it: we are in just such a time . . . regardless of whether or no Felon47 will declare martial law on Easter Sunday after invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. This dusty law has gone without updates for more than 200 years. The original text states: “That in all cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws… the president of the United States [can] call forth the militia [or armed forces] for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection.” (Technically, it is now not just one law but a series of statutes in Title 10 of the U.S. code.)

One thing we have learned about IT during his years in office - or in front of a network camera - is this: he is very predictably unpredictable. We’ve just seen this during last week’s tariff debacle which set markets reeling around the globe and made U.S. Treasury Bonds (which until just a few days ago were the safest investment on the planet) a financial instrument being increasingly dumped in favor of other investments. Even if he doesn’t declare martial law, we are still in a time of grave peril, characterized by the strong-arming of Ivy League colleges or universities (in the name of eliminating DEI and anti-Semitism) as well as major white-shoe law firms; the unfathomable risks to medical research and public health (think measles, mumps and Alzheimer’s Disease); the firing of thousands upon thousands of veteran federal workers (all in the name of saving “trillions upon trillions of dollars” which is one of the most obvious lies in human history); the deportation of hundreds of immigrants (whether legal or not) based on charges of being violent terrorists and being shipped off to El Salvador without formal charges or access to due process; and the eroding of public trust in just about anything and everything. And if this were not enough, IT is even publicly musing about running for a 3rd term . . . despite the existence of the 22nd Amendment, which was ratified 74 years ago.

Egad! If this were to happen (it won’t, it can’t . . . amending the Constitution is next to impossible) IT would be taking his next oath of office at age 82, and goodness knows he has been showing what appears to be significant cognitive deficits for the past several years . . .

So, what is to be done?

Part of the answer, I believe, comes from the fictional Albert Lory, as played so magnificently by Charles Laughton. If he were a real - as opposed to a reel - human being, I could imagine him standing up straight and telling the Republican members of the Congress: You’ve got to grow a spine and see that your external actions are consonant with your innermost feelings about this King of Chaos and his loyal stooges. You simply cannot continue to blindly follow him as he goose-steps over the Constitution. Now is the time to act like true patriots and recapture the powers guaranteed you by that 200+ year old document to which each and every one of you have taken an oath of allegiance. Anything short of this is an act of treason . . .

It is obvious that for many, many Republicans, even the fleeting contemplation of standing up to a man and a regime they really do not and cannot trust, is a task that sends shivers up their non-existent spines. Some shy away from criticizing his policies over fears for their physical safety and that of their families. Others know full well that speaking out against his growing authoritarianism will result in their getting “primaried” in 2026 and possibly finding themselves being voted out of office by someone even further to the right than they are. According to Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) “I have a lot of friends who are Republicans. They are terrified of being the tallest poppy in the field, and it’s not as simple as being afraid of being primaried and losing their job. They know that that can happen. It’s much, much more personal. It’s their personal safety that they’re afraid of, and they have spouses and family members saying, ‘Do not do this, it’s not worth it, it will change our lives forever.”
A large percentage of these Republican members of the House and Senate – many of whom said the nastiest (and most truthful) things about IT in years past, should remember that the man they now outwardly support with such brazen gusto warned them all long ago that his one overriding philosophy of life was the necessity of getting revenge on anyone he believes has wronged him. As he told Charlie Rose way back in 1992, “I love getting even with people.”

About the only thing the world does not yet know about this hellhound of retributive justice (and his unscrupulous myrmidons) is how far he will go in his quest to enact his will . . . regardless of how crazy or destructive it may be. It doesn’t seem to bother him one iota that his most recent net approval rating stands at -6, or that more and more federal judges are putting a halt to the most dreadful of his deportation dreams. Just yesterday, federal judge Indira Talwani blocked IT and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from canceling a program introduced President Biden, that grants parole and the right to work to immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. For now, Judge Talwani’s ruling signals a major victory for these paroled immigrants who had sued the regime in the hope of remaining in the U.S. for a two-year period. There has yet not been a response from either the White House or Homeland Security, but you had better believe that the A.G. Pam Bondi will order someone on her staff to start an appeal ASAP.

This decision - among many others - is a positive sign that there are still heroes in our midst. Additionally, 7 Republican senators, including the Senate’s president pro tempore, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, and former Senate Republican leader, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell have signed on to a bipartisan bill (The Trade Review Act of 2025) that would require Congress to approve ITs steep tariffs on trading partners. (Others in the group include Sens. Jerry Moran (Ky), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Todd Young (IN) and Susan Collins (ME). The bill does what, in any other time or happenstance, would be the legislative equivalent of “See Spot run” medicine; the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate foreign commerce, impose tariffs, and collect revenue. Period. Should it pass the Senate (which I believe it will), it would then go over to the House, where the Speaker Mike Johnson, will likely throw it into the nearest waste basket . . . lest he earn the scorn and contempt of his Füh. . . uh president. I bet if Speaker Johnson polled voters in Louisiana’s 4th district, they would favor him bringing the bill to the floor . . .as well as keeping his hands off Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Of late, the Regime has been taking after America’s most elite universities, demanding that they make a series of policy changes (mostly cutting out all that “dangerous DEI folderal”). In one such case, the White House sent the leaders of Harvard a 5-page letter demanding that the college make “meaningful governance reform and restructuring to make possible major changes.” If not, they will lose more than $2 billion in grants. Rather than back down (as did Columbia University), Harvard’s lawyers responded in writing on behalf of Dr. Alan Garber (Harvard’s President), and Penny Pritzker (Senior Fellow of the Harvard Corporation) that the demands were illegal and that they would not comply. In their 2-page response, the Harvard legal team wrote that “Harvard remains open to dialogue about what the university has done, and is planning to do, to improve the experience of every member of its community. But Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”

My money’s on Harvard.

So, we can see what I pray is the emergence of some opposition to the MUMP Regime’s path to perdition. We, the people, like the fictional Albert Lory, must stand tall and forcefully, heroically communicate with our representatives, senators, governors and judges and get them to recognize that we, not the felon residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we are your bosses. Please, we beg you, who hold the highest offices in the land: relocate your backbone and stand up to those who are destroying Democracy. So what if you aren’t reelected because IT has chosen and endorsed a more fiercely loyal Republican than you - just because you did your job? If recent history is any indication, those IT-endorsed, Musk-funded candidates, stand a good chance of losing . . . thus putting government back in the hands of people who know and understand the Constitution. You can probably make more money in the private sector anyway . . . and perhaps get a better night’s sleep as well.

Power rests with the people.

This land is mine . . . and ours.

2 Comments 0 Likes

categories / All Politics All the Time, The Coming Autocracy

(1,031): The One Thing Money CAN - and CANNOT - Buy

April 01, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

OK, everybody let’s take out our pencils or I-Pads, and make a tally of the things money definitely cannot buy. Without question, people of a certain age are likely to be influenced by the title of one of the earliest smash hits from the Lennon-McCartney songbook as their #1: Can’t Buy Me Love . . . although I have to believe that POTUS and FLOTUS as well as anyone named Kardashian would likely disagree.

Here’s the beginning of my list of things that money definitely cannot buy:

· Common Sense

· Emotional Mastery

· Empathy

· Good Manners

· Gratitude

· Happiness

· Honesty

· Inner Peace

· Loyalty

· Mechanical Aptitude

· Morality and Ethics, and

· Wisdom

If you have some doubts about any of the 13 characteristics -or qualities - which money cannot buy, consider some of the אנגעשטאפטע מענטשן (ongeshtafte mentshn - Yiddish for, roughly “hyper wealthy people”) who are members of Felon 47’s Cabinet and coterie of closest advisors and factota. They are, without question איבערגעשטאפט (literally “stuffed”) but most seem to lack - or demand - such qualities as good manners, honesty, empathy or common sense in either themselves or their spooky brigade. Most come across as Übermenschen (“supermen”); philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s superior people who think they are able to be their own determiners of value; people who sculpt their own characteristics and circumstances regardless of what anyone - save others like them -- think. Despite ITs having convinced tens of millions of American voters that he was a populist who would always stand foursquarely on the side of the working stiff, he turned out to be what he always has been; a cunning neurotic born with a silver spoon in his tiny hand and a necrotic foot in his godless mouth. Indeed, no sooner did he take his second Oath of Office than he reverted to type; an oligarch whose only passion is for enriching himself and his band of billionaires.

In the regime’s first 71 days, we’ve been witness to what an unelected, unvetted centibillionaire holding aloft a chainsaw in his hand and a brain boosted by Ketamine can do. As the titular head of DOGE, he and his band of twenty-something trolls have made deep cuts in various federal agencies. Seemingly, he and his co-president (IT) have been most obsessed with making their gravest, most lethal cuts (and worst appointments) in one major area: anything dealing with medicine, medical research and healthcare delivery (i.e. HHS, FDA, CDC, NIH, CMS and HRSA). In addition to slashing their budgets (which is the constitutionally-mandated purview of Congress, not the White House), the MUMP Regime has seen fit replace the outgoing heads of these agencies with people who - despite possessing degrees from elite universities) hold some of the most toxic opinions of what roles their agencies should not be playing in the names of health and wellbeing:

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (26th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services): the scion of one of America’s most famous political families, RFK, Jr. was originally known for being one of the most influential environmental lawyers in the country. Over the past many years, he has become known for being among the country’s most prominent vaccine skeptics and a world-class conspiracy theorist. As head of HHS he recently named David Geier (who is not an M.D.), a prominent 2nd generation anti-vaxxer, who has long supported the almost universally debunked "medical fact” that certain vaccines cause autism to conduct a study looking for such a link. Kennedy’s announcement was met with incredulity and dropping jaws by most of the medical community. Just the other day, Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, resigned under pressure. In announcing his resignation, Dr. Marks warned that under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”

Marty Makary, M.D., PhD (27th FDA Commissioner): a pancreatic cancer surgeon and health policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Markary first came to the attention of ITs team when he was a Fox News personality and commentator on COVID back in 2021. At the time, he incorrectly predicted that the nation was “racing toward an extremely low level of infection.” Although not an anti-vaxxer, at his recent Senate confirmation hearing he expressed support for vaccines, even as he suggested that the F.D.A. needed to review the role of vaccine experts whom the agency turns to for advice.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., PhD (18th NIH Director): An Indian-born physician-scientist and health economist, he has spent the majority of his career in the latter field. In his Senate confirmation hearing he said that one of his main goals as NIH Director would be to prevent research grants being made to universities that fail to support academic freedom. He has also made it clear that he wants to take on campus culture at elite universities, wielding the power of tens of billions of dollars in scientific grants.
Tom Engels, B.A. (Administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration: A career politician who started his public life as then-Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson’s Deputy Press Secretary, he worked his way up through the ranks as an administrator in both state and federal health-related positions. This is his second stint as HRSA administrator, having served in this position during the first IT administration. He oversees nearly 2,000 employees and an annual budget of $15.9 billion.

It goes without saying that major health agencies at both the federal and state level, as well as those who partake in the world of clinical trials (myself included) are in a growing blue funk. With so many people being “furloughed” (a politically correct way of saying “canned”, which leaves agencies grossly understaffed and deprived of both expertise and institutional memory, and so many billions upon billions of dollars being stripped from research into new drugs, medical devices and surgical procedures, things are looking pretty grim. It makes me wonder about these overstuffed oligarchs; don’t they realize that without robust medical research - especially at a time of lessening Medicare and Medicaid coverage - it isn’t only the poor who will suffer. No amount of personal wealth can buy a cure for what ails you if the research isn’t ongoing. Money can provide the fabulously wealthy with plane tickets and great accommodations in a foreign country where non-FDA approved medicines or surgical procedures can be gotten. But all the cuts in medical research being instituted by the MUMP Regime cannot purchase miracles.

Do the oligarchs and overstuffed wannabes really, truly think their extreme wealth can save them or their loved ones from a rare, catastrophic or orphan disease? Haven’t they thought it through? Or are they suffering from the Marie Antoinette syndrome (Qu’ls mangent de la brioche!”. . . Let them eat cake?) Peut-être . . . perhaps.

In the nearly 30 years I have been vetting and editing what are called “Informed Consent” documents (which must be made understandable by anyone who is going to participate in a clinical trial), I have seen tremendous progress in human healing. Among the most fascinating and promising are:

CAR T Cell (Chimeric antigen receptors) Therapy, which involves genetically engineering a patient’s own T cells (red) to attack cancer cells. Basically your T cells (which can be easily trained) are taught to treat a tumor as a mortal enemy, rather than a friend.
Monoclonal Antibodies (all those medicines end with the suffice “mab” such as Rituxumab [breast cancer], Aducanumab [Alzheimer’s disease] and Vedolizumab [Entyvio . . . for Crohn’s Disease]). mAbs are laboratory-produced proteins that mimic the body’s natural antibodies.
Biologics: medications that come from living organisms, like proteins and genes; one day they may treat previously untreatable conditions including cancers, genetic disorders and autoimmune diseases like Multiple Sclerosis, Lupus and Crohn’s Disease.

At its best, medicine and medical research are a fascinating admixture of art and science. To bring a new drug, medical device, or surgical procedure to market takes a lot of time, talent and patience . . . not to mention teamwork and money. Money can buy both healing and hope for the sick, the hurting and afflicted. That’s the good news. The bad news - for those seeking to slash research funding and medical care to the bone - is that no amount of hyper wealth can buy a potential cure that is no longer in the pipeline . . .

BTW: For all those who are anxious, nauseated and feeling helpless, might I suggest joining the National Day of Action this coming Saturday, April 5. On that day millions of people from every state in the union, marching under banners dealing with a multitude of issues and concerns, will gather and send a message to the Regime . . . In order to find out where the gathering will be in your community (and even in Canada), please go

Hands Off!

Keep up the good trouble.

7 Comments 0 Likes

#1,030: From Melting Pot to Salad Bowl

March 24, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Although now largely forgotten, in his day, the Anglo-Jewish writer Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) was considered “the Dickens of the Ghetto.” A prodigious author of novels, plays, and essays, the vast majority of Zangwill’s oeuvre of nearly 190 works, is, unbelievably, still in print nearly a century after his death. In addition to penning one of the earliest “locked room mysteries,” 1892’s The Big Bow Mystery (filmed thrice, the most famous being the 1946 picture The Verdict starring that most unique of all cinematic pairings, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre), he also wrote a series of ghetto novels and short-stories with titles such as Children of the Ghetto, King of the Schnorrers, Dreamers of the Ghetto, Ghetto Comedies and Ghetto Tragedies. Zangwill’s literary brilliance lay in his ability to take a time, a place and a people - Jewish immigrants living and surviving in the ghettoes of Victorian England - and make them universally understandable to a largely non-Jewish reading public.

Zangwill also penned several plays that eventually made their way to both Broadway and Hollywood. Among the best-known were Merely Mary Ann, Children of the Ghetto, and most notably of all, The Melting Pot, which opened at Broadway’s Comedy Theatre on September 6, 1909 and ran for 136 performances (quite respectable in the early 20th century). As a sign of just how popular and successful a writer he was, on October 5, 1908, the night The Melting Pot opened at the Columbia Theatre in Washington, D.C., he was accompanied by no less a personage than President Theodore Roosevelt, who was heard above the applause at play’s end shouting “THAT’S A GREAT PLAY, MR. ZANGWILL.!”

Those who are widely read, know that Zangwill’s The Melting Pot is, in its own way, an update of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This time, instead of the feuding families coming from a medieval Italian city, the lovers (David and Vera) are from Russian Jewish and Russian Cossack families. David emigrates to America in the wake of the 1903 Kishinev Massacre (pogrom) in which his entire family is killed. He composes a great symphony called “The Crucible” expressing hope for a world in which all ethnicity has melted away, and falls in love with a beautiful Russian Christian named Vera. The dramatic peak of the play is the moment when David meets Vera's father, who turns out to be the Russian officer responsible for the annihilation of David's family. Vera's father admits his guilt, the symphony is performed to accolades, David and Vera agree to wed, and kiss as the curtain falls.

Towards the end of Act I (the play has 4), Zangwill proclaims through David, the immigrant composer, America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all races of Europe are melting and re-forming! . . . . A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians . . . into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American.

Zangwill’s political, philosophical and emotional attachment to the melting-pot view of America is best expressed in a brief colloquy between David and Vera in Act IV:

David: [exalted by the spectacle of thousands of immigrants arriving in New York Harbor] There she lies, the great Melting Pot . . . listen! Can’t you hear the roaring and the bubbling? There gapes her mouth [He points east] . . . the harbor where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour in their human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian, black and yellow . . .

Vera: [Softly nestling to David] Jew and Gentile.

David: Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross--how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. Ah, Vera, what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward! Peace, peace, to all ye unborn millions, fated to fill this giant continent--the God of our children give you Peace.

For years, this concept - e.g. the Melting Pot - was, for the most part, at the center of the American ethos; when people reached the “new world,” their history, ethnicity and language entered the melting (or “smelting” as Ralph Waldo Emerson called it) pot and fused into a new creation: the American. But increasingly, this concept has fallen by the wayside in favor of either the “salad-bowl” or the “pizza pie.” Why? In order to answer this, one must first understand what the smelting (or melting) process entails: applying tremendous heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of “extractive metallurgy” that is used to obtain many metals such as iron, copper, silver, tin, lead and zinc. It is impossible to locate any of the original constituent ingredients within a melting or smelting pot; it is an altogether new metal.

A salad bowl (or pizza pie) is a totally different construct: a singular entity in which virtually all the main ingredients are still easily identifiable. In a salad, the tomatoes, radishes, olives, cheese crumbles etc. are all distinguishable, just as the mushrooms, onions and pineapple chunks (ugh!) visibly sit atop the cheese(s) and tomato sauce in a pizza pie. Salads and pizza pies are the essence of diversity . . . a sort of gastronomic E pluribus Unum (“Out of many comes one”) or comestible DEI (Diversity equity and inclusion) . . . although over past year or so, I’ve come to the conclusion that it really stands for “Donald’s Embarrassing Idiocy”).

Inside the lower pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, there is a bronze plaque containing a sonnet (“The New Colossus”) composed by the poet and activist Emma Lazarus. Lazarus (1849-1887) was a member of one of the oldest Jewish families in the United States, her earliest ancestors arriving on these shores in 1654 aboard the St. Catrina, known to history as "The Jewish Mayflower.” Her Petrachan sonnet, written in 1883, expresses the “melting pot” concept that Israel Zangwill would popularize a quarter century later. The most oft-quoted of Lazarus’ 14-line poem are its last 5:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

For as long as there has been an America, there has been an underpinning of racism, xenophobia, homophobia and various exclusionary practices. Although not springing from the soil of the nation, it has existed, its targets being - depending on the time and place - natives, Catholics, the Irish, Chinese, Jews, Italians, women and today, Muslims and people of many different colors. This is not a repudiation of the melting or smelting pot; rather it is the rejection of the salad bowl. In 2024, a minority of the voting public elected a president who pledged to “Make America Great Again” by deporting millions upon millions of people whom he claimed were “murderers,” “drug-dealers,” “terrorists” and “rapists” . . . the “dregs of humanity.” Or to put it another way, he promised that from hereon in the American salad would “once again” consist of nothing but lettuce . . . read “White Christians.” In the eyes of many, this has long been the American Dream. In the eyes of – hopefully – many more, this has never been the dream. For everlasting dreams cannot and must not be based on illegal actions . . . such as deporting people without benefit of a hearing or a trial.

Just this past week, Jerce Reyes Barrios, a former professional soccer player from Venezuela, was spirited away by members of ICE in California, where he was awaiting his asylum hearing and flown - along with 200 other, mostly Venezuelan refugees - to the notorious CECOT, El Salvador’s mega-prison for gang members. On what basis did the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) determine that Senor Barrios, who came to the U.S.-Mexico border legally through the CBP One app in September 2024 determine that he was a Tren de Argua (TdA) member? By a tattoo of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “Dios” (God), which DHS decided was ink associated with the notorious Venezuelan gang. According to Senor Barrios’ attorney, "In reality, he chose the tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favorite soccer team, “Real Madrid.” The attorney, Linette Tobin rejected the idea her client was a gang member and said he had fled Venezuela in early 2024 after being detained at an anti-government demonstration by security forces and "taken to a clandestine building where he was tortured.” He has neither been seen nor heard from in the past week. All this without benefit of due process . . . another “carrot” . . . or "cucumber” or "mushroom” wrenched from the "salad.”

(When it comes to tattoos which should get you deported [or at least tossed out of your current position] how about DOD secretary Pete Hegseth’s “Jerusalem Cross” ink, which has a long, long history in Christianity going back to the Crusades, but has lately been co-opted by some far-right groups as a symbol of the fight for Western civilization? Or his tat with an AK-47 beneath the American flag? If he was a Muslim, he would likely be shipped off to CICOT in the middle of the night. But he is a Christian Nationalist and former FOX celebrity, so I guess that makes him fit for sitting atop the DOD

Hegseth, who has called for an “American Crusade” against the “internal” and “domestic enemies” of the U.S. and Israel, was nominated to his position by a President and Commander-in-Chief who is publicly itching to deploy that military throughout the United States. Who will save the people of the U.S. from an internal crusade of a military that already has an extremism problem? Hegseth is a Christian Nationalist who believes that Islam is a natural, historic enemy to the West and has lamented growing numbers of American Muslims. For Hegseth, his boss and oh so many MAGAites, this is the “Melting Pot” they are working for . . . even if they’ve never heard of Israel Zangwill or Emma Lazarus.

One positive thing we’ve learned over the past week is that public outcries can occasionally cause the MUMP regime to reverse course in rewriting history . . . in removing everything in the “salad bowl” save the utterly bland and tasteless lettuce. Case in point: a couple of days ago the Pentagon deleted from its website pages highlighting Black veterans such as Jackie Robinson, the Tuskegee Airmen, the Navajo Code Talkers of WWII, Vietnam-era medal of Honor recipient Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers as well as the Japanese American 422nd Combat Regiment. After a vast public roar against the deletions, the Pentagon restored most of the pages. Let this be a lesson to us all: speaking in a loud, unified voice, making our thoughts public and feelings well-known can be more powerful than a clenched fist.

In a few hours, we will be dining on a large Caesar Salad with chunks of baked Salmon . . . a perfect symbol of what America should be.

2 Comments 1 Likes

categories / Immigration

#1029: An Act of Resistance

March 10, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

It’s now been slightly more than 60 years (!) since the Free Speech Movement began at the University of California at Berkeley, long the nation’s number one public university. Those were incredibly heady days, which turned a generation of young adults into lifetime political activists. For those of us who were around at the time, the names Clark Kerr, Mario Savio and Bettina Aptheker (not to mention Jackie Goldberg, Art Goldberg and Michael Rossman) are as indelibly engrained as John, Paul, George and Ringo. Personally, my political memories of the ‘60s include attending large rallies, warming up crowds singing songs of protest penned by Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton and Pete Seeger, blocking highways and speaking at innumerable protest rallies. For the most part, we were protesting the war in Viet Nam (Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is gonna win!), the military draft (Hey, Hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?) and then, in 1969, the closing down of Berkeley over what has been historically known as The Battle for People’s Park. Those who were around at the time will long remember Alameda County Sheriff Frank Madigan, Santa Rita prison and the guards, who we nicknamed The Blue Meanies, named after the villains in the Beatles’ movie Yellow Submarine. You may also remember the name James Rector, a student activist who was killed when teargassed from a sheriff’s helicopter . . . which we called a “whirley pig.”

By the summer of 1969, I’d chopped off my pony tail (which has returned every few years), trimmed my beard, purchased a couple of Brooks Brothers suits and went off to Washington, D.C. where I put my political energy to work as an intern in the United States Senate. Over the next several years I worked for Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK), former California Assembly Speaker Jess “Big Daddy” Unruh (where my boss was Fred Taugher, who has been a longtime reader of this blog), and California Governor Jerry Brown, where I worked in the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research under Bill Press, one of the best political writers and pundits in the business.

One of the most important things political activists of the Viet Nam era managed to pack in their luggage of life was - and still is - the need for resistance. Yes, I know, most often, it’s the people with the megabucks who generally call the shots. Let’s face it: ever since the Supreme Court’s horrific 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that reversed century-old campaign finance restrictions and enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited money on elections, electing and controlling both the Congress and the political agenda has been even worse and more brazen than at any time since the Gilded Age. Just look at the financial statements (if you can find them) of those who sit in our current cabinet, or he who serves as the "shadow POTUS.” At first glance, there are really only 4 things that can stop the autocratic oligarchs from turning the United States into something that has only one goal: to enrich the already stinking rich and making the rest of us pay for it. What are these four entities?

The United States Congress, which currently contains a majority of invertebrates. Even if the Constitution is on their side when it comes to controlling the purse strings, without a collective spine it really doesn’t matter.
The Federal Judiciary, which of late has begun showing a bit of spine. In a 5-4 decision this past Wednesday, Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts joined Justices Sonia Sotomayor. Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson backing a federal judge’s power to order the MUMP Regime to pay $2 billion to USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) contractors but did not require immediate payment. This was the first DOGE test for SCOTUS; they are not happy campers. As a result, MAGA extremists have targeted Justice Coney Barrett. claiming that she is a closet liberal. One conservative media personality, Mike Cernovich, posted on X. “Another DEI hire. It always ends badly.” When confirmed, she became the fifth woman to ever serve on the bench. Somehow I have my doubts about the federal courts being our saving grace. The response to Justice Barrett shows just how rattled and unprepared the right-wing marching and chowder society was for a setback. Please note: although the federal court system is potentially the “last best hope” for stopping IT and his team in their demonic tracks, it will require POTUS and his BFFs to obey the court’s ruling. Whether or not he/they will obey what the majority of the court rules is anyone’s guess.
Wall Street: We have already seen what a couple of disastrous days for the Dow Jones can do to force Felon47’s hand. Already well known for waffling, IT tabled tariffs against both Mexico and Canada after the market lost more than a thousand points and both countries announced their own tariff proposals against the USA. There is already quite a bit of talk on “the street” (a polite way of saying “among investors”) about POTUS’ economic policy vis-a-vis inflation, higher prices massive job losses. If the titans of wealth lose faith in IT, he will have to change gears. He has no concern about being accused of inconsistency; everyone on Wall Street knows who and what he is.
People Power: This is something which has always existed in America . . . sometimes more, sometimes less. It includes such obvious activities as voting and contributing money to candidates and campaigns we favor, and the broad category of “volunteerism.” This latter category includes such things as knocking on doors, making phone calls or writing postcards to voters, and of course, corresponding with your member(s) of the House and Senate. Then too, think about attending “Town Hall” meetings in which your elected officials make themselves available. Over the past several weeks, these meetings have met with such a wave of angry backlash that Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC), chair of the House GOP’s campaign arm issued a stark message to the G.O.P. rank and file: Stop having in-person town halls with your constituents. Seems like something is beginning to get through. By cutting back on face-to-face meetings, Republican members of Congress are not winning any new friends . . . let alone keeping the friends they obvious have.

An Angry Crowd of Republicans at a Town Hall

Outside of ITs extreme MAGA base - which is cultic in its devotion - a growing percentage of the American public is finally beginning to catch on to his numerous character and personality flaws and utter lack of knowledge about oh so many things. Farmers in the Midwest are scared witless that his tariffs will kill their livelihood; families sitting around the kitchen table are asking why the price of eggs continues to rise despite his promise to fix it on day one. In the eyes of many, with each passing proclamation, ITs craven bullishness is becoming more and more apparent. As a result, his poll numbers - historically anemic - are dropping like a 300-pound skydiver who forgot to strap on his parachute.

Back in rabbinic school, we all had to take a course in what is called homiletics - the art and science of giving meaningful sermons. At Hebrew Union College our instructor was the delightful Lowell McCoy who, despite being an ordained Methodist minister, was, for many of us, our “favorite rabbi." He was a gentleman of the highest order and had a passion for the spoken word. The professor who filled us in on subject matter for sermons was the late Hungarian-born Eugene Mihaly, who taught both rabbinic literature and homiletics. One of the things Dr. “Mihomily” (as many generations of students called him . . . but never to his face) was that in order for a sermon to be both proper and meaningful, it had to end on a note of נחמתה (n’khem-ta) a Hebrew word meaning, roughly “consolation,” “comfort,” or “relief.”

So what in the heck does this detour have to do with this post? Just this: I’m going to take Dr. Mihomily’s advice and conclude with a bit of comfort. To wit, the situation involving a handful of brave government employees working for a largely unknown, infinitesimally-tiny agency whose annual budget - about $46 million - (which is less than 0.000022% of the $2 trillion dollars DOGE wants to eliminate from the federal budget) who bravely stood their ground against the forces of the MUSK Regime.

The agency in question is the United States African Development Foundation, whose mission is To support African-led development that grows community enterprises by providing seed capital and technical support. Over the past 5 years, USADF has invested more than $117 million directly into over 1,000 African-owned led SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises), entrepreneurs, and community organizations and impacted over 7 million lives in some of the poorest countries in Africa. USADF was created by an act of Congress in 1980; its original sponsors were Senators Edward Kennedy and George McGovern, and began program operations in 1984, during the Reagan Administration. Throughout the 40+ years it has been in service it has provided financing to more than 1,700 small enterprises and community-based organizations.

This past February 25th, IT issued an executive order declaring that the “non-statutory components of functions” of USADF . . . shall be eliminated to the maximum. This past Wednesday (March 5), a couple of DOGE workers and Pete Marocco, the director of the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance, arrived at USADF headquarters in order to get access and fire all the employees. The roughly 50 employees refused to let them inside. After about an hour of trying to enter the agency’s building, the DOGE squad left, threatening to come back the next day. But the next day did not come. On Thursday, March 6, Senior U.S. District Judge Richard j. Leon (appointed by Pres. G.W. Bush in 2002) issued an order hours after the filing of a lawsuit by the president and CEO of USADF. In his order, the judge agreed with the USAFD’s legal contention: DOGE and IT do not have the authority to shut down the agency, which was created by Congress. This ruling, and the legal basis upon which it was filed, may pave the way to keep the Regime from closing down other agencies such as the Department of Education, FEMA and the EPA.

Although a “David” of an agency in terms of size and relative influence, its 50 employees combined, through an act of resistance, to at least temporarily “slay Goliath.” If there is a G-d in Heaven (believe me, there is), their resistance should send shockwaves to all those in the United States and around the world who are afraid to turn on the news or read a headline. There is so much we can do to shut down FELON 47’s nihilists and true-believers. Keep up on what’s happening, no matter how depressing it is; always remember that together we can accomplish far more than we can a part; join your local Democratic Party club and lend support to those who make sense. And above all, remember the words of Teddy Roosevelt:

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”

2 Comments 1 Likes

categories / The Coming Autocracy

#1,028: The Ambush

March 03, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

The art and underlying skill of diplomacy lies in being able to firmly disagree with someone or express strong opposition while still maintaining a polite and respectful demeanor. Winston Churchill (supposedly) expressed this truism best when he opined that “Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions “ I’m not so sure Winnie ever said or wrote this; he simply wasn’t that witty. One wag I am sure of is humorist, columnist, movie star (and at one time the honorary Mayor of Beverly Hills) Will Rogers, who unquestionably said “Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie,' until you can find a rock."

Historically, the best, most successful acts of diplomacy have taken place behind closed doors - often in out-of-the-way places and, in the modern age, never, ever, in front of a bank of cameras. Ever since his ride down his gilt escalator in 2015, the public has come to expect the unexpected from IT. Whether it be in what he says, how he gestures or the lies he tells, people the world over have come to take it for granted that the 47th POTUS is what Mark Twain once called “a falsehood in flesh and blood.” To say that IT is the bipolar opposite of a diplomat goes without saying . . . but say it we must.

Last Friday’s Oval Office presser with Felon47, Vantz, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was not an historic act of diplomacy taking place in a room full of cameras and reporters; it was an out-and-out ambush. Going in to the meeting, President Zelensky had hoped to secure U.S. support in any cease-fire talks with Russia. (Remember, during the 2024 campaign, IT had promised the American voting public - and indeed, the world - that he could and would bring the now 3-year old war to a close within his first 24 hours in office . . . and likely even before he took the oath of office. Instead, Zelensky’s relationship with both the president and vice-president was revealed for the entire world to see.

It was meant to be a moment of triumph for Zelensky, a change after weeks of maneuvering for an Oval Office meeting to demonstrate American backing in Europe’s longest and bloodiest war in generations. Instead, the meeting unraveled into insults. He was berated by both POTUS and VPOTUS as “disrespectful” for arguing that Russia posed a threat to Ukraine. On more than one occasion, the V.P. accused Zelensky of never having “thanked the President and the American people” for all they had given Ukraine, blamed them for starting the war against Russia . . . both obvious falsehoods. Voice rising, POTUS accused Pres. Zelensky of “gambling with World War III.”

Throughout the brief (10 minute) press conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio slouched quietly, his hands clasped and appearing stone-faced. Some commentators claimed he appeared to be “embarrassed.” And yet, early Sunday he fiercely defended ITs sharp turn against Ukraine’s leader, accusing President Zelensky of trying to derail the peace process with Russia by openly challenging the POTUS and VPOTUS. “What Zelensky did, unfortunately, is that he found every opportunity to try to ‘Ukrain-splain’ on every issue.”

During the Q&A that followed, the Ukrainian President was questioned about his choice to wear combat gear while attending a function in the Oval Office. “Why don’t you wear a suit? You’re in the highest level of this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit? I just want to see, do you own a suit?” Brian Glenn, a commentator for the arch-conservative Real America’s Voice (RAV) outlet asked. "A lot of Americans have problems with you respecting this office.” (It should be noted that Glenn is the boyfriend of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene). President Zelensky quickly jabbed back with a sarcastic remark. “I will wear [this] costume after the war will finish. (N.B.: he used the word “costume,” which in Ukrainian is костюм, their word for ‘suit’). “Maybe something like yours, yes, maybe something better, I don’t know, he added.

(Anyone find it odd that no conservative reporter or news outlet has questioned Elon Musk’s attire at the first Cabinet meeting of the Mump Regime? At that event he came clad in a single-breasted charcoal peacoat, which he opened wide at one point to show off the words “tech support” in large letters on a black T-shirt. His outfit was complemented by two bespoke items: a Tesla-themed Texas belt buckle and a black “Make America Great Again” baseball cap. It has long been considered the height of disrespect to wear a hat in the Oval Office . . . )

It then quickly brought the gathering to an end and President Zelensky departed the Oval Office, and was driven to a military airport where he flew back to the Ukraine. Almost immediately thereafter, the marching and chowder society known as the Republican caucus began spreading verbal encomia, effusively praising and thanking the president for standing up for America. What went unspoken, of course, was that the only victor that afternoon was Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. As for the rest of America’s European allies, their leaders immediately rallied behind President Zelensky:

French President Emmanuel Macron posted: "There is an aggressor: Russia. There is a victim: Ukraine. We were right to help Ukraine and sanction Russia three years ago - and to keep doing so."
Germany's outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote that "no one wants peace more than the citizens of Ukraine", with his replacement-in-waiting Friedrich Merz adding that "we stand with Ukraine" and "we must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war".
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada "will continue to stand with Ukraine and Ukrainians in achieving a just and lasting peace".
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said: "Ukraine, Spain stands with you," while his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk wrote: "Dear [Zelensky], dear Ukrainian friends, you are not alone."

Whether or not the ambush of President Zelensky was preplanned or spontaneous is a question that began being asked within minutes of the actual event. Not surpassingly, the White House flatly denied any conspiracy to embarrass or humiliate Zelensky, thereby showing Vladimir Putin that he has an obsequious toady sitting in the Oval Office. If the humiliation session was spontaneous, then why did Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.-SC) tell members of the press almost immediately after the meeting when down in flames, that he had urged Zelensky earlier that morning not to “take the bait?” Did he know something? Even media pundit Geraldo Rivera weighed in on the meeting, telling viewers during his Friday appearance on NewsNation (formerly WGN), “I just could not believe what I was seeing. It’s President Trump at his worst. President Trump as an ill-mannered bully insulting a war hero. This wasn’t an Oval Office photo-op. This was an ambush,”

How much longer are we going to put up with a chief executive who seems to be a walking, breathing example of a tertiary syphilitic? How much further can America stomach a reality TV show host who will do or say anything that is on the tip of his tongue or corroding his frontal lobe? Friends, It and his cadre of changelings are causing the United States to become a laughing stock among nations . . . seemingly for the sake of several multi-billionaires’ greed, cupidity and utter corruptibility.

620 days until the 2026 midterm elections . . .

3 Comments 0 Likes

categories / The Coming Autocracy