#1,079: 160 Days and Counting

Kurt Franklin Stone 160 Days and Counting

Yes, I know, 160 days is still a long way off. I will no doubt be writing - and you will hopefully be reading - many more articles, essays, and posts between now and then. and November 3, 2026 . . . the day of our Midterm Elections. To me, being 160 days away is, in the world of elections, sort of like the period of time well before the beginning of Spring Training in baseball; a lot of waiting, contemplating, and prognostication; of exercising and keeping in shape. 

This “exercising and keeping in shape” aspect of the next 5 months is, in my politically humble opinion, more important for Democrats than it is for Republicans.  How so and why?

Most polls indicate that, unless something totally unknowable and unforeseen occurs between now and November 3, Democrats are going to recapture the House - and perhaps with a Big Blue Wave.  Other polls indicate that Democrats might even take back the Senate.  Were one or both of these to happen, ranking members of committees would find themselves wielding gavels, setting agendas, and issuing subpoenas. 

Were the Democrats to take the House, as an example, the Judiciary Committee would be chaired by Jamie Raskin (MD), Homeland Security by Bennie Thompson (MS), Appropriations by Rosa DeLauro (CT), and Budget by Brendan Boyle (PA) . . . all stalwart institutionalists and excellent legislators.  They would each be replacing chairs who have shown themselves to be loyal to #47 first, the institution second, and the people, G-d knows where.

With POTUS’ polling numbers being so abysmally low, and a new scandal seemingly coming to light with each passing hour-and-a-half, it would appear, at first glance, that Democrats are holding the winning hand in the midterms.  “Just run against Trump and MAGA,” many proclaim, “that’s the only strategy we need to bump ‘em off!”  A strong majority of Democrats and Independents believe that continually reminding American voters about the price of gas and groceries, the illegal war in Iraq, the President’s billion-dollar ballroom and golden “Victory Arch,” his new $1.776 billion “Anti Weaponization Fund”, his family’s crypto ventures, the 3,711 stock trades he has made just this year, and his DOJ’s newly-proposed immunity for himself, his family and their businesses for virtually any past, present or future fiscal crime . . . are easily more than sufficient to make him the lamest of lame ducks. And this is without even getting into the billions of other dollars he has made in violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause.

While the above may feel like a brilliant game plan for all those Democrats and Independents who have nothing but disdain and utter contempt for IT, his team of Christian Nationalists and incompetents (as well as all those MAGA-ites who believe his presidency is ordained from on high) cave hanc gravem veritatem (namely, beware of this grave truth): merely running against a president, an administration or a compendium of corruption is not a political strategy . . . it is a public tantrum. Remember, there are still millions upon millions of voters who firmly believe their guy is perfect, brilliant, and the greatest POTUS of all time; who believe every word that comes out of his mouth . . . or insist that anything he says which may seem inconsistent, hyperbolized, or  just downright untrue,  is a creation of the “faux media.”

In other words, merely repeating ad nauseam the sins of Satan isn’t going to change the minds of his maniacal followers, although a growing number of them seem to be starting to open their eyes to his corruption and frailty (both of the moral and physical sort) without much help from the Democrats.  The economy, the price of gas, groceries, and healthcare, the gilding of the Nation’s Capitol at a time of financial insecurity, the churlish Qu'ils mangent de la brioche (“Let them eat cake”), attitude of the nouveau riche is beginning to get under their skin. But is this enough to make them cast a vote for the other side?  Or will they simply stay home, wearing their “Make America Great Again” ballcaps and getting their news from OAN and Fox?

Then, too, we are beginning to see an incremental bit of spinal strengthening among Congressional Republicans.  POTUS’ Anti Weaponization Fund, by which he could build up his own private army of goons without a shred of governmental oversight, seems to have gotten the goats of a growing handful of senators and representatives . . . many of whom, it need be said, are not running for reelection.  Without question, it is getting increasingly difficult for many of these Republicans to imagine campaigning back home; how are they going to respond to their constituents who are so angry with the way things are going? What if they are asked (as they surely shall) if this president, this administration, and this congress really give a termite’s tuchas about them and their well-being?  What answers can they possibly give without coming off as being daft, dumb, or just total liars?

 While continually dumping on - and revealing the misdeeds of - one’s political opponents may be rewarding, it does not make for a smart campaign strategy.  A proper Democratic campaign strategy mixes attacking one’s Republican opposition for their many misdeeds, with a full-throated discussion of what the future can and should be under a Democratic-controlled House and Senate.  Our platform must:

•  Prioritize lowering pocketbook costs,

• Strengthening the middle class through job creation and tax reform (that does not just benefit the donor class), 

• Protecting reproductive rights state-by-state.

• Restoring funding for USAID around the world, thus saving millions upon millions of lives.

• And the potential list goes on and on . . .

 Many remember the Republicans' game plan for the second IT administration; the “Project 2025” blueprint, a 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” published by the Heritage Foundation. This is the plan that aimed to restructure the executive branch, centralize presidential control, and implement a wide range of conservative policies.  And by G-d, they have pretty much stuck to it.  This is precisely what the Democrats need, not so much as a mandate for taking back the government, but rather as its blueprint for what they seek to accomplish after the midterm elections and heading into 2028. 

One challenge Democrats have had since long before I was born is coalescing around a platform that can be, if not unanimously agreed upon by one and all, at least well-thought-out enough to keep the party organization from coming apart at the seams. Will Rogers (1879-1935), in addition to being a legendary vaudeville performer, Broadway actor, and movie star, was also 20th-century America’s greatest and most humorous social/political commentator.  His most beloved - and truthful - political quip was “I am not a member of any organized political party.  I am a Democrat.”  Such has ever been the case.  In 2026, the party is broadly divided into four main ideological factions, each represented by corresponding congressional caucuses, think tanks, and voter coalitions. 

Today, in late May 2026, the party is heavily focused on winning back working-class voters, thus creating an intense debate between progressives pushing for economic populism and moderates prioritizing pragmatic, swing-voter strategies. The 2026 midterm primaries highlight a push for new, often younger, candidates to replace older establishment figures.  The key factions are, roughly speaking:

1. Progressives (Approx. 40% of voters): Often younger and highly educated, this group favors wealth redistribution and strong action on climate and social issues. Prominent figures like Rep. Greg Casar are pushing for an affordability strategy focused on capping costs for child care and housing.

2. Moderates/Center-Left (New Democrat Coalition): This group focuses on economic growth, cost of living, immigration, and security, seeking to win back swing voters. They argue for a "pragmatic" approach to winning in swing districts.

3. Economic Populists: A wing pushing for a sharp, left-wing economic message to win back working-class voters, including backing candidates who support Medicare for All and aggressive anti-war stances.

4. Establishment/Party Leadership: Focuses heavily on "electability," utilizing the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) and "Red to Blue" programs to back preferred candidates in competitive primaries to maximize the chances of retaking the House.

Just last week, hundreds of Democrats - members of Congress, party activists, strategists, and financial backers - gathered in Washington, D.C. for the purpose of shaping the party’s 2026 national policy agenda.  In addition to taking shots at POTUS (“The worst president in American history”) and demanding the release of the Epstein Files, most of the speakers focused largely on affordability.  House MInority Leader Hakim Jeffries summed up this approach with a concise — and characteristically alliterative — commitment to “costs, care, and combatting corruption.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)., urged Democrats to fight harder for federal investments in childcare, saying Democrats took a “weak and ineffectual” approach on an unsuccessful attempt to enact changes during former President Joe Biden’s administration.

Democrats will be speaking about future legislation on the campaign trail. Many of the proposed bills will be aimed directly at corruption, such as outlawing any member of the legislative, executive, or judicial branch of the federal government from making investments without having a blind trust; voting to overturn “Citizens United” (the Supreme Court’’s 2010 decision which made unlimited amounts of anonymous corporate funding available to political campaigns - note that Hawaii just passed a first-in-the-nation bill targeting that horrendous ruling), and tightening the laws permitting any POTUS with allocating funds via executive order. On the social/economic side, Democrats will be looking at legislation lowering the costs of prescription drugs, restoring healthcare benefits to millions of Americans, and putting back billions of dollars into medical research.  

But most importantly, they will be doing this with a positive attitude and outlook.

160 days to go . . . 
Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,078: "Perfection is the Enemy of Progress"

Kurt Franklin Stone "Perfection is the Enemy of Progress"

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            Francois-Mariet Arouet (Voltaire) 1694-1778

As I sit down to begin writing this blog, America’s midterm elections (Tuesday, November 3, 2026) are 176 days away. Needless to say (or write), even before what looks to be an historic date, scores of votes will have been cast either through surface mail, electronic means, or early visits to the nation’s innumerable local polling sites. (Whether or not some of these sites will host armed ICE agents remains to be seen.) 

Keep in mind that depending on the source from which one gleans their political prognostications, the final tally might hand both the U.S. House and Senate over to the Democrats, keep the Senate in Republican hands, or - g-d forbid- be called off due to some utterly fictional “state of emergency.” Such a range of possibilities suggests a pithy truism from the French aphorist and novelist Voltaire: “Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien," generally translated as “The best is the enemy of the good," or, as Sir Winston Spencer Churchill translated it, “Perfection is the enemy of progress.”  But more on this later. . .    

If  recent elections provide teachable moments, one may assume that any Republican loss will be declared the product of base political trickery on the part of the Democrats . . . or that any Republican victory (regardless of margin of said victory) will be declared a "landslide of epic proportions.” Ah, shades of Antonio in Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “The past is prologue,” meaning that history sets the stage for both the present and the future.  (BTW, this is the phrase notably inscribed on the National Archives building in Washington, D.C.)  For those who might wonder what the oldest government record held in that neoclassical “temple to American history” might be, put on your seatbelt: it is the eerily named Doomsday Book (actually, there are two of ‘em: Little Doomsday and Great Doomsday), which contains a tremendous amount of information about England in the 11th century.

Speaking of “doomsday,” up until less than 2 weeks ago, it looked like the next volume of the ancient text would be written by Republicans facing a congressional bloodletting in the House and perhaps even the Senate.  Up until the last days of April, Democrats were feeling increasingly emboldened about taking over control of the House after seeming to have fought the redistricting wars to a draw.  In state after state, and lower court after lower court, Republican attempts to rid their states of Black-, Hispanic- or Progressive-leaning congressional and state legislative districts were meeting with nothing but failure.  And, in special-election-after-special-election, Democrats were manhandling Republicans for seats in both Congressional and state legislative districts . . . districts which NACHO had handily won in 2024. 

But two court rulings — one by the United States Supreme Court (Louisiana v. Callais) and another by Virginia’s top court — and an aggressive new push by red states to carve up congressional maps, have delivered the Republican Party its biggest burst of momentum in many months. Bluntly put, Republicans have roughly 10 more House seats that favor them than they did just 10 days ago, and Democrats are suddenly grappling with a new landscape.  And although Democrats are still widely seen as favored to win the House this fall, Republicans face a daunting political climate, saddled with POTUS’ sagging approval ratings, high gas prices, and an unpopular war with Iran. In special elections and last year’s races for governor, Democratic enthusiasm has swamped Republican turnout.

Indeed, the last 10 days have demonstrated the power and speed of the courts to shape the midterms — and the role of judges in the next phase of the redistricting battle. Recent legal actions are underway in Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama that could still undo or block some of the potential Republican gains before the fall.

The outcome of the legislative and legal fight, which has unfolded largely beyond the control of American voters, could be highly consequential. No party has made a net gain of more than a dozen House seats in a national election since the wave of 2018.

So, what can those Americans who truly fear a future with a Republican Congress, Senate, governorships, and various state legislatures do? Making financial contributions to Democratic candidates is always a good idea . . . although beyond the means and habit patterns of many.  

Another suggestion – which costs virtually nothing to accomplish: contact your local election office (they go by different names in different places) and make sure you are still eligible to vote. Please, do not wait until the last minute.  With the way things have been going of late, it’s just possible that you could get to the polls and find your right challenged - or what’s even worse - denied.  So go online, pick up the phone, send an email, and make sure you’re still on the books.  Taking care of this within the next several days will also give you the time you need to locate any documentation you may be lacking.  And while you’re at it, please make sure you are set up to receive a sample ballot by surface or email.  There is nothing worse than trying to figure out who you’re going to vote for (or where you stand on ballot issues) when you get to the polls.  Do your homework before leaving home!

   Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965) 

In doing my prep work for this blog, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about Winston Churchill, who, as mentioned in the second paragraph of this piece, retranslated Voltaire’s “teachable moment” as “Perfection is the enemy of progress.”  What does  Sir Winston’s quip have to do with the upcoming midterm elections?  In a word, plenty. 

In most democratically elected systems, political primaries tend to attract candidates from each party’s full spectrum, from farthest right to farthest left, and from single-issue ideologues to their most centrist realists.  Problems can occur when enough people vote for (or against), say, a single-issue candidate, thus denying a primary victory to someone who may actually stand a chance of gaining victory in the November general election. We are seeing this political phenomenon across the country in key Senate and House races, where Democratic primary voters are being presented with nominees who are more progressive or moderate than they, the voters, are, and who may have discrete positions that unsettle them.  Or, what veteran New York Times opinion writer Frank Bruni refers to as  “individual warts that offend them [or] biographies that aren’t to their liking.”

In a recent opinion piece, Bruni cited a couple of these, most notably the Maine Senate race, where Democratic candidate Graham Platner may not stand as good a chance of defeating 6-term incumbent Senator Susan Collins, as would have Governor Janet Mills, who essentially ceded the Democratic nomination to Platner last week. The problem with Platner?  About all the voters know about him - and what Republicans will no doubt incessently remind voters about between now and November - are a couple of non-issues: that Platner has never held office before, has a bit of a public temper, once sported a Nazi tattoo (now gone), and has a fondness for “gay” and “gayest” as put-downs, in his not-so-distant past.  Collins, on the other hand, will remind voters over and over again that she is a “moderate” Republican who has, from time to time, gone against POTUS. (Actually, Collins’ moderation is more by way of reputation than reality; she has shown herself to be an undependable check on Felon47. The issue here is not whether Platner is perfect; it’s whether or not Mainers are terrified enough of MAGA and the regime to get rid of a senator who possesses neither the guts nor the courage to help save the country by standing up against the worst, most incompetent, most morally and intellectually bankrupt POTUS in history. 

It seems to me that in deciding who to cast a primary vote for in the coming weeks, two things are of utmost importance:

1. Will my candidate be able to defeat the Republican in November, and

2. Will my candidate successfully call out IT and members of his regime, thus saving the country from grifters and gangsters who make us the laughingstock of the world? 

Save perfection for the world-to-come and the 1972 Miami Dolphins.  Please, I beg you, in the name of Voltaire and  Churchill: 

DON’T LET THE PERSUIT OF PERFECTION BE THE ENEMY OF PROGRESS!

Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,077: Einstein Was Right About More than Quantum Physics

Kurt Franklin Stone Einstein Was Right About More than Quantum Physics

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           Prof. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Back on April 15, NACHO (a new nickname meaning “Not a Chance Hormuz Opens,”) sunk about as low as any POTUS has ever done: he blasted Pope Leo, accusing him of “liking crime.” This frontal assault got headlines around the globe. A little more than 2 weeks later, the Holy Father responded by appointing 3 bishops critical of POTUS. Not surprisingly, the pope’s political riposte also garnered headlines from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. 

Strangely, an embroglio that should have made headlines was, in the words of Grandpa Doc, “. . . buried beneath the truss ads on page 39.”  The issue at hand was an executive order IT had issued just weeks after he returned to office. His order called for a task force within his newly refashioned DOJ to investigate and pursue what his press office called the Biden Justice Department's “aggressive prosecutions” against Christian demonstrators at clinics where abortions were performed but responded “less aggressively” to attacks on Christian pregnancy resource centers (i.e. places that dissuade women from having abortions). 

Recently, the White House issued a 200-plus page report about NACHO’s contention. In addition to the matter of the “aggressive prosecutions” of Christians at abortion clinics, the report accused the previous administration of imposing disproportionately heavy fines on  several Christian Universities, including Liberty and Grand Canyon, which the Department of Education under Biden - so the recent report stated - had accused of functioning as nothing more than diploma mills. The report further compared this charge with the lower fines against Penn State and Michigan State for cases of sexual. abuse.  Unlike last month’s back-and-forth between the White House and Pope Leo, this week’s Biden-Anti-Christian-bias report received far, far less coverage. One of the few places it could be seen, heard, or read was, not surprisingly, on Fox; Their headline ran, DOJ alleges ‘systematic culture’ of anti-Christian bias across federal agencies under Biden. 

In the Regime’s report, the term “traditional Christian” is used over and over as it discusses the great need to defend White Christian beliefs. Many of the concerns in this report - abortion, vaccines, LGBTQ rights - are the concerns of conservative white evangelicals who are an important base of support for NACHO. The report also describes White American Christians as being a persecuted minority.

How’s that? Since when are Christians a minority . . . and a persecuted one at that?  According to the United States Census website, as I write this sentence, there are precisely 342,473,537 people in the United States.  Let’s compare this to the Jews for just a second. According to the Jewish Agency for Israel, the global population of Jews - whether traditional, secular, or merely cultural - is about 7,200,000 living in Israel, and 6.3 million living in the United States. And although I did not major in math, I can easily determine that 6.3 million represents less than 2% (1.18% to be precise) of the American population. How’s that for a tiny minority! And yet, to listen to many MAGAites, there must be at least 35-4million Jewish people in the United States; enough to control Hollywood, the media in general, medicine and all those universities that push the teaching of DEI and all other Marxist corspiracies. And then there are the Muslims.  According to the most recent census statistics, there are approximately nearly 4.5 million Muslims in America.  This works out to just a little over 1.3% of the U.S. population. And yet, there are any number of prominent Republican politicians – including Speaker Mike Johnson and Texas Senator John Cornyn  – who continue sounding the alarm on what they call a growing Sharia law threat in the U.S.  Just last February, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government held hearings on the incompatibility of Muslim Sharia and American Constitutional law . . . as if it were a major issue to be concerned with.  Hey, in the race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Minnesota, former “My Pillow” exec Mike Lindell has vowed that if elected, he will take on satanic statues immediately and will ban Sharia Law on day one. Well, it does serve to distract a percentage of the public away from the Epstein Files saga.

By comparison, according to Pew Research, as of 2024, 62% of U.S. adults identify as Christians (which includes Catholics, all branches of both traditional and primitive Protestantism, Lutheranism, and Pete Hegseth’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) According to the Pew poll the 62% figure represents a decline of 9 percentage points since 2014, and a 16-point drop since 2007. The report ordered up by the Regime at the very beginning of the second go-round essentially serves as a sop to so-called “traditional Christians.”  Over and again, the report uses this term in discussing many concerns, such as abortion, vaccines, LGBTQ rights . . . which are precisely the concerns of conservative white evangelicals, who happen to be an important base for NACHO and his Regime. 

One need look no farther than the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who is a loud and proud member of CREC – the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which is often associated with both Christian Nationalism and what is called “Federal Vision” theology.  In addition to their anti-Democratic notions about allowing only 1 vote per household, keeping women out of both the military and the workforce, and working for a post-millennial world, those belonging to CREC churches (there are currently more than 160 of them in the United States) or are self-proclaimed Christian Nationalists or hold to Federal Vision theological principles, truly believe that they are a dangerously persecuted minority.   

If you want to know from a member of a religious minority what persecution feels like, just talk to a Jew. Acts of lethal anti-Semitic violence are on the rise in the USA, UK and Australia. It should come as no surprise that even with the war in Iran, an overwhelming percentage of American Jews do not support the Regime. They/we find a haunting, mostly deceptive, under-façade of anti-Semitism beneath all the grammar school-level rhetoric. Our antennae are attuned to both the evil and the silence. We know far better than most that anti-Semitism is, in addition to being the world’s oldest prejudice, the equivalent of ‘moral pornography.’

And here we ask Prof. Einstein to enter the conversation. For as brilliant as he was in the fields of relativity and Quantum Physics, he was equally astute in understanding both politics and the human psyche. For it was Einstein - in one of his most trenchant and understandable moments - taught:

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil,
but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,076: First, Do No Harm

Kurt Franklin Stone First, Do No Harm

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                                           Dr. Erica Schwartz (MD, MPH, JD

Our late maternal grandfather, “Grandpa Doc” (James J. Kagan, DPM: 1891-1974) had a story for any event, every occasion. Perhaps that’s where I got it from. One of my favorites dealt with the first Jew being elected POTUS. At the inauguration, a man sitting next to the about-to-be-sworn in president’s mother softly said to her “You must be so terribly proud of your son . . . I cannot imagine the feeling.” The mother turned toward the man, smiled warmly and said: “Most certainly . . . but you should only meet his sister: SHE’S a doctor!”

Although she herself is not Jewish (her husband, Dr. Daniel Schwartz is), there is a much to be proud about Dr. Erica Schwartz who, just last week, was nominated by POTUS to be the new director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).  First and foremost there is her extraordinary CV: Dr. Schwartz is a retired rear admiral in the in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps who was Deputy Surgeon General from January 2019 to April 2021, who earned both a BA with a degree in biomedical engineering with a minor in East Asian studies in 1994 from Brown University, as well as an M.D. from the same Ivy League university in 1998.  She also earned a Juris Doctor  at the University of Maryland and is a member of both the AMA and the District of Columbia Bar. Her medical specialty is occupational and environmental medicine; she is also an expert health policy, pandemic response (including COVID-19 testing sites), and implementing disease surveillance systems (systemic, ongoing processes for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting health data to detect, monitor, and prevent disease outbreaks. 

I don’t know about you, but to me, Dr. Schwartz seems to be ideally suited to taking over the CDC.  And by the way, unlike her potential boss, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., she is both personally and professionally pro-vaccine.  While testifying before a host of House and Senate committees last week, Sec. Kennedy, Jr. was questioned by Rep.. Raul Ruiz, MD (CA-25) in a House hearing: “If Dr. Schwartz is confirmed as CDC director, will you commit on the record to implement whatever vaccine guidance she issues without interference?”  The secretary’s response?  “Im not going to make that kind of commitment.”  Dr. Ruiz, the son of farmworkers who earned an MD, 2 MPHs form Harvard (the first Latino to do so)  quickly retorted “Because you probably won’t, you’ll fire her.  Like you did with Dr. [Susan] Monarrez, because you will not accept recommendations based on science,” 

Although Dr. Schwartz’s nomination has thus far garnered both bi-partisan support and near unanimous plaudits from the scientific/medical communities, there is a deep underlying concern about how Secretary RFK, Jr. will treat her and the obvious differences they share when it comes to the cavernous gap between proven science and political sorcery.   Let’s face facts: there is a world of difference between Hippocrates commanding physicians to “First, do no harm,” and the HHS Secretary instructing medical people to “denigrate and deny science."  

During his round of grilling by various congressional committees for the first time since he came into office, Kennedy strenuously pushed back on Democrats’ assertions that he bore some of the responsibility for the measles outbreak in the U.S., the worst the country has experienced in nearly a half-century.  He told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the outbreak is global, that it started before he took office and that those who were sick were mostly 5 years or older, which meant their parents had decided against vaccination before he was in office.  For their part, Republicans mostly praised Secretary Kennedy’s work to urging healthier diets and expanding access to peptides, often unproven compounds that are popular in the wellness industry.  I for one find it somewhere between highly ironic and outright daffy that a man like Kennedy, who talks endlessly about healthy (and expensive) diets, should work for the president with the worst possible eating habits of any chief executive in the nation’s history . . . with the possible exception of the 345-pound Wiliam Howard Taft.    

Two areas where Felon47, The Brain Worm and their bootlicking toadies have forced dieting on both America and indeed, the entire planet, are in the fields of medical care and research.  Since RFK took the helm of HHS  in February of last year, his department has shed more than 17,000 jobs according to data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).  Figures show that HHS and its four key subagencies - FDA (Food and Drug Administration), NIH National Institutes for Health), CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) and CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) have cut, respectively, 4,332, 4,049, 2889, and 1061 jobs.  The single largest job loss by percentage was at the CDC, which managed to fire nearly a quarter of its employees.  Professionals estimate that it will take a decade or more to replace these employees with people of similar caliber, and easily a generation to replace their level of experience.

What’s even worse is the amount of money cut from medical research.  As of the first of February of this year, more than 7,800 research grants have been terminated or frozen.  A majority of these are monies that would normally go to research labs attached to universities. This means that some 25,000 scientists and personnel are gone from agencies and labs that have long made the United States the premiere source of new medicines, medical procedures and new drugs in the world . 

This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. Seeing the devastation being visited upon medical research absolutely infuriates me.  You see, for the past 30+ years I have spent the majority of my working hours serving as a member of an Institutional Review Board . . . a group of medical, scientific and academic professionals whose collective job is to oversee clinical research projects with a mind towards making sure that the research is what you might call “clinically kosher” and that the rights of the participants (subjects) involved in the research are protected.  Over the years, I have grown to specializing in translating medical terminology into lay English, in order to ensure that participants can understand what they are signing up for.  It’s not easy; doctors and scientists speak a unique tongue called “medicalese” . . . whether their native tongue be English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Korean or Hebrew.  Of all the many professional fields and pursuits I have engaged in over a long life (actor, political speechwriter, historian, lecturer, congregational rabbi, blogger, and professor), none has been more challenging - or given me greater satisfaction - than working on an IRB.  It is the one thing I’ve ever done that gives me the feeling that maybe - just maybe - I’m making a tangible difference in the world.

Getting approval for a new drug, medical procedure or device can be a long and very costly process.  First comes the laboratory stage, in which rats, mice,  zebrafish, dogs, cats and other animals are kept in a vivarium (an accredited medical research facility designed to house laboratory animals under strictly controlled environmental conditions) where they become the first creatures to undergo preclinical research.  After a period of time there will be different study phases, first involving healthy humans then on to randomized, placebo-controlled double-blinded studies and eventually premarketing studies.  At each step along the way - which can take years - the various sponsors, labs, investigators and clinical procedures are overseen by both an IRB, and either a Medical Ethics Board or a Data Monitoring Committee.  All this costs money . . . a lot of money.  Often, the money is provided by a sponsor; frequently by a university grant and, up till recently, from monies budgeted and allocated by the Federal Government.  Not all research is intended to make the sponsor a fortune; there are only so many erectile dysfunction medications out there.

When a new medication or procedure hits the headlines, cheers can be heard throughout the medical world.  Just this month, three potential “game changers” were announced.  The first two are both oncological drugs meant to target one of the most challenging and lethal of all diseases: Metastatic (spreading) Pancreatic Cancer.  The first, from Revolution Medicines is an orally administered drug called daraxonrasib. According to Dr. Mark Goldsmith, CEO of Revolution Medicines, its pill (daraxonrasib) has already helped subjects survive an average of 13.2 months after starting treatment, compared to 6.7 months for those receiving standard chemotherapy.  The second pancreatic drug (elraglusib) also doubled one-year survival for subjects taking it compared to those getting standard chemotherapy.  Elraglusib, produced by Actuate Therapeutics, is given by IV (e.g. through a vein). Without getting overly technical, both drugs treat advanced solid tumors with what are called RAS mutations, controls a sort of “on-off switch” in solid tumors.  These drugs turn off the RAS signal, thus blocking, binding and inhibiting oncogenic signaling.  So highly thought of are these two drugs that  they received “breakthrough therapy designation” (BTD) from the FDA . . . a process designed to expedite the development and review of drugs that are intended to treat a serious condition.

The third game changer is a first-ever gene therapy for the treatment of genetic hearing loss, which was just approved by the FDA under their National Priority Voucher Pegram. For further information, please check out this link.

It’s been a long, long time since Hippocrates (c. 480 BEC - c. 370 BCE) told doctors that the first rule of medicine is “Do no harm.”  It seemed to work for a couple of thousands of years.  Hippocrates was also, supposedly, the first person to publicly state that diseases were caused naturally, . . . and not because of superstition and gods.  Under THE FONDLING FATHER and THE BRAIN WORM, we seem to be moving backwards.  In place of striving to first, do no harm, we are causing rises in Measles, Malaria ,and HIV  (to name but a few of the most infectious medical monstrosities) in various parts of the world.  Many of these reductions are due to the Regime’s disemboweling of USAID around the globe . . . mostly in the name of economic necessity.  

Remember, there are a mere 191 days until November 3, 2026: midterm election.  And while you’re at it, keep in mind that Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine” will also be on the ballot.

Πρώτον, μην κάνεις κακό

“First, do no harm”

Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,075: The Latest Example of Chutzpah

Kurt Franklikn Stone The Latest Example of Chutzpah

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I was born in Hollywood (CA) on Sunday, August 21, 1949. 3 weeks and 4 days later (September 25, 1949) ABC became the first network to broadcast The Lone Ranger, starring Clayton Moore as the title character and Jay Silverheels (Harold Jay Smith) as his loyal companion Tonto (Spanish slang for “fooslish,” or “silly.”) The show, an absolute favorite for youngsters like me who were fornuate enough to live in a household with a TV set, ran for 221 episodes - until June 6, 1957. In those days, before he became a mutual funds maven, my father owned a TV store (“Flash Televisions"), which permitted us (my slightly older sister Erica and me) to become fans of one of the earliest of all shows. We became steadfast friends of the Masked Man and his loyal companion, Tonto.  We loved their grit, their fearlessness, and their code of honor . . . not to mention that they always captured the bad guys and always preferred to let justice - rather than vengeance - take its course.

                                   Corriganville Movie Ranch

When viewed from a distance of some 7 decades, their lives, actions, and Weltanschauung are far more treacly and sincere than what we have become accustomed to - both on celluloid and in reality.  And yet, even in 2026, the Lone Ranger, Tonto, and their “gang” of regulars (including Lane Bradford, John Doucette, Bill Ward, Harry Lauter, House Peters, Jr., and Gail Davis) are still solid entertainment. One of the things that gives me the greatest kick out of watching the shows today (it’s on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on Pluto TV and  Roku TV) is where it was originally shot . . . just up what is now called “Valley Circle Blvd” in West Hills, previously “Canoga Park,” and before that “Owensmouth,” the immense tract of land owned by the late movie star Francis (Frantisek) Lederer.  Even today, you can see some of the unique rock formations.  And, at the very bottom of the hill is the town of Simi Valley, where the remains of the Corriganville Movie Ranch sit; it was, for many decades, a full Western set created by yet another cowboy star, Ray “Crash” Corrigan.  All of these are within walking distance of my sister Erica’s home in what is now called "West Hills.”   

                                          I GOT A BIG MOUTH!!!”                     

My other favorite TV show from that era lasted a mere 39 stand-alone episodes: The Honeymooners, starring Jackie Gleason as New York City bus driver Ralph Cramden, Audrey Meadows as his wife Alice, Art Carney as Ralph’s eccentric best friend and neighbor, municipal sewer worker Ed Norton, and Joyce Randolph, Ed’s wife Trixie.  It was a simple half-hour comedy with a simple plot-line: Ralph’s dreams of a better life; Ralph and Ed’s crazy schemes to strike it rich, and Ralph’s relationship with Alice.  Although each episode ends with Ralph hugging Alice and proclaiming "BABY, YOU’RE THE GREATEST!”, they do have their share of spats.  Despite their love, at least once each episode, Ralph waved a fist in Alice’s face and loudly asked, “YOU WANNA GO TO THE MOON, ALICE?” or proclaimed:  “ONE OF THESE DAYS . . . POW! RIGHT IN THE KISSER!”  The one line that had me rolling on the floor in hysterics each week was when, frustrated to the max, Ralph would bellow out, “I GOT A BIG MOUTH!!!”

Of course, what Ralph was portraying in those moments that got me into hysterics was a burst of what is known as chutzpah . . . Yiddish for  “nerve,” “gall,” “brazenness,” or “extreme temerity.”  (It never ceases to amaze me how a simple two-syllable word can have so many meanings.)  The all-time most famous example of chutzpah is that of the child who murders his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court, begging for leniency because he is an orphan. . . 

‍ ‍                                    The Trinity of Delusion

I have the feeling that the above, age-old example of chutzpah - outright nerve - is on the verge of being replaced by America’s “Trinity of delusion”: Trump, Hegseth, and Vance.  For in less time than it takes to convince millions of people that they are men of devoutness and faith . . . people whose lives are guided and inspired by the word of G-d, they go to war with the Pope, accuse him of being “soft on crime,” and publicly mistake a verse from the Biblical Book of Ezekiel for a tense, film noir monologue from a Quentin Tarentino film.  If that ain’t chutzpah, what in the world is?

Just a week ago, IT, in a lengthy Truth Social post, condemned Pope Leo XIV, calling him “WEAK on Crime,” and  “terrible for foreign Policy.”  He also claimed that the Pope feared the administration, and that the first U.S.-born pope in history was only selected because “they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump.”  POTUS continued his attacks on Pope LEO, subsequently telling reporters that he believes the Pope “likes crime.”  During a prayer service this past Saturday in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Pope did not mention POTUS by name, but rather spoke about the “delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us” and how it has destabilized the “balance within the human family.”  To say that FELON47’s attacks on Pope Leo for “liking” and being “soft on crime” are not only bizarre, they also show a clear misunderstanding of precisely what his holy mission truly is. And then, to add insult to injury - and piss off millions of Christians of all stripes - POTUS posted an AI-generated image on Truth Social that depicted him in a white robe, appearing as a Jesus-like figure healing a man.  After fending off much criticism, he deleted the post, claiming he viewed the image as representing him as a doctor or Red Cross worker.  As they say in Latin, falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus: “False in one thing, false in everything.” 

Next in line in the chutzpah parade is the regime’s highest-ranking Catholic: V.P. J.D. Vance, who converted to the religion in 2019, and has a new memoir about that event coming out in June. Recently, the V.P. told a conservative audience at the University of Georgia that the pope was wrong to say that disciples of Christ are “never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.” Asked about the debate between his boss and the pope at the Athens, Ga., event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point USA, the Veep admonished Leo, saying that if he was “going to opine on matters of theology,” his comments needed to be “anchored in the truth.” You tell me, J.D.: precisely what should a Pope who earned his doctorate in Canon Law (JCD) from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) in Rome more than 40 years ago be speaking about in public?  The St. Thomas soccer team?  You, sir, have more chutzpah than the entire cast of Fiddler on the Roof.

Lastly, we have the case of our ultra-chutzpadik Secretary of War, the Hon. Pete Hegseth, who is a member in good standing of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.  CREC is a White, archconservative, Calvinist denomination that emphasizes White nationalist views.  The secretary sees the will of G-d in everything we do, in every war we fight, and in every political breath we take.  He firmly believes that there should only be one vote per family (the husband); that women should stay home and take care of the family, and that the Bible should be the absolute basis of our every thought, motive, and decision.  He has instituted a prayer service at the Pentagon,  fired officers who happen to be female or people of color, and declared that Jesus ordained the War in Iran (Operation Epic Fury). How then is it that this man, so very, very steeped in the Bible, does not know the difference between a verse from the Biblical book of Ezekiel (25:17), which deals with G-d’s vengeance against the Philistines, and a blood-curdling monologue delivered by Samuel L. Jackson in Quetin Tarrentino’s savage 1994 crime film Pulp Fiction?  Take a look . . . 

Chutzpah is not necessarily a bad thing to possess. According to actor Alan Alda (who, although not Jewish, has been happily married to Arlene Weiss for nearly 70 years), “Nothing important was ever accomplished without chutzpah. Columbus had chutzpah. The signers of the Declaration of Independence had chutzpah. Don’t ever aim doubt at yourself. Laugh at yourself, but don’t doubt yourself.”  When put this way, I am in total agreement; no actor who ever succeeded was lacking in gall.  However, audacity (another way to define chutzpah), when combined with terminal insincerity, malignant narcissism, “know-it-allism,” and raging self-doubt, can and does make for the very last thing you want in your leaders. And that’s precisely what we’ve got in IT, THE GRIM VEEPER, and the TRIPLE SEC OF DEFENSE, not to mention our soon-to-be-shown-the-door FBI director, KEYSTONE KASH Patel.  What is most telling are their recent polling numbers:

• As of today (April 21, 2026), the Fondling Father’s approval rating hit a new second-term low of 35%. Various polls in mid-April showed his approval ranging from 33% to 41% with disapproval consistently over 55%.

• The “Grim Veeper” has seen a steep decline in popularity, described as “historically the worst” for a V.P. at this stage, falling from a net +3 in January 2025 to roughly -18 in April 2026.

• The nation’s “Triple Sec of Defense” is currently facing criticism over the war in Iran, and House Democrats have filed articles of impeachment against him earlier this month, alleging unauthorized military action. More than one poll has shown his disapproval rating at a -30 point net unpopularity.

• “Keystone Kash’s” numbers have plummeted, especially after the release of a well-researched Atlantic article entitled The FBI Director is MIA.  In this rather lengthy piece, staff writer Sarah  Fitzpatrick alleges that the director engaged in “excessive drinking” and “unexplained absences” while leading the FBI. Within 72 hours, Patel sued both Fitzpatrick and The Atlantic for $250,000,000 in damages plus any proceeds from the article, claiming defamation of character and malice.  

With the way things are going within the regime, I prefer the heroism of the Lone Ranger and Tonto, and the antics of Ralph, Alice, Norton, and Trixie to the lethal level of chutzpah emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  

195 days, 16 hours until the midterms . . . 

“Copyright ©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,074: Oh, and It's Alright, It's Alright, It's Alright

                J.S. Bach                                           

On January 19, 1977, the night before Jimmy Carter took the oath of office, thus becoming America’s 39th President, a strictly A-list pre-inaugural gala was held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Among the performers rocking the house were the “alpha and omega” of world-class musical talent: Aretha Franklin and Paul Simon. For her part, Franklin tore the house down with her megawatt version of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” Although Berlin wrote the song way back in 1918, it wasn’t heard in public until Kate Smith sang it on her number one most popular radio show on November 10, 1938. Aretha Franklin’s version had the pre-inaugural crowd jumping, stomping, and sweating.

By comparison, Paul Simon’s choice was a much quieter, more thoughtful, pensive - even prayerful - piece musically based on one of the greatest masterpieces of Baroque music: J.S. Bach’s sacred oratorio St. Matthew’s Passion (part 1, numbers 21 and 23, and part 2, number 54). Simon simply called it American Tune. It began with the words:

Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken
And certainly misused.

Oh, but I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant
So far away from home
So far away from home

The song, originally released in November 1973, has been a personal favorite of Simon and his vast fan base ever since. Rolling Stone has rated it as high as #262 on its list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of all time.” (Somewhat ironically, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” came in at #1.) Upon his induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, Simon chose "American Tune" as his song of induction.

Much of the power of “American Tune” is in Paul Simon’s voice. It does not ring with the loud anger that runs through our time. His guitar playing, like his voice is deceptively simple but truly complex; you try it. Let’s face it: Bruce Springsteen he is not. Bob Dylan, he is not... and never was.  In American Tune, his only real protest song, his voice is mournful, as if unspooling in the candlelight of a day’s end, in the place where a person’s battles give pause until dawn. The song is searing in its tenderness, poetic in its indictment. It is political without being so. And its voices sound like truck drivers or factory workers, men and women who hustle for their daily bread while the world above them, the one of bankers and politicians, spins on indifferently.

For several years, of course, going back to his high school days when he and Art Garfunkel performed as Tom and Jerry, Paul’s voice was counterbalanced by Artie’s soaring, almost angelic, crystaline delivery. It’s hard to believe that at their peak, they were only together for 6 years (1964-1970) -  3 years before Paul wrote American Tune. (For those who have never understood why they broke up so many decades ago, I highly recommend former Los Angeles Times music critic Robert Hilburn’s definitive biography, Paul Simon: The Life. It will tell you all you want to know about 2 of the most successful, essentially private men in the history of the performing arts. This is not to say that they haven’t, very, very occasionally, teamed up for a night on stage.  On September 19, 1980, Simon and Garfunkel played before more than half a million people at New York’s Central Park. A love album came out of that historic event; it included what I believe is the only time they performed American Tune together:  

Throughout its history, America has refracted its patriotism and its protest in music, including “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the African American spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” Billie Holiday’s rendition of “Strange Fruit,” Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Neil Young’s album “Living With War.” Back in 1973, Simon referred to American Tune as “My Nixon impeachment song.” In their book, “Songs of America,” Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw write that American history “is a story of promises made and broken, of reform and reaction — a story fundamentally shaped by the perennial struggle between what Abraham Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature’ and our worst impulses… Through all the years of strife, we’ve been shaped not only by our words and our deeds but by our music, by the lyrics and the instrumentals that have carried us through dark days and enabled us to celebrate bright ones.”

In American Tune, Paul Simon is far from sentimental; he is tired but resilient.  He writes, When I think of the road we’re traveling on/I wonder what went wrong.”  The American dream comes with both disappointment and loss. Each generation endures its sins and crises; its diminishment and cruel realizations. It is the job, though, despite the clamor and politics, that waits at first light with the hope of reward and the fear of resignation.  American Tune, like Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (published in 1888), George Orwell’s 1984 (published in 1949) or Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here (1935) American Tune reads like it was written just last week (though Bach composed the music in 1728).  It is a tune for the ages; even more about our current demented despot than Tricky Dick more than half a century ago.  American Tune is the masterwork of a lyricist/composer on a par with Harold Arlen, the brothers Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rogers, Lorenz Hart, Frank Loesser, Bob Dylan, Carol King, Billy Joel, and Leonard Cohen . . . all of whom, in addition to be musically gifted to the max, happened to be Jewish.  In American Tune, Paul Simon figures out how to make prophecy rhyme.  He is one who firmly believes that regardless of the crises and fears of today . . . there will, G-d willing, yet be another and brighter tomorrow. Already, we are beginning to see a tightly bound package of evil beginning to unravel. I have to believe this is perfectly in keeping with the plaintive prophecy Simon wrote back in ‘73:

                                                                          Oh, and it’s alright, it’s all right, it’s all right. 

Copyright©2022, 2026 Kurt F. Stone

#1,073: We Were ALL Slaves in the Land of Egypt

Kurt Franklin Stone + ? We Were ALL Slaves in the Land of Egypt

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In about 48 hours, Jewish families, friends and communities the world over will begin the celebration of Passover (Pesach). By any stretch of the imagination, it can be both the most enjoyable - and most complex - of all Jewish festivals. And, depending on how good the cooks, chefs, or caterers in your neck of the woods are, it can also be the most delicious. Pesach, of course, commemorates the ancient Hebrews’ exodus from slavery to freedom after being under the thumb of the ancient Egyptians for some 430 years.  It can be a rather complex holiday; G-d knows that for some of us, its preparation - the scouring of the kitchen, replacing of the plates, pots, pans, and utensils, the shopping for kosher le pesach (“kosher-for-Passover) foodstuffs - can begin upwards of a week or more before the candles are even lit for the first Seder.  

And yet, Passover has a simple yet incredibly seminal message to deliver not just to Jewish folks but to people from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe: to wit, that slavery is a supreme sin, and freedom is the most basic of all human rights. Throughout the haggadah - the booklet used at the Passover Seder - the message “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt’ is repeated in one form or another.  It is repeated in both positive and negative forms: to remember and not to forget.  This is not some mere suggestion; it is on a par with any of the Divine Commandments (mitzvot) and is the most frequently repeated commandment in the Torah (the Five Books of Moses): 36 times.  It is an essential, perhaps the essential value for both Jews and non-Jews alike: to work for justice at all times on behalf of oppressed people, based on the awareness that we were once slaves . . . whether in Egypt, Spain, Turkey, Russia, Iran, the United States, England . . . or anywhere else on the planet. 

                                       Annie, Nurit and Moi

And whether the more than 8 million people who just yesterday attended “No Kings” rallies in the 50 states knew it or not, our gathering, sign-waving, singing, and protesting was, as we would say in Hebrew, zecher le'yetziat Mitzraim: “a remembrance of our going forth from Egypt” . . . both a literal remembrance from the past, and a figurative spur for the future. The gathering Annie, Nurit, and I attended yesterday in Coral Springs along University Drive was incredibly energizing. Annie carried a placard emblazoned with the words “Peaceful Protest is a Right (along with a red-white-and-blue hand giving the two-finger “peace” sign); Nurit wore a black T-shirt with a melting ice cube that she had designed; mine had the immortal hope of the late Rep. John Lewis: “Redeem the Soul of America.” 

Over the past several decades, some fundamentalist Christians have begun hosting Passover meals at their churches.  To them, it is a means of bringing the flock closer to Jesus, who, as the Christian Bible tells us, celebrated Pesach with his disciples during the Last Supper, which occurred immediately prior to his crucifixion.  As a Jewish person, he would have quite obviously followed the tradition of commemorating the Exodus. To many Christians, Jesus is seen as the unblemished “Lamb of G-d,” the broken Afikomen symbolizing his body, and the third of the four cups of wine (the Cup of Redemption) representing his blood.    

Although the Jewish and Christian interpretations of that Passover Seder may differ, the underlying message of that seder itself has not: the universal need and necessity of all people working towards the redemption of those who are enslaved - whether in body, mind,  spirit, or soul.  At this season, in which Jewish people observe Passover and Christians celebrate Easter, I get more questions about the nature of Judaism than at any other time of the year.  What follows is both a brief explanation of the nature of Jews and Judaism, and a prayer for better understanding.  I came across this piece some time ago, and have no idea who its author is . . . but THANK YOU:

Judaism is a religion. But it is not only a religion. And you don’t need to believe in G-d to be Jewish. You don’t have to daven mincha (pray the afternoon service) or keep a kosher home or light candles on Shabbat (Sabbath) or study Torah or face Jerusalem to pray.

Because Judaism is also a peoplehood. A memory. A language that echoes even when we don’t speak it. A rhythm that pulses even when we don’t keep time with it.

Israel is our source and where we took root - not just a place on a map, but a landscape of story. It lives in the names we carry, in the lullabies we don’t remember learning, in the way certain words catch in our throats. It lives in ancient coins with Hebrew inscriptions pulled from the earth, in shards of pottery, in prayers pressed into stone, in arguments that never really end.

We are a people — magnificent, far-flung people — from the steppes of Russia to a shtetl in Poland, from the deserts of sub-Saharan Africa to the highlands near Addis Ababa, from Kaifeng to Cordoba, from Baghdad to London, from Casablanca to Brooklyn, from Buenos Aires to Berlin, from a crowded table at Russ & Daughters to a quiet apartment overlooking the Western Wall.

We have lived everywhere. We sound different. We look different. We practice differently. We vote differently. We argue differently. We disagree — loudly, sometimes painfully — because that is what living people do.

But beneath all of that, there is a through-line.

We have been cast out. We have been othered. We have been translated and mistranslated, renamed and erased, and rediscovered. We have learned how to live between worlds — sometimes by choice, often not. We are, many of us, a little like mermaids — fluent in more than one element, never fully belonging to just one.

We are survivors. But survival is not the whole story. We build. We write. We joke. We argue. We fall in love. We make art out of exile. We make meaning out of rupture. We take what is broken and we do something with it. And we don’t need anyone to tell us who we are — or what defines us. Because there is no single answer. There never was.

There are Jews who find God in the silence of early morning prayer.

And Jews who find meaning in protest, in justice, in repair.

And Jews who find themselves in food, in family, in language, in memory.

And Jews who are still searching, still questioning, still unsure — and that, too, is part of it.

We don’t need anyone to tell us who is a “good Jew” or a “bad Jew” or how to be a Jew correctly.

We have our own moral compasses.

They are not identical. They were never meant to be.

And maybe that’s the point.

A people that has crossed deserts and oceans, survived empires and expulsions, argued across centuries, and still shows up to the table — however we define it — is not fragile.

We are complicated. We are contradictory. We are alive.

And we are still here.

Wishing one and all a meaningful Passover and an Easter that both restores and reenergizes. Remember, we are here, together in partnership: divinity with humanity; those who pray right to left with those whose devotionals move from left to right; those who were once enslaved with those who are still bound in the shackles of subjugation.

May we always remember the lesson of Egypt . . .  May we never forget the power we have when we all work together.      

Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone & Anonymous

#1,072: The Pentagon’s Holy Warrior

Kurt Franklikn Stone #1,072: The Pentagon's Holy Warrior

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          Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)

Last week, this blog gave prominence to the first American writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature: Sinclair Lewis.  This week, let’s give a slightly less effusive shout-out to an even more prolific author with a somewhat similar name . . . who never won a Nobel Prize: Upton Sinclair.  Sinclair (1878-1968) was best known for his 1906 epic polemic on the meatpacking industry, The Jungle (which writer Jack London referred to as “The Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery”).  But Upton was far, far more than a mere novelist and short story writer; he was a polemicist for socialism, healthcare, temperance, free speech, and workers’ rights, and a fiery political candidate, who once ran for governor of California on his own EPIC (“End Poverty in California”) ticket.  He lost that race, due mainly to MGM, which flooded its theatres with what today we’d call “mocumentaries.” These slickly produced shorts showed hundreds of thousands of "hoboes” streaming into the Golden State atop hundreds of railroad cars in anticipation of Sinclair winning the governorship and giving them tons of free goodies.  It didn’t help Sinclair’s campaign that Louis B. Mayer, producer and cofounder of the giant studio, was also a staunch conservative who happened to chair the California Republican Party.

When it came to sheer productivity, Upton Sinclair beat out Sinclair Lewis by miles and miles: Lewis published 23 novels over a period of 39 years, while Sinclair authored 87 novels over a period of 81 years . . . not to mention works of non-fiction, plays, and treatises on subjects ranging from diet and religion to economic interpretation. To my way of thinking (and reading), Upton Sinclair’s very greatest accomplishment was his 11-volume Lanny Budd series of political/historical novels written between 1940 and 1953.  The series features a central character named Lanny Budd, who is the son of an American arms manufacturer.  He is portrayed as holding the confidence of world leaders, and not simply witnessing events;  most often, he is propelling them. As a sophisticated socialite who mingles easily with people from all cultures and socioeconomic classes, Lanny was, for his time, the antithesis of the stereotyped "Ugly American."  Novelist Sinclair placed Lanny Budd within the important political events in the United States, Europe, and North Africa in the first half of the 20th century.

Sinclair’s eye for - and understanding of - high-stakes, history-making politics and the real protagonists and antagonists who shaped the period between pre-WWI and early McCarthyism is second to none . . . and in so many, many prophetic ways:

• Lanny, in his role as FDR’s P.A. (“Personal Agent"), enters the personal political circles of both Mussolini and Hitler (as well as Goebels, Himmler and the rest of the European Fascist hierarchy.  Posing as an international arts expert (which, in reality, he is), he has a front-row seat.

• He comes to understand that what keeps dangerous dictators in power is that these autocrats surround themselves with men whose only requirement is that they be totally loyal to - and unquestioning of -  their leader.

• He learns that there is a vast difference between a “free” and a “bought” or “purchased” press.

• He comes to recognize that the most immoral of tyrants use the language of religion to capture the approval of the masses . . . despite being both terribly irreligious and grossly immoral themselves.  Indeed, in volume 10 (One Clear Call, 1948), in blowing off steam about Mussolini, Lanny quotes Antonio in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice:

  The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness
  Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
  A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
  O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

OK. As much as I love and am awestruck by the brilliance of the Lanny Budd series of novels, this week’s blog really isn’t about Upton Sinclair. Rather, it is about the haunting, disturbing similarities Lanny Budd discovered among Fascistic regimes in the 1930s and 40s in Europe, and what is going on before our very eyes in 2020s America. It should be obvious that just as Hitler and Mussolini looked for and demanded nothing more, and nothing less, than total loyalty for those under them, so too does our current regime here in the U.S. Then, too, the underpinnings of religious millennialism have changed barely a whit. Hitler promised a Reich that would last for a thousand years; so too does He Who is Addicted to Gold Leaf promise an administration that will never require another election. And they, too, clothe their most misguided, inhumane, brain-dead policies in the name of Jesus and a much-promised “second coming” of the Messiah.

 Sec Def Pete Hegseth - White Christian Warrior

If this sounds like something more out of the Feudal Dark Ages than modern 21st-century America, you are correct. We are closer to medieval times than is comfortable to admit. Without bringing up “Mr. Big” (A.K.A. Boss Greed), let’s hone in on one of his most loyal of loyalists: that mindless moral monster, Pete Hegseth, our current Sec. Def . . . who wants the press to refer to him as the “Secretary of War.”  Hegseth is a Princeton graduate with a Master’s in Public Policy from  Harvard (he reportedly returned his degree, writing “Return to Sender” on it in protest of the university’s offering classes in critical race theory), and a major in the United States Army.  He also worked for Fox News for 10 years (2014-2024) as a regular contributor.  Hegseth is a dyed-in-the-wool White Christian Nationalist who firmly believes that the U.S. is a Christian nation.  He wears his faith on his body through the numerous tattoos he wears, including a Jerusalem Cross (a religious symbol tied to the Crusades) and the term Deus Vult (Latin for G-d wills it).  He is tied to the highly patriarchal CREC (Council of Reformed Evangelical Churches) that staunchly holds, among other things, that women cannot serve in leadership, that homosexuality should be criminalized, and that the  19th Amendment (which gave women the right to vote) should be overturned. 

To be perfectly frank, before last week, only a small percentage of the American public - outside of those who follow politics closely - knew thing one about Hegseth’s religious worldview, beliefs, or practices.  What, if anything, they knew was that he sports a lot of body ink and is (he claims) a recovering alcoholic. That changed just last week when, standing in the Pentagon, Hegseth issued a call to the American people for a specific kind of wartime prayer: Every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ. . . . “  As New York Times journalists Greg Jaffe and Elizabeth Dias noted somewhat dryly in their article about Hegseth’s call to prayer, “At a time when the U.S. and Israeli militaries are dropping thousands of bombs on a majority-Shiite Muslim nation, the explicitly Christian nature of Mr. Hegseth’s call stood out.”  In an earlier interview with CBS News’s “60 Minutes,” the Holy Warrior said: “Our capabilities are better.  Our will is better.  Our troops are better . . . The providence of our almighty God is there protecting those troops . . . “  Before the attack on Iran, Hegseth launched an effort to “make the Chaplain corps great again.” (Military chaplains are supposed to minister to all religions, but Hegseth wants to rewrite their manual to reinsert more God and rely less on secular language.)

In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth wrote that the U.S. faces a “crusade moment” that echoes the 11th-century Christian invasion of the Holy Land.  Islamists, according to the then-future Secretary, are enabled by American “leftists” against God-fearing White Christian Americans.  I don’t know about you, but this kind of myopic religious bigotry sets my blood to boiling. There are so many millions upon millions of people in America who neither pray in the name of Jesus, kneel when they pray, nor are actively cheering on any kind of Second Coming.  To achieve “Armageddon” (derived from the Hebrew Har Megiddo,, meaning, simply, “Hill of Megiddo) means, among other things, that all the Jews in the world must be removed to the Holy Land (the State of Israel) where they will be given the choice of either accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior collectively, or going up in a ball fire.  Sorry, but that’s not in my game plan . . . not by a long shot.

 On the March 20, 2026, broadcast episode of The Last Word, MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell gave a scathing rebuttal to what Hegseth had said earlier in the day.  In part, O’Donnell, himself raised as a Catholic altar boy, said: Hegseth doesn't want the prayers of the vice president's wife because she is not and never has been Christian, and Pete Hegseth doesn't want the prayers of two of the three officials who testified to the House Intelligence Committee today about the worldwide threat assessment because Donald Trump's FBI director and Donald Trump's director of national intelligence are not Christian. And so they will never join together to pray on bended knee, in the name of Jesus Christ, to win the war that they could not defend.”

How many more reasons do American voters need in order to flip the House, Senate, and both state and municipal legislative bodies this coming November?  Yes, I know there is quite a bit of concern about citizens having the ballot ripped from their hands because they cannot locate – or pay for – their original birth certificates, wedding licenses, or passports. But we can win this thing and begin the process of throwing the bums out, and then restoring and rebuilding our Democratic Republic which, for nearly 250 years, has been the marvel of the world.

BTW: Are you attending a “No Kings” rally this Saturday?  If you’re interested, check out this link, type in your zip code or city name on the top left corner of the interactive map of the USA, and find out where there’s one in your neck of the woods. The sight of tens of millions of Americans marching down the streets of cities from Bangor, Maine to Escondido, California, will rattle our Fondling Father so badly that he will likely have an accident in public . . . whew! 

It is indeed a very holy act to fight against a very unholy war.

And when you get some free time, get to know Lanny Budd!

Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone.

#1,071: Sinclair Lewis: Nobel Prize Laureate, American Prophet

Kurt Franklin Stone #1,071: Sinclair Lewis: Noble Prize Laureate, American Prophet

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          Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)

In 1930, Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) became the first of 14 Americans to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Born in the tiny town of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the son Dr. E.J. Lewis and his wife Emma Kermott Lewis, young Harry, known variously as “Hal and “Red” (for his generally untamed mop of red hair), earned his B.A. at Yale in 1908, and then moved to New York, where he became a book editor and writer of dozens of mostly unread short stories and several long-forgotten novels such a Our Mr. Wren: Adventures of a Romantic Gentleman (1914) and 1917’s The Job, his first overtly political novel -  and first to be purchased by the film industry.  Even with his relative success, he wondered if he would ever be able to stop editing and earn a living as a full-time author.

His dream was answered in 1920, when the then-tiny firm Harcourt Brace & Howe published Lewis’s Main Street.  It would quickly become a publishing phenomenon, the best-selling novel of 1921; indeed, it was the best-selling novel of the 20th century up to that time.  What makes this all the more unique is that Main Street is relentlessly cynical in dealing with its subject: small-town America.  In the then 35-year-old Lewis’s first great satire, “Gopher Prairie,” the smallish Minnesota town where all the action takes place, is a substitute for the author’s real hometown, Sauk Centre. 

Main Street follows the story of Carol Milford, an idealistic and ambitious young woman from Mankato, Minnesota. After completing her education and working briefly as a librarian in Saint Paul, Carol marries Will Kennicott, a small-town doctor. The couple moves to Will's hometown of Gopher Prairie, which, as noted above, is a fictional rural community modeled on Lewis's own hometown.

Upon arriving in Gopher Prairie, Carol is immediately struck by the town's lack of culture and aesthetic charm. Determined to bring about change, she launches various initiatives to improve the town's appearance and cultural offerings. Her efforts, however, are met with resistance and ridicule from the conservative locals. Carol finds herself increasingly at odds with the narrow-mindedness and provincialism of small-town life.
Frustrated by her inability to bring about meaningful change and feeling stifled by the town's conformity, Carol eventually leaves Will and moves to Washington, DC, to work as a government clerk during World War I. After some time away, she returns to her husband. Though she failed to achieve her lofty goals of transforming Gopher Prairie, Carol maintains her ideals and refuses to surrender to the small-town mentality surrounding her.

 Lewis’s literary talents and ear for how small-town, Midwestern Americans really sound, are on full display in Main Street.  Although widely praised by the most prominent literary reviewers in America, it did have its detractors.  Believe it or not, Main Street was actually banned by the public library in Alexandria, Minnesota, due to what his hometown Sauk Centre Herald called “its “unflattering portrayal of small-town life.”   What the editorial writer of the Herald was mistaking for Lewis’s “unflattering portrait” was actually something that would run through most of his remaining novels: a critique of American complacency and conformity.

When given the chance to respond to The Herald’s skewering of Main Street, Lewis wrote a surprisingly mild and didactic essay.  In it, he supposedly wrote (for it can no longer be found on the Internet) by way of explanation: 

“I love America; I don’t always like America.” 

(We’ll get back to Sinclair Lewis toward the end of the blog . . . )

Lewis’s reflection - whether he actually wrote it or not - is well worth commenting upon.

I think tons of sensible people can agree that one need not like everything America does or proclaims to be considered either a patriot or “lover of America.”  Then too, we do have a sizeable minority here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave who would loudly disagree.  Their love and loyalty appear to be to a single man with a single plan, no matter how erratic, volatile, or inconsistent it may be.  I couldn’t disagree more.  Let me share with you some of the things I absolutely love about America:

• I love that the Declaration of Independence, largely the creation of an aristocratic Southern slave owner, begins with the words “We THE PEOPLE.”

• I love that America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, was also the most down-to-earth of all our 47 chief executives.

• I love that our Constitution created and mandated three coequal branches of government so that ultimate power should rest with the people.

• I love that Presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson saw fit to preserve, protect, and defend our national treasures by enacting, respectively, the Yellowstone National Park  Protection Act (1872), the Antiquities Act (1906), and the Organic Act, which created the National Park Service (1916).

• I love that for so many decades, America kept its gates wide open for immigrants to enter, either through Ellis Island (and earlier Castle Garden) to make better lives for themselves and their progeny. (Interestingly, both sides of our family came to America before there was an Ellis Island or Castle Garden. My father’s side entered through Baltimore Harbor, remaining in that city for several generations; my mother’s side likely through Canada, where they settled down (ironically) in St. Paul, Minnesota . . . not too far from Lewis’s Sauk Center.)

• I love that President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and NASA.

• I love that America led the battle to save the world from 3 of history’s worst, most diabolical dictators in the 1940s.

• I love that in America, when things get as dark, desperate, and depressing as they seem they can, the people tend to gather, garner strength, and get back to work to make things happen. Case in point: since the nation’s chief Ninnyhammer (that’s “moron” in Elizabethan English) returned to office on January 20, 2025, Democrats are 28-0 in taking back Republican-held seats in state legislatures . . . some in districts that our Favorite Fapdoodle won by 10 or more points in 2024.

 Then there are things I don’t like about America:

• I don’t at all like the growing number of people who accept as gospel such conspiratorial notions that White Christians are in far greater danger than Jews; that millions of illegal immigrants are collecting hundreds of billions of dollars in “freebies,” or casting millions upon millions of illegal votes for Democrats.

• I don’t at all like that a small handful of multi-billionaires are buying up the nation’s media so they can skew the truth about virtually everything.

• I don’t like that every couple of decades, Americans are convinced that the lion’s share of our economic, cultural, or political difficulties is the fault of immigrants . . . thereby demanding that the gates be shut.

• I don’t like that, with few exceptions, members of one political party refuse to speak out against a leader who is obviously in the throes of dementia and urge - let alone even suggest - that the 25th Amendment be put into use.

• I don’t like that the sole requirement for service in the current POTUS’ administration is absolute loyalty to him.

• I don’t like that America has turned its collective back on the planet’s poorest, hungriest, sickest, and most endangered human beings all for the  - supposed - sake of “Making America Great Again.”

• I don’t like that people without a shred of professional knowledge have been put in charge of critical, heretofore essential, bureaus and offices to convince people that vaccines cause autism, that raw milk isn’t dangerous, or that alternative energy sources cause cancer.

• I really don’t like that so many people online refer to our former FLOTUS, Michelle Obama, as “Big Mike,” and claim she is a transvestite. Yes, we have a First Amendment guaranteeing their right to free speech, but whatever happened to not making a complete jackass out of oneself in public? Oh well, I guess it’s likely due to the Internet’s relative anonymity.

  And yet, I can still say with a straight face and a loving heart that I love America.

Now back to Sinclair Lewis . . .

Main Street changed Sinclair Lewis’ life in many ways. First, it gave him his first taste of real money. When the first royalty checks started rolling in, he realized that it would now be possible for him to become a full-time novelist. His agent quickly sold the rights for a stage adaptation to be written. On October 5, 1921, a four-act play debuted at Broadway’s National Theatre. Although it only ran for 86 performances (not a bad run by 1920s standards), Main Street received fine reviews. His agent also sold rights to the newly formed Warner Bros. Starring such stars of the day as Florence Vidor and Noah Berry, and future stars Monte Blue and Alan Hale, it became Warner’s first full-length feature film, and garnered awards for Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Actress for August 1921.

Over the next 7 years, Sinclair Lewis produced 4 additional literary masterpieces, all of which were bestsellers turned into major motion pictures:

• 1922: Babbitt

• 1925: Arrowsmith

• 1927: Elmer Gantry

• 1929 Dodsworth.

All these novels dealt with aspects of American life, ranging from small-town America and medicine to religious fraud and extra-marital romance. Each benefited from Lewis’s satiric skills, his knack for creating memorable, believable characters, and his felicitous gift of having these characters put words into his pen, rather than he putting words into their mouths.

And of course, in 1930, Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize. In his presentation speech on December 10, 1930, Erik Alex Karlfeldt, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, noted the wonderful irony that the first American writer to win this most prestigious of prizes should come from a part of the United States that had long been the home to more Swedish “contacts” than anywhere else in the New World. Karlfeldt (who himself would be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature the next year) concluded his address with the words: " You have a special recommendation to Swedish hearts. You were born among our countrymen in America, and you have mentioned them in friendly terms in your renowned books. We are glad to see you here today and glad that our nation has a laurel of its own to bestow on you. And now I ask you to descend with me and receive it from the hand of our King.”  (Sinclair Lewis on the right in the photo, holding his Nobel plaque)

In all, Sinclair Lewis wrote 24 novels; the last of which, World So Wide, was published posthumously in 1951.  Of his 2 dozen novels, 17 are still in print . . . a truly remarkable accomplishment.  To my way of thinking, the most important (though not the best) of the group) is his 1935 dystopian fantasy, It Can’t Happen Here. ( I wrote about this novel in a blog back on July 2, 2012, entitled Buzz Windrip is Alive and Well.)  The work is difficult to read in the age of MAGA.  It predicts the takeover of America by a demagogue named Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, who is elected POTUS, after fomenting fear and promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and "traditional" values.   Doremus Jessup, a small-town newspaper editor, witnesses and writes about all of this as Windrip defeats FDR in the presidential election and then quickly turns America into an authoritarian state.  The new president’s personal troops are called “The Corpos,” who make sure that everything works just the way the new despot, Buzz, wants it to.  Doremus Jessup’s moral courage and resistance to the Corpos offer a sobering reflection on the cost of complacency and the importance of vigilance.  Here, 90 years after its publication, is Sinclair Lewis’s prophecy . . . unless we all act more like Doremus and less like Buzz we are big, big, big trouble..  

I URGE YOU TO READ THIS UNFORGETTABLE BOOK.
Remember: you can love America without always liking her. . .

Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,070: Pain and Pleasure, Peril and Purim

Kurt Franklin Stone Pain and Pleasure, Peril and Purim

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          Netanyahu, Trump and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

As I begin typing this blog, it is nearly 7:30, the evening of Saturday, February 28, 2026. The Jewish sabbath has just concluded; a new week begins. This past shabbat  was named Shabbat Zachor, the “Sabbath of Remembrance.” It always comes just before the Jewish holiday Purim, a celebration which, when all is said and done, is the most uniquely, lightheartedly enjoyable - and slightly bizarre - of all Jewish observances. Its uniqueness stems largely from the fact that on this holiday we read (or chant) the book of Esther . . . the only book in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible or Old Testament) that does not explicitly mention G-d by name; it is lighthearted, because one of the few commandments associated with the holiday is that one must become intoxicated enough so as to be unable to distinguish between Barukh Mordechai (“Blessed be Mordechai . . . the hero of the story) and Arur Haman . . . “(Cursed be Haman” . . . the wicked villain of the tale).  It is also quite bizarre, for reasons which shall soon come into focus.

This year. there is an extreme irony attached to the celebration.  

Without going into great detail, the story of Purim takes place in the kingdom of Shushan, (Persia) Its king, Achashverosh, likely the historic Xerxes I (“Artaxerxes”) a fairly simple-minded, slightly arrogant leader, gave over the running of his kingdom to his prime minister, one Haman, an Agagite (meaning either a literal descendant of the biblical “Agag” [King of the brutal Amalekites)  or a symbolic term for an extreme antisemite), and about as wicked a fellow as ever lived . . . either in reality or world literature.  As with most ancient myths, the thoroughly wicked Haman, at story’s end, is hung . . . along with his 10 sons.  It is, of course, a chilling aural coincidence that the name of the modern-day version of a Persian (Iranian) madman who was “taken out” just 48 hours prior to Purim, should have been named Khamenei, sounding oh-so-similar to Haman.  (The meanings are totally different: Khamenei, in Farsi, means, simply “from Khamene”, which is a village in the East-Iranian province of Azerbaijan, while Haman is an ancient Hebrew word  meaning, quite correctly, either “noise,” “tumult” or “destruction.”

                           Cyrus (c. 600-530 BCE)

The hero and heroine of the Purim tale are the Jewish Mordechai (possibly a stand-in for the mythic Babylonian Marduk), and his cousin/adopted daughter Estayr, whose Jewish name is Hadassah (Hebrew for “Myrtle”). Estayr is likely a takeoff on “Aphrodite”, the Greek goddess of love. Estayr becomes King Achashverosh’s queen; unbeknownst to him, she is Jewish. Then all hell breaks out; Haman ha-Rasha (“The wicked Haman”) seeks to kill all the Jews.  But in the end, everything works out well: Haman and his 10 sons are hanged and they all live happily ever after . . .  And indeed, in the centuries following the establishment of the Persian Empire and King Cyrus the Great’s rule, Jews lived there for more than 2,700 years. It was a time marked both by sporadic expulsions, forced conversions to Islam and pogroms against the Jewish community, as well as by long periods of peaceful coexistence.  (The best, most readable book I know on the subject is Rabbi Raphael Harris’ History of the Jews of Persia; it makes a great read.)

                       Obama and Staff: May 1, 2011 

The bomb blast that took the lives of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many of Iran’s top leaders should cause both feelings of joy and relief.  I am sure we all remember how we felt when we saw those pictures of President Barack Obama and members of his team sitting hunched over a computer screen watching the assassination of Osama bin Laden at bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 1, 2011. It felt like a gigantic MISSION ACCOMPLISHED for Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike; the end of a wicked life and hopefully the beginning of something far less fraught with danger and destruction.  But of course, politics being what was and still is, that feeling didn’t last too long.  Within 7 months, then reality TV star Donald Trump was back to attacking Barack Obama . . . the man he’d spent the previous several years proclaiming was a native Kenyan - and therefore illegally occupying the office of the presidency.:

• “In order to get elected, Barack Obama will start a war with Iran.”  Donald Trump, Nov. 29, 2011.

• “Barack Obama will attack Iran to get re-elected”,   Donald Trump, Jan. 7, 2012.

•  “Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin - watch for him to launch a strike on Libya or Iran. He is desperate.” Donald Trump, Oct. 9, 2012.

• “I predict President Obama will at some point start a war with Iran in order to save face!” Donald Trump, Sept. 16, 2013.

• “Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly - not skilled.” Donald Trump, Nov. 11, 2013.

This, coming from a man who launched an airstrike - along with Israel - against Iran when his approval rating was somewhere between 34% and 40%, and that of P.M. Netanyahu’s most recent numbers show that 44% of the total sample supports direct military involvement in a potential US attack on Iran, while 50% support participating only if Israel is first attacked by Iran.  Are we supposed to believe that neither man had anything other than what’s best for their respective countries, the Middle East, Europe and the rest of the world in launching “Operation Epic Fury?”  Just how gullible do they think we are?

Some of us remember that back on June 25 of last year, the White House issued an official release which quoted the  Fondling Father saying “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term!  The devastating US strike on Fordo [one of Iran’s major nuclear facilities] destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable. We assess [sic] that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program, has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”  And yet, just prior to this newest attack, POTUS, in an 8-minute video shared on Truth Social,  justified the bombing raid by warning that the Iranians were just a few days away from having the ability to shoot and land nuclear missiles at the United States.  Just last week (February 23) ITs special envoy (and fellow billionaire real estate developer) Steve Witkoff told writers at The Hill that Iran “. . . is a week away” from developing nuclear bomb making material through uranium enrichment.  He told the journalists that Iran’s enrichment level “has reached 60%.”

The White House has also declared that the reason for airstrikes was to get rid of the terrorist regime that has inflicted so much pain, torture and murder upon its civilian population.  In other words, even if the regime wasn’t that close to restarting their nuclear bomb-making program, we would go after them in order to take them out, so as to give everyday Iranians the ability to take to the streets and effect regime change.  Some of us remember back to November 1956 when the Eisenhower Administration, working in tandem with Radio Free Europe, urged the Hungarian people to rise up and rebel against the Soviets.  It took Russia precisely one week to put down that rebellion.  One wonders what will happen in Iran.  Remember: regime change is as rare and difficult as an unassisted triple-play in baseball (there have been precisely 15 in all MLB history, making it even rarer than a perfect game).  There is also the unofficial “Pottery Barn Rule” with regards to one country (or coalition) seeking regime change in another country: “You break it, you buy it.”

There are those who believe (I am one of them) that the reason for the current airstrike is neither getting rid of Iran’s nuclear arsenal, nor freeing  the Irani people from the iron-gloved theocracy that has held them in thrall for close to a half-century; rather, its purpose is likely to unglue American voters’ attention (and indeed the rest of the civilized planet’s) from the Epstein Files . . . which could easily make Watergate and the Teapot Dome scandals look like mere fraternity pranks by comparison.  Then too, the White House is scared witless about the upcoming midterm elections; when weighed against current polling, they could lose their political shirt . . . and socks, shoes and britches . . . thus creating a situation in which the Democrats control the gavels, subpoenas. and debates over future Supreme Court nominees.  And don’t rule out the fact that war always brings tremendous profits to weapons’ manufacturers . . . most of whom are heavy contributors to 47 and his fellow Maga-ites.  

As glad as I am that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (as well as Ali Shamkhani [Secretary of Iran’s Defense Council], Abdolrahim Mousavi [chief of staff or Iran’s armed forces], Aziz Nasirzadeh [Iran’s minister of defense] and Mohammad Pakpour (commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps [IRGCL]) were all taken out in a massive blast on Khamenei’s compound, I cannot – and will not – praise the American regime for its strategic brilliance or long-term objective.  We are, I fear, about to enter another ‘endless war’ ala Iraq, Afghanistan or Viet Nam.  I will not suddenly believe that IT has, overnight, become the best friend Israel has ever had or that he loves the Jews more than life itself.  Where and what is the endgame?  Is this war nothing more, nothing less than a case of  “Wag the Dog”? And why oh why didn’t a single member of the regime show up on a single one of yesterday’s Sunday talk shows to discuss this historic event? 

An afterthought that may well become an entire blog essay one of these days: 

On this issue, like so many, many others, it seems incomprehensible how some people (most frequently MAGA-ites) generally proclaim absolute knowledge and fealty about and towards anything and everything POTUS does or says (despite their limited level of education or understanding), while another faction (frequently more progressive and generally better educated) are on the other side of the fence. There is a possible answer for this which emanates from the world of Political Psychology (a field which has fascinated me for more than a half century) which attempts to explain this phenomenon.  It is called the Dunning Kruger Effect.  Originally researched by political psychologists David Dunning, PhD, and Justin Kruger, PhD at Cornell in 1999, it explains what is called cognitive bias, an umbrella term used to describe an error in reasoning or flaw in judgement.  It holds that people with limited knowledge or competence in a specific domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence, while experts underestimate theirs. That is why writers/academics like me are often taken to task by people who get their news from conservative social media, who accuse  me of not knowing thing one about politics, history, economics or anything beyond a few verses of the Hebrew Bible.  It also explains why a person like me, who has immersed himself into such varied fields as history, political science (both its practice and the psychology,behind it) as well as medicine, ancient languages and world literature, often feels inadequate.  

To be perfectly honest ITs taking us into war took me by surprise. I thought he and his herd paid more attention to polling numbers . . . especially those showing that less than 24 hours ago, just one in four Americans support the regime’s ongoing strikes on Iran . . . (this according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released yesterday). Perhaps he was talked into it by Bibi Netanyahu, who, unlike POTUS, has read the Book of Esther, and wants to make a lot of noise, inflict a lot of pain, and celebrate Purim with a bang.

I’m sure Def. Sec. Pete Hegseth will be delighted with the drinking part of the celebration . . .

Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,069: Boycott the SOTU Address

Kurt Franklin Stone #1.069: Boycott the SOTU Address

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As President of the United States, D.J.T., a.k.a. the Fondling Father, is a man of many firsts:

• Richest person ever elected POTUS;

• Oldest person ever to take the oath of office (he was inaugurated for his second, nonconsecutive term on January 20, 2025 at the age of 78 years, 220 days, breaking the previous record held by President Joseph R. Biden);

• Married and divorced more than any president (3 marriages, 2 divorces);

• Coined more money while serving in office than any other POTUS. (It is estimated that he and his family made $3.4 billion after his first year back in office);

• Has named more things after himself than any other POTUS. (Trump-class U.S.S. Defiant; The Trump Gold Card; The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts; Trump Institute for Peace). Hell’s bells, it took Congress nearly a half century (47 years to be precise) to name the Headquarters of the U.S. Department of State after Harry S. Truman back in September 2000, and “Give ‘Em Hell Harry” had by that time been out of office since 1953, and deceased since back in December 1972;

• Has delivered the longest (1:39:32) address to a joint session of Congress by any POTUS in U.S. history. (n.b. This longest-of-all presidential speeches, which he delivered on March 4, 2025 [and coming in at a whopping 9,831 words] was not, literally, a SOTU address. Starting in 1981, presidents have been invited to address a joint session of Congress early in the first year of their presidency. These have occurred in 1981 [Reagan] 1989 [G.H.W. Bush], 1993, [Bill Clinton] 2001 [G.W. Bush], 2009 [Barack Obama], 2017, [ D.J.T.] 2021 [Joe Biden], and 2025 [D.J.T).

It’s this last tidbit - Felon47’s penchant for droning on and on whenever there’s a vast crowd and a room full of television cameras before, behind to the right and the left of him - that’s been causing me uncertainty and unease.  The question over the past several weeks has been “Were I a member of Congress, would I attend or would I boycott the address? On the one hand, American history is replete with SOTUs in which the chamber was filled with members of both parties, whether or not they agreed with the man speaking at the dais.  For decades they were there out of respect to the office of President - plus the Constitution and the 3 branches of government - even if not for the  man himself.  But every time I considered our Beloved Pouter Pigeon’s utter and obvious disesteem for these aforementioned building blocks of democracy, I find myself less and less sanguine with attending . . . were I a member of the House or Senate.        

Then too, there are rarely any surprises when this man speaks.  Wherever and whenever he speaks, there are far more lies than truths to be heard; too many unscripted asides in which he imitates a fatuous fableist; too much time given over to venting his spleen, tearing people down, (calling them names better suited to a nasty 3rd grader than the leader of the free world); and  taking credit for things that never truly occurred.  Even a solid, well-grounded respect for both democracy and the office of POTUS (which I, personally, have in abundance, as I’m rather certain you do as well) makes me want to boycott.  I have enough gastroenterological issues; 2 hours of listening to him just might put me in back on the operating table for yet another strictureplasty.

            Rep. Al Green (D.-TX)

As we near the 24-hour mark until February 24, I have made up my mind; were I a senator, I would boycott the speech, opting instead to join into the counterprogramming event on the National Mall that Democratic Senators Markey (D-Mass.), Merkley (D.-Ore), Van Hollen (D.-MD) and Schiff (D,-CA) (among many others) have dubbed the “People’s State of the Union.” 

In past years, people watching the SOTU on television have seen members of Congress - both Republican and Democrat - interrupt speeches by both IT and Biden by calling out “LIAR!” or holding up paddles bearing messages like “Save Medicaid,” “Musk Steals,” and simply “FALSE.” Some critics panned the gestures as performative; others defended them as a necessary show of resistance. The disruptions reached their apex (or nadir, depending on where you sit) last year when Texas Rep. Al Green was ejected from the chamber (and later censured) after disrupting IT’s speech with a cane-waving tirade.

Among those who will be in attendance at the “People's SOTU” are:

• Calif. Rep. Eric Swalwell;

• New York Rep. Dan Goldman;

• Virginia Rep. Eugene Vindman

• Minnesota Mayer Jacob Frey;

• Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson;

• Actor Robert DeNiro;

• Actor Mark Ruffalo.

There have been discussions within the Democratic Caucus as to what might, beyond the counterprogram, be the best way to proceed.  Some would be satisfied to have less than half their colleagues be in attendance for the address . . . thus showing an obvious dearth of members in the House chamber.  Some have urged that they attend, and then, when the perfunctory announcement “Mr. SPEAKER: THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!”  is made, they stand up and leave the building en masse. Of course, the optics of such a mass exodus could wind up kicking the Dems. in the tuchus . . . but sometimes that’s just the price one pays for engaging in acts of political courage. No doubt, any such walkout would show on his face, wreaking havoc with The Fondling Father’s famously orange punim . . . reportedly provided by his daily application of Bronx Colors Boosting Hydrating Orange Pancake Concealer. Then too, any ego injury suffered by POTUS might not even be shown; it so happens that the political party in control of the House of Representatives (MAGA) controls the cameras, with staff under the direction of the Speaker of the House managing the feed. 

Shortly after the SOTU concludes, recently-elected Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger will deliver the Democratic response. Spanberger, a former undercover CIA officer who served three terms in Congress, became Virginia’s first female governor earlier this year, resoundingly winning an office previously held by a Republican.  She won that race by a double-digit margin.  It isn’t an easy task; like all SOTU responders, she’s reading off a teleprompter that was mostly engineered prior to the president’s address being given.  Fortunately, with this POTUS, one can predict what he would say even before his teleprompter was locked and loaded.  Speaking about what Governor Spanberger’s task would be, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stated “She stands in stark contrast to [POTUS].  She will lay out a clear path forward: lower everyday costs, protect healthcare, and defend the freedoms that define who we are as a nation.”  It will be up to Governor Spanberger to present not just a rebuttal; she has been sent out with orders to present - as best she can - the earliest brushstrokes of the  Democrat’s platform for 2026 and 2028 . . . something that can undo MAGA’s monstrous Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.”

The professional politicians of Capitol Hill are about to face their Shakespearean moment: To boycott or not to boycott; that is the question.”  For those of us who are not elected officials we also have a choice.  I for one will be boycotting the actual live speech; there won’t be any surprises.  The person giving the address has not a millimeter  of morality about him, let alone scruples, honesty  or love of country.  While I revere the office of the president, I totally denounce and execrate the man who so thoroughly abuses it with his every passing breath.   And so yes, I will definitely be boycotting his address tomorrow night.   

What I will be doing is keeping my television on PBS and radio on NPR for their live broadcasts and then watching MSNOW for their well-wrought fact checking, and stellar (though admittedly progressive) post-address analysis.   

Whatever you choose to do is, of course, up to you.  But do remember, when all is said and done, WE THE PEOPLE have the final say . . .  

Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,068: Of Cowards and Conquerors, Paladins and Pissants

Kurt Franklin Stone Of Cowards and Conquerors, Paladins and Pissants

           Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME) 1897-1995

Nearly 76 years ago (June 1, 1950, to be precise), Maine Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith delivered a 15-minute speech on the Senate floor; she called it the Declaration of Conscience. Smith, the first woman to be elected to both the House (1940-1949) and Senate (1949-1973) began her brief address with words that, hauntingly, could have - and should have - been delivered on just about any day since The Fondling Father moved into the White House: “I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition.  It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear.  It is a condition that comes from the lack of effective leadership in either the Legislative Branch or the Executive Branch of our Government. . .” Senator Smith, who would eventually chair the Senate Republican Conference (1967-1973), managed to get 6 of her Republican colleagues to officially sign on to her declaration  

Although never named in her brief speech, Smith - and just about everyone on the Senate floor - knew exactly what and who she was referring to: Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and the fear, loathing and disunity he was spreading from “sea to shining sea” with his insistence that America was in the deep grip of a Communist conspiracy. McCarthy’s growing grip on the American public had begun in Wheeling West Virginia on February 9, 1950, when, in his address (known to history as the “Enemies Within” speech) to the Ohio County Republican Women’s Club he attacked the Truman administration and accused more than 200 Americans currently working at the State Department, of being members of the Communist Party. To be precise, the senator, who had long been looking around for a propelling issue through which he could make his political bones, held up a sheet of paper and said: "I have here in my hand a list of 205 - a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department. Over the next weeks and months, McCarthy repeated this claim . . . the number of purported Reds changing with each speech or address.  As obvious as this “inconsistency” (a nicety meaning “obvious prevarication”) was, no one had the guts to call him out for being a liar.  

              McCarthy and Cohn in 1954

As his power and public presence grew, “Tailgunner Joe” added a 26-year old federal prosecutor named Roy Cohn to his staff.  Cohn (1927-1986), who first gained fame as a prosecutor in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, became McCarthy’s ruthless chief counsel, and ultimately the key architect of investigations into alleged communists and gay federal employees (called the Lavender Scare).  The longer Cohn remained with McCarthy, the worse the senator got; in terms of his lies, his brutal pugnacity, and his all too-obvious alcoholism. And, despite being asked behind closed doors to stop attacking colleagues, no one would publicly take the senator to task.  They were simply too scared to go against him for fear of being smeared by the man they fully despised.  Cowardice was rampant . . . until McCarthy met his match in the form of a soft-spoken Boston lawyer named Joseph Welch.  In 1954, Welch was representing Fred Fisher, a young attorney from Welch’s firm (Hale and Dorr) who had been hauled before McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Investigations and accused of associating with the National Lawyers Guild, which FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Roy Cohn’s former boss) swore was nothing more than a Communist front organization.

              Joseph Welch (1890-1960)

On June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the nationally-televised “Army-McCarthy hearings”, Welch attacked McCarthy, saying “Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale and Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.”  

When McCarthy tried to renew his attack on Fisher, Welch issued his coup de grâce . . . which effectively ended the Wisconsin senator’s political reign of terror: “Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”  Shortly thereafter, with sanity and a modicum of courage restored, the senate censured McCarthy; in less than 3 years, he drank himself to death and died of a massive myocardial infarction. He was a mere 49 years old.

It has always seemed to me that the lesson here is that sometimes, it takes but a single person with courage and a moral compass in good working order to get others to join in on successfully taking down a monster. 

And so ended the horrid saga of Senator Joseph McCarthy.  But what of Roy Cohn?  The young lawyer simply found himself another narcissist who, like his former mentee possessed similar character traits: high levels of impulsivity, low agreeableness, low conscientiousness, all but incapable of empathy, and an exiguous level of kindness or compassion.  That man’s name was, of course, Donald Trump. 

                     Cohn and DJT (circa 1978)

Soon after McCarthy’s downfall, Cohn returned to New York city, where he established himself in private practice at the powerful firm Saxe, Bacon & Bolan.  In short order he became an unnamed partner in the firm, garnering a reputation for doing whatever it took to win a case.  Cohn had many high-profile clients, including several organized-crime bosses (including Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and John Gotti); New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner; and Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis; he also served as lawyer for the popular New York City nightclub Studio 54. Two of Roy Cohn’s most notable and long-lived clients were New York real estate magnate Fred Trump and his son Donald. In 1973, Cohn defended them against charges of racial discrimination in their apartment rentals.  A 1978 profile in Esquire Magazine (“Don’t Mess With Roy Cohn”) painted a portrait of him as “. . . a legal executioner - the toughest, meanest, loyalest, vilesst, and one of the most brilliant lawyers in America.”  One of Cohn’s closest personal friends was Roger Stone . . . who would also play a significant role in Felon47’s political career, and in 2000 be sentenced to 40 months in federal prison for commiting crimes on his behalf.  However, Stone would never serve a day in federal stir;  his good friend DJT, by now the POTUS, commuted his sentence and later granted him a full pardon.

Roy Cohn taught his young friend who, years later would become president, that in order to succeed beyond his wildest dreams he must:

• Never, ever admit defeat;

• Aggressively (and expensively) litigate against any and every adversary;

• Learn how to harness the power of exaggerations and outright lies;

• Demand and expect total loyalty from everyone and anyone . . . but don’t show much to them yourself.  

• Live the life of a multi-billionaire, die broke, make sure you owe billions in back taxes. (As Cohn did).

Publicly, Cohn’s sexuality was an open secret..  Often referred to as  “flamboyant” in media coverage, he spent decades surrounding himself with young, attractive men, and summered in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a long-standing destination for LGBTQ life.  He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1984 and died in the summer of 1986 from complications of the disease, although he insisted until the very end that he was dying from liver cancer.  One can only wonder what kind of role Cohn might have played in a Trump presidency . . . Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?

Over the past dozen or more years Roy Cohn’s role in IT’s life has been taken over largely by “The Steves” - Bannon and Miller . . . the latter being POTUS’ longest serving political advisor . . . the man who has almost single-handedly godfathered the administration’s "take no prisoners” immigration policy.  Miller, who has variously served as the White House Director of Speechwriting (2017-2021) Senior Advisor to the President (2017-2021), White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy (Jan. 2025- ) and Homeland Security Advisor (Jan. 2025) has been described by the Washington  Post’s former immigration editor Jenna Johnson  as “ . . . an accelerant for the president’s most incendiary impulses, shaping the lives of individual Americans in nearly every realm.”

                     DJT & “Submissive Stephen” (SS)

Miller’s personality, to a great degree, mirrors that of the late Roy Cohn.  Both are/were incapable of admitting error or defeat; both are/were suffused with all-consuming arrogance and possess(ed) not a shred of empathy. They are/were, to a great degree, the puppet-masters (along with Steve Bannon and perhaps Elon Musk) who long pulled the Fondling Father’s public and personal strings.  The lack of empathy is, to my way of thinking, the most alarming and disgusting of these “DNA transfers” . . . and helps answer 2 interlocking questions posed by so many:  First, How can so many right-wing Christians (let’s call ‘em ‘MAGA Christians’) be so wildly supportive of the least godly, most obviously sinful president in American history? and Second, Why are nearly all Republicans incapable of speaking out against POTUS, his administration, his agenda or his singularly dreadful weltanschauung?   

  “Empathy,”  which comes from the Greek  ενσυναίσθηση (ensynaisthisi) is generally understood to mean the ability to understand, feel, and share another person’s perspective, emotional state, and experience.  Empathy acts as a crucial foundation for human connection, social bonding, and altruistic behavior.  It is a staple of both Jewish thought and practice (חֶמלָה khmelah), and for most Christians is fully aligned with the teachings and example of Jesus.  But of late, more and more Christian Nationalists (the MAGA version of Christianity) have come to see it as being toxic; they argue that it can cloud moral judgment or be manipulated to advance policies they see as unbiblical.  Indeed, two of the best-selling books among these Conservative Christians, released in 2024 and 2025, are entitled Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion  and The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits.  Even DJT’s on-again-off-again BFF, Elon Musk declared on Joe Rogan’s podcast that “. . . the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” 

The rise of MAGA Christian nationalism has seen empathy demonized as “sinful,” “dangerous,” “weak,” and even a tool of liberal manipulation. Calls for compassion toward marginalized groups are increasingly met with defensiveness or hostility. With the popularity of books like the two mentioned above “. . . driving this blatant move away from Christ’s message of radical love, justice and preferential treatment of the oppressed, MAGA Christians are able to sit comfortably in their bigotry as their neighbors are kidnapped and murdered in the streets,” said Bible scholar Mattie Mae Motl.  The demonization of empathy, as so supremely role-modeled by IT, gives justification to a seeming majority of MAGA Christians to abandon their LGBTQ+ kids without feeling an ounce of guilt, and permission to fully bully, arrest, deport and even murder people on the basis of the way they look, the language they speak or the land of their birth.  It also makes publicly calling out, criticizing or even questioning a president who fronts such beliefs an act of heresy.  But remember: hate wrapped up in piety is still hate.

Behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, there are many, many Republicans who think (and even say in hushed tones) that 47 and his sycophants are thorough-going embarrassments who are destroying democracy here at home and bringing America down in the eyes of the world.  It is next to impossible to find a “regular” Republican (except those who have chosen not to run for reelection) who, like the late Senator Margaret Chase Smith, has the courage, commitment and moxie to call a spade a spade, a traitor a traitor, a sinner a sinner. 

Whether we are reaching an inflection point in American - and global - democracy depends largely on who you talk to, what their current set of beliefs are, where they get their news from, and what frightens them the most. At this point, what frightens me the most is how many so-called “public servants” are more motivated by the absolute need to say or do nothing that will put them on the wrong side of a man suffering from pre-senile dementia and a regime they know deep down is callous, corrupt, cruel, crude,  and cupidinous . . .  than living up to what they publicly profess.  Proclaiming words of the Divine while doing deeds of the depraved is sheer hypocrisy.  

What lessens my fear is in knowing that there are far more paladins (fighters for righteous causes) in our midst than pissants (worthless, contemptible people filled with rage).  Together, we must all identify the most courageous aspects of our being, while at the same time spurning noisome, despicable people and learning the necessity of getting out of our seats, and together, go about the job of doing deeds of empathy, sympathy and compassion for the good of our common future.   

Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone     

#1,067: Profound Wisdom From Ben Zoma (Ben Who?)

K.F. Stone #1,067 Profound Wisdom From Ben Zoma (Ben Who?)

              POTUS & Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-IL)

This past Thursday, POTUS attended the annual “National Prayer Breakfast.” For him, it was his sixth time. Not surprisingly, he was on the agenda, scheduled to give a brief address - as all presidents do - on the nature and importance of prayer. But what he did and said was neither brief nor uplifting. Over the course of 75 minutes, POTUS, whom late-nite talk show host Jimmy Kimmel referred to as “Scammy Faye Bakker” for the comedian’s opening monologue, rambled on about this and that, and even got in a shot at House Speaker Mike Johnson for “saying grace before eating lunch.”  IT’s diatribe was so singularly lacking in compassion or spirituality - let alone even a smidge of humanity - that Illinois Representative Jonathan Jackson (the son of the Reverend Jesse Jackson and godson of the late Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.), got up and, standing inches in front of our Beloved Pouter Pigeon, asked G-d to get POTUS to "do the right thing.” As much wisdom as there was in Rep. Jackson’s heartfelt plea, one wonders if G-d has given up on our Fondling Father.  (You can watch Rep. Jackson’s 3-minute speech on YouTube.)

    The Wisdom of Ben Zoma (In the original Hebrew)

Had I been at the National Prayer Breakfast and given the honor of saying a few words, they would have undoubtedly been the wisdom of a second century (CE) scholar named Shimeon ben Zoma.  Although he never carried the official title “rabbi,” Ben Zoma has long been lionized for his extraordinary erudition.  Without question, his best-known piece of wisdom is found in the rabbinic work known as Pirkei Avot (פִּרְקֵי אָבוֹת), translated variously as either Chapters of the Fathers or Ethics of the Fathers. Found in the Mishnaic tractate Nizikin (נְזִקִין - “Order of Damages”), it is the only one of the six tractates in the Mishnah with almost no laws, consisting instead of short statements of advice, ethics, and wisdom.  Ben Zoma’s wisdom, found in chapter 4, verse 1, asks - then answers - the following questions . . . thereby teaching one of the most precious and eternal lessons in human history:

1. Who is wise?  The one who learns from everyone, for as it is said: From all who have taught me have I gained understanding. (Psalms, 119:99).

2. Who is mighty? The one who subdues his/her [evil] inclination, for as it is said: “The one who is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and the one who rules their spirit than the one who conquers a city. (Proverbs, 16:32).

3. Who is rich?  The one who rejoices in his/her lot, for as it is said: “You shall enjoy the fruit of your labors, you shall be happy and you shall prosper.”  (Psalms, 128:2).  “You shall be happy” in this world, and “You shall prosper’ in the world to come.”  

4. Who is the one who is honored?  The one who honors his/her fellow human beings, for as it is said: “For I honor those who honor Me, but those who spurn Me shall be dishonored. (I Samuel, 2:30)

 And while we’re at it, a further bit of wisdom from the sage Hillel, again from the work The Ethics of the Fathers, this time chapter 1:14: Rabbi Hillel used to say: If I am not for me, who will be for me?  And when I am for myself alone, what am I?  And if not now, then when?

Tradition also ascribes to Hillel (ofttimes referred to as “Hillel the Elder”) the Jewish version of the “Golden Rule”:  That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow human.  That is the entire Torah.  The rest is commentary. Go learn. One notices that his version of this time-honored homily is the precise inverse of what most know to be the Golden Rule. Think about it: if one is a masochist - relishes being treated like a dog – that would give him/her the right to treat others in that fashion.  Perhaps, at root, that’s part of what’s wrong with IT . . .

Happily, the teachings of sages like Ben Zoma and Hillel (and many, many others found in The Ethics of the Fathers), have long been translated into English and just about every other language on the planet. The wisdom they teach is simple to comprehend, universal in scope and truly, truly inspirational.    

What we need now, more than ever, are men and women in positions of leadership who are both wise and inspired, instead of those who are merely “wise guys.”

 Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone    

#1,066: The Snow Shoveling Queen of Eau Claire, Wisc.

Kurt Franklin Stone The Snow Shoveling Queen of Eau Claire, Wisc.

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     The Snow Shoveling Queen of Eau Claire, WI

This coming Wednesday, February 4, 2026, marks precisely 21 years since I posted my first blog essay, entitled As Dad Used to Say. Back in 2005, as a handful of you will recall, the name of the blog was Beating the Bushes - a none-too-witty double-entendre. Looking back to that first post, political reality seems to have been one heck of a lot less perilous and a tad more urbane, than it is today. And while this observation is undoubtedly true, that first blog did end with a kvetch that seems more appropriate for 2026: Unless we, the loyal opposition, mount a serious unified campaign in both 2006 and 2008, America is going to become a second-rate nation.  It’s time to begin beating the Bushes . . . 

21 years ago, Beating the Bushes (not to be renamed The K.F. Stone Weekly until the election of Barack Obama in 2008)  started with less than a hundred readers, made up mostly of family and students at a couple of South Florida universities.  Over the years, I am humbled to report, its readership has grown, if not like Topsy, then most  pleasantly. Today, there are thousands of readers located on several continents. Back in 2005, the vast majority of readers agreed with just about anything I wrote.  And while that might have been somewhat OK for my ego, it didn’t make my work all that challenging.  With growth in readership came folks who took deeply partisan - not to mention occasionally brutal - umbrage at my opinions and point of view. And while I have yet to become completely inured to be called a "fool,” "idiot” or “f . . . ing libtard,” it does keep my juices flowing.

Among my favorite readers (of both this blog and its companion, Tales From Hollywood & Vine, which began life about a decade ago), there is a delightful woman up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin who, for the sake of privacy, I will simply refer to as Barbara.  Originally from an Albanian family up in snowy, snowy Buffalo, Barbara has lived in the same house in snowy, snowy Eau Claire for half-a-century.  Prior to retiring from gainful employment, Barbara specialized in TESOL: Teaching English to Students of Other Languages. She got her break as a writer by nationally publishing educational materials on the subject.  This led to her writing essays, reminiscences of growing up in Buffalo (“The City of Good Neighbors”), the daughter of recently-arrived immigrants from Albania, and poetry.  As an adult, she married, moved to Eau Claire, raised a family, became politically active (she’s a consistent, contentious progressive) and took to riding a bicycle all over town.  And then there was all the snow shoveling . . . 

As of 2024, Eau Claire, Wisconsin consists of 72,331 hearty souls. And hearty - not to mention both healthy and helpful - they must be. Sitting at the confluence of the Eau Claire and Chippewa rivers it is a really cold, snowy place. The average annual temperature is only 46 F; its average annual snowfall is more than 55.5”, reaching an average depth of more than a foot. Needless to say, for much of the year the city’s streets, parks and residential areas are encrusted in white.  In Barbara’s neighborhood, the city is responsible for clearing enough of the snow in the residential areas to make it possible for people to get their cars onto the roadway and get to work . . . or the grocery store.  What they are largely not responsible for are the sidewalks.  

                                   Brrrr!

Years ago, Barbara decided that she would take it upon herself to do that which the city could not (or would not) do: shovel the sidewalks around her house. Since she lives on a corner lot, that meant a lot of shoveling. And of course, that also meant shoveling nearly every day during Eau Claire’s long, long winter. Over the course of time, she started clearing the sidewalks further away from her property . . . and eventually across the street. Before too long, she became a fixture; an elderly woman with long hair, bundled up to the 9s, brandishing a shovel with an 18-inch blade, clearing the sidewalks from one side of the neighborhood to another.

And mind you, today, this shovel queen/cum/writer/poet/bicycling enthusiast par excellent is 85 years young! 

Not too long ago, the City of Eau Claire decided to accept nominations for the “Shoveler of the Year.”  Intrigued, Barbara entered the contest and, much to her amazement, won.  In her application for the contest, Barbara wrote: “I am the person who shovels this area and my lovely house, which I take pride in owning. My house is on a corner, so it has two streets to shovel, and I put de-icer on icy spots. Plus, I always shovel the corner curbs that have snow piled high from City plows, so pedestrians can cross at corner walkways.”   As the senior queen shoveler, she was interviewed by the local press and even appeared on the evening news.  In her weekly posting, Eau Claire City Manager Stephanie Hirsch noted: Barbara shared that she wants to be sure that people coming and going to the nearby hospital and elementary school can walk safely and comfortably, without having to go through slush. Barbara said that she grew up in Buffalo, New York (which gets even more snow!), and she treasured the neighborhood mindset of everybody shoveling. She said she learned growing up to take care of her property and neighborhood. You are amazing and inspiring!  Thank you Barbara!!

Of late, the nation  has learned the ways of neighborliness which are part and parcel of life in Minneapolis . . . like Eau Claire, a place of constant cold and snow.  In places with such climates - and I must include Traverse City, Michigan, the current home of Pete and Chasten Buttigieg and their children - it is really, truly the norm for people to come out and help one another.  Living with the potential - and reality - of extreme isolation during near sub-arctic winters has a tendency to bring out the best in people; to make sure their neighbors have both heat and food in the house . . . a ride to the doctor . . . the knowledge that they are not alone.  People like Barbara  . . . who go above and beyond . . . remind us that there are still good, feeling, tender folks out there who still give a damn about their neighbors.  At such a time as this, it is a delightful tonic.

But even more, my friend, fellow activist and constant reader Barbara shows that combining the proper attitude with energy (as well as the fortune of inheriting good genes), helps make that old saw about “Growing older is mandatory; growing up optional,” more real than one can imagine. 

I congratulate you, my friend on your victory, and wish you more years of writing and reading, of protesting and poeticizing, of biking and beaming.

Let me close with my favorite of your poems, Hope for Dummies, which sums up your incredible philosophy of life in a mere 10 lines:

Hope for Dummies

It would be easy to say
take two aspirin today
and when you wake up
it will all be okay. 

But, as everyone knows
that ain’t how it goes. 

Treasure this day.
Never give up.
Imagine what’s lost
if Hope slips away?

You go girl!  Keep on shoveling . . . 

Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone
  

#1,065: Abe Lincoln Weighs in on '47, Political Courage, and Congressional Republicans

(Introductory note: those lines which are both italicized and in bold are actual quotes from Abraham Lincoln)

Kurt Franklin Stone (With a brilliant Assist From Honest Abe) Abe Lincoln Weighs in on '47, Political Courage and Congressional Republicans

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Abe Lincoln here with a few thoughts on ‘47, the current POTUS, political courage, next month’s State of the Union Address, and a couple of jibes about this and that. Back in my day, the State of the Union wasn’t called an “address”; it was a message hand-delivered from the White House to the House Chamber, and then read aloud by the House Sergeant-at-Arms to both Houses of Congress.   If memory serves me well, up until my time as POTUS (March 4, 1861 - April 15, 1865), only Presidents Washington and John Adams (#s 1 and 2) had delivered the SOTU (my god, how you moderns love your acronyms!) in person. According to my heavenly neighbor, that great political historian, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, it was he who revived the custom of actually going on over to the House chamber and giving the address in person.  That was in 1913 . . . and ever since, it has been a rather gala happening. 

I thank my stars there were no such things as television or cable in my day; with my face, the camera would likely have shattered into a thousand pieces.  I guess I had what would eventually be referred to as “a face for radio” . . . long before it had been invented.  And by the way, when my friend Stephen Douglas once accused me of being “two-faced” during one of our debates, I quickly riposted: “If I had another face, do you really think I’d use this one?”  Ah well, true success comes to the one who is serious about the task without taking him- or herself seriously.

Up here in the great beyond, we just got word that ‘47 will be delivering his SOTU on Tuesday, February 24.  As soon as we learned this, a spiritual coterie of our historic group gathered together, wondering what he would have to say.  As originally mandated by the Constitution (Article II, Section 3), the President would, "from time to time, give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” According to my friend Thomas Jefferson (with whom I shared a glass of wine just the other day), this clause established the President's duty to report on the nation's condition, and propose legislation for the Congress to pass. 

After watching the ”Sage of Monticello” take a sip  of a 1787 Chateau Lafite Rothschild and delicately wipe the corners of his mouth, I asked him “Tom, do you really think that ‘47 will live up to the Constitution’s directive? he smiled, took a breath and softly said: “Not a chance under heaven. He will speak for hours on end, proclaim that the economy is better than at any time in our history; that America is back to being the most respected nation on earth, and let one and all know of a certainty that he has fulfilled every single promise made during his last Inaugural Address January 20th.”  How my friend didn’t break out into a derisive laugh is beyond me. 

Eyeing my wine goblet  (I fear that my taste runs more towards an occasional swig of Kentucky sipping whiskey) I added: T’wer I betting  man, I would make you a wager that he will get in a least 30 mentions of Joe Biden and how he stole the 2024 election, and at least a combined 45 minutes of the most obvious falsehoods and fabrications since Odysseus.  I mean, what Odysseus is to classical literature, ‘47 is to American political history.  And do remember, dear Mr. Jefferson that I, unlike you, messrs Adams, pere et fils, Madison, Monroe, Tyler, Polk, Buchanan, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur and T. Roosevelt,  I never got the chance  to read it in the original.  Or, as I once wrote about a politician of my own time, He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.

Here in the world beyond, many of us - presidents, as well as a bipartisan grouping of senators, representatives, political journalists and historians - gather together and discuss what’s happening in the world we once inhabited.  I freely admit that the overwhelming preponderance of us are neither impressed nor terribly optimistic. One of the things which really gets our goat is how much political silence greets political violence.  I mean my party, the G.O.P. the one which historians (whether correctly or not) claim I created as a voice for those who opposed slavery, is today made up largely of a group of mutes; men and women who whether out of fear, cowardice or downright dastardliness refuse to challenge their leader even under the most unfathomable of circumstances.  He wants to take over Greenland?  Few say anything.  How’s about a “Are you out of your mind?” from someone - anyone - in authority.  He unilaterally creates tariffs and then takes credit for putting ungodly sums back into the pockets of American taxpayers (an out-and-out lie) and not a peep is heard.  He pardons people lawfully convicted of crimes both larcenous and lethal, only to see them rearrested . . . and his partisans sit on their thumbs.  Well I’ll tell you.  Long, long before any of these folks’ great-grandparents were born I told anyone who would listen that To sin by silence when they should protest, makes cowards of men.  Then too, please, please get it into your thick skulls that their job can be precisely summed up in 21 words: Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.

Then there’s all those so-called “born-again” Christians who loudly and proudly proclaim that they follow the word of the Lord . . . you know things like “Feed the poor”, “clothe the naked” and “care for the sick” but instead use their Bible not as a guidepost for goodness, but rather as a billy club for the inflicting of pain. Yeah, I know, no one has ever figured out precisely what church I prayed in, though as a wee sprat, my father and mother raised me up a Baptist.  Although I likely spent more time with Jewish people than any other president in American history, my religious philosophy could be summed up thusly: When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad.  That’s my religion. I only wish the vast number of Republicans in Congress and the various states could live by the same 17 words.

 And so, from way up above, I encourage you, the men and women of the United States to pay close attention to what your current POTUS has to say; not just on February 24, but each and every day of the week . . . or for him, each and every hour on the hour. Do your best to separate fact from fiction, for as I have long been wont to say, I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.

And last, I beg you, remember these two salient bits of wisdom:

• “Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right,and part with him when he goes wrong.”  and:

• “Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”   

Copyright©2026, Kurt Franklin Stone (with a brilliant assist from Abraham Lincoln)

#1,064: Of Sonnets, Citizenship and Salad Bowls: Becoming an American is No Piece of Cake

Of Sonnets, Citizenship and Salad Bowls . . .

Kurt Franklin Stone

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                       “Lady Liberty”

For a country whose very greatness has long been owed to its many, many immigrants, it is incomprehensible - not to mention a bit oxymoronic - just how long America has been beset by deep-seated xenophobia. German Lutherans, Irish Catholics, Chinese, Eastern European Jews, Hispanics, Somalis; they’ve, all been, at one time or another, caught  in the political/cultural crosshairs.  Never has there been a country built by such a vast array of people from “the four corners of the earth” as it used to be put.  But it hasn’t been easy or without prejudice.  With each fresh wave entering upon our shores (or walking across our borders or landing at our airports), new conspiracies and what we might call “carcinogenic misconceptions” have come into play.  And yet,  despite the many social, cultural and economic disabilities which have awaited these newcomers, America continues to this day to be - mostly - “The land of the free and the home of the brave,” as somewhat ironically envisioned by the aristocratic Southern slave owning/attorney/reluctant patriot, Francis Scott Key,  whose best known poem, Defense of Fort McHenry, eventually provided the lyrics for our National Anthem.  

Without question, the greatest symbol of America vis-a-vis our long - though frequently tainted - history of welcoming immigrants from all nations, is the Statue of Liberty, AKA Lady Liberty. A gift to America from the people of the French Republic, it was meant to celebrate the enduring friendship between the two nations, commemorate the centennial of American independence (1876), and honor the shared ideals of liberty and democracy, particularly following the abolition of slavery. According to the original agreement, France would pay for the creation, construction and transportation of the 151 foot tall (46 meters) bronze statue; the people of the United States would cover the cost for its base. (n.b.: with its base, Lady Liberty’s total height was/is 395 feet [93 meters]).

                            Emma  Lazarus 

The classic Petrarchan sonnet at the statue’s base, The New Colossus, was written by the 33-year-old Emma Lazarus, the fourth of seven children, born in New York City to a wealthy Sephardic Jewish family of Portuguese descent. Lazarus (1849-1887), the daughter of a highly successful sugar merchant, received a first-class education and early on, decided to become a writer. Her father, Moses, was one of her biggest supporters and he decided to publish her first book of poems (called Poems and Translations: Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Sixteen for “private circulation.” Shortly after its publication, Lazarus decided to send a copy of this, her first book, to the famous writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson quickly became her mentor and when she published her next book of poetry in 1871, she dedicated the main poem, “To My Friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson.” This book, entitled Admetus and Other Poems, received critical acclaim.  Widely traveled and highly engaged in civic committees dealing with anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the treatment of Jews in Europe, Lazarus wrote "The New Colossus" for a fundraising effort to secure the pedestal upon which to mount the Statue of Liberty. The poem was not physically attached to the Statue of Liberty until 1903, over a dozen years after Lazarus's death in 1887.

During the twentieth century, however, people embraced Lazarus's words and the meanings they suggested for the Statue of Liberty and the United States.  Within its 14 lines, she expressed the open-handed, warm-hearted attitude she believed would always make America singular among the nations; a land desiring nothing more than  to  

Send me, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . .
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, and to
send these, the homeless, Tempest-tossed to me.    

Lazarus’ words represent the hope and the spirit of both the America of 1883 and that of the future.  Emma was what might be termed a “professional idealist”; one who saw the good in that long road ahead which would provide a constant stream of new, ambitious, hard-working Americans.  What she did not see (or perhaps refused to contemplate) was just how mangled and rutted that road would be.  Take as but one atrocious example, the Johnson Act of 1924 (also called "The Johnson-Reed” or “National Origins” Act).  In that fateful year (1924), President Calvin Coolidge signed the act which limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. It completely excluded immigrants from Asia.  This act effectively cut immigration from Eastern Europe to next to nothing; in 1890, there weren’t nearly as many people emigrating from places like Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, etc. as in 1900.  Without having to say so, the bill was aimed against Jewish immigrants. Publicly, supporters of the bill (which wasn’t changed until 1952), claimed that its chief intent was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.”  

Although the word “homogeneity” is rarely - if ever - used in discussing immigration today, it is still a lurking shadow. Just this past Wednesday, the State Department announced that it would “pause immigrant visa processing from 75 countries whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates.” The countries affected include Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Among other measures taken to slash legal immigration in 2025, the Trump administration imposed travel restrictions or entry bans on people from 39 countries. Plot all of these countries on a map—newly targeted and old—and you will see that most of Africa, large swaths of Asia, and much of the Muslim world are now unwelcome. Western Europe is unscathed.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose  (that’s  French for “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”)

Today, there is so much rationalizing about keeping “them” out of America because they are mostly “escapees from prisons and insane asylums” (factually untrue); “get free health insurance and free public education” (first one false, second one true); “don’t pay taxes” (WRONG); and “won’t learn English.”  This last one is particularly perplexing.  I know from being married to an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher that the government-funded program (both state and federal) under whose aegis she taught for many, many years, was totally defunded by the very people who now hold a lack of English literacy against her students. 

My wife, Annie, is an immigrant.  She and her mom and dad (who was a Holocaust survivor from  a small town in Poland) moved to the United States from Argentina in 1969, immediately went to work,  paid taxes, learned English, went to class several times a week, studied hard, passed their U.S. History and Civics Test, and became proud citizens.  It was no piece of cake . . . ah, but the pride of becoming an American citizen was - and still is - palpable.  (Ironically, yesterday was the 45th anniversary of Annie’s raising her hand and becoming a citizen).  On my side of the family, things were quite different: our parents, grandparents (save 1) and great-grandparents were all native-born Americans living in both the midwest (Minnesota and Missouri) and South (Maryland and Virginia).  There were no tests to take; being citizens was their birthright.

It’s actually quite difficult to become a naturalized American citizen.  In order to get just a taste of what it takes, I would like to suggest that you go to look over  and try taking  the American citizenship test required of all those seeking citizenship.  It has 128 questions.  Please go to the site, bone up and take the test.  And if you are of a mind, please let me know how you did. 

It never ceases to amaze me how little many “real Americans” know about American history, our system of government, or our founding documents. Many of these unlettered folk make it perfectly clear that the solution to any and all of America’s problems is deportation . . . of “illegals,” of those who are “merely” residents, and even, in some cases, of those who are citizens.  What they wish, more than anything is that America go back to being a “melting pot.”  Ah! There’s a term with an interesting history and a meaning rarely understood.

Originally, The Melting Pot was a play by the Anglo-Jewish playwright/novelist Israel Zangwill . . . often called the “Jewish Charles Dickens.” He was known for his poems, short stories, novels, plays, and the first “closed-room” murder mystery, The Big Bow Mystery. The Melting Post, ostensibly a love story between a Jew and a Gentile, was really propaganda for the concept of the United States as a great crucible in which newcomers shed their old-world ways and emerged as ‘shiny, brand-new Americans,’ as one reviewer put it.  Both Zangwill and his play were so well-respected, that at its October 5, 1908 opening-night performance at Washington, D.C’s Capitol Theatre, Zangwill’s escort was none other than President Theodore Roosevelt. The play is still being staged in 2026, nearly 120 years later.

But there is a problem with the very concept of America as a “melting pot.” When different metals are put into a pot then melted down, each metal loses its identity; it becomes a completely new amalgamation. In metallurgy, this is no problem; when it comes to sociology, anthropology or the human sciences, it can carry more than a whiff of eugenics . . . a form of scientific racism.  Simply stated a human “melting pot” creates a new entity wherein the various ingredients (in this case people from diverse cultures, histories, religions and language groups) become something which “civic scientists” think is best.  To listen to many these days, the ideal (or “real”) American is white English-speaking Christian. That is what “The Great Replacement Theory” (a conspiracy theory if ever there was one) is all about.  To my way of thinking, the better goal is the creation of a “salad bowl” - a single entity (a salad) - wherein the various constituent ingredients going into the makeup of that single entity are still easily identifiable . . . the lettuce, the cucumbers, the endive, radishes, tomatoes, nuts, cheeses, etc.  America is best when its citizens and residents maintain a hyphenated identity.

Immigration has long helped make the United States the unique treasure it is.  Many immigrants to our shores have begun their lives here working at jobs few wanted.  With time, strong work ethics, and the desire to get ahead, they moved up the ladder, raising their families, paying their taxes and becoming citizens.  Statistics have shown that - in contradistinction to what narrow-minded bigots claim -  immigrants (whether documented or not) have a lower legal offending rate than U.S. born citizens. They have slightly higher birth rates than U.S.-born citizens which, at a time when the TFR (total fertility rate) is dropping, can be a positive good.  Those who have made the danger of illegal immigration THE issue in political campaigns (think ICE and its many crimes against human beings) are not doing what is best for the American polity, society, economy or morality.       

As a Mexican-American friend of mine - a man who started life as a campesino picking lettuce in the Salinas Valley, got a college education, became a civil engineer and eventually ran for the United States Congress - said to me on more than one occasion: Never, ever forget hijo . . . Columbus didn't discover America; the native Americans discovered Columbus.  That’s what makes this country great!   

PLEASE, PLEASE: DO GIVE THE American citizenship test A LOOK-SEE AND, IF YOU WISH, SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH ME !

Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone
       
   
 

#1,063: While You Were Being Misinformed . . .

Kurt Franklin Stone While You Were eing Misinformed

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Whether it be the god’s honest truth or nothing more than conspiratorial fiction, there are a lot of folks out there who believe that much of the choloshes drek (Yiddish for, roughly, disgusting crapola) that’s being broadcast in the country - e.g. headline-capturing events going on in Venezuela, Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon and the Trump Kennedy Centre, murder victims being portrayed as the responsible party in their deaths- have a lot to do with keeping the ongoing Epstein Files out of the news. To update and to modernize a bon mot from our old friend Mark Twain: “If you don’t read, watch or listen to the news, you’re uninformed.  If you do manage to read, watch or listen to it, you’re likely misinformed.” 

Some of these journalistic diversions will grab our attention for weeks; some for months; some for only G-d knows how long. Take such current stories and situations as Venezuela+Maduro+Oil; Greenland+Denmark+NATO; and ICE/Renee Nicolle Good/bald-faced lies; they are all on our minds.  The last of these involve ICE - the regime’s version of Die Geheime Staatspolizei (Eghad!: does this mean that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is the second coming of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler or that Deputy White House Chief of Staff [and Its ideologue-in-chief] Stephen Miller is the rebirth of Joseph Goebbels? As much as I revile both Sec. Noem and Mr. Miller [who is referred to by his colleagues in the White House as “The Prime Minister’] I pray the answer is “no.”)   

Am I crazy, or have the “Epstein Files” taken far more than a back seat to just about everything else in the first two weeks of 2026?  If so, I’m sure no one at the White House is complaining; this is the last thing they want on their plate as people’s attention begins turning towards election season.  I guess, in their minds, the less press prominence the entire Jeffrey Epstein/Donald Trump/pedophilic sex ring/public figure imbroglio receives, the better it will be for their beloved Pouter Pigeon.  (n.b. For those who may have forgotten, the term “Pouter Pigeon” it was a nasty epithet used nearly a century ago to describe Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.  I wrote about the nickname and the man back in August 2025.  See  my essay Pouter Pigeon: The Art of the Kneel.)

But it’s not just Epstein et al that is missing from the news; so too are some stories and happenings that could actually bring a glimmer of hope to an otherwise disconsolate, disconnected world. Take as an example, a stunning, unanimous  decision handed down just last week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. This court, which hears appeals from the U.S. District Courts for the Districts of Maine, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island, ruled that the administration could not make drastic cuts to the federal funding supporting much of the country’s medical and scientific research.  Their unanimous decision reaffirmed a lower court’s ruling from early 2025.  In last week’s decision, the three-judge panel found that . . . one of the Trump administration’s earliest attempts to kneecap universities, through proposed reductions to grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH),  was unlawful.  As noted in the New York Times, “The [original] proposal brought an outpouring of opposition from hundreds of universities and hospitals, which warned that the cuts could cost them billions,` and make it impossible to continue studies in areas like cancer, genetics, gerontology, and infectious diseases”

Without getting too technical, the sharp (inhumane) cuts took aim at the pre-negotiated rates in thousands of federal grants that set aside money for overhead costs in medical research.  Huh?  Here’s  how it’s supposed to work: Whenever and wherever “academic” (as opposed to “corporate”) medical research is undertaken, there must be funding provided for such things as facility upkeep, laboratory technology, and support staff.  Ever wonder who takes care of the animals who are used in early-stage research?  Every research facility most house (or have a working relationship with) a vivarium (that’s Latin for ‘place of life’) which feeds, houses and tends to the health of all the various animals (dogs, cats, birds, primates, etc.) who will partake in research. Simply stated, you do not want to use a sick animal in research; it can easily invalidate the results. What the administration has, as early as 2017, sought to do, is to cap these overhead reimbursement costs at no more than 10% of the total grant. The first time this proposal hit the House floor, it was summarily rejected.  In the main, these overhead costs have classically come in at more than 25%.  In other words, what the regime was seeking to do was essentially put a gigantic roadblock into medical research. Since this ruling came down just 24 hours after the abduction of Venezuelan President Maduro and Felon47’s announcement about taking over the country’s oil industry, it only ran, as Grandpa Doc would have had it, “On page 47, just beneath the truss ads.”   

Last week’s decision upheld an earlier decision from this past April made in the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, which permanently barred the regime from capping the funding referred to above, and the proposal remained stalled throughout the remainder of 2025.  Of course, what the Republican right hopes and prays is that when - and if - it reaches the top of the judicial food chain, that SCOTUS will overturn this past week’s decision, thus lessening the amount of funding for future medical research.  Then too, there is the possibility that SCOTIS will issue a Stare decisis (Latin for “to stand by things decided”) decision, thus allowing the lower court’s ruling to stand. That would be the best of all possible worlds, however, one never knows.  Afterall, the chances are that at least a couple of members of the nation’s highest court - as well as many, many members of Congress - have relatives who have suffered from oncological, neurological or gerontological issues that are currently being researched.  If they have more empathy and compassion for their ailing family members than loyalty to their boss, perhaps they will do the right thing.  

Speaking of congress, there’s another story that could give a glimmer of hope . . . but is off the front pages due to stories about ICE, Venezuelan oil, Greenland and the possibility of the regime attacking protest-beset Iran. What story? Well, simply stated, a move by an increasingly angry Congress to undo thousands of cuts to federal science programs that IT called for last year when planning the government’s current budget. Why would Republicans in Congress even consider going against their  Führer . . . I mean leader? Because members of both the House and Senate - both Democratic and Republican - are getting sick and tired of the executive branch cutting not just federal spending on medical research, but cutting out Congress in toto from asserting its constitutionally-mandated job of dealing with all things fiscal and budgetary.

Am I just daydreaming?  Well, for those of us who still read, watch and/or listen to professional sources of news, we know that just the other day, the Senate Appropriations Committee (Chaired by the frequently-reliable Susan Collins [R-ME), released a bipartisan package of bills that largely scraps their beloved Pouter Pigeon’s planned cuts . . . especially in the area of medical research.  (It should be noted that Senator Collins, who has long had her own personal medical issues, has long shown great interest in healthcare issues, particularly those dealing with Alzheimer’s Disease (she is a founder and co-chair of the Congressional Task Force on A.Z.) , Diabetes (she chairs the Senate Diabetes Caucus) and Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases. 

Seemingly overnight, Congress is racing to undo thousands of cuts to federal science programs that Felon#47 called for last year when planning the 2026 budget.  As originally conceived, the White House budget sought an overall cut in scientific and medical research funding to $154 billion from $198 billion - a plunge of 22%.  This would have been the largest reduction in federal spending on science since WWII, when Washington and the unraveling of nature’s secrets began their partnership.  But just this week, Senator Collins and her committee released a bipartisan package of bills that largely scraps much of ITs planned cuts.  According to analysts in the know, if the proposed budgets hold up in the weeks ahead, Congress will wind up setting aside roughly $188 billion for federal research - a drop of only 4% from the most recent annual budget. Some analysts actually foresee a possible rise of more than 2% in the budget category known as basic research, generally described as “. . . the blue-sky variety that produces fundamental strides and spinoffs in fields such as health care and A.I.”

This is, of course, potentially great news . . . a Congress working in a bipartisan fashion for the good of the public. Why it is happening seems obvious . . . at least to me. In a word: midterm elections. When it comes to medical and scientific research, few people are untouched; most of us know someone - be it a family member, friend, neighbor or worker - who could benefit from the miracles being performed in the world of clinical and/or scientific research. I know that personally, as one who has been closely allied with medical research and medical ethics for more than 3 decades, the idea of taking a meat cleaver to research gives me a lethal dose of apoplexy.

So why aren’t we seeing, hearing or reading good news when it comes our way? Why are there so few who are unaware that both parties in Congress are working together to keep funding dollars available even while doing their best to renew subsidies for the Affordable Care Act?  I really do not have an answer.  What I do know is that come November, we need a vast turnover in both the House and Senate.  We need to ensure that we get closer and closer to a veto-proof Congress and that when the next Supreme Court Justice decides to hang up the gavel, that he/she will not be replaced by a troglodyte.  Goodness knows, our appeals courts are already chock full of Federalist Society philistines.

If there is ever to be better news out there, it will be because we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off and became far more engaged in civic accountability. 

 Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,062: Iraq 2.0 or, Mark Twain Was Right!

Kurt Franklin Stone #1,062: Iraq 2.0 ir, Mark Twain Was Right!

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                         Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Mark Twain, the greatest and, for my money, wittiest of all American authors, carried more satirical barbs in his literary quiver than just about anyone who ever lived. Among his best and most spot-on bon mots were:

• All generalizations are false, including this one.

• A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

• Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

• Reader: suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

• The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

• If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

• It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress. And one of my very favorites:

• History doesn’t repeat itself . . . but it rhymes.

One result of early Saturday morning’s successful commando-style abduction and removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Máduro and his wife Cilia Flores (called Operation “Absolute Resolve”) is that this last Twain quote has suddenly taken on an eeriness that can best be summed up by yet another great writer . . . Marcel Proust, whose 7-volume novel À la recherché du temps perdu (generally translated Remembrances of Things Past  or literally, In Search of Lost Time) says it all.  Between Twain and Proust, we have both an explanation and a warning.  Indeed, there are many things about yesterday’s snatch-and-grab of the Máduros and American military actions against Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya a generation or two ago that have a haunting similarity . . . call it Twain’s notion about history “rhyming.”     

With Iraq, the proximate cause of our military action was Saddam's IEDs;  with Venezuela, it was originally saving Americans from Maduro’s “narco-terrorism.” From all accounts, planning for the removal of Máduro began as early as August of last year.  Without question this highly dangerous mission was carried out with both military deft and clandestine precision; one White House spokesperson likened its pinpoint exactitude to something Israeli commandos might carry out.  During its planning stages White House officials told congressional leaders that their objective in Venezuela was not regime change, but rather the knocking out of drug trafficking.  (n.b. It should be noted that Venezuela is hardly as big a player in the international drug trade [both cocaine and fentanyl] as many other in South American and Latin American countries.)

 At this point in the essay, it is well to bring up yet another quote from Mark Twain that he may well have written while looking in a crystal ball and viewing a picture IT: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Throughout his political career, our beloved Pouter Pigeon has claimed to be an isolationist; a man who firmly believes that “America First!” means precisely that. And up until beginning his second go-round as POTUS he has shown little if any interest in promoting democracy abroad.  But ever since last Saturday’s military seizure of Venezuelan President Máduro - a raid undertaken without Congressional approval - IT and members of his administration have been issuing warnings to several other countries and territories - including Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Iran and Greenland. (In response to his bundling Greenland into the mix, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that the United States had “no right to annex” Greenland and that the island was not for sale.)

 So much for keeping one’s mouth shut . . .

Then there is the situation with Venezuela’s neighbor to the West, Colombia. Though Colombia is a major non-NATO ally of the U.S., IT has repeatedly threatened its President, Gustavo Petro, alleging without evidence that he (Petro) has ties to the drug trade. During an informal chat with the press aboard Air Force One, POTUS issued a stark warning to Petro and Colombia that underscored his administration's increasingly aggressive posture toward leftist governments across Latin America. “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall,’ he said.  “I don’t know if they’re going to hold out.” 

Speaking of Colombia, our beloved Pouter Pigeon said: “Colombia is very sick too — run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and sending it to the United States, and he’s not going to be doing it very long.” In response, President Petro – a former guerrilla himself – said “I swore not to touch a weapon ever since the 1989 Peace Pact, but for the homeland, I will take up arms again. He also stressed that his armed forces have been tasked with defending him and all Colombian cities from foreign forces, and argued that his government was leading the charge against the illegal drug trade in his country, telling Felon#47 an attack on him would only embolden the cartels.     

Yesterday, Felon#47  said: “We are in the business of having countries around us that are viable and successful and where the oil is allowed to freely come out . . . American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned again.”  And here I thought that this had already been addressed by the Monroe Doctrine back in 1823.  (It should be noted that 47 renamed it the “Donroe Doctrine after the Venezuelan raid.  How’s that for chutzpah?  Oh well, at least he was painfully truthful about oil . . .)

 Venezuela has the largest untapped crude oil reserve on the planet: an estimated 300 billion barrels . . . of which they extracted a mere 960k barrels/day (as opposed to the U.S., which has a proven reserve of 45 billion bbl and produces a planet-leading 20.1m barrels/day. One of the reasons why Venezuela produces so little oil on a daily or even yearly (50m bbl) is that its oil fields and pumping stations - which are secured by both the Venezuelan and Cuban military - are in a physically frightful state.  (It should be noted that the majority of its oil exports go to China.  It’s an obvious trade-off: China needs the oil and Venezuela needs the cash).  

 In order for IT’s promise to make the American takeover of Venezuela pay for itself, he will need to convince American oil companies to invest literally tens of billions of dollars in its restoration. In order for them to accede to their leader’s command, he will need to make some gigantic promises about how much they and their stockholders will make, as well as how many billions of dollars the U.S. Treasury is willing to spend in order to protect the melioration of the industry itself. And mind you, this is no overnight project; it will take years. Winning a war (or snatching a dictator) is the relatively easy part; what happens beginning the next day - that’s the hard part. It is the difference between going home and attending victory parades and settling in for a forever war . . . like Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan, to name but three.

Precisely who is going to be “running” Venezuela is anyone’s guess.  Secretary of State (and current acting National Security Advisor) Marco Rubio simply has neither the time nor the talent to add “Viceroy of Venezuela” to his c.v.  Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s obvious problem is his glaring incompetence. Then too, there simply aren’t enough qualified, capable economists, diplomatists or internationalists left at the State Department to fill the literally hundreds upon hundreds of posts required to “run” a foreign government . . . especially on behalf of an occupying power that, try as it might, cannot get its own house in order. 

Last but certainly not least, there are the issues of  Congress, Constitutional legality, America’s standing within the community of nations, international repercussions (e.g. precisely how will the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ affect  Xi’s vision of power in Asia), the Epstein Files and . . . dare we say . . . the midterm elections, which are a mere 241 days away.  If the Democrats will only do their job (a big “if”) and continue asking voters the question “What does the Regime’s taking over Venezuela accomplish for  you in terms of bringing down the price of food, health insurance, rent, paying your bills?”) perhaps they will be able to convince enough voters that enuf’s enuf!   

For when you cut through all the basura y tonterias (look it up), politics works best when it speaks of to the people through pocketbook issues.  

These are some of the most challenging times we have ever experienced as a nation. Indeed, it is getting harder and harder to be a patriot. How is this to be overcome? For one possible answer, we conclude where we began: with the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain:

PATRIOTISM IS SUPPORTING YOUR COUNTRY ALL THE TIME, AND YOUR GOVERNMENT WHEN IT DESERVES IT . . .

Copyright©2025 Kurt Franklin Stone

1,061: Some New Year's Resolutions for 2026

#1,061: Some New Year's Resolutions for 2026

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                 Janus, the Two-Faced God

As I begin writing this essay, we are about 60 hours away from the secular New Year, 2026. That means we should be well on the road to figuring out precisely what our resolutions for the next 12 months should be. According to people one whole hell of a lot smarter and better educated than I, this custom/ritual goes back at least 4,000 years . . . to the time of the ancient Babylonians. From what I’ve read, rather than making self-reflecting resolutions, this ancient folk would make promises to their gods.  It was part of an immense twelve-day festival known as Akitu that took place not in January but in mid-March when crops were planted.  Promises made to the gods included paying their debts and returning objects they had borrowed in hopes that the gods would bestow a favor on them for the upcoming year.

Similarly, ancient Rome established January 1 as the beginning of the new year in 46 B.CE., naming the new year after Janus, a two-faced god whose spirit inhabited doorways and arches.  This was symbolic because the Romans believed that Janus looked backwards into the previous year, and ahead into the future, therefore the Romans offered sacrifices to the god and made promises of good behavior for the coming year.

               New Year’s Resolutions, 2016

Nowadays, of course, there is a greater tendency for those who do make New Year’s resolutions, to keep them to the self-reflecting sort . . . more often then not dealing with things like diet and exercise, the maximization of good deeds and the minimization of things that are harmful or deleterious to one’s bodily or spiritual well-being. For 2026, I myself have decided to take on a new type of resolution . . . a negative one.  To wit, in 2026, I am resolving to not forget a dozen or more acts of delusion, mendacity, madness and/or imbecility on the part of the 47th POTUS, his staff and the vast majority of Congressional Republicans who, despite all the delusion, mendacity, madness and/or imbecility,  have managed to sit on their hands and keep their mouths shut.    

Let’s face facts: within mere minutes of taking his second oath of office on January 20, 2025, Felon#47 began acting like an unhinged autocrat ruling over a vast dictatorship, rather than the democratically-elected leader of the planet’s most praiseworthy representative democracy.  Let’s remember a dozen or so of his worst (and downright loopiest) acts . . . acts which we resolve not to forget in the New Year 2026.  What follows is not ranked from really bad to absolutely the worst of the worst, but rather, somewhat chronologically:

February: 5 weeks and 3 days into his second term, POTUS invites Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelenskyy (Criminy!! So many ways to transliterate  Володимир Зеленський) and members of his presidential staff to pay a lunch call at the White House.  While there, Pouter Pigeon and V.P Vance begin castigating Zelensky for not demonstrating enough gratitude for American support. It turns into a shouting match, with Trump and Vice President JD Vance accusing the besieged Ukrainian leader of standing in the way of a peace agreement with Russia. Later, Zelenskyy and his staff were essentially kicked out of the White House (even before lunch was served) and departed with grim looks on their faces.  (n.b. By April, Felon47 was accusing Zelenskyy of being the one who initiated the war against Russia, not vice versa!)

March: In a new version of “March Madness,” Pete Hegseth, the Sec. Def (more on him below) added new meaning to the term “ineptitude” by accidentally (?) including Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief, in a “signal chain” on Goldberg’s I-phone while sitting in his car in the parking lot of the local Safeway. The chain, which involved a highly classified meeting discussing attack plans against the Houthi in Yemen, included then-National Security Advisor (and current U.N. Ambassador) Michael Waltz and the aforementioned Hegseth, who wound up putting all sorts of highly sensitive, classified information on that chain. This episode represented one of the biggest, most painful black eyes of Pouter Pigeon's second term; there is simply no reason why such information should have been included on a signal chat . . . especially one including a devout anti-Trump journalist like Goldberg. “Signal Gate” (the shorthand name for this debacle) will be debated in political circles for at least the next half-century. 

April: Precisely 24 hours after April Fools Day, IT announces a sweeping set of tariffs upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war.  Henceforth, he announces, in the future, every April 2nd will be known as “Liberation Day.” That which he and his economic advisors have in mind look to be the most sweeping tariff hikes since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act . . . the 1930 law best remembered for triggering a global trade war and deepening the Great Depression. As a predictable response to the newly-added tariffs on imported products, consumer prices continued to rise. Trump clung to his familiar lie that these tariffs are paid by foreign countries, not by people or companies in the US. (The tariff payments to the government are made by US importers, not foreign exporters, and importers often pass on some or all of the added costs to the final consumer.) The president essentially fact-checked himself this past November, when he told an interviewer that he would lower Americans’ coffee prices by lowering his tariffs on imported coffee. 

May: On the 21 of the month, the U.S. government announced the United States had officially accepted as an “unconditional gift,” a $400 million Boeing 747-8 luxury jetliner from the Qatari government, and that the Air Force was being tasked with upgrading and retrofitting it in order for it to be used first, as a new Air Force One for POTUS, and then to be moved to his future presidential library . . . presumably in South Florida.   

December: While speaking in Mount Pocono, PA on the 11th of the month, Felon47 told the assembled crowd of MAGAites that he believed the term “affordability” was a hoax perpetrated by  Democrats.  Nonetheless, 16 days later he proclaimed that the 2026 midterm elections would revolve around "pricing.” During an interview with Politico on the day after Christmas, the Republican president expressed confidence that midterm voters — who will decide which party controls Congress next year — will embrace his economic agenda.  “I think it’s going to be about the success of our country. It’ll be about pricing,” POTUS told the outlet. “Because, you know, they gave us high pricing, and we’re bringing it down. Energy’s way down. Gasoline is way down.”

August and September: Throughout these 2 months, IT declared at event after event that the “most favored nation” policy he unveiled in an executive order in May would serve to reduce the price of prescription drugs by 1,000% or more. Depending on the date and venue, his numbers would change; at various times the price reduction might be “1,400 to 1,500%, or, in a single day, “I’m going to be reducing drug prices by 1,000% – by 900, 600, 500, 1,200.%” Needless to say, this is not how math works. Even if his policy does produce a big decline in drug prices – and that is very much uncertain given that it relies on cooperation by reluctant pharmaceutical companies or hypothetical future regulatory action – he can’t actually cut the price of any product by 500% to 1,500%. If he magically got the companies to reduce the prices of all of their drugs to $0, that would be a 100% cut. Cutting drug prices by more than 100% would mean that Americans would get paid to acquire their medications rather than paying for them. I for one know of no drug company in the world that would give a person $400 to buy a drug that they are now pricing at $100.

July: On the second of the month the administration announced that in order to save money,  U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was being defunded and thus closing its doors.  For the past 20 years, the USA has been the leading government donor to humanitarian response plans, development aid, and multilateral development banks. USAID was established in 1961 as an independent agency in the executive branch under the direct authority and guidance of the Secretary of State. The agency's aim was twofold: the first, to provide humanitarian assistance, and the second to also assist and support economic growth and self-resilience of developing countries, especially those deemed strategic for the US economic and geopolitical impact In each mission and country where USAID had been operational, the agency engaged with diverse partners, such as central governments, private entities, local organizations, and international and national non-governmental organizations operating mostly bilaterally. Over the years, and despite a relatively modest effort in relation to its national wealth, the USA's importance as a donor for development and humanitarian aid overshadowed any other donor.  From 2001-2021 alone, it is estimated that USAID saved more than 92 million lives worldwide. According to a report by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande, the White House decision to fiscally dismember USAID, has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition. To my way of thinking, this story, in the long run, could likely turn out to be the gravest, most inhumane act that the IT Administration will be remembered for . . . 

 July: On the last day of the month, POTUS announced that he would be building a 90,000+ sq. ft. ballroom . . . a single room twice as large as the entire White House. In his initial announcement, he promised that nothing would happen to the East Wing; it was totally destroyed in less than a week. The room, which could easily seat more than, 3,000 people, would be paid for by ITs wealthy friends . . . the very billionaires who would benefit so greatly from his “Big Beautiful Budget Bill.” The cost has been skyrocketing; as of today, the estimated price is above $400 million.  (n.b. On December 12 fr this year, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which was chartered by Congress in 1949 to facilitate public participation in the preservation of sites of national significance, filed suit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against various individuals and agencies of the government asserting that ongoing construction of the White House ballroom is unlawful and asking the court to halt further construction activities until the government complies with the law by going through the legally mandated review processes, including a public comment period.)
 

Since Day One: As like many candidates for the White House, Felon#47 repeatedly spoke about what he would do “on day one.” How was anyone to know that his first act would be to pardon all those felons languishing in federal prison as a result of their being convicted of crimes on January 6, 2021? Pardoning felons would quickly turn out to be one of his favorite activities . . . including: On May 28, Trump pardoned reality TV stars Todd Chrisley and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted in 2022 of several counts of fraud and tax evasion involving more than $30 million. Todd was serving a 12-year sentence, and Julie was serving seven years; In mid-October, Trump commuted the prison sentence of Grpthr Santos, the disgraced New York Republican who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft last year. Days later the president handed a full and unconditional pardon to Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of Binance, who pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. Binance had ties to the Trump family's cryptocurrency business, but Trump said in an interview with 60 Minutes that he does not know who Zhao was. In early December, IT formally pardoned former President Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras, fulfilling a vow he had made days before to free an ex-president who was at the center of what the authorities had characterized as “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.” In issuing the pardon, IT pledged to issue the pardon after Mr. Hernández sent him a four-page letter casting himself as a victim of “political persecution” by the Biden-Harris administration and comparing his fate to that of the American president.  Do remember, this pardon occurred at the same time the administration was carrying out a series of naval attacks against Venezuelan boats under the assumption that they were transporting drugs to the United States under the orders of President Nicholas Maduro. . . 

September-December: Speaking of Maduro and Venezuela, there are the extraordinary efforts by the administration’s least competent equerry, Sec. of War Pete Hegseth, to carry out attacks by both sea and now air, all the while convincing Americans that it is for the purpose of keeping Fentanyl out of the hands of American youth.  The secretary has even gone so far as to claim that each downed power boat saves the lives of no less than 25,000 potential Fentanyl users . . . perhaps even higher. It is highly likely that when it reconvenes, Congress will look into: A), whether or not firing at the Venezuelan boats constitutes an act of war which requires Congressional approval, and B), whether or not the real issue is Venezuelan oil and minerals.

January 21- December 31, 2025: The Epstein Files. Need we say more? This is a scandal which has already bypassed both “Teapot Dome” and “Watergate” in terms of smarm. Indeed, as the years go by, this will likely be known as “The scandal that destroyed both a presidency and a political party . . .”

Dec. 30, 2025: The “Trump-Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,” created by an act of Congress in 1964 in memory of the slain John F. Kennedy, has just announced that due to circumstances beyond their control, it was cancelling its annual "New Year’s Eve concert . . . and likely suing The Cookers, a much revered jazz ensemble scheduled to headline the evening’s festivities. Ever since IT fired the Kennedy Center board and replaced them with a roster of billionaire allies . . . and added his name to its masthead . . . attendance has fallen precipitously. In matter of fact, no events are currently scheduled until the end of March, 2026. Just the other day, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), one of the few remaining non-Trump selected Kennedy Center Board Members, joined by a large group of her Democratic colleagues, filed a suit in federal court arguing that only Congress can change its name. a controversy sparking legal action from both sides

There are certainly other issues, events and political sins that we should resolve ourselves to never forget . . . such as ICE raids in largely “Blue” states and metropolitan areas; the shipping off - frequently without benefit of any legal recourse - of immigrants to CECOT (El Salvador’s brutal mega prison . . . Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo); and Felon47’s transmogrification of both himself and his government into a rebirth of France’s Louis XIV , Le Roi Soleil (“The Sun King”), who gilt everything he saw or touched in his expansive realm, . . . sort of like the Oval Office . . . except his gold wasn’t purchased at Home Depot!.

During this coming New Year, I urge one and all to resolve to use the memory of what in 2025 as the fuel for what can and should be in 2026.  About the only positive thing I can say about POTUS is that he is distinctly mortal . . . and that his mortality is making itself increasingly evident with each passing day. 

There are precisely 307 days to go until America votes . . .  

I urge us all to keep the two-faced Janus in mind; one face to the past and one to the future. . . and remember the words of Dante (Paradiso, Cante III): "E 'n la sua volontade e nostra pace" . . . “And in His will is our peace.”

Copyright©2025 Kurt Franklin Stone

#1,060: Gross Incompetence, Breaking International Law, Retribution, a Christmas Without 37 Pencils, and a Mandated Change of Font: THAT’S MAGA

Kurt Franklin Stone #1,060 Gross Incompetence . . . and Mandated Change of Font That's MAGA!

                Calibiri BAD, Times New Roman GOOD

History teaches that America’s 29th (and until recently, absolutely worst) POTUS, Warren Gamliel Harding, had one of the worst, least competent, most corrupt and avaricious Cabinets of all time. The reason? Unwilling to break up his “Ohio Gang” - his poker buddies - Warren simply brought them to the Nation’s Capitol. Among those he appointed were Harry M. Daugherty (his A.G. and years later fictionalized by actor Christopher McDonald in Boardwalk Empire), Albert Fall (Sec. of the Interior), Charles Forbes (Head of the Veteran’s Bureau) and Jess Smith (Daugherty’s chief aide, who would commit suicide at age 50 after it was discovered that he was running a bootleg and graft operation out of “The Little Green House on K. Street.”

All the fun and fermentation of the Harding era came to a crashing conclusion on August 2, 1923 when the 57-year old president suddenly dropped dead of what future POTUS Herbert Hoover officially stated was “cerebral apoplexy.”  Don’t believe it: to this day there are those who believe that his wife Florence (nicknamed "The Duchess”) had actually poisoned him.  The reason?  She was fed up with all his extramarital affairs, one of which wound up presenting the courtly president with a daughter.  In 1927, Nan Britton, the mother of that waif, would ghostwrite a best-selling work entitled, simply, The President’s Daughter. (Ironically, there is one other book - in this case, a fictional thriller - with the same title.  It was written by none other than President Bill Clinton).    

As bad, incompetent and corrupt a president as he was, Warren Harding, believe it or not, did more to preserve both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution than any of the nation’s chief executives: in 1921, he signed an executive order to transfer the two documents from the State Department to the Library of Congress, thus initiating their permanent display in protective glass cases . . . a crucial step in their preservation. While this is both true and somewhat ironic (considering the many, many failures of his presidency), it also true that Warren is no longer considered by historians to have been the worst of the worst.  That position clearly belongs to the Man from MAGA.  Felon47’s Cabinet is rife with incompetent sycophants ranging from DOD’s Pete Hegseth and A.G. Pam Bondi, to HHS Secretary RFK, Jr., DNI director Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Secretary of Education Linda (“The Queen of the WWE”) McMahon. (And by the way, Harding did somehow manage to name three pretty accomplished gentlemen to his Cabinet: Andrew Mellon at Treasury, Charles Evans Hughes at Foggy Bottom (State) and future POTUS Herbert Hoover at Commerce.)   

Hardly an  hour goes by without the current POTUS referring to his predecessor as “Sleepy Joe” or remining one and all of his supposed mental deficits.  One thing he has - to the best of my knowledge - never claimed is that the gentleman from Delaware surrounded himself with a mass of incompetent people who had little if any experience in government.   Say what you will, but there is/was no comparing :

• Biden Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin (a PhD economist who had served 8 years of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and happens to be married to Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerlof) to the current Treasury Secretary, former Soros Hedge Fund Manager Scott Bessent;  

• Biden-era A.G. Merrick Garland (A.B. Harvard, J.D. Harvard Law), a former Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (who was nominated by Barrack Obama for the Supreme Court . . . a nomination that Senator McConnell would not permit so much as a hearing on) and Pam Bondi (J.D. Stetson), who prior to becoming A.G., served on ITs legal defense during his first Senate impeachment trial.

• Biden’s Defense Sec. Gen. Lloyd Austin III, the 12th commander of the U.S. Central Command (2013-2016) and current Sec-War Pete Hegseth, a graduate of Princeton, former Fox News talking head and alleged alcoholic.

Historically, most - if not all - presidential administrations have included friends, supporters and even family members of the sitting president. The regime, however, has taken what is essentially an historic grian of sand and turned it into an alpine-sized monolith. In order to be in - and stay in - the good graces of the boss, one must be (if you are female) young, sylphlike and always showing a crucifix above the cleavage; it also helps to have been at one time or another part of his defense team. For males, let’s begin with possessing the riches of Croesus, and the ability to hold one’s tongue on most occasions, and end up with the ability to spell r-e-t-r-i-b-u-t-i-o-n, and possess relative political tone-deafness.  Why hasn’t anyone spoken out about all the failed and illegal attempts to turn the Bondi-led Justice Department into a personal law firm that legally harasses any and all of ITs current or former political enemies . . . those who came into the political cross-hairs for simply doing their jobs (like Senator Adam Schiff and N.Y. A.G. Letitia James)?   

The best - and most successful - political leaders manage to get across the message “I feel your pain” to a large segment of the public. And what makes this all the better is that these politicians actually believe what they are saying. Think Franklin D. Roosevelt and Barrack Obama. What we face today is something sui generis: a leader (?) who is essentially telling the vast unwashed public (supposedly the bread-and-butter of his fan club) “You aren’t feeling any pain; believe me: there is no pain . . .”  Just the other day, Felon47, while ostensibly kicking off the year-end holiday season repeated his bizarre “toy rationing” idea.  During a speech in Mount Patterson, PA, where he was slated to talk about affordability (which he initially claimed was a “Democrat hoax” and then claimed to wholeheartedly embrace as his idea) he told Americans that they can “give up” products, including pencils and dolls, for their children to bring down costs! Said the Grinch of Palm Beach: ’Every child can get 37 pencils.  They only need one or two.  They don’t need that many, but always need you always need steel [sic.].”  Besides being both incomprehensible and economically loony-tune, he showed just how out of touch he is with the children who love receiving toys, and the parents who wish they could give them more . . .

 It makes one wonder precisely who (or whom) the regime is doing its darndest to please.  It’s certainly not the working or lower-middle class.  Then too, if logic prevailed, it couldn’t be farmers, inhabitants of small-town America, minorities or non-whites. So who would it be?  It seems to me they are most concerned about people with unreasonable fears and grievances . . . who need others to blame for the things they themselves do not or cannot understand.  Take DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and WOKE as an example.

In the midst of all the outrageous Sturm und Drang enveloping early 21st century America, there are plenty of ultraconservatives who want men, women and children to find solutions to the pains and shortcoming of society, by blaming those who are different . . . or at least those who are “catering and caring” for those who are different. Here are 2 examples; one more ludicrous than the other.

In Wisconsin, there is a group called the Wisconsin Deafblind Project, a state program for the families of children with combined vision and hearing loss. It has made a world of difference to both the children and families of those, like the Who’s Tommy are “deaf, dumb and blind.” This past September, the Regime cancelled the five-year $918,000 grant for the program, which supports about 170 children. It also ended a $10.5 million grant used to recruit and retain special education teachers in the state.  At the same time, the administration cut similar programs for deafblind children across seven other states . . . all of which lean Democratic.  According to a article in the Times, “In each case, the federal officials cited language in the programs’ grant applications related to goals for diversity, equity and inclusion.”  (n.b.  It should be noted that one of the first executive orders signed after taking office targeted DEI initiatives throughout the government, including federal grants used to advance DEI programs.)

Precisely how assisting these children and their families - already facing lifetimes none of us can imagine - has to do with “Making America “Great Again” is anyone’s guess.  But please, don’t even try to guess, for there is simply no answer.  It is just plain cruelty; it has nothing to do with any religious or moral ethic I’m aware of.  

The one that really takes the cake is Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent announcement that as of December 8, 2025, and for reasons of  “pushing to stamp out diversity efforts,” he would “order a halt to the State Department’s official use of Clibiri” (a sans-serif typeface [font]) thus reversing a 2023 Biden-era directive that Sec. Rubio called a ‘wasteful’ sop to diversity.”  “Switching to Calibri achieved nothing except the degradation of the department’s official correspondence,” Mr. Rubio said. From hereon out, Foggy Bottom will be returning to the serif typeface Times New Roman. 

According to an “Action Request” memo, the secretary said that switching back to the use of Times New Roman would “restore decorum and professionalism to the department’s written work.” His order noted that when compared to Times New Roman, Calibiri is “informal” and “clashes with the department’s official letterhead. Even the State Department’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion has been abolished.  (BTW: The initial change from Times New Roman was meant to improve accessibility for readers with disabilities such as low vision, dyslexia and people “who use assistive technologies, such as screen readers.”  

Gee, don’t you feel so much better just knowing that by “returning to tradition” the regime is getting closer and closer to stamping out all remnants of diversity across the federal government?

Now, if only they could get rid of tariffs, stop blowing Venezuelan boats out of the water, and release the Epstein files, perhaps America could get back to climbing back up a few rungs on the ladder of greatness.

Please? 

Copyright©2025 Kurt Franklin Stone