#1,056: "White Hawk"

November 09, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

This past Tuesday’s off-year elections brought more hope to Democrats and independents (and more fear to Conservative MAGA Republicans) than any political event in recent memory. In virtually every election at the state, county and local levels Democratic candidates for governor, state attorneys general and local boards of education and supervisors did precisely what polling numbers predicted they would: win big. Moderate Democrats Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger won governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, while democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani prevailed in his race for New York City mayor over the state’s moderate ex-governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent. (It should be noted that these 3 victors are so relatively unknown that their names have yet to be added to spellcheck). Unquestionably, Republicans from Maine to Seattle will be told that Mayor-elect Mamdani - a Muslim who made “affordability” the keystone of his campaign - is all they need to know about the Democrats; a party of anti-Semitic Marxists bent on bringing Sharia Law to America.

But these marquee races were just the beginning:

Pennsylvania voters chose to retain three state Supreme Court judges that were first elected as Democrats after millions of dollars in outside spending driven by conservative billionaire Jeff Yass’ efforts to reshape the state court’s politics.
In Georgia, Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson were elected the newest members of the state’s five-person public utility regulator after earning 60% of the vote. It’s the first time Democrats have won a nonfederal statewide office there since 2006.
At the state legislative level, Mississippi Democrats broke a GOP supermajority in the state Senate after flipping two seats in that chamber plus another pickup in the state House.
Democrats flipped all three city council seats in Georgetown, S.C., and winning back mayoral races in Connecticut.
Detroit City Council President Mary Sheffield defeated megachurch pastor the Rev. Solomon Kinloch to become the first woman to lead the Motor City. She will inherit a city that continues to improve following Detroit’s 2014 exit from the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. The Mayor-elect was elected to the City Council in 2013 at age 26, and has been council president since 2022.
In Cincinnati, Vice President J.D. Vance’s half-brother, Republican Cory Bowman, lost his long-shot bid in the nationally-watched mayoral race, running 56 points (78.2%-21.8%) behind Democratic incumbent Aftab Pureval. (It is interesting to note that although he endorsed his half-sibling, the Veep made no contribution to Mr. Bowman’s campaign).

To my way of thinking, perhaps the biggest victory – the one that should cause the greatest amount of angst and worry within Republican circles – belongs to the Great State of California and its 40th governor, 58-year old Gavin Newsom. Thanks largely to the governor’s around-the-clock campaigning and stellar fundraising, California voters overwhelmingly supported Proposition 50, Mr. Newsom’s measure to gerrymander at least 5 more Democratic congressional seats, countering a similar redistricting effort in Texas pushed by IT (whom Newsom recently branded “The Nodfather” For his part, Felon47 has been referring to the California Governor as “Newscum” since early 2024) Prop. 50 passed by such a wide margin (61.4%-35.9%) that national news sources were able to call it within 5 minutes of polls closing in the Golden State. Even before the results were announced, Governor Newsom was making plans to celebrate his victory over the Nodfather in the Lonestar State. Last night (Saturday Nov. 8), standing against the backdrop of an enormous American flag, befitting a national campaign, the California Governor framed the redistricting battle in historic terms. In the eyes of many, the rally was nothing short of Newsom’s first campaign stop in his quest for the White House in 2028.

Speaking before a standing-room only crowd at a union hall in Houston, he told the cheering Democrats “We can shape the future here all across the South and across the United States of America. You have that power. You do. Not Donald Trump. Shouts of “2028!” echoed out. Just last month, he openly acknowledged that he will consider a 2028 presidential run shortly after the 2026 midterms. While Governor Newsom was wowing the crowd in Houston his office announced that this week he will be traveling to Brazil to attend the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) “ . . . joining international partners to strengthen climate commitments and showcase how California - the fourth largest economy in the world - is proving that its clean energy transition is creating jobs, driving investment, and cutting toxic pollution.”

The press release drew a stark contrast between Governor Newsom and the Nodfather: As the President of the United States turns his back on people and the planet, California is inking global partnerships focused on creating jobs and cutting toxic pollution. The economic winners of the 21st century are those who build the clean energy future . . .

It won’t be long before the public “learns” from a thousand-and-one online “new sources” that Gavin Newsom is a drunk, a failure as a businessman, a mayor and a governor; that he has the lowest approval rating of any governor in the United States; is farther to the left than Leon Trotsky, and wants to bankrupt America . . . just as he has bankrupted California. And, oh yes, he wants to give free education, free healthcare and free food to every illegal immigrant in the 50 states. And you know what? There will actually be people out there who swallow this swill as if it were the greasiest cheeseburger in the world.

The fact of the matter is that were one to examine what he has and has not accomplished during his eight years as mayor of San Francisco (2004-2011), eight years as Lt. Governor under my old boss Governor Jerry Brown (2011-2019) and going on seven years as governor, one would find that while he dreams the dreams of an out-and-out idealist, he has always managed to live the life of a political realist. He has had his victories and defeats, but in the main is a strong leader who ranks high on the honesty scale and has put a stamp of progress on a huge polyglot state. Make no mistake about it: his politics are best characterized by a blend of progressive ambition and pragmatic, quite moderate actions, marked by a focus on large-scale climate and social goals while also facing criticism for fiscal decisions and the handling of specific issues. In other words, he practices the politics of the possible.

What “proof” will his detractors have for all the asinine allegations mentioned above? First and foremost, that he is a 4th generation San Franciscan . . . and you know what that means! Even worse: Newsom’s aunt Barbara was married to Ron Pelosi, the brother-in-law of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi! Newsom’s father, William Alfred Newsom III was a state appeals court judge and longtime attorney for Getty Oil. The Getty-Newsom connection is both long and strong. Businessman and classical music composer Gordon Getty, one of the late oil tycoon J. Paul Getty’s 4 ,invested in 10 of Newsom’s 11 businesses, beginning with his first, the PlumpJack Winery in 1992. It should be noted that Gavin Newsom is godfather to the American model, socialite and LGBT+ activist Nats Getty. Although raised a Roman Catholic, as a child, Gavin Newsom went to a JCC preschool in San Francisco, and spent time at the Jewish summer camp Camp Tawonga.

In July 2008, Newsom married to film director Jennifer Siebel; they have 4 children. His first brief marriage was to America’s current Ambassador to Greece, former Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle. In October 2006, Newsom, then Mayor of San Francisco (he served in that office from January 2011-January 2019) publicly announced that he was seeking treatment for alcohol use disorder. The treatment was successful; he has been a recovering alcoholic for more than 18 years.

Like most human beings, Gavin Newsom is not a saint. Unlike many in public life, however, he has proactively discussed his sins and shortcomings in public, always seeking to become a better person. Remember, if the rewards of Paradise were reserved only for perfect, blemish-free people, it would be the emptiest piece of property in the universe. What we are about to “learn” and “hear” about Governor Newsom in the weeks, months and years to come should be considered far more a testament to how much his possible success scares his political opponents (some of whom are Democrats) and far less because he is a blot on society. No one without ego, drive, the ability to deliver a coherent and positive message and raise vast amounts of cash has the slightest chance of becoming POTUS. As much as we may decry and even revile the motivation and tools in the political tool box of people who seek the nation’s highest office, we do well to remember just how how grueling and quixotic the trek truly is.

We’ve never had a successful politician named Gavin. Indeed, up until recently (unless you were a San Franciscan, a political geek or baseball fan) the only Gavins that came trippingly to the tongue were actor Gavin MacLeod (Capt. Merrill Stubing on "The Love Boat”) and right-hander Gavin Floyd who pitched for 5 major league baseball teams from 2004 to 2016, finishing with a career record of 74-76. As of today, Gavin Newsom is the most famous Gavin in both the United States and likely the world. Gavin is a name of Welsh origin, it carries the meaning “white hawk” and all the virtues long associated with that bird of prey. Considered symbolic of love and steadfastness, the white hawk is a fitting spirit animal for Gavin’s most famed namesake: Sir Gawain of the Knights of the Round Table. This heroic figure of Arthurian legend is most known for his loyalty, bravery, and knightly perfection. He was immortalized in an anonymous late 14th century poem (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) that follows him as he embarks on a quest for honor a mysterious challenge from the supernatural Green Knight. Through trials of courage, honor, and moral integrity, Gawain’s journey explores the complexities of knightly virtue and human frailty.

Who knows? Might there be a “white hawk” in our future?

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categories / 2028

#1, 055: The United States of Amnesia

November 04, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

First and foremost, a confession: I am not a Marxist. Period. End of confession. Why in the name of erudition am I making this avowal? Because I am about to quote from Karl Marx’s 1852 monograph The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: to wit, History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Paraphrasing the German Idealist G.W.F. Hegel, Marx’s intention in this essay was to discuss how historical events can echo - but with a lesser, more pathetic quality - the second time they happen. Well, dear reader, we are currently in the throes of a severe and moronic political crisis that affirms just how insightful and dead-bang on were die Herren Marx und Hegel: to wit, when history does repeat itself – as inevitably it shall – it tends to have a lesser, more distressing quality the second time around.

The current political crisis is well-known to a majority of Americans. While the government is shut down, Congress is on permanent holiday; while millions of families are in real danger of malnutrition and having to decide between paying rent or forgoing medical care, POTUS is gearing up to have his DOJ “repay” him $230 million for legal expenses and having his billionaire best buds cough up hundreds of millions of dollars in order to create the largest banquet hall on the planet. And to top it all off, our fearful leader is actually giving serious thought to constructing an Arc de Trump meant to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary.

To make matters worse, whenever questioned about anything going on within the regime, House Speaker Mike Johnson displays a raging case of amnesia. Sun Sentinel opinion writer Pat Beall snarkily summed things up in a recent piece in the following manner: Dinner with the president and his crypto BFFs? “I don’t know anything about the dinner.” Presidential crypto grift? Same. Quatar jet? Shutdown layoffs? GOP police funding cuts? Whatever it was Eric Trump said this week?

To the best my knowledge - and after extensive research - there are no historic rankings of house Speakers; of who were the best best of the best all the way down to the worst of the worst. It is, as with most things in the realm of American history, a matter of political weltanschauung (worldview) and partisanship. To my way of thinking, the best of the best was Joseph Gurney Cannon (R. IL) the man known during his speakership as both “Uncle Joe” and “Czar Cannon." He exercised exceptional control during his 7 years (1903-1910) as Speaker; he effectively had total control over the agenda and debate proceedings of the House. (n.b. He also chaired the House Rules Committee). Eventually, there came a political revolt, led by a small group of Republicans who managed to curb his power. In many ways his experience mirrored the more recent frustrations of far-right Republicans who, during the first Trump Administration, voiced interest in lessening the institutional power of both the speaker and the House itself. Although some could fault Cannon for the dictatorial manner in which he ran the House, he did manage to keep Theodore Roosevelt (whose presidency ranks in the top 10) from eviscerating and castrating the purpose and perquisites of the House . . . the one thing our current Speaker has utterly failed to do.

Other upper-echelon Speakers include

Henry Clay (Whig-KY): “The Great Compromiser,” was a staunchly anti-Jacksonian who eventually became leader of the Whigs . . . who were the liberals of his day and time. He was the only person to be elected Speaker during his first term in the House after having previously served two brief terms in the U.S. Senate. During his 6 non-consecutive terms as Speaker, Clay reshaped the office by actively setting the House’s policy agenda—especially his “American System” of economic expansion, high tariffs, and investments in the nation’s infrastructure—while pursuing more direct political objectives. He was also the first Speaker to be appointed to a presidential cabinet, servicing as U.S. Secretary of State in the administration of John Quincy Adam.
Sam Rayburn (D-TX), who wielded the gavel for a record 17 nonconsecutive years. He left a permanent legacy; one of the main buildings housing legislative offices adjacent to the Capitol bears his name. More importantly, he was a master negotiator, credited with raising the prominence of the Democratic party and supporting the budding career of LBJ.
Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. (D-MA) who, despite being a deeply partisan Democrat, managed to also be a paragon of bipartisanship. The relationship between the highly-progressive Speaker and the ultra-conservative President Ronald Reagan was a model of what the executive and legislative branches can accomplish when political partisanship takes a backseat to what’s in the best interest of the commonweal. The two Irishmen often had to walk a fine line between capitulating to a popular conservative POTUS and maintaining his party interests in the midst of the Cold War.
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Likely the best “wrangler” of votes in the history of the office, the first female Speaker routinely found the proper leverage points to keep party legislators in line, while also trying to secure votes from members of the opposition. As but one example, during the debate over the Affordable Care Act, Speaker Pelosi helped drive through the deeply debated legislation. The sweeping health care policy passed the House on Nov. 7, 2009, with a vote count of 220 to 215. It needed 218 to pass. Today, she is routinely considered the “worst of the worst” by MAGA Republicans, who, afflicted with amnesia, forget the disasters which were Dennis Hastert (an admitted serial child molester), Newt, John Boehner, Kevin McCarthy, and the current wielder of the gavel Mike “I know nothing” Johnson. Political historians predict that she will be known as one of the most successful Speakers of all time.

Here’s where Marx/Hegel’s nostrum about history repeating itself “first as tragedy, second as farce” comes into play. Or, we can go back even further, to the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes. In that book, Koheleth, the self‑named author, states a profound truth in Chapter 1, Verse 9: "What has been will be, and what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun" Koheleth's verity, which extends to both the political and the religious realm, might well serve as the epitaph for the second Jewish person to serve in Congress, Lewis Charles Levin of Pennsylvania. For the major issue that obsessed Levin and made his brief moment in the political spotlight has resurfaced time and again. In Levin's day, it was called nativism. Toward the end of the nineteenth century it was termed populism. Today it goes under the name MAGA, or, as one current historian calls it, "the cult of national patriotism." The issues Levin raised in his day on the national political stage (roughly 1845-51) - prayer and Bible in public schools; keeping America free of foreign influence; strengthening moral values; keeping illegal immigrants from coming to America - are once again staples of American politics in the 21st century.

Equal parts crusading moral zealot, paranoid conspiratorialist, and agitating dogmatist, Levin fashioned a barely coherent political philosophy that sought nothing less than "the attainment and preservation of America's `national character.'" As he declared early in his first congressional term in 1845, "I go for everything American in contradistinction to everything foreign." In the end, he proved himself to be remarkably unsuccessful in achieving his aim. But . . . and this is an enormous ‘but’ . . . he did manage to give rise to a political party known in the mid-19th century as the American Party but ever since as The Know-Nothing Party.”

From the way Lewis Levin railed against paupers, drunks, Catholics, and those who "had not been sufficiently long in the country to have lost the odor of . . . steerage," one might have taken him for some priggish Backbay snob. Far from it. Although little is known about his antecedents or early life, it is clear that Lewis Charles Levin was the son of Jewish parents. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, on November 10, 1808, Levin spent the first sixteen years growing up in a city that was home to early-nineteenth-century America's largest Jewish population---somewhere between 600 and 700. From his later actions, it is clear that Levin felt like an outsider and tried desperately to escape from his Jewish past. Although there is no concrete evidence that he ever formally converted to another religion, he did become an advocate of Protestantism and married two non‑Jewish women, Anna Hays and Julia Gist.

Levin graduated from South Carolina College (University of South Carolina) in 1824. Infected with wanderlust, he spent the next fifteen years earning a precarious living as an itinerant Christian preacher and teacher, settling variously in Maryland, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Somewhere along the line he read law and was admitted to the bar in several states. In 1839 or 1840, Levin---by now married to Ann Hays of Kentucky---moved to Philadelphia, which, notwithstanding his disaffiliation, was then home to some 1,600 Jews.

In 1842, Lewis Levin purchased a newspaper which he called the Temperance Advocate. For the budding journalist, the subject of temperance was an early passion. His speeches and articles against the evils of drink brought him to the attention of like‑minded souls; in 1843, he was elected president of the Pennsylvania Temperance Society. In this capacity, Levin continued speaking out against drink, the stage, and anything that in his estimation led to the creation of a less puritanical society. Like a Sunday‑school preacher, he distrusted man's natural impulses. Without discipline and self‑control, he feared, American society would collapse beneath the weight of its immorality.

Levin sold the Temperance Advocate in 1843 and purchased a larger paper, the Daily Sun. Now he added the evil of foreign influences to his arsenal. Levin was not alone in disparaging foreigners. In the 1840s, America began playing host to wave after wave of European immigrants. Their arrival served to fan the flames of dislocation, uncertainty, and intolerance. As a result, many Americans, looking for scapegoats to blame for political, fiscal and social dislocation, became attracted to the burgeoning nativist movement. This movement, which would eventually coalesce into a national political party, sought to identify and promote a purely American ethos. Foreigners, particularly Irish Catholics, became easy scapegoats in a highly confusing time. Levin took this antipathy and molded a paranoiac fantasy whereby the monarchs of Europe were plotting to take over America by means of the spiritual influence of the Catholic Church. In an article he wrote in his Daily Sun, Levin claimed that the monarchs of Europe were planning “. . . to people the country with Catholic immigrants, in order to provide for the contingency so patriotically prayed for . . . of our government changing to a monarch - whereby his holiness (the Pope) will have a King ready, sprinkled with holy water, to mount the throne in the name of Catholic liberty! Levin even gave rise to a canard that turned into a conspiracy: that the Pope was secretly digging a tunnel under the Atlantic to attack America!

America has long been a country with a penchant for both amnesia and conspiratorial fears. As the preeminent American historian Page Smith (under whom I studied back in the 1960s) noted in volume IV of his massive A People’s History of the United States: If there is something in the American character especially susceptible to notions of conspiracy it may stem from incapacity to deal with the unanticipated and coincidental quality of history itself. Americans have been generally inclined to think of themselves as being in control of their individual and collective destinies. Inexplicable or irrational events, hard times, or even natural disasters must, it was thought, be capable of explanation. Better a shaky conspiracy theory than no explanation at all.

In 1844, Levin published a broadside entitled A Lecture on Irish Repeal, in Elucidation of the Fallacy of Its Principles and in Proof of Its Pernicious Tendency in the Moral, Religious, and Political Aspects. In it, he attacked both the Irish "Repeal" movement (the fight for the repeal of Ireland's union with England and Scotland) and its leader, Daniel O'Connell. Levin claimed that in establishing Repeal Clubs throughout America, O'Connell and his minions were actually establishing beachheads for an eventual takeover of America by the papacy. Levin uncovered "a nefarious plot to debauch and contaminate the institutions of the United States and to set up a monarchy." His pen dripping with vitriol, Levin concluded that "The Irish Catholic vote is to be organized to overthrow American liberty. The extensive ramifications of Repeal Clubs have suddenly become affiliated societies, to carry out the intentions of His Holiness, the Pope!"

Fueled mainly by the diatribes of journalists, propagandists, and pamphleteers like Levin, the nativist movement continued to grow. In the mid-1840s, a new political faction, variously called the Native American Party, American Republicans, or the Know Nothings, came into existence. Wherever and whenever they held their conventions, violence against Catholics and Catholic churches was sure to follow. The party attracted followers by raising the fear that immigrants posed a concrete threat to the American way of life. When Levin and his cohorts added the issue of Bible in the public schools, their ranks swelled dramatically. One plank of the Native American Party's platform boldly proclaimed: We maintain that the Bible, without note or comment, is not sectarian---that it is the fountain head of morality and all good government and should be used in our public schools as a reading book.

The Bible to which the nativists referred was, of course, the King James (Protestant) version, which, they claimed, the Catholics wanted excluded from the schools. Levin's diatribes to the contrary, this was simply not the case. As one Catholic bishop of the time stated, "I do not object to the use of the Bible provided Catholic children be allowed to use their own version." Levin retorted that the King James Bible was actually a nonsectarian book! He and his nativist allies pushed for what they called "Bible Education"---a program of learning that would inculcate proper moral values and promote Americanism. Underlying all of this was, of course, an implied attack on the Catholic Bible, the Catholic Church, and Catholics in general. Although the nativists attracted numerous followers, their appeal remained largely among a narrow segment of society. With regard to the Catholic versus Protestant Bible issue, one observer of the time wryly noted: "A large majority of the Protestants who fought out the question of reading the Bible in the public schools . . . would not have known the difference between the Protestant and the Catholic Bible if it had been placed in their hands."

In July, 1844, Levin was indicted by a grand jury for inciting to riot. He made political capital by claiming that he had actually tried to stem the violence which had taken place in Philadelphia's Southwark district; moreover, he claimed, the indictment was part of a "Popish plot." His name prominently before the public, Lewis Charles Levin declared his candidacy on the American Party ticket for Congress from Pennsylvania's First District. During the three‑man campaign, Levin kept hammering away on the "pernicious foreigner" issue. Levin's standard stump‑speech message from 1844 sounds hauntingly familiar even after more than a century and a half: "Unless a remedy be found to impede the influx of foreigners in the United States, the day [will] not be distant when American‑born voters find themselves a minority in their own land." Largely on the strength of this message, and his public notoriety, Levin captured the First District seat. Shortly after his election, he stood trial on the charge of "riot, treason and murder." He was found not guilty.

Levin served three terms in Congress, during which time he became one of the least popular men on Capitol Hill. In speech after speech, Levin subjected his colleagues to rancorous attacks on the Catholic Church. When members of the House challenged him or took him to task, Levin would simply accuse his antagonists of being "paid agents of the Jesuits who hang around this Hall." At one point Levin attempted to win Southern support for the American Party by claiming that the abolitionist movement was inspired by the Pope and his agents! Most Southerners, offended by Levin's bravado and naked political opportunism, turned away in disgust.

It has long been a truism in Congress that the best way to succeed on Capitol Hill is to make oneself an expert on a single issue or area of interest---farm price supports, foreign policy, defense, etc. For Levin, given his unique political pathology, the area of expertise, not surprisingly, was immigration and naturalization. Levin proposed changing the naturalization law to require a residence period of twenty‑one years in order to qualify for American citizenship. Moreover, he pushed a concept he called federal citizenship, whereby the federal government would be granted the exclusive right to determine qualifications for voting. After a prolonged and rancorous debate, the House concluded that Levin's proposal was unconstitutional; it usurped the clearly enumerated right of the individual states to set voting qualifications. Levin's hatred of immigrants was so great that he opposed a bill setting minimum passenger-space requirements for transatlantic ships bearing newcomers to America. The bill's sponsor, Representative George Rathbun of New York, argued that current overcrowded conditions on the ships were ". . . a revolting spectacle, a disgrace not only to our laws and our country, but to humanity itself." In speaking out against Rathbun's proposal, Levin sarcastically suggested that the legislation be amended to read "A bill to afford additional facilities to the paupers and criminals of Europe to emigrate to the United States." Levin's diatribe notwithstanding, Rathbun's bill passed overwhelmingly.

Levin and his cohorts attempted to turn their nativist faction into a national political party but met with little success. Levin easily dominated the Native American Party's three national conventions, held in 1845, `46, and `47. The party's demise can largely be blamed on Levin himself. By resolutely demanding that "birth upon the soil be the only requisite for citizenship," Levin caused an irrevocable split among his nativist colleagues. By 1848, the Native American Party was finished as a political force. Levin should have seen the handwriting on the wall. He was easily defeated for reelection to a fourth term in 1850, and returned to Philadelphia, where he took up the practice of law.

In the last years of his life, Levin's tenuous mental makeup got the best of him. He spent at least the last three to four years of his life as a patient in hospitals for the insane in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Lewis Charles Levin died in Philadelphia on March 14, 1860 at age fifty-one, thus ending both a tortured life and a sorry chapter in American political history. Levin was buried in the nondenominational Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. His wife, Julia, tried to raise funds for a monument to his memory, but someone connected with the campaign absconded with the funds. To this day, no tombstone graces Levin's final resting place. Julia Gist Levin and Louis Levin (his son) converted to Catholicism in 1880.

What caused Levin’s party to become nicknamed "The Know-Nothings” was that party leaders ordered its rank-and-file members, when asked by non-members about any and all party doctrine, to say they "knew nothing.” Despite attempts to resurrect the name and officially run candidates for office, it has never again become a ballot-qualified party.

Nonetheless, the "amnesiac” defense continues to thrive in MAGA land. As mentioned in the early paragraphs of this week’s post, Speaker Johnson is the modern embodiment of the I know nothin strategy in American politics. Me thinks he must have spent his childhood watching reruns of Hogan’s Heroes (to my mind one of the most tasteless sitcoms in all broadcast history) and learned to imitate "Sgt. Schultz” who made I know nothing! the show’s most memorable phrase. (Somewhat hauntingly, John Banner, the actor who portrayed Schultz, was, in real life a Viennese Jew who fled Europe shortly after the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria to Nazi Germany. Another cast member, Robert Clary [who played the character “Cpl. LeBeau) was a French Jew, who as a child, was interred in a Nazi concentration camp.).

This past Sunday’s edition of Sixty Minutes featured Norah O’Donnell’s extended interview with IT, held at Mar-a-Lago. At one point in the interview, just after POTUS was railing about Joe Biden’s use of an autopen “in order to give pardons” (thus suggesting that, like a puppet, he did not know what he was doing) O’Donnell asked him about last month’s pardon of crypto billionaire Changpeng Zhao (“C.Z.”). He had pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering in 2023, serving four months in prison and then agreeing to step down as the chief executive of Binance, the crypto exchange he co-founded. His companies have partnered with firms linked to Trump on new digital-currency projects including Dominari Holdings, where his sons sit on the board of advisers and which is based in Trump Tower.

When asked about why he pardoned Zhao even though government prosecutors had sasid he caused “ significant harm to U.S. national security, Felon47, gave an answer that would have caused Lewis Chas. Levin to beam: “I don't know who he is. . . I have no idea who he is,” only that he had been told that the businessman was a victim of a witch hunt by the Biden Administration. POTUS went on to say, My sons are involved in crypto much more than I-- me. I-- I know very little about it, other than one thing. It's a huge industry. And if we're not gonna be the head of it, China, Japan, or someplace else is. So I am behind it 100%. This man was, in my opinion, from what I was told, this is, you know, a four-month sentence.

The historic Know Nothings did manage to run one candidate for president in the 1856 election. That man was Millard Fillmore who served as the last Whig POTUS from 1850-1853. Generally ranked by historians as one of the 3 or 4 worst presidents, he came in third, receiving a less-than-resounding 21% of the popular vote - a mere 8 electoral votes - losing the election to Democrat James Buchanan.

Had he won, America would have been run by a bunch of racist, xenophobic, Bible-thumping reactionary amnesiacs. Hmmm . . . wonder what that would have been like.

Not really . . .

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categories / All Politics All the Time, American History, The Regime

#1,054: Tariffs are Not America's Pastime

October 26, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

As I sit here in my library, about to begin writing this blog, I’m wearing one of my L.A. Dodger tee shirts . . . this time a blue one emblazoned with the name OHTANI across the interscapular region. I’m drinking coffee from a blue Dodger mug. Last night, while watching Dodger ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto become the first pitcher to hurl consecutive complete games in a postseason since 2001, I was adorned in a grey L.A. Dodgers: 2024 World Series Champions shirt. Here in the library, sitting on a ledge just to my right is a bust of Thomas Jefferson and a beautifully framed octagonal photo of silent movie icon Clara Bow. Sitting between them is a plaque proclaiming Dodger Stadium: 2,694 mi. The plaque, like the tee-shirts and jerseys (which include “Kershaw,” “Betts,” and “Valenzuela” are all courtesy of my slightly-older-sister Riki (Erica). To be a member of the Stone family means being a fanatical “Bleed Dodger Blue” partisan. And that we are. . . in spades.

Throughout the day, and while watching the early innings of last night’s game, part of my brain was going over possible topics for this week’s blog. Unlike during the presidencies of Obama and Biden, when selecting things to write about wasn’t all that difficult, the era of the Regime presents far, far too many hebdomadal possibilities. Among the subjects I considered were:

The $20 (or $40) billion gift to the right-wing, fiscally inept Milei administration in Argentina; of how it would drive a stake through the heart of the American beef industry and only serve to enrich the billionaire hedge fund friends of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (himself a former hedge fund manager who once served as chief investment officer at Soros Fund Management [!]) who have been buying up Argentine bonds at an alarming rate. Those wishing to better understand why the Regime is investing so heavily in a failing South American economy, I urge you to read Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman’s piece from October 9.
Speaking before the press the other day, IT claimed the the federal government owes him ‘a lot of money’ ($230 million) for federal investigations during and after his first term. He further declared himself the arbiter of whether or not his own administration should pay him damages, telling reporters that any such decision “would have to go across my desk”. In a somewhat lighthearted moment proving G-d knows what, he said “It’s interesting, ’cause I’m the one that makes the decision, right?” The situation has no parallel in American history, as Felon47, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president’s former lawyers atop the Justice Department. “What a travesty,” said Bennett L. Gershman, an ethics professor at Pace University. “The ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.” BTW: IT told the press he would donate any such funds to charity. “I’m not looking for money,” he told reporters. “I’d give it to charity or something. I would give it to charity, any money.” All those who believe this, raise your hand.
Speaking of lying, our Beloved Pigeon (an historic epithet for Mussolini) announced before he tore down the entire East Wing of the White House in order to build a gilt $300 million, 90,000 square foot ballroom, that it would not interfere with the historic look of the grounds. White House officials then told CBS it was always the case that the East Wing would have to be modernized to enhance security and technology, but that during the planning process, it became apparent that the best option would be to demolish the entirety of the East Wing. Compare this ballroom to the one at Mar-a-Lago. ITs ballroom is about 20,000 square feet and seats around 700 people for dinner ,about 1,000 standing. It’s one of the largest private ballrooms in the country. According to the most recent reports, the new ballroom will be 90,000 square feet. That’s more than four times larger than Mar-a-Lago’s, and could hold somewhere around 3,000-4,000 people depending on the setup. Now mind you, the entire White House itself is only about 55,000 square feet. Forget the fact that Felon47 claims that he’s getting his billionaire friends to cough up the gelt for all the gilt. This is history being destroyed.

As last night’s game progressed, I continued pondering what to write about. And then came an ad from up in Toronto . . . the home of the Dodger’s World Series opponent, the Blue Jays. It dealt with an address former President Ronald Reagan gave back on April 25, 1987 in which he said, “When someone says, ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while, it works, but only for a short time. . . .High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation from foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars . . . .Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down and millions of people lose their jobs. This so angered IT (who had previously made a friendly bet with Ontario Premier Doug Ford over the outcome of the World Series) that he not only cancelled further trade talks with Canada, but imposed an additional 10% tariff on all Canadian goods. To add insult to injury, he also called the ad a complete fake: They fraudulently took a big buy ad saying that Ronald Reagan did not like Tariffs, when actually he LOVED TARIFFS FOR OUR COUNTRY, AND ITS NATIONAL SECURITY. . . . Thank you to the Ronald Reagan Foundation for exposing this FRAUD.”

Actually, the Ronald Reagan Foundation (which is located within jogging distance of my sister’s home in Southern California) opened its files and provided an actual video capture of The Gipper’s radio address:

I for one do not believe that Pouter Pigeon ever placed a wager in favor of the Dodgers. Afterall, they are in Los Angeles, which is in the State of California, which is also home to San Francisco . . . 3 places high on his ‘must take over’ list. Now, ironically, his pique for the good folks of Toronto is just about as high . . . if not higher. By running the ad at the end of every game (there are a maximum of 5 to go), Canada is essentially hitting a Grand Slam. I for one hope they play the ad at the Super Bowl in 2026. And if, G-d forbid, the Blue jays take the World Series crown from the L.A. Dodgers, I somehow doubt IT will be inviting them to the White House. Then too, should the Dodgers win, they will likely refuse the invitation.

Baseball is, without a doubt, America’s Pastime. Tariffs, swindles, misappropriation of funds, making sure your friends and family add to their personal billions . . . are nobody’s pastime. . .

. . . Unless you are a member of the inner circle of a malevolent cult; then these things are nothing more than unspeakable sins.

GO DODGER BLUE!!

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categories / America's Pastime, The Regime

#1,053: Did You Hear the One About the Psychiatrist Who Went to Heaven?

October 20, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

First things first: yesterday Annie, Nurit and I attended a historic, energetic, colorful, and totally peaceful “No Kings” rally along University Drive in downtown Coral Springs.. My guestimate is that there were about 2,500 people along the route, which stretched for about half-a mile, mostly on the east side of the street (the shady side . . . remember, this is sunny South Florida!) The placards, tee-shirts and costumes were about as creative as humanly possible. Altogether, there were people of all ages, colors and languages in attendance, not to mention the hundreds of drivers honking their horns in solidarity. Standing and waiving my two-sided sign, I couldn’t help but remember the first protest rally I ever attended . . . a “No War Toys!” protest held on Santa Monica beach back in the summer of 1964. For many, rallying, protesting and resisting is not for sissies; it is a lifelong obsession.

Many of us attended a similar event back in June, but the months since have seen IT make a truly dizzying array of changes in quick succession. This time, the crowds included a new round of protesters, those who said they were outraged over immigration raids, the deployment of federal troops in cities, government layoffs, steep budget cuts, the chipping away of voting rights, the rollback of vaccine requirements, the reversal on treaties with tribes and the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. Despite what the White House press office claimed, this turned out to be the single-largest protest rally in American history.

I know that whenever I attend a protest rally (and I’ve been doing it for more than 60 years now), I remember the words of Rabbi Tarfon:

לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמוֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה

“It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it” (Pirke Avot, 2:16)

Hate to say it, but I don’t think the work will ever be finished. Over the past 250 years, America has always had a kind of split personality; a bifurcation of both intention and identification, if you will. Our very Constitution is an attempt to keep that bifurcation - between rich and poor, landowner and landless, “blueblood” and "illegal” - from becoming a chasm of societal necrosis. It is precisely because of our historic bifurcation that we have a bicameral federal legislature: the House was meant to represent the people; the Senate was a sop to the wealthy. That is also why we have a tripartite federal setup: legislative, executive and judicial . . . with the legislative coming first.

Nonetheless, what’s been going on since a (supposed) billionaire descended on a gold-encrusted elevator back in 2015 to announce that he was running for POTUS is something Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and the rest of the Founders could never have imagined . . . let alone been prescient enough to set up safeguards against . . . to wit, a "leader” who simply doesn’t give a sh-t about anything or anyone but himself.

To the MAGA leader and his family of followers, the U.S. Government is no mere piggybank; it is their personal mint; a tool for making them richer than Croesus, the last king of the ancient Lydian Empire. What makes things even more deplorable is that he - and his closest followers - are now likening him to both the savior of Christianity and the Almighty coself* (co being my "he/she” pronoun for the Divine).

Want proof? Well, just a couple of days ago, POTUS’s son Eric, told podcaster Benny Johnson that we should all thank his dad for " . . . keeping Budweiser trans free, Colin Kaepernick out of the NFL and for 'saving G-d’.” This is way beyond chutzpah; it is outright blasphemy. Eric the Egregious actually told the podcaster “We’re saving Christianity. We’re saving G-d. We’ve saving (sic) the family unit. We’re saving this nation. I mean, DEI is out of the window . . . We have a return to people going to church.” AAArgh!

Not to be outdone, just days before the nationwide “No Kings” rallies, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News The Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals. Back in April Leavitt claimed that her boss was behind a ‘spiritual revival’ in the U.S. and helping people move ‘closer to G-d.’ Who in the hell is she referring to? The man who has spent less time in church than the founder of “American Atheists,” the late Madeline Murray O’Hair?

Somewhat ironically, during the 4 months between the June 14th and October 18th rallies, I’ve been immersing myself in reading the late novelist Upton Sinclair’s jaw-dropping 11-volume Lanny Budd series . . . an utterly brilliant (though lamentably long-forgotten) work of historic fiction. Between 1940 and 1953, Sinclair wrote this series of novels featuring a central character named Lanny Budd. He was the son of an American arms manufacturer who moved in the confidence of world leaders, not simply witnessing events, but often propelling them. Lanny has often been characterized as the antithesis of the “Ugly American”: a sophisticated socialite who mingles easily with people from all cultures and socioeconomic classes. What originally drew me to the series was that it covers western history from WWI through McCarthyism about as well as any textbook could ever hope . . . and yet be totally entertaining.

Here comes the irony: right now, I am immersed in the 5th volume of the series, Presidential Agent, in which Lanny becomes a secret agent in the employ of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Upon meeting FDR, we listen in as the great man tries to impress Lanny with just how terribly busy he is . . . and what his enemies say about him. I am supposed to be drunk all the time, and in spite of my physical deficiencies I maintain a large harem. Lanny responds by saying;

Have you heard the one about the psychiatrist who died and went to heaven and was invited to psychoanalyse G-d?

FDR: No. Has that something to do with me?

Lanny: St. Peter explained that G-d was suffering from delusions of grandeur . . . He thought He was Franklin D. Roosevelt!

The president threw back his head and laughed heartily; he put his soul into his enjoyment of a joke, and it was a good thing to hear. Lanny remembered that Abraham Lincoln had sought the same kind of relief from too many burdens. . . .

From what I’ve learned through research, this was actually a well-known joke in 1936 . . . after FDR won a second term, beating the pants off of Kansas Governor Alf Landon 60.8%-36.5% (523 electoral votes to a mere 8). Considering those who are touting the Beloved Pouter Pidgeon as the true Savior, the satiric bot mot still works rather well.

Make no mistake about it: FELON#47 is neither the savior nor the redeemer . . . let alone a leader of a country. What he is is the leader of a cult; a man suffering from unmistakable mental deficits and an ego thinner than tissue paper. That so many of his followers believe every word he says - or remain mum in the face of what they know to be his many shortcomings - is traitorous . . . to say the least.

NO, G-d Almighty does not want to be IT; what Co wants - or demands - is for all of us to be patriots, and thus fearlessly live up to the rights and responsibilities of American citizenship . . . which includes voting, rallying and resisting autocracy.

Rabbi Tarfon spoke the absolute truth:

It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it."

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categories / American History, Power to the People!, The Regime

#1,052: Action is the Antidote to Anxiety

October 12, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

This past week has been worthy of Charles Dickens’ opening sentence in A Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

To say that the past 168 hours have been weird to the max is an overstatement. Consider that many of us - for the first time ever - are actually in agreement with Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on an issue. “What issue?” you ask. Precisely this: the Republicans’ “Big Bad Bill” which has started putting the cost of health care well beyond the means and hopes of millions upon millions of American taxpayers. . . and is at the heart of the current federal shutdown.

Never mind the fact that Greene - a.k.a. Capitol Hill Karen - enthusiastically voted for the bill’s passage; as of the other day, she’s up in arms. It seems she’s finally become aware that it will affect her own adult children, who will no longer be able to afford health insurance. Now, suddenly, she’s ashamed to be a MAGA-ite. Well sorry Marge; just because you have taken this most anti-MAGA stance (for which I do sincerely applaud you) doesn’t erase all the gruesome, heartless things you’ve done and said in your racist, Islamophobic, anti small-d democratic political career. Hell, even a broken clock is correct twice every 24 hours.

Then, of course, there is the breathtaking news that finally, finally, after more than 2 years, the war between Israel and Hamas just might be coming to an end; that Israeli hostages - both living and deceased - will be returning home in a swap for upwards of 2,000 Palestinian prisoners currently being held in Israeli prisons. As of this morning (Sunday Sept. 12, 2025) Israel and Hamas have signed a cease-fire agreement to free the remaining hostages in Gaza. But the future is murky: Many of the plan’s ambitious ideas for postwar Gaza have yet to be negotiated.

Yes, there are certainly hopeful signs on the horizon . . . for which POTUS and his negotiating team (Miami neighbors Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff) should be applauded. What they have accomplished has taken place largely behind closed doors and away from the cameras . . . where traditionally, the greatest strides in diplomacy have always taken place. Joining in on the diplomatic sessions with Kushner and Witkoff (both of whom made their billions in international real estate and venture capitalism) in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh were the Qatari P.M., Sheik Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Egyptian foreign minister Badr Abdelatty, Pakastani PM Shehbaz Sharif, and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin.

As much room as there may be for rejoicing, one must keep a couple of things in mind. First, as recently as February of this year, POTUS spoke freely about his underlying motive for bringing “peace” to the Middle East. In a meeting with Israeli PM Netanyahu, he spoke of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in order to develop Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” He called on Egypt and Jordan, in particular, to absorb the displaced population, while the United States would “own” the seaside territory. In a Fox News interview, Trump further clarified that the relocation of the Palestinians would be permanent, with no right of return. Remember this: the man is at base a deal-maker, not a diplomat. And that fact alone throws several cups of cold water (at the least) onto the smoldering passion for peace in the Middle East.

Second, remember that whether or not he and the international community will actually succeed in bringing the war to an end, he is still the man who is currently:

Overseeing the firing of hundreds of thousands of federal workers;
Keeping members of the military from receiving their pay;
Ordering National Guard troops into Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon either “in order to protect those cities from dangerously high crime rates” or “to protect ICE agents from being attacked by left-wing Marxists.” This may be nothing more than a pretext for implementing the Insurrection Act . . .
Sanctioning retributive prosecutions against the likes of former FBI Director James Comey and NY Attorney General Letitia James and likely California Senator Adam Schiff;
Calling for the imprisonment of mayors and governors who have publicly called him out;
Is enriching himself and his family to the tune of at least $5 billion in their latest cryptocurrency venture;
Joining hands with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in pushing unproven (and unsound) advice around Tylenol and various vaccines;
Issuing an executive order purporting to go after “domestic terrorism,” and authorizing punishments for even tenuous connections to speech the regime doesn’t like.
And on and on and on . . .

These are indeed anxious times. And while there is, to paraphrase Ernest Thayer’s Casey at the Bat, “Some joy in Mudville,” (i.e. MTG’s turnaround on the “Big Bad Bill” and the return of the hostages from Gaza) it must not cause anyone into thinking that, in the words of yet another poet (Robert Browning) G-d’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world. One good act, one political volte-face does not - nay, cannot - make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear . . . as our British cousins used to say. However, sometimes the opposite can be true. Here, I am thinking of the late Senator Edward Kennedy who did an awful lot of political good during his life. And yet for many, all that good has been nullified by precisely 4 words (which many can no longer identify): “Chappaquiddick” and “Mary Jo Kopechne.”

In any event, anxiety currently abounds, and there is an early-stage trickle of resentment beginning to be expressed all over the country. As one might expect, the greatest, most audible resentment comes from America’s center-left. And yet, there is beginning to be heard and felt a deepening of pique and displeasure from the center-right as well. More and more, we are hearing the words TRUMP MUST GO! THE MAN’S A MENTAL CASE! and WHAT ABOUT USING THE 25TH AMENDMENT!

Someone far wiser than I once wrote that “Activism is the antidote to anxiety.” I firmly believe this to be true; I’ve seen it happen in Berkeley, Chicago, and along the National Mall in years past. It can happen again this coming Saturday, October 18, 2025.

I’ve been pushing the national “No Kings” day of protest for quite some time. Once again, I’m urging one and all to join in, SIGN UP and attend a rally in your neck of the woods. Our presence, our signs, our voices and our activism can relieve the anxiety. Let Mr. Speaker Johnson proclaim that everyone at “No Kings” protests is a terrorist bent on showing that they hate America and are pro-Hamas. He is, as Grannie used to say, “Full of canal water.”

Peaceful public protest is as American as apple pie.

Come on out and engage in a slice of patriotism.

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categories / Power to the People!

#1,051: Optimist, Pessimist, Realist, Activist

September 25, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Despite the fact that most even semi-literate people have heard (and perhaps even used themselves upon occasion) the expression The optimist sees the glass as half full, the pessimist as half empty - no one knows who first gave it voice. In 1908 a precursor of the expression appeared in a Minnesota newspaper with an acknowledgement to a journalist identified as “David Dodge of The New York World”, in which a fictional Professor of Mathematics named Dr. Nix, used wordplay to generate a “curious paradox”. The joke hinged on the equivalence of “half full” and “half empty”. The words “pessimist” and “optimist,” however, were not mentioned. Then there are those who are absolutely certain that its creator was Baron Josiah Charles Stamp (1880-1941), an English industrialist, economist, civil servant, statistician, writer, and most importantly, one-time director of the Bank of England. On April 4, 1935 “The Daily Telegraph” of London printed a quip delivered by Baron Stamp during a speech the previous evening: “Sir Josiah Stamp gave this definition of an optimist and a pessimist when he spoke at the dinner of the Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors in London last night: An optimist is the man who looks at his glass and says it is half full. The pessimist is he who looks at it and says it is half empty.”

In Hollywood, there are lots of people who firmly believe that the quip started with Ted Healy (1896-1937), who was the creator of “Ted Healy and His 3 Stooges,” (yes, those “Three Stooges”) who once, when speaking to a reporter from the Brooklyn Eagle about the gas tank in his car, remarked that he “couldn’t tell whether the gas tank was half full, or half empty, because the needle pointed half way.” Well, regardless of who was originally responsible for this bon mot is irrelevant; what matters is the fact that there is a germ of truth in it.

I gave thought to this aphorism while sitting and praying in shul throughout services for the two days of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. After more than 45 years of being the officiant (call it the ‘driver’) at High Holiday services, today was the second time I was a mere ‘passenger,’ by which I mean a congregant. Fortunately, I was sitting next to my dear friend Shepsl, who has been my gabbai (second in command) for as many years as I can remember. Shepsl isn’t a rabbi; nonetheless, he’s as well trained as one, but permits me to look flawless . . . which is an amazing skill. Anway, while sitting next to him and his wonderful partner (whom I introduced to one another years and years ago), I had the rare opportunity to listen to the rabbi give his sermon . . . instead of having to deliver one myself. He was speaking about life lessons on this Holy Day, the first day of the Jewish New Year 5786.

One of the major - and most memorable - aspects of services for Rosh Hashanah is a long recitation of our sins (חֲטָאִים khah-ta-eem), shortcomings (פֶּשַׁעִים p’sha-eem), and offenses (עֲבֵרוּת ah-vay-rut) and our resolve to - with G-d’s assistance - make more moral, positive and productive versions of ourselves in the coming year. Mind you, this prayer, which is repeated again and again throughout services, is recited in the first person plural (We), as opposed to the singular (I), for indeed, we are all in the same boat together.

Despite all the terrors, tortures and troubles the Jewish people have suffered throughout our millennia as a people, we tend to be historically optimistic. We have long understood as the moral of an ancient of an ancient tale teaches גם זה יעבור (gahm zeh ya-ah-vore) "this too shall pass.” The tale, a story about King Solomon and his eldest son Rehoboam (Heb., רחבעם - R’khav-ahm) who was a depressive sort. The young man’s extremely wise and caring father understood the reason for his son’s depression: he never thought he could be as smart, as great or as accomplished as his father the king. Solomon realized that merely telling his son not to worry - that everything would work its way out - wasn’t enough. And so, he had a servant go to the royal jeweler and make a two-sided coin . . . one side made of sapphire, the other of ruby. The servant instructed the jeweler to etch the words גם זה יעבור (“This too shall pass”) on both sides of the coin.

When the coin arrived back at the palace, King Solomon summoned his son and told him that he had a very special gift for him; one he would not be giving to Rehoboam’s brother, Menelik nor his sister Tapat. He told Rehoboam to take the coin and grasp it in his closed palm, red side up. “When things get so far down and you feel like you’ve hit rock bottom,” his father told him. I want you to look at the red side of the coin. Open your hand and read me out loud what you see inscribed on it,” the king said. Opening his hand, the young man read the inscription: גם זה יעבור. “Is this really true?” Rehoboam asked. “Will things really get better?” “Yes indeed,” King Solomon told his son. “Things will get to be so good, so bright and positive that you will entirely forget how bad things used to be.”

“Now,” the King continued to his son, who was beginning to show signs of a smile on his face, “When you feel like you reached the top of the greatest mountain in the world and that everything is as rosy as can be, I want you to learn the lesson etched into the blue side of the coin . . . turn it over now, and please read the words aloud.” Rehoboam obeyed his father, slowly opening his palm and turning up the coin’s blue side. “גם זה יעבור,” he read aloud. “It says the same thing . . . you mean that even the good times will pass?” he asked in amazement.

“Yes,” his father said, placing his hand on his eldest child’s shoulder. "It is the most profound wisdom in the world . . . hold it close for all your days . . . it is the gift of balance. . . never forget its meaning . . . let it penetrate your very mind, heart and soul. . . ”

In these extremely trying times, when a pernicious insanity has beset much of humanity, This too shall pass is an extremely good bit of wisdom to hold close. Far too few can honestly claim that the glass is half-full . . . which is, of course, another way of saying half-empty. For as long as I can remember, I have had a different approach and understanding to Baron Stamp’s formula. To wit, I have been neither a thorough-going optimist nor a deeply neurotic pessimist. To my way of thinking and experience, so long as there is something . . . anything in the glass, that makes me a realist . . . a person hopefully imbued enough strength, fortitude and conviction to be an activist in both the best and worst of times . . . and everything in between.

Since the beginning of secular year 2025 we have been witness to the wholesale plummeting of both individual and communal rights in the country. The upsurge in the number of non-citizens who have been “disappeared off the streets” by masked and heavily-armed ICE troopers, then spirited away to secret holding facilities (all without access to legal counsel or lawful judicial procedure), for the purpose of deporting them to third-world countries that are little better than penal colonies has been both shocking and dispiriting. The rationale for this is that most are members of organized criminal gangs responsible - as POTUS recently averred, "the overdose deaths of more than 300 million Americans.” (FACT: there were a maximum of 62 million deaths from all causes worldwide in 2024).

In the first 8 months of 2025 (equal to the last 9 months of 5785), we have witnessed Health and Human Services (HHS), under the command of RFK, Jr., take a wrecking ball to:

America’s healthcare system, cutting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funding for medical research;
All but eliminating vaccines for Measles, Mumps, Rubella and Whooping Cough, as well as questioning the efficacy of Polio vaccines, and,
Stressing to America’s pregnant women that taking Tylenol (Acetaminophen) during pregnancy can lead to autism in newborn children (Medical science says this is absolute twaddle).

(n.b.: I for one find it both ironic and ghoulish that our beloved Pouter Pidgeon made his announcement about the relationship between Tylenol and Autism from the Roosevelt Room, the only part of the White House named for a President who suffered from Polio . . . a vaccine which RFK, Jr., and POTUS have questioned).

In the first 8 months of this administration, we have seen the virtual decimation of USAID, thus spurring both an alarming spike in world hunger and a heartless drop in universal health . . . not to mention putting a black mark on America’s reputation in the world.

In recent weeks we have begun to see a rise in prices for everything from artichokes to zucchini, as well as a worldwide drop in sales of United States-grown soybeans . . . which is about to impoverish an awful lot of farmers in America’s heartland. Blame it on the IT-mandated tariffs which might well lead to trade toxicity. We have also had to listen to POTUS “bloviate” in front of the United Nations about the “lie” that is Climate Change, how the rest of the nations of the world are “going to Hell,” claiming that Christianity is the most endangered religion on the planet and turning a supposed eulogy into an hour-long diatribe against his enemies. (n.b. bloviate, BTW is a word invented by America’s 29th President, Warren Gamliel Harding who, up until the election of Felon47, ran the lamest, most corrupt and least progressive administration in United States history.)

Yes indeed, it would appear that America had hit its historic nadir . . . and I’ve left out dozens upon dozens of further examples of this blunders, faux pas and outright mindless misdeeds .

But . . . and there’s always a but . . . we would do well to feed our frustrations with fuel provided by wise-old King Solomon:

:גם זה יעבור
THIS TOO SHALL PASS!

This is simply not the time to wallow in the pessimism of the glass that is half empty. At the same time, we cannot afford the optimistic lunacy of seeing the glass as being half full. Rather, it is time for realism; for taking heart in the fact that at least there is something in the glass. And that something is beginning to show . . . in lower federal courts holding POTUS and his allies’ feet to the fire; in a small, growing handful of libertarians finding their voice (e.g. Senators Cruz and Paul in the recent FCC imbroglio over Jimmy Kimmel); in corporations and universities beginning to stiffen their spines against political and monetary blackmail; in the results of nearly every special election, in which voters have given overwhelming defeats to MAGA-espousing candidates. And especially in America’s historic secret weapon: WE THE PEOPLE.

Now is the time to use the realism of there being something in the glass and turn the tide through ACTIVISM. If you are currently unaware . . . or haven’t given it much thought or commitment . . . on Saturday, October 18, 2025, there will be another nationwide NO KINGS MOBILIZATION. I cannot urge you strongly enough to make plans to attend a rally in your neck of the woods. Just go to https://www.nokings.org/ and find where you can join up for a few crucial hours of activism.

Together we can make a mighty difference.
Together, we can make our voices heard.
Together, we can begin to turn the tide.
Together, we can rebuild America; not through negativism, but through good old-fashioned American ACTIVISM.

Be sure to make a sign, bring a bottle (or a case) of water, and an umbrella, and, if you are able and of a mind, a guitar as well.

THIS TOO SHALL PASS!!

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#1,050: Blessings & Curses

September 15, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

This past Wednesday’s gruesome assassination of ultra-conservative influencer - and IT ultra-ally - Charlie Kirk at (allegedly) the hands of shooter Tyler Robinson on the campus of Utah Valley University, has sent shockwaves throughout America and indeed, much of the world. Even more, it has uncovered much of what is most grisly and wickedly conspiratorial - as well as most mendacious and mind numbing - about early 21st century culture here in the land of Washington and Lincoln, Jefferson and Obama. It should be obvious to all but the pathologically insane that no one, regardless of their politics, obnoxious opinions or utter lack of empathy, compassion or truthfulness (à la the murder victim Mr. Kirk) should be taken out in a public killing. No child should have to face life without a father; no spouse without their mate.

Was the deceased a public menace who put the lives of everyday men, women and children in imminent danger? Rhetorically speaking, perhaps; I mean he was a cheerleader for cruelty, who possessed a vicious genius for making outlandish statements such as:

“It's worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other G-d-given rights,"
"I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage."
"Jews have been some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas and supporters of those ideas over the last 30 or 40 years."
If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”
“The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.”
“There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.
At a “Turning Point USA’s" Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Grapevine, Texas this past June, attended by more than 3,000 mostly school-aged young women and girls, Kirk called upon women to abandon careers and education to "submit to a godly man” and raise “more children than you can afford.” At one point he touted the idea that American society should “bring back” the “Mrs. Degree,” a concept dating back to the mid-19th century, in which women attended college with the intention of finding a husband.

Within 24 hours of Kirk’s murder, the 31-year old’s martyrdom was already well on its way to being etched in stone. In her first encounter with media after his murder, his widow, Erika Kirk, vowed to continue her husband’s movement, and said that “the cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry. . . .The evil-doers for my husband’s assassination have no idea what they’ve done. They killed Charlie because he preached a patriotism, faith and of G-d’s love. They should all know this. If you thought my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you have unleashed across this country and this world.” Mind you, her comments were made even before Tyler Robinson’s arrest . . . at a time when many public figures and political influencers (including IT) were blaming the ‘radical left’ for Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

Many on the right have asserted that American political leaders and participants are far more endangered by “highly-armed liberal crazies” than patriotic Christians on the right. After reading those kind of statements, I did a little research and could only come up with one major crime that fit this stereotype: the 2017 shooting at a ballfield near D.C. where Republican members of the House were practicing for an upcoming charity softball game. Then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (who survived) and 4 other house members were shot by liberal activist James Hodgkinson from Belleville, Illinois. Hodgkinson, 66 was killed by police officers on the scene. Aside from this, I have yet to find another such incident. Yes, there are the 2 recent attempts on the life of the president; one man is on trial and the other was shot dead by the police before anyone could determine what - if anything - were the political underpinnings of his ghastly deed.

On the other hand, the number of shootings, bashings, failed kidnappings and outright murders on the part of ultra conservatives against Democrats (all of whom are labeled either “ultra-liberal,” “Marxist” or “child murdering”) needs to be counted on the fingers of several hands:

June 14, 2025: A masked man dressed as a police officer went to the home of the Minnesota House of Representatives’ top Democrat and fatally shot state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband as police tried to stop what Democratic Gov. Tim Walz later called “a politically motivated assassination.” The same man had just shot and wounded Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife at their home, police said. A list found in the gunman’s abandoned car largely included names of Democrats and figures with ties to Planned Parenthood or the abortion rights movement, including Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Tina Smith.
April 13, 2025: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro – with his wife, their four children, two dogs and another family – were forced to flee after someone threw a Molotov cocktail into the governor’s mansion, severely damaging the home hours after the family hosted a Passover seder. The suspect said he targeted the Democratic governor in part because of what he believed were Shapiro’s views on the war in Gaza, search warrants show.
October 28, 2022: a man who reportedly had compiled a list of people he believed were “systematically and deliberately” destroying American freedom and liberty broke into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, planning to kidnap and hurt her, authorities said. The Speaker was not at home at the time of the attack. Instead, her husband, Paul Pelosi, was bludgeoned by a hammer, which cracked open his skull.
January 6, 2021: Minutes after a fiery speech by Trump filled with false claims and a call to his followers to march to the US Capitol and “fight like hell,” thousands broke into the Capitol as Congress gathered to certify Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. Captured on live television, rioters attacked the Capitol and breached the Senate floor. (BTW: During the insurrection members of the mob, from inside the Congressional building went in search of V.P. Mike Pence, whom they sought to hang. On his first day in office in January 2025, the Pouty Pidgeon pardoned all those who were found guilty and sentenced for their criminal misdeeds.)
October 8, 2020: The FBI announced the arrests of 13 men suspected of orchestrating a domestic terror plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and otherwise using violence to overthrow the state government. Some labeled the attempt an example of stochastic terrorism, where violent rhetoric by prominent figures inspired the plot. 9 perpetrators were convicted and sent to prison. In June of this year, IT publicly stated that he was giving consideration to pardoning the imprisoned. This brought an immediate response from Gov. Whitmer. As of today, no pardons have been granted.
January 8, 2011: Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords suffered a serious brain injury when a man shot her point-blank in the head while she met with constituents outside a grocery store near Tucson, Arizona. Six people were killed in the attack and 13 wounded. Giffords, a Democrat, was the sole target in the attack. The shooter pleaded guilty to 19 charges in exchange for the government not seeking the death penalty. He was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years, with no possibility of parole.

As of this morning (Monday, Sept. 15), the news stream has meandered in the direction of Tyler Robinson having lived “for at least a year” with a “transitioning” roommate. Most of these “reports” are coming out on social media, rather than legitimate news, sites. If indeed, Robinson’s roommate is/was transitioning has yet to be proven, and is really nothing more than a voyeuristic sidebar that proves little. (It does, however, bring up memories of the mesmerizing 1975 dark comedy Dog Day Afternoon, starring Al Pacino. In the film [which was based upon a real-life incident that occurred in August 1972], Pacino plays “Sonny,” a Vietnam veteran turned bank robber determined to steal enough money for his partner Sal (John Cazale) to get a sex change operation.)

As shocking and depressing as the murder of Charlie Kirk is, the manner in which the White House has been treating it is even more so. Where virtually no words or expressions of sympathy, empathy or concern were coming forth from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at the time of the murders in Minnesota, the arson in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the hammer attack in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco or last week’s school shootings in Evergreen, Colorado, Mr. Kirk’s body was flown to his home upon Air Force Two, accompanied by Vice President J.D. Vance. POTUS immediately issued a proclamation stating: The flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, September 14, 2025. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

Moreover, POTUS announced that he would be awarding Charlie Kirk the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom . . . the same award which, over the years, has been bestowed upon such diverse people as:

Scientist Jane Goodall
Actor and Parkinson’s Disease activist Michael J. Fox
Former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Former British P.M. Margaret Thatcher
TV’s Mr. Rogers
Walt Disney
Helen Keller
Journalist Edward R. Murrow
Musician Duke Ellington
The late Ambassador and New York Governor Averill Harriman

Precisely what Charlie Kirk accomplished in his brief life that merits him being included in this rarified group is beyond my ken. . . . but I’m not stupid. He is being groomed as a future icon for the post-IT era.

It has long been my habit to see what the weekly Torah reading was at the time of various historic (or history-grabbing) events. Sometimes what I learn sends chills down my spine. The murder of Charlie Kirk is one of those haunting times. For the week of his murder, פָּרָשָׂת הַשׁבוּעַ (parsashat ha-shavua . . . “The Weekly Torah Portion”) was none other than כִּי־תָבוֹא (ki tavo Deut. 26:1-29:8). In this reading, which prescribes various rituals that were to accompany the presentation of the first-fruits and tithe of the Sanctuary (among other topics) we find a brief section (27:15-28:14) in which a list of various “solemn dooms” and blessings are enumerated before the entire congregation of Israel. According to Tradition, the Levites stood round the Ark of the Covenant, in the valley, midway between Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal. They would first turn toward Gerizim and pronounce the Blessings, and the whole multitude would on the slopes answer Amen. Turning then to Mt. Ebal, they would pronounce the Dooms, followed by the same response.

In going over this section, I was stunned - but not overly surprised - to find that one of the dooms (or curses) spoke directly to Charlie Kirk. For in Chapter 27, verse 18, we read: אָר֕וּר מַשְׁגֶּ֥ה עִוֵּ֖ר בַּדָּ֑רֶךְ וְאָמַ֥ר כָּל־הָעָ֖ם אָמֵֽן “Cursed be the one who the causes the blind to go astray . . . and all the people responded AMEN!”

What in the world does this curse have to do with Charlie Kirk? If we take the words literally - “at face value” - likely nothing. Ah, but those who study (as oppose merely ‘read’) the Hebrew text, we have dozens - if not hundreds - of interpretations debated and discussed over hundreds upon hundreds of years. (Most regrettably, the vast majority or these commentaries are not in English, but rather in Aramaic and medieval rabbinic Hebrew). Well, it turns out that in this case, to be “blind” goes well beyond the scope of mere biology or optics; it can mean, variously, “unlettered,” “uneducated,” “naive,” “gullible,” “unwary,” and “exploitable” . . . among many, many other synonymous terms.

In other words, much of what the late Mr. Kirk was engaged in during his brief life was exploiting the “blind” - filling the holes, gaps, fears, and uncertainties with tons of untruths. That is to say convincing people who feel that life has cheated them by pounding into their heads that Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, aliens, LGBTQ+ people, non-Christians like Muslims, Jews and Hindus, etc. are all plotting to replace them . . . good white Christian males . . . with a “new-found” understanding of what is good and what is evil, of where the blessings and where the curses emanate from. This is, according to the Bible, a sin of gigantic proportion for which we must say “This is אָרוּר . . . cursed!”

It is both sad and frightening to report that much of what and who is/are MAGA, are committing this dooming sin on a daily basis: leading the blind astray by the power of their presence and a ton of ill-intentioned charisma.

The only blessing that comes to mind at this juncture is one which paraphrases Tevye the Milkman’s Rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof: “May G-d bless and keep such as these . . . FAR AWAY FROM US.”

And let us all say “AMEN!”

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1,049: The Epstein Files . . . It's Likely NOT What You Think

September 05, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

The Epstein Files, Phase I: Issue or Smokescreen?

Way back in 1949. Sheldon Harnick wrote the lyrics to a topical ditty he called The Merry [Little] Minuet. Harnick, (1924-1923) who, in collaboration with composer Jerry Bock, wrote some of Broadway’s most memorable musicals, including the Tony Award winners “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Fiorello,” started out life composing satirical songs made popular by the likes of “The Kingston Trio,” and the recently deceased Tom Lehrer (a.k.a. “The J.D. Salinger of Satire”). In a sense, Harnick was godfather to such musical satirists as “Weird Al” Yankovic, Randy Newman, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, John Prine (the “Mark Twain of songwriting”) and currently, Randy Rainbow. Harnick’s “Merry Minuet”, which lists many of the world’s political woes back in the post-WWII era, began with four introductory lines which were never recorded nor played in public:

There are days in my life when everything is dreary
I grow pessimistic, sad and world weary
But when I am fearful and tearfully upset
i always sing this MERRY LITTLE MINUET . . .

It goes on to proclaim:

There’s rioting in Africa
La, la la, la la, la la
They’re starving in Spain
La, la la, la la, la la
There’s hurricanes in Florida
La, la la, la la, la la
And Texas needs rain
La, la la, la la, la la

It never ceases to amaze me (who frequently performed this song at anti-war rallies in the 1960s) just how timeless it is . . . a hallmark of great satire. After several stanzas depicting the world’s woes, it ends with the lyric:

But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For man’s been endowed with a mushroom shaped cloud
And we know for certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off, and we will all be blown away!

“So, what in the world,” I can hear you ask, “does all the above, have to do with “The Epstein Files” and our beloved “Pouter Pigeon?” Only this: misdirection. Satire, whether in prose or music, often works as a “double-reverse” - pointing out that that which at first seems clear-cut or obvious to “true believers” - is anything but.

Over the past several months, a wide array of polls have pretty conclusively shown that Americans are paying far more attention to the Epstein Files imbroglio than just about anything else. Goodness knows, it is frequently the lead story on the nightly news - perhaps with the exception of Fox. Signs indicate that upwards of 47% of those who voted for IT in 2024 disapprove of their leader’s handling of the Epstein case. Many journalists, op-ed writers and even political bloggers keep alive the notion that so many of ITs current spate of Executive Orders and midnight ramblings are meant to keep attention away from his handling of the Epstein controversy. . . such actions as:

· Moving the U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama

· Sending National Guard Troops into Washington, D.C. and strongly hinting that he would repeat this action in several “blue” metropolitan areas

· Expanding his immigration policy to give free rein to ICE agents to conduct enforcement actions in and around houses of worship and other “sensitive locations”

· Threatening to cut $126.4 million in disaster relief to California unless the state enacts voter ID laws

· Preparing to cancel a large swath of federal funding for California over a transgender athlete’s participation in a sporting event.

· Urging SCOTUS to overturn a federal appeals court ruling which invalidated his most punishing global tariffs, thereby permitting him (not Congress) to regain control of his economic strategy, and

· Issuing an executive order directing the Justice Department to prosecute cases of flag burning that may incite violence. .

The above are really a smokescreen to divert attention away from the Epstein Files case, which includes having moved convicted felon Ghislaine Maxwell from a highly restrictive federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida to a minimum-security prison for female offenders in Bryan Texas, and delivering a tranche of documents to the House Oversight Committee which then released them to the public . . . documents which had already been seen by the committee during the Biden Administration. And while there is certainly a “double reverse” at work in all this, it is highly likely that it’s not all the presidential actions keeping public attention away from the casus Epstein, but rather vice versa . . . using the salacious Epstein quagmire to keep public attention from what the regime is really doing: implementing the Heritage Foundation’s 920-page blueprint for authoritarianism in the U.S. Called Project 2025, this is the political initiative par excellence to utterly reshape our federal government and consolidate executive power in favor of far right-wing policies, all the while declawing Congress, gutting many executive branch offices and pretty much ignoring the Federal Courts (save SCOTUS when they do something Pouter Pigeon likes).

(n.b. It should be noted that in his first 8 months back in the White House, Felon47 has issued precisely 198 executive orders; that works out to 329 per year. By comparison, in the 8 years he served as POTUS, Barack Obama issued 275, which worked out to an average of only 35 per year, and in a little over 12 years, FDR issued 3,726 . . . 307 per year. Of course, FDR served as POTUS from the earliest days of the Depression, created the New Deal, and was Commander-in-Chief during WWII. Source: The American Presidency Project)

During the 2024 presidential campaign, then-candidate IT was repeatedly asked about Project 2025; what he knew about it, had he read it, and would he use it as a partial blueprint should he be elected in November. In early July 2024, he (or his ghost) wrote in a Truth Social post that he had “no idea who is behind Project 2025.” He went on to say that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” and that “anything they do, I wish them luck, but have nothing to do with them.” Unsurprisingly, he was, as per usual, lying through his teeth. Remember, this is the man who now claims that he barely knew Jeffrey Epstein . . . or anyone else he ever palled around with or campaigned for who then lost.

For a man who claimed little if any knowledge of Project 2025’s aims and goals . . . and derided the few he "had heard about” . . . it should come as no surprise that since January 20, 2025, the Pouter Pigeon and his merry band of enablers have already enacted 47% of the project’s most jarring, most authoritarian, objectives. Breaking down their “successes,” we find that the regime has fulfilled 100% of its 6 goals for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); 92% of its 13 objectives for the White House; 9 of its 21 goals (43%) for the CDC, 75% of its 11 objectives at the Department of State; 61% of its 18 objectives at the DOJ and 57% of 15 objectives at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

You may or may not agree with me about this “double reverse” - e.g. using the 24/7 Epstein Files news cycle to divert attention away from the evisceration of the oldest and most successful representative democracy in the history of the world. Hey, I have a pretty thick skin, and after having spent more than half-a-century participating in, and writing about politics, I understand there will always be those who think I just may have a point to share, and others who firmly believe I am nothing more than a tool of the old Weather Underground. Such is life.

But please consider . . . what if I am right? Are you sanguine with the Executive Branch taking away our rights and freedoms by force-feeding us a toxic diet of sex and sin?

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#1,048: Pouter Pigeon: The Art of the Kneel

August 20, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Hope your week has provided you and yours with a few tranquil moments away from all the Sturm und Drang (German for “storm and stress”) of the disaster that was/is Alaska. Up until his departure for the summit, POTUS pledged that any peace between Russia and Ukraine had to be preceded by a cease fire. Indeed, in the days and weeks preceding his meeting with pale clothing moth (the literal translation of Putin’s KGB nickname) IT swore on a stack of Tolstoy’s War and Peace that without an immediate cessation of hostilities, Russia would face “severe consequences.” By the time he landed just outside of Anchorage, those two words had been stricken from his vocabulary.

In less than 24 hours, he had broken from a strategy agreed to with European allies for a cease fire, to adopting Putin’s preference for pursuing a sweeping peace agreement based on Ukraine’s ceding unconquered territory to Russia. And mind you, this wouldn’t be a swap; the Ukraine doesn’t occupy a single verst of Russian territory. Unless you forgot, it was Russia who attacked the land of Sholem Aleichem . . . not vice versa.

Unless one is a clone of The Who’s “Tommy” (e.g. “deaf dumb and blind”), one cannot give POTUS a grade above F+ for his summit with Vlad: about the only positive thing one can say is that when he left Alaska, it was still the 49th State of the Union. Goodness knows, it was just about the only thing he did not cede. In terms of how IT deals with Putin, it has long been the case that the farther away he is from him geographically, the more chest-thumpingly bellicose he sounds; but then, the closer he gets to him in physical reality (like on a tarmac, sharing a ride in The Beast, watching a military flyover or sitting opposite him behind closed doors), the more politically pliant he becomes. In other words, he morphs from being Mr. Art-of- the-Deal, into Comrade Art-of-the-Kneel.

The summit in Alaska had an eerie Neville Chamberlain-like quality about it, although Anchorage can’t hold a candle to Berchtesgaden in terms of physical quaintness. The choice of venue was significant: there are few places outside of Russia where Vlad can go without being arrested . . . I mean, ever since the man was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, he is subject to arrest in at least 125 countries around the world. But to invite him to Alaska, have that U.S. Air Force flyover, give him a red-carpet reception, a hardy handshake and a lift in The Beast . . . and then permit him to speak before POTUS at the post-meeting presser, is more than a שאַנדע (shanda . . . that’s Yiddish for shame or disgrace); it is an out-and-out פאַרלעגנהייט (farlegn’heyt . . . embarrassment. About the only thing missing was IT mouthing the words "peace for our time.” Appeasement is appeasement. Kneeling is kneeling.

(A brief digression: You might have wondered what, who and why the use of the term Pouter Pigeon in this week’s title means. Simply speaking, Pouter Pigeons are ornamental breeds of the rock dove, valued for their very unique appearance. There are countless varieties of them. Many ornithologists believe they were bred for a single purpose: to dazzle the eye of the beholder. The largest of them are about 16 inches high. They come in many colors and are likely descendants of the wild rock pigeon. Charles Darwin wrote about how distinct this breed was way back in 1868. What distinguishes all of them - regardless of size or color - is the nature of their crop: when excited, they throw out their chest and actually get a pouty look. In his novel Between Two Worlds, (the second of his 11 historical novels in the “Lanny Budd” series written between 1940 and 1953), author Upton Sinclair wrote about Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, whose nickname was “Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon.” The Fascist leader was wont to thrust out both his chin and chest when making a point, and then talk on and on and on . . . sort of like you-know-who. And so, I’ve decided to append yet another nickname to #47: Pouter Pigeon; partly for his preferred public posture, and partly for his fascistic tendencies. Now, back to The Art of the Kneel. )

From Anchorage, Pouter Pigeon headed back to the people’s gilded palace, awaiting the arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I cannot imagine what must have been going through POTUS’s muddled mind. on the flight back home. Perhaps “I’m one step closer to Putin . . . what-a-guy!” Or maybe, “Oops. Did I just lose the Nobel Peace Prize?” For a man who left D.C. proclaiming the need for an immediate cease-fire before even considering what any future security arrangement might entail, to one returning home with the belief that there is no need for a cease-fire and to just get on with the final next step, he sure would need to rehearse his best Pouter Pigeon punim. I wonder how much sleep he got the night before his meeting with President Zelenskyy and 7 deeply pro-Ukraine European leaders. I wonder if he dreamt about the last time the Ukrainian President had a confab with him in the Oval; about how V.P. Vontz and far-right reporter Brian Glenn repeatedly chided him for not “suiting up,” and how he treated the more diminutive man like a petulant child . . . going so far as to bring the tete-a-tete to an early, hasty ending. At that visit, he accused Zelenskyy of not showing enough gratitude for all that he - the Pouter Pigeon - had been doing on Ukraine’s behalf. It must have been a listless night.

It’s obvious that his last visit was on the mind of Zelenskyy as well. This time, his mode of attire was quite a bit more presidential, and he began by thanking POTUS for arranging the meeting with himself and 7 European leaders (United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, President of the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte). All the leaders treated their host with respect, but nonetheless stood firm in their belief that a cease-fire was essential before any further discussion. Some differences did break through. Chancellor Merz of Germany argued for a cease-fire to be put in place before further negotiations with Russia, but was somewhat rebuffed by the Pouter Pigeon. Then too, President Macron of France suggested he was skeptical that Putin was dealing in good faith. “I am not convinced that President Putin also wants peace,” he told reporters at a news conference.

All the participants appeared to agree with a plan to arrange direct talks between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Putin (a “Trifab” in Pouter Pigeon’s lingo) while other issues are worked out, such as the precise nature of the security guarantees for Ukraine, and what if any territory Ukraine might be willing to cede. During the meeting, POTUS went to call Putin in order to bring him up to date. In boxing terms, that call was a “low blow” - against the rules of battle.

It is still unclear if Vlad would directly participate in talks with the Ukrainian president. When asked by the press whether the U .S. would send American troops to Ukraine as part of any peacekeeping effort, he did not answer the question directly, but said that the U.S. would “help them out.” “We’ll be involved,” Pouter Pigeon said.

Within hours after the meeting at the White House, Russia launched hundreds of drones and missiles, targeting energy and transport infrastructure into the industrial city of Kremenchuk in central Ukraine’s Poltava region. As of this writing, POTUS has yet to issue a statement about the renewed attack that left more than 1,400 residences and more than 100 businesses without power. Instead, he has been more fully engaged in sending individual states’ national guard troops to police some of the nation’s largest cities; arguing that he will do everything in his power to eliminate voting by mail (something which he himself has been doing for years); and blaming former President Biden for Russia’s initial attack on Ukraine more than 3 years ago. (We can assume that he either does not remember - or ever knew in the first place - that Russia has been trying to reassemble the former Soviet Union for more than a decade . . . including prime land in the Ukraine. He may not understand or fear Putin’s expansionist intentions; Europe does . . . which is why they so strongly back the Ukrainian cause).

Pouter Pigeon’s attention to all t these other issues are, of course, intended to keep public attention away from the ongoing debacle concerning release of the Epstein files . . . which could be a political IED in his path.

A suggestion Mr. President: quit dreaming about receiving that Nobel Peace Prize. It simply ain’t gonna happen; no way, no how. Hey, if Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama could win one, why not you? Among the thousands of reasons we could give, there’s only one that matters:

Teddy, Woodrow, Jimmy and Barack stood tall in their approach to the future. You are far, far more comfortable kneeling down.

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#1,047: Painfully, Angrifyingly Ironic

August 11, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Every Monday and Thursday morning I go online, connect with an internet provider called CIRBI (Center for IRB Intelligence), and spend several intellectually challenging hours working with a wonderful group of medical specialists, research scientists and ethicists. Our task is rather clearcut and simple: vetting and improving on new, modified or continuing medical protocols and clinical trials . . . all with the purpose of making as sure as possible that the investigative drugs, devices or medical procedures before us are safe, show promise of success, and won’t cause undo harm to those men, women and children who volunteer to participate in medical trials. For every hour we are online, we spend on average at least 2 hours studying medical documents provided by pharmaceutical companies, university med schools, or independent laboratories. Out of all the many fields I engage in during any given week, this . . . belonging to and participating in an Investigational Review Board (IRB) . . . is, by far, the most intellectually stimulating and rewarding of them all. During any given teleconference, you might find us engaging in the study of anything between new chemotherapeutic drugs, advances in treating multiple sclerosis or Duchenne muscular dystrophy, or the development of new flu or COVID vaccines for next year. Working alongside all these brilliant, deeply humane folks over the past dozen years has been . . . and continues to be . . . a deeply rewarding and humbling experience.

One of the clinical trials we were vetting just this past Thursday involved a phase 2a, randomized, observer-blind study to evaluate the immunogenicity and safety of a mRNA-based multivalent seasonal influenza vaccine in adult candidates 18 years of age and older. If you don’t understand what all this means, don’t worry; it won’t be on your final exam! What you do need to know and understand is that every flu or COVID “season,” requires a different vaccine. Why? Because viruses change (mutate) from season to season. This change is called antigenic drift, which consists of small changes in the genes of influenza (or COVID) viruses. In other words, this season’s anti-flu virus will simply be out of “style” next season; hence, a new vaccine is required.

In all the years I have served on various IRBs, rarely – if ever - have we engaged in political conversation. Heretofore, politicians and bureaucrats provided the tools to make research possible, while the medical community provided the science. I regret to say that this inviolable separation has again and again been seriously breached.

Today, we are increasingly seeing medical dictates being handed down from on high by people who have neither a scintilla of medical training nor knowledge. What these people do have is a political agenda. Case in point: our discussion on the new mRNA-based multivalent seasonal influenza vaccine. Just 2 days before this meeting, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced his plan to cancel $550 million in funding mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses that cause the flu and COVID-19. You had better believe that as we discussed this new anti-flu virus, there was an air of frustration, anger and disbelief at the irony and stupidity of it all.

From where I sit, Secretary Kennedy knows as much about science, medicine, infectious diseases and virology as I do about Periplaneta americana (Linneaus) . . . namely, cockroaches. (Oh, and by the way, one of the most widespread fears in the world is called Katsaridaphobia": namely, the fear of cockroaches.)

In his statement announcing the drastic cut in virus research, Kennedy said his team had “reviewed the science, listened to the experts and acted. [T]he data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVIS and flu.” Precisely who these “experts” he consulted with is anybody’s guess. Last June RFK fired all 17 members of a committee that issues official government recommendations on immunizations, replacing them with people who have criticized the safety and efficacy of various vaccines. Kennedy also said his department was shifting the funding toward “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.” What in the world this means is anyone’s guess. He also claimed that mRNA vaccines can help “encourage new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics as the virus constantly mutates to escape the protective effect of the vaccine.” I gotta tell ya: from all I have read and learned over the years, viruses mutate regardless of whether or not vaccines exist for them.

In matter of plan fact, the development of mRNA vaccines to target COVID-19 was critical to helping slow down the pandemic and saving millions upon millions of lives. Peter Lurie, a former US food and Drug Administration (FDA) official told the BBC that Kennedy’s latest gambit would essentially force the US medical community to be in the position of “. . . turning its back on one of the most promising tools to fight the next pandemic.”

Kennedy has also expressed doubts about childhood vaccines, including those against polio and measles, that have been the mainstay of childhood immunizations for decades. Believe it or not, he has described the COVID shot as “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”This is, of course, stuff and nonsense. According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the first eight months of 2025 show the most cases of measles diagnosed since the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, as well as being the diagnose cases in more than three decades. As of July 7, 2025, 1,281 cases of measles have been reported, more than the 1,274 cases reported in all of 2019. As for polio, which had all but been eliminated by the year 2000, it is once again on the rise in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to a report on NPR, “Global health officials say there's real concern that those numbers could balloon and that polio could reemerge in other countries as well in the wake of the dismantling of USAID” (United States Agency for International Development). It should be noted that since all-but dismantling USAID, the Regime has announced that it will burn nearly $10 million worth of contraception drugs and devices in Belgium. Are we to believe that this is the way patriotic politicians bring down the federal deficit? Or is it merely pandering to fundamentalists and holy rollers? It surely has nothing to do with science, humanness, or smart medical practice.

For years before becoming HHS secretary, RFK, Jr. spent much of his time championing the hairbrained (and overwhelmingly disproven) canard that vaccines - most notably MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) - cause autism as well as other disorders in children. There are various arguments that have been advanced about whether or not this is scientifically der emes (Yiddish for “the truth”). One of the most famous (and fatuous) arguments was advanced by the British gastroenterologist/fraudster Andrew Wakefield, back in 1998. In that year, he published an article in The Lancet (the British equivalent of JAMA), in which he claimed that through his own “exhaustive clinical research”, he had concluded that the MMR vaccine definitely caused autism. Six years after Wakefield’s article, a London Times reporter, Brian Deer, made some devastating allegations about Wakefield’s research to the editors of The Lancet. It turned out that Wakefield had been given $100,000 by a personal injury lawyer to write the article, in order that some the solicitor’s clients could sue the vaccine manufacturer in the British courts. When it was brought out at trial that five of the eight autistic children anonymized in Wakefield’s study were actually clients of Barr, the doc’s name was struck from the UK’s medical register, and The Lancet retracted the article. (In 2020, journalist Deer published an utterly fascinating narrative of the case entitled The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Science, Deception, and the War on Vaccines. His text begins with an epigraph taken from Walter Scott’s 1808 work Marmion: “O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive . . . “

Could Sir Walter have had a premonition that one day, a deceiver by the name of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would come along to weave his own tangled web?

There is, I write with a mixture of both pain and anger, a deadly serious contagion in our midst; a contagion that no vaccine can staunch: to wit, the distrust - if not outright fear - of science and expertise. It is being forced upon society by both the self-professed “very stable genius” and members of his administration. This distrust has burrowed its way into several areas of government, from health care to trade, the economy, climate change and international relations. Social scientists call it denialism: I call it anti-intellectualism.

While anti-intellectualism and populism are nothing new in American life, there has hardly been an administration as seemingly committed to these worldviews. Anti-intellectualism is a general distrust of experts and intellectuals, the rejection of scientific thinking, education and the pursuit of knowledge. It can be expressed by dismissing art, history, literature and science as impractical or politically motivated. Remember back to the pandemic: Rather than allowing an extremely competent leader (Dr. Fauci) to provide Americans with prudent advice regarding the spread of COVID, IT suppressed the truth about the virus and the importance of wearing masks to contain the spread. The anti-intellectual efforts contributed to mass confusion and inefficiency in addressing the problem. Then too, remember back to the earliest days of the first IT go-around: one of the very first things he did was to announce America’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. So far as he and his fellow puppets were told to believe, climate change was a conspiracy on the part of left-wing socialists and communists . . .

Historically, anti-intellectualism has been a tool of the right far more often than of the left. Historically, progressives have fought against big business, big banks, Wall Street and the Blue Bloods. Ironically, today, the elites (at least the billionaires amongst them) are in control, and a high percentage of the least educated are on their side . . . supporting policies and practices which are frequently far more harmful than beneficial.

Undoing all the angrifying, counterintuitive shots across the bow of America perpetrated in the name of MAGA cannot and will not be accomplished the day Pumpkin Punim is replaced by someone else. That will take a long, long time; perhaps a generation. Nonetheless, I do find a measure of solace in the knowledge that because he is such a raging narcissist, and it’s never dawned on him that he’s mortal, he hasn’t taken the time to groom a successor.

I urge all physicians, nurses, scientists, bio-and medical-ethicists as well as caretakers and caregivers to gather, clad in their scrubs, whites and wearing their stethoscopes in whatever cities, towns, or regions where they may work or reside, and let it be known that we are all bound by the same oath: “First, do no harm.”

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#1,046: After a Century, We Are Still Inheriting the Wind

August 03, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Clarance Darrow & Wm. Jennings Bryan (1925)

Off and on for the past several months, I have been spending a lot of my “free time” (?!) boning up on the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial,” which pitted renowned defense attorney Clarance Darrow, against the “Great Commoner” (and Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson) William Jennings Bryan. The case at hand, State of Tennessee versus John Thomas Scopes, dealt with whether or not Scopes, a substitute high school science teacher and football coach at a public high school in Dayton, Tennessee, had violated the state’s recently passed Butler Act (which declared unlawful the teaching of any doctrine denying the divine creation of man as taught by the Bible) by teaching his students Darwin’s theory of Evolution . . . despite the fact that he never mentioned Darwin by name, and was teaching out of a state-approved textbook entitled Civic Biology.

Tracy, Morgan & March in “Inherit the Wind” (1960)

My “boning up” on the case - one of several “trials of the century” I am covering in an 8-week course entitled “From Court Room to Cinema” also includes the showing of Stanely Kramer’s 1960 masterpiece Inherit the Wind, starring two cinematic warhorses: Spencer Tracy (as the Darrow character, now named Henry Drummond) and Frederic March (Matthew Harrison Brady). Included in the all-star cast are Gene Kelly (playing a fictionalized H.L. Mencken now named E.K. Hornbeck), Dick York as Bertram T. Cates (Scopes) and Harry Morgan as Judge Mel Coffey.

In preparing for this 2-part lecture, I have also read myself ragged. Among the books I have devoured are:

Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson (1997)
Monkey Business: The True Story of the Scopes Trial by Marvin Olasky (2005)
The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet (2008) and the latest (and in my opinion the best):
Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy and the Trial That Riveted a Nation, by Brenda Wineapple (2025).

The more I have been researching and thinking about the era in which the Scopes trial took place – as well as the personalities, cultural, political, economic and religious trends of the time – the more I have been astonished at how many similarities there are. The late teens and 1920s were a time of increased political and moral bifurcation. It was a time of fear: the fear of immigrants, of moral relativism, of "commies and socialists” (on the part of smalltown and rural Americans) and fear of what Mencken referred to as the ‘booboisie’ . . . a swathe of the American public he characterized by what he termed “the banal ideas and cautious, stupid habits of mind of the great masses and inferior men. [sic]. He saw them as complacent, conforming, and susceptible to mass delusions. It was the age of barnstorming evangelists and radio preachers such as Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson and William Jennings Brian - people exemplified and satirized by Sinclair Lewis in novels like Babbitt, Main Street and Elmer Gantry. It was an age of Prohibition - except for those who had enough money to have it shipped across the Canadian border; a “Jazz Age” the young fans of F. Scott Fitzgerald who rolled their stockings, bobbed their hair, petted in rumble seats and always had a hip flask hidden on their person.

Ecstatic fundamentalism - in which the literal word of the “authorized” Holy Bible (the specific version likely depending on the church and pastor) - and the necessity of converting as many "heathens” as humanly (or divinely) possible, were keystones of the era. This necessity was perhaps best summed up by Wm. Jennings Bryan at a rally the night before the Scopes Trial was to begin, in which he told more than 3,000 devoted believers that "The Christian church should wake up and carry the gospel until everyone shall know the truth.”

Anti-Immigration and eugenics walked hand-in-hand to make sure that America would remain a white Christian nation. President Calvin Coolidge maintained, in his simple folksy way, that “America must be kept American.” There were too many immigrants, too many foreign-language speakers and foreign-language newspapers, and too much miscegenation. The “melting pot” (a term coined by the Anglo-Jewish playwright Israel Zangwill for his 1908 Broadway hit of the same name) was, to millions, a false theory. While the eugenicists were planning to eliminate, through breeding the “bad” aspects of human character in order to generate a utopia populated by the “better” sort of humans, politicians and paramilitarists were doing their darndest to rid America of unwanted aliens . . . frequently through mass raids and illegal deportation. Combining Christian Nationalism with eugenics, well-known leftwing journalist McAlister Coleman satirically noted “The new front is the religious front, and there will be no peace until every last girl and boy in every last public school is taught to believe, with no mental equivocation, that the Fundamentalist whale swallowed a White, Nordic, Protestant Jonah.”

The prototype for our current Attorney General, Pam Bondi, was A. Mitchell Palmer, who served under President Woodrow Wilson. Palmer (1872-1936) was best-known for spearheading the eponymous raids whose sole purpose was to round up those he claimed were “reds” (i.e. anarchists, communists, socialists and other political radicals) and then deport them back to Russia . . . and generally without a trial. Most of those he and his troops rounded up were Jews from Eastern Europe. To do so, Palmer created a small division within the D.O.J. to gather intelligence on the radical threat and placed a young (24 years old) Justice Department lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover in charge. Hoover collected and organized every scrap of intelligence gathered by the Bureau of Investigation (the FBI’s predecessor) and by other agencies to identify anarchists most likely involved in violent activity. The apex of Palmer’s time as Attorney General (and that which he believed just might get him elected POTUS in the 1920 election) was his “Soviet Ark” campaign of 1919 and 1920.

On June 15, 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act, which became the primary instrument for prosecuting opponents of American involvement in what was then known as “The Great War” (WWI). The law included a provision making it a crime to interfere with military operations, which included the draft. This provision was broadly interpreted to mean that criticizing the war was illegal because it would encourage young men not to cooperate with the draft. The Espionage Act was amended and strengthened, on May 16, 1918, by the Sedition Act, which in even broader terms also made it a crime to criticize the government. On December 21, 1919, the ship USAT Buford (renamed the “Soviet Ark”) left New York City, carrying 249 alleged alien radicals, the best-known of whom were birth-control advocate Emma Goldman and her longtime companion, the anarchist Alexander Berkman who, in July 1892 had unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, general manager of the Homestead steel plant.

Indeed, the anti-science, anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual, pro-Christian nationalist 1920s, are hauntingly similar to the age of IT and MAGA. Up until a week ago, I had not entertained any thought of turning my research on the Scopes “monkey trial” into a blog post. But that changed this past Monday, July 28, when I read in The Hill about a memo released that morning by The Regime that aimed to “protect religious expression among federal workers.” According to the 5-page memo, released by the Office of Management and Budget, federal workers "can attempt to persuade coworkers about why their religious beliefs are 'correct.’” The memo further outlined that such actions should not result in disciplinary or corrective action, including displaying in the office bibles, religious artwork, jewelry, posters displaying religious messages and other indicia of religion such as crosses, crucifixes and mezuzah. (Actually for sake of both consistency and correctness, the last word should have been 'mezuzot,’ the plural of mezuzah.)

The memo, which listed the OMB Director Scott Kupor (who is Jewish) as its primary author, also said one or more employees should be allowed to engage in individual or communal religious expressions and that employees can engage in conversations on religious topics “. . . including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views, provided that such efforts are not harassing in nature . . . . During a break, an employee may engage another in polite discussion of why his faith is correct and why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs. However, if the nonadherent requests such attempts to stop, the employee should honor the request,” the memo added. “An employee may invite another to worship at her church despite being belonging to a different faith.”

It seems to me that the Regime has dressed up the memo as a victory for religious freedom. But advocates for religious freedom of speech and even people of faith (myself included) see it as yet another step toward something far more sinister. As much as OPM, Scott Kupor, the task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” (headed by A.G. Bondi) and the White House faith office (headed by televangelist Pastor Paula White) is selling this as giving federal workers legal cover for talking about their religion, it is, in truth, the implementation of Christian Nationalism in this country. William Jennings Bryan would be proud.

The vast majority of the examples of permitted activities in the memo are related to Christianity, such as instructions that an employee may display crosses, rosary beads, or invite colleagues to church for an Easter service. There is one mention each of an employee displaying the Star of David and a mezuzah, symbols of Judaism. No other religions are mentioned. The memo’s focus is overwhelmingly on the ability of Christians to promote their religion without pushback, despite the fact that Christianity is already the dominant religion in the United States: 63% of American adults identify as Christian as of 2024, according to Pew Research. That’s because in the MAGA version of Christianity, the rights of white conservatives and IT supporters, who are likely to be evangelicals, are of the most importance and they’re the ones under attack.

We all should have seen this coming. Back on February 6 of this year, PumpkinPunim announced plans to establish the above referenced taskforce and a presidential commission to protect Christians from religious discrimination. The announcement came as he was addressing the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, where he laid out multiple steps he was planning to take to address what he described as attacks on religious liberty and on Christians in particular. “While I’m in the White House, we will protect Christians in our schools, in our military, in our government, in our workplaces, hospitals and in our public squares,” he said. “And we will bring our country back together as one nation under God.” At the same time, he announced that he was creating a White House Faith Office to be led by the Rev. Paula White, who had been serving as his “religious advisor” for several years.

As both a practicing and reasonable well-read Jew, this sort of thing halts me in my tracks and sends chills up my spine. For those of us who are Jewish, the very idea of someone - anyone - attempting to interest us in joining their religion is both frightening and anathema. We belong to a tribe that has rarely - if ever - engaged in proselytization. Our feeling has long been that “Judaism is the best religion in the world . . . for Jews.” We simply have too many collective historic memories of forced conversions. It has happened to the Children of Israel time and time again in our past, and by G-d, we will do everything in our power to make sure it never happens again.

On Tuesday August 12, beginning at 2:30, I will be delivering a 2-hour lecture on the Scopes Trial at Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter. 1 week later (August 19), I will be showing the 1960 film Inherit the Wind in its entirety. On Thursday August 14 and 21, I will be delivering the same lecture and film at the FAU’s Boca Raton Campus beginning at 3:00. If you are interested, please contact FAU’s Lifelong Learning Division.

The title Inherit the Wind comes from a verse found in the Biblical book Proverbs (11:29). In Hebrew it reads:

עֹכֵ֣ר בֵּ֭יתוֹ יִנְחַל־ר֑וּחַ
(aykhayr baytoe, yin-na-kha-ruakh), which translates to say:
”The one who brings trouble on his house will inherit the wind.”

The classic commentary understands this to mean that “A fool who spends his/her life trying to be in charge of everything and everyone in his/her life will end up troubling those who are closest, and at the end of life, will have nothing to show for it. It was just as true in the time of King Solomon (who history tells us was the author of Proverbs) as it was in the time of William Jennings Bryan and A. Mitchell Palmer who sought to determine who was a worthwhile human being, what should be taught and in what manner should we pray until our very time . . . when the forces of plutocracy are once again enacting the sins of the past.

President Wilson said that his motivation was to “Make the world safe for democracy.” I fear that the current regime, to borrow a pun from H.L. Mencken, unknowingly seeks nothing more than to “Make the world safe for hypocrisy.”

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categories / The Coming Autocracy, Religion and Politics

#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 . . .

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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.

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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!

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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

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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

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#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 . . .

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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.

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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 . . .

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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.

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categories / The Regime, Conspiracies

:גם זה יעבורTHIS TOO SHALL PASS!

:גם זה יעבור
THIS TOO SHALL PASS!