IT'S NOT CASEY AT THE BAT

It is very difficult to think coherently about the current war the United States and Israel are fighting against Iran.

But America's chief executive never let incoherence stop him.

So why should it stop the rest of us?

There are, actually, many reasons it should. 

One is that incoherence is often the hallmark of disaster.  

It was, for example, in 1914, when Europe's elder statesmen allowed a Serbian shooting of an Austrian prince to trigger a world war.  Also in 1964, when either non-existent or invited attacks on American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin resulted in Congress giving LBJ the green light to "take all necessary measures" in Vietnam. And then in 2003, when non-existent weapons of mass destruction became the reason for invading Iraq.

In all of these cases, the conclusion in the form of actual policy did not really follow from the assumed cause. Either the response did not fit (or was ridiculously disproportionate to) the actual cause, as was the case with World War I, or the cause itself was false, as was true with Iraq in 2003, or both the fit and (probably) the cause were suspect, as was (likely) the case in the Tonkin Gulf.

Another is that incoherence can signal irrationality.

People who speak incoherently are often unintelligible.  They appear to be confused, illogical, scattered. 

This can be dangerous in a leader.

But not always.

Sometimes apparent unintelligence or confusion is just a mask.  

That was the case with Casey Stengel.

Stengel was the manager of the New York Yankees  from 1949-1960.  During that tenure, he was difficult (but not impossible)  to understand.  His convoluted syntax, neologisms, non-sequiturs and sheer length baffled as many as it entertained.  But beneath it all, he was actually quite brilliant. And he led the Yankees to ten pennants and seven World Series victories. 

To understand Stengel, you first had to master his special vocabulary. 

A "Ned in the third reader" were five words that meant one was naive. If he thought someone was experienced or shrewd, it came out as "he's no Ned in the third reader."  Rookie ballplayers were all "the Youth of America"; individually they were each a "green pea".  A "plumber" was a good fielder but a "road apple" was a bum. A player who chased women was "whiskey slick". "Worm killers" were low balls.  "Hold the gun" meant he wanted to change pitchers; it was usually said to the on-deck hitter. "Amazin'" generally meant good (but was comically applied to the expansion New York Mets he managed from 1962-1965, a team that was very bad).  And since he could not remember names, everyone was a "fella". As in my "fella in left". Even an unforgettable great like Mickey Mantle was "that fella of mine."

Nothing ever began with Casey Stengel. 

It "commenced".

And anytime he was fired or released from a club, which was often, he claimed to have been "discharged".   As he explained  in 1958, "we call it discharged because there was no question I had to leave."

The second thing you had to do to understand Casey was more difficult to master.

You had to hear the commas or periods so you knew when one thought ended and the next, as it were, commenced. 

He was the James Joyce of baseball.  The words poured out along with the thoughts, and where those thoughts stopped and started was obvious only to the experienced listener. In biographies of him, there are page long annotated accounts of a half hour interview he did with Ken Meyer of WBZ (Boston) in 1973. At one point, he was praising Roberto Clemente for beating him during the 1960 World Series, one of the three the Yankees lost in their ten trips to the fall classic under Stengel. 

Here's Casey's stream of consciousness, as punctuated by Meyer:

"Clemente commenced being alive again. I mean he was a right fielder--he's like Kaline. He has to throw to second base. You run a ball out and you run hard, and he's facin' throwin' to second, he's facin' throwin' to first, and there, facin' there, but when you get to first base and you go to third just thinkin' a man that hits that hits the ball down the right field line the right fielder has to turn around to throw to third. He's out of position, where a left handed man on the foul line is in position to throw to second, to throw to third on the hit and run plays from first to third. And in his hitting. In turning around, a left-handed man, you'd think he'd be better out in right field, but he displayed, he and Kaline, that it's an amazing thing how a right handed thrower could be that great as they were in the outfield. So then--Clemente got better. Now when it comes to hitting, you'd--he's so quick with the wrists  and, you know with the bat. Every time we went to pitch different to him, we were supposed to throw at him, back of him, you know, or move him back from home plate, and then we'd pitch the ball over the plate, why he could hit down on the ball and he rubbed the balls out, which they said the effort he put into his work is like Gowdy said. The effort he puts into his work all through the Series showed up, and it showed up there that he beat out three of those balls on me in the infield and if he hadn't I woulda finally won the last Series."

Translation:

Clemente cost the Yankees in game 5 because his arm made it impossible for them to move runners from first to third on a single to right field in the seventh inning and bring home a run, which at that point would have narrowed the Pirates lead to one run.

And Clemente beat them again in game 7, which they lost by a single run (and with it the World Series), when a run scored in the eighth as he (i) "hit down on the ball and . . . rubbed the ball[] out", i.e., swung so hard that he hit a high chopper rather than a grounder, and (ii) beat it out with his speed.

One of Stengel's more infamous orations occurred before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Anti-Trust and Monopoly in 1958.  

Stengel was among a group of players called to testify on a bill exempting baseball from the anti-trust laws.  The owners wanted the bill, which would have strengthened the anti-trust exemption the Supreme Court gave baseball in 1922,  because it legalized both the reserve clause that bound players to teams for life  and the franchise restrictions which limited the number of teams in any one market.

Stengel was asked his "views on the legislation" and spoke for forty-five minutes.  

From time to time, in the words of author Robert Creamer, he "went off on . . .  wild stream-of consciousness diversions." 

But . . .

In seven thousand words . . .

Stengel recounted his career as a player, minor league manager and major league manager. He praised the recently created player pension system. He suggested the absence of more minor league teams was based on insufficient local demand but understood the number of major league franchises had not expanded in the decades past. He more than once mentioned how night ball and the advent of radio and television had significantly increased revenues. 

When one Senator asked if he intended to "keep on monopolizing the world's championship in New York City", he defended his own team, explaining that even though competitors filled their parks when  New York came to town, his "hated" Yankees got a mere twenty-seven cents per ticket sold on the windfalls their presence created. For the clubs that didn't enjoy the Yankees' success, he blamed their  owners for putting inferior products on the field.

At one point the subcommittee's chairman apologized by saying "Mr. Stengel, I am not sure I made my question clear". Casey's rejoinder -- "Well, that's all right, I'm not sure I'm going to answer yours perfectly  either" --  brought the house down.  It was the biggest laugh of the day until the last one.  That occurred after Stengel was finished and Mickey Mantle was called to  testify.  Asked his view on the legislation, Mantle replied ""My views are about the same as Casey's."

Stengel's testimony, in Creamer's opinion, "was greeted as a great comic performance." 

"But despite the laughs," Creamer continued, "he was serious." 

In his testimony, and way before his time, he agreed baseball could grow internationally. He even suggested a true "World" series might someday come to pass with national champions fighting each other for the title.  And with today's World Baseball Classic international tournament , perhaps it has. 

"He was prodding Congress,"  Creamer explained. "He was obviously for the status quo but he avoided any direct comment . . . pro or con . . . [and] seemed to be encouraging the subcommittee's inquiry into aspects of the game."

Thirteen days ago, the United States and Israel started a war with Iran.  In violation of applicable law, the war was not declared or otherwise authorized by Congress and Iran posed no imminent threat.

In the days leading up to the war, including in his almost two-hour State of the Union address mere days before, President Trump made no claim of imminent danger nor did he suggest any full-scale war was only days away. Instead, in the days after the attack, either he or others in his administration claimed a threat was imminent because Israel was about to attack Iran and Iran would respond by attacking us.

This is imminence invented.

If Israel was about to attack and we knew Iran would respond by attacking us, none of that was so unforeseeable that Congress and the American public could not have been consulted.  Israel has wanted and planned to attack Iran for years.  In all that time, any President, including Trump, could have gone to Congress and the American people and asked whether America should strike preemptively in the event we learned of a precise Israeli timetable.  

None ever have.

This is not surprising.

Had any American President done so, he would have been derided.

For two reasons.

First, any claim that Iran will attack us once Israel has attacked them is itself a claim to take with an enormous grain of salt.  Iran's responses to past Israeli attacks have been to attack Israel, not us. If that is no longer the case, what has changed ? Have the distinctions between Israel and the United States ceased to exist? Are their acts ours? Is Iran that stupid?

Second, even if the assumed Iranian response were accurate, why would that be a reason to simply follow an Israeli timetable? Israel is our ally. In the highly unlikely circumstance where we know an attack by them will immediately result in an attack on us, why is the correct response not to ask Israel to hold off briefly while the President at the very least seeks Congressional authorization. And if Israel itself is not under imminent threat -- and here it was not -- why should we not insist Israel do so? 

Along with its invented imminence claim, the administration has offered three or four (the number regularly changes) other reasons for going to war now.  One is that Iran intends to develop a nuclear weapon.  The second is that Iran is developing ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States.  The third is that Iran has been killing or taking Americans hostage since 1979 and enough is enough. A fourth appears to be replacing the Iranian government, a/k/a regime change.

None of these, however, justified Trump's unilateral and unsanctioned action.

Iran is nowhere near obtaining ballistic missiles that can hit the US. For years, defense intelligence has estimated that it is at least a decade away from having that capability, and perhaps longer when the difficulties of arming it are considered.  In any case, the threat is not remotely imminent.  And what has happened since 1979 is not imminence at all.  It is ongoing and well known. If patience with Iran's authoritarian theocracy has worn thin, we have had forty-seven years to think about it or more than enough time to fashion a Constitutional response.

The nuclear weapons and regime change claims are particularly troublesome.  

Last summer, when the United States granted Israel's wishes and dropped bunker busters on Iran's nuclear facilities, Trump told us Iran's nuclear program had been obliterated.  Now we are being told Iran still intends to develop a nuke. Who cares? If their program was obliterated months ago, their intentions are meaningless (and certainly present no imminent threat). And if the program wasn't obliterated last summer, the guy who told us it was is either dishonest . . .

Or stupid . . . 

Or incompetent . . .

Or dangerous . . . 

Or all of the above . . .

And in any case . . .

Hardly someone you should trust to start a second (undeclared or unauthorized) war.

The reality here is that Trump is playing an elaborate shell game. His real estate investor/special envoy Steve Witcoff argues repeatedly these days that Iran’s stockpile of 60% enriched uranium is absolute evidence of an existing nuclear program. No one, he says, needs 60% enriched uranium for peaceful purposes. This stockpile, however, is not new. It existed last July, was buried by a bunker buster dropped on Iran’s Isfahan facility, and back then was dismissed as a threat in the aftermath of obliteration. Now, however, there is ostensibly classified intel that Iran somehow has access to it. So, mirabile dictu, Iran is once again a nuclear threat. If so, the only way to seize the stockpile is with ground troops.

In the two weeks that have followed this Trump war of choice, seven American servicemen or women have been killed, ten middle eastern nations are being regularly attacked by Iran, the Strait of Hormuz through which 20% of the world's oil supply passes has been closed and mined, oil prices have sky-rocketed (as has the price of gas at America’s pumps), and the stock market has lost 7% of its value. Meanwhile, one killed Ayatollah/Supreme Leader of Iran has been replaced by another, as have the killed commanders of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and notwithstanding Trump's invitations (but nothing else) to the contrary, the regime does not appear to be in danger of falling. 

In fact, the regime is not changing precisely because Trump's invitations are hollow.  

As with seizing Iran’s now-magically accessible uranium stockpile, for regime change to happen, ground troops would have to invade. Though the administration argues otherwise, history refutes their optimism. While internal opposition in the Warsaw Pact nations and the old Soviet Union overturned communism without bloodshed in 1989 and thereafter, the regimes themselves allowed their dissidents to organize and refused to use force, as they had on 1956 and 1968, to silence them. This will not be the case in Iran. Throughout its forty-seven year history, Iran’s theocrats have been more than willing to kill dissidents en masse and will no doubt do so now unless either the dissidents stay quiet or the US and Israel invade and eliminate the regime.

Although Trump says he will not send ground troops, he has not completely ruled that out and some are suggesting what looks like at least the beginnings of such a commitment. Bret Stephens, an opinion columnist for The New York Times, has said the US should take over Kharg Island, Iran's oil transport hub twenty miles off shore in the Persian Gulf. That would presumably end Iran's ability to export its oil.  But that is pretty much the case now, so it is unclear what additional leverage occupying the island would provide. In any case, if a full- scale invasion occurs, the US will suffer thousands of casualties for who knows how long a period of time. If the Iranian government falls as a result, there is no obvious organized opposition to replace it. 

Does anyone in this administrative gang that cannot shoot straight remember what happened in Iraq after Saddam was brought down?

Trump’s reaction to all of this wanders from bravado to insouciance and back. 

The war, he says, has either already been won or is “very complete”. In one rally he said it was “won in the first hour.” At another point he said it won’t be over until he says so. At yet another, he said he would settle for nothing less than "unconditional surrender". All these boasts share anything from little to absolutely no basis in reality, the last particularly.  The only American wars that ended in unconditional surrender were the Civil War and World War II and each cost hundreds of thousands in fallen soldiers.

Meanwhile . . .

Trump wore a campaign hat to one dignified transfer, missed the second, referred to service deaths as just “the way it is” in war, and -- to make his Congressional enablers who voted against a war powers resolution happy -- even called the whole mess "a short term excursion". The tomahawk strike that killed over a hundred Iranian school girls was, he falsely claimed, launched by Iran. And, says President Bone Spurs, the oil tanker captains should get some “guts” and plow through Hormuz. The promised naval escorts have not been deployed and some tankers have already been attacked. 

But he's not the captain piloting those ships.

In 1988, during a Vice-Presidential debate, the GOP nominee was Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle. Responding to claims that his resume for the job was a little thin, Quayle noted that he had “as much experience in Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency.”  To which, in a put down for the ages, the Democratic nominee responded “Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.”

Kennedy, a war hero, never lacked for courage and never asked someone else to stand in the way of a bullet he wouldn’t take himself.

Donald Trump is no Jack Kennedy.

And though from time to time he sounds like him . . .

He’s no Casey Stengel either.

STATE OF THE UNION

The state of our divided union is . . .

Uncertain.

It was uncertain on Monday and will be uncertain tomorrow.

The Constitution requires that the President "from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union".  

For most of our history, this came in the form of a written report.  Though George Washington and John Adams delivered their state of the unions in speeches, Thomas Jefferson discontinued that practice. He thought a personal address was too "monarchical".

Back then, the prevailing view favored a strong separation of powers.  

In following the Constitution, although the president had to "from time to time give . . . Congress Information" on the state of the union and could even (as the ensuing clause permits) "recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient", the ambiguous nature of the requirement (by no means annual or even routine) and the obvious status of his ideas (recommendations, not orders) made it clear that only Congress could actually make law.

Put simply, everyone had to stay in their lane. 

All that changed in 1913, however, when Woodrow Wilson became president.

Wilson's vision of the presidency differed from that his predecessors. 

With few exceptions, policymaking prior to the Wilson administration started in Congress. Wilson, however, wanted to set the agenda or at the very least be an active proponent in the process of doing so.  According to his biographer John Cooper, Wilson "as a legislative presence . . . ranks up there with FDR and LBJ".  His reduced tariffs, Federal Reserve Act, and Clayton Antitrust Act were historic wins, and his first-in-a-century in person State of the Union was an intentional sign of what was to come. 

As Cooper puts it, the 28th president "wanted to break the precedent" started by the third and practiced by the next twenty-four.  Nonetheless, when it was reported that Wilson had decided to  jettison that precedent, the "disbelief . . . expressed in congressional circles" was strong. So strong, in fact, that The Post had to "assure[] its readers . . . such spectacles were 'not to become a habit.'"

Oh, well.

How has that worked out?

Donald Trump will deliver his sixth state of the union address tonight.

It will be all spectacle.

On the facts, the actual state of the union this year is not much different from what it was the year before and the year before that. 

The economy is both in relatively good shape and enormously challenging.  The top line inflation and employment numbers are about where they were at the end of the Biden presidency.  Inflation hovers in the neighborhood of 3%, unemployment in the neighborhood of slightly more than 4. 

The challenge these otherwise not so terrible numbers present is inequality. As the rich and super rich have taken larger and larger shares of the nation's productivity gains, the ability of everyone else to navigate rising costs at whatever level (i.e., affordability) and obtain and retain jobs that pay living wages has eroded. 

Lots of otherwise productive citizens are an illness or job loss short of bankruptcy. 

No one is saving.

In this environment, the nation's 47th president has nothing to report that has either reduced this burden or will ameliorate it going forward.  

His Big Beautiful Bill cut taxes at the (ever growing) top and services to the (continually struggling) bottom and  middle.  His "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) Secretary of Health and Human Services watched measles explode while disassembling the nation's public health infrastructure, defunding ground breaking research and leaving the World Health Organization (WHO). 

His Department of Justice prosecutes his enemies, albeit unsuccessfully and often comically. When DC's US Attorney Jeanine Pirro sought indictments of the six Democrats who publicly told servicemen and women they did not have to follow illegal orders, she literally obtained zero votes from the grand jurors.

Zero.

(Memo to Jeanine: If I had done this when I was an Assistant US Attorney, I would have been fired.  PS Love to your pardoned ex Al, glad he's staying out of trouble.) 

His Department of Homeland Security is lawless, trigger happy and the tragic source of a growing body count. 

His tariffs have just been declared unconstitutional.

On foreign policy, Ukraine and Russia are still at war.  There is no peace deal in sight because, with Trump in his pocket, Putin knows he does not need one. 

Gaza is off the front page but by no means peaceful. Hamas has not disarmed. 

Despite repeated claims that Iran's nuclear facilities were obliterated in the June 2025 Israeli and American bombings, a flotilla of American aircraft carriers and destroyers now stand by in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf, apparently ready to strike if Iran does not agree to limit the nuclear program Trump says we already destroyed.

Go figure.

This is not a presidency that takes on and solves big problems.

Generally speaking, it ignores big problems (e.g., inequality, China), takes a swing at small ones (e.g., Maduro, the border), and creates problems that heretofore did not exist (e.g., Canada, Greenland, the gold-winning American men's hockey team). 

It routinely violates the law. (A DOJ lawyer has just been held in contempt in Minnesota and DOJ admitted in federal court in New Jersey that it violated court orders fifty-two times.)

And it is corrupt.

I do not know what Donald Trump will say tonight.

I do know it will be a performance.

A very long and extravagant one with . . . 

Created facts, paraded supplicants, faux praise and bestowed honors.

From someone whose ultimate answer is always . . .

Himself.

It will be given to an amen chorus of enablers . . .

Punctuated by the stoic faces of a minority who resist.

In other words, it will be . . .

Spectacle.

The 28th president bequeathed but avoided that.

The 47th can never get enough of it.

No thank you, Mr. Wilson.

MINNESOTA

A friend from law school lives in Minneapolis.

Five days after the shooting of Renee Good, I wrote asking for her take on what was going on there.  Three days later she responded.  

Here is what she said:

"A friend wrote this and I thought it was an excellent explanation of how things are here. I modified it a bit:

'If you are not in Minnesota and it sounds exaggerated how bad it is here[,] [i]t's not exaggerated. The stories of US citizens, including native Americans, being detained: real.  Citizens who are children being detained because they don't have "papers": real. 

'Physical violence: real. Indiscriminate chemical spraying of peaceful protester: real. Smashing car windows, dragging P[eople] O[f] C[olor] out by their hair and pummeling, punching, kicking them without asking a question, including those screaming that they're a US citizen: real. 

'Large groups roaming with guns in stores, parking lots, at schools, public libraries and malls: real. Going door to door with weapons drawn in some neighborhoods: real. US citizens and undocumented immigrants afraid to leave their homes, go to work, or get groceries: real.  Schools closed: real.

'It is as bad as you are hearing, and worse. 

'Meanwhile, thousands of Minnesotans are protesting, providing rides, delivering groceries, donating what they can. 

'It isn't right. 

'This is not how genuine, purposeful law enforcement is done. 

'And it has nothing to do with fraud. 

'Our city is under siege.'"

On Saturday, as part of that continuing siege, Border Patrol agents killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse with the Veterans Administration. 

Pretti was standing with his two arms held aloft and a cell phone in his left hand.  He then went to help a woman in front of him who an agent had pepper sprayed.  With his back to the agents, he tried to lift her up. A scrum of agents tackled and pinned him face down. One removed and walked away with a gun he legally possessed and had not brandished.  

One or more of the agents then shot him.

Ten times.

In the aftermath, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti had "committed an act of domestic terrorism." Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said "the officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted" and "an agent fired defensive shots."  Apparently because Pretti was carrying a gun and bullets, albeit legally, she also said "This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement". 

Shortly after McLaughlin's statement, Trump's senior policy advisor, Stephen Miller, made the claim explicit. "A would be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement," he said, "and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists." A little more than a half hour after Miller spoke, Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino echoed McLaughlin and Miller. Pretti, he said, had intended to "massacre law enforcement".

None of these statements were true.

At the point Pretti was shot, he was unarmed, face down and restrained.

On the Sunday talk shows, Republicans blamed Minnesota's Governor and Minneapolis's Mayor for the shooting, claiming local officials were unwilling to cooperate with the federal government because Minneapolis calls itself a sanctuary city.  

No so-called sanctuary city, however, actually hides undocumented immigrants or interferes with federal law enforcement.  Nor does Minneapolis.  All of them arrest and prosecute undocumenteds for the crimes they commit, especially any that are violent. Crime is down appreciably throughout the nation as a whole and in Minneapolis in particular.  And regardless of any jurisdiction's self-appointed "sanctuary" status, no well-trained and law-abiding police department would have done to Pretti what the Border Patrol agents did to him on Saturday.

For a number of reasons, it is time to abolish ICE and start over.

First, in order to more than double its force, ICE recruited 12,000 new agents this year. Five thousand of them are now deployed and the rest will be over the next six months.  All of them, however, are poorly trained.  What was once a six-month training course has been reduced to 42 days. Four weeks of in-person on the ground training has been replaced with a 40-hour on-line course. In those 42 training days, only four hours are devoted to de-escalation, and these are spread over the entire period.

Many of the trainees have not been well-received by veterans. As one senior ICE official put it, "These are people who have no business setting foot into our office" and "would have been weeded out during a normal hiring process." And beyond poor training, the recruitment effort itself has trafficked in white supremacist rhetoric. 

Just after the Good killing, ICE put out a recruitment post with the all caps tag-line "WE'LL HAVE OUR HOME AGAIN. JOIN.ICE.GOV". The line is from a song with the same name. According to the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, "it is a song only known in white nationalist circles" and includes lyrics supporting white replacement theory. As the Global Project concluded, its use by ICE "can't . . . be a mistake."

Second, Trump has changed ICE's mission. In the past, ICE engaged in targeted enforcement of the immigration laws and in both the Obama and Biden administrations was able to deport millions. Arrests were planned in advance and agents took suspects into custody safely and with the least amount of drama. No one was shot in the street. 

Today, however, masked agents roam the streets outfitted as if they are in war zones ready for armed conflict. In Minneapolis they outnumber the local cops by orders of magnitude. Unlike the locals, they do not wear body cameras; in fact, that is the reason protesters have been told to video the agents and is probably what Pretti was doing when he held his phone aloft on Saturday.

Third, there need to be investigations of the killing of both Good and Pretti.  In Good's case, the local coroner has already ruled her death a homicide and there is a good chance this will be the case with Pretti as well. The notion, however, that this administration can objectively conduct those investigation refutes itself. 

In Good's case, the administration has already announced the agent who killed her did no wrong, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, and in both Good's and Pretti's case, it has told the local investigative authority with expertise in police use-of-force cases -- the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension --  to stay away.  In Good's case, the federal authorities did not preserve the scene and thus have also effectively destroyed evidence. In Pretti's case, a federal court has ordered them not to destroy evidence but it is unclear what, if anything, was done to preserve the scene and gather evidence on Saturday.

Finally, the administration's rhetoric needs to be jettisoned. 

The notion that protesters like Good or Pretti are "domestic terrorists" is false and disgusting. Good was a poet; Pretti a nurse. The claim that Pretti intended to "massacre" agents is baseless. Leaving aside the hypocrisy of GOP gun lovers now finding fault with Pretti's (legal) possession of a firearm, he never brandished his weapon; in fact, a federal agent had removed it by the time he was shot. He also wasn't committing a crime while otherwise legally possessing the weapon.

On ABC's This Week yesterday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) suggested the agents' tactics were required given epithets being thrown at them by the crowd or Minnesota's politicians. That too is nonsense. Well-trained police do not react to name-calling. They are supposed to be above it. 

Trump, of course, is not. 

Nor are Miller, Noem or Bovino.  

Which is the real problem here.  

If you send masked enforcers into the streets to invade homes without judicial warrants, cheer as they frog-march citizens out of those homes in their underwear, lie that you are only detaining the "worst of the worst" when the vast majority have no criminal records or charges whatsoever, and then call a poet and a nurse begging to differ "domestic terrorists" after your masked enforcers have killed them,  the likelihood of professional policing vanishes . . .

And the analogy to Germany in the 1930s starts to make sense. 

That is where we are today.

Real.

Not exaggerated.

TATIANA, RENEE, ZOHRAN . . . AND DYLAN

On December 30, 35-year-old Tatiana Schlossberg passed away.  

The daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Ed Schlossberg, and the granddaughter of Jackie Onassis and President Kennedy, Schlossberg was a young but accomplished journalist who succumbed to a rare form of leukemia.

A month before her passing, on the anniversary of her grandfather's assassination, Schlossberg disclosed her illness and impending death in a piece in The New Yorker entitled "A Battle With My Blood".

Anyone who read it was in tears by the end.

Her leukemia was discovered over a year ago immediately after she gave birth to her second child.

Literally.

Three hours after giving birth, she was told she had leukemia and moved to another floor in the hospital as her parents, husband and son all said goodbye.  

What followed was a year and a half of chemotherapy; two stem cell transplants that did not work; a clinical trial of Car-T-cell therapy; months-long hospitalizations at Columbia-Presbyterian and then Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK); constant outpatient treatments at MSK; and too much time to think.

But think she did.

About the daughter and son who will not (or will hardly) remember her.

About the"handsome genius [she] managed to find", her  "perfect" husband "who did everything for [her] he possibly could" and with whom she won't "get to keep living this wonderful life".

About her mom, the Kennedy for whom tragedy never skips a generation, the mother she always tried to "protect" but who now must cope with a "new tragedy" she could do "nothing  . . . to stop".

And, finally, about her cousin . . .

The one who "during the Car-T treatment, a method developed over many decades with millions of dollars of government funding, . . . was in the process of being nominated and confirmed as the Secretary of Health and Human Services".

The one, she wrote, who was "an embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family"  and who, "in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed . . . despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government".

The one who "cut nearly half a billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers; slashed billions in funding from the National Institute of Health, the world's largest sponsor of medical research; and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings."

"Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials," she wrote, "were cancelled, affecting thousands of patients. I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission."

"Early in my illness," she continued, "when I had [a] postpartum hemorrhage, I was given a dose of misoprostol to help stop the bleeding. The drug is part of medication abortion, which at Bobby's urging, is currently 'under review' by the Food and Drug Administration."

"I freeze," she concluded, " when I think about what would have happened if it had not been immediately available to me and to millions of other women who need it to save their lives or to get the care they deserve."

In the end, it was a tale of two cousins.

The older forgot Bob Dylan's best advice.

The younger -- in her life and certainly in her last act -- actually lived it.

    May God bless and keep you always

    May your wishes all come true

    May you always do for others

    And let others do for you

    May you build a ladder to the stars

    And climb on every rung

    May you stay forever young

On Wednesday morning in Minneapolis, a federal ICE agent killed  37-year-old Renee Good.

She was a single mom of three, one of whom -- her six year old son -- is now an orphan.

She was driving her car away from the agent when he shot her through the windshield of her car.

She was not trying to run the agent over with her car, which was moving away from him.

After the shooting, her car careened to the left side of the street and was stopped as it struck the back of a parked vehicle.

A bystander asked another federal agent if he could go help her.

That officer said no.

The bystander told the agent he was a physician.

The officer said "I don't care."

A couple of hours after the shooting, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the victim was "wealponiz[ing] her vehicle" and "attempting to run a law enforcement officer over."

This assertion was refuted by the video evidence of the entire encounter.

That afternoon, President Trump said the victim "behaved horribly. And then she ran [the federal agent] over.  She didn't try to run him over. She ran him over." 

This assertion was also refuted by the video evidence.

Trump's so-called "border czar”, Tom Homan, declined to weigh in.  Instead, he said "Let the investigation play out and hold people accountable based on the investigation.

On Thursday, however, Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) Superintendent Drew Evans said BCA was "reluctantly" withdrawing from that investigation because the federal government  "had reversed course" and would not give BCA "access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews."  Instead, the investigation will now be done by the FBI, which is headed by Trump-loyalist Kash Patel.

Also on Thursday, Vice President Vance called Good's shooting "a tragedy of her own making."

That too was refuted by the video evidence.

Good was apparently part of a group of neighbors watching masked ICE agents and whistling their presence as a warning to those the masked agents might seize. If she violated any law, and this is unclear, she did so either in diagonally stopping her car so that those behind her had to go left to get around her or in refusing to exit her car when a federal agent ordered her to "Get out of the fucking car".  

Though unmarked ICE agents were behind her, it is not clear she was trying to impede them. At  least one report had her car so configured on account of the snow and ice in the road. Others reported she was actually asking those behind to go around her. Though she did not exit her car, she did attempt to drive away from the agents and was not running anyone over when she was shot.

Trump's enablers -- Noem and Vance -- immediately trotted out the false story that she was attacking the agents and was a "domestic terrorist" radicalized by "the left". 

In a presidency that regularly substitutes false sound bites for fact-based analysis, this is almost certainly false. 

According to Associated Press, Good described herself as a "poet and writer and wife and mom" and  her ex-husband said "she was no activist and . . . had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind. He described her as a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger."

Whether she was monitoring and/or warning of ICE's presence (which appears to be the case); obstructing the agents (much less likely given her effort in asking those behind to go around her); or refusing to follow ICE's profanity-laced demand that she "Get out of the fucking car" (both of which -- her refusal and ICE's cursing -- are true), the shooting was plainly illegal.  

No federal agents were in danger nor was anyone else. 

And under the law, cops don't get to shoot in that situation.

At Old Dominion University, where she completed  her degree while raising children, this poet, writer, wife and mom won the American Academy of American Poets prize.

Her felt-need to oppose ICE-masked tyranny was sincere.

The Dylan in her was real. 

    May you grow up to be righteous

    May you grow up to be true

    May you always know the truth 

    And the lights surrounding you

    May you always be courageous

    Stand upright and be strong

    May you stay forever young

Yesterday, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and NY Governor Kathy Hochul met to discuss Mamdani's plans to bring universal child care to NYC.  

Doing so would almost certainly require some kind of tax increase, and because New York City does not have the independent power to tax, any such increase would have to be approved by the state. 

In the past, Hochul has called Mamdani's proposed tax increases dead on arrival, and inasmuch as this (for her) is an election year, the betting was that Zohran's "socialism" would thus die in Albany.

Yesterday, however, the Governor appeared to be saying "Not so fast."

With Mamdani at her side, she announced plans to ask the state legislature to spend $4.5 billion on child care in the upcoming fiscal year.  Some of the money would come from existing funds, some from tax increases; the relative shares were not reported and apparently are not set. 

According to The New York Times, the proposal would allow the state "to vastly expand free and low cost child care throughout the state over the next several years, and put New York City on track to become the first city in the United States to provide free universal child care." 

Rising economic inequality has made affordability a front and center issue for the middle class in today's America, and for his part, Mamdani has rejected the notion that "big government" has no role in curing it.  

In his Inaugural Address on New Years Day, he was adamant: "To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this -- no longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers' lives."

The question, of course, is how to do this.

As a matter of American history, it has been done in the past in only two ways.  

The first was in the form of the American west.  

So long as farming was America's principal venture, and the frontier remained open, (most) anyone with two feet could improve their lot by walking west, seizing available open land and getting to work.  

Millions accepted that invitation.

In 1862,  Abe Lincoln even formalized it.

Signing the Homestead Act, his administration granted 160 acres of federal land to anyone willing to farm it.

The second came in the form of FDR's New Deal

Once industrialism arrived and the frontier closed, Lincoln's remedy no longer worked.  

America's first Gilded Age produced enormous wealth gaps, regular recessions and, ultimately, two Depressions, the first from 1873 to 1896 and the second in 1929. 

Roosevelt, who was elected in 1932, and his successor Truman, who became president in 1945, created and then continued the New Deal to combat inequality and end depressions.

They did so with the big government.

First, they radically reduced inequality with a series of laws that effectively redistributed national income from the top to the middle and the bottom. Social Security provided old age insurance; the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) empowered unions to negotiate wage and benefit increases for their members; an alphabet soup of agencies (like the NRA and the CCC) provided emergency employment; and the later  GI Bill paid veterans to get college degrees (and thus higher paying jobs) in the post-World War II world.

Second, they regulated the financial markets to end the schemes that had either caused or facilitated depressions. The Securities Exchange Act made illegal the financial frauds that had actually led to the 1929 Depression. The Banking Act created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that insured customer deposits and stopped bank runs. The Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial and investment banking. This made it illegal for securities firms and investment banks to take deposits. It also made it illegal for Federal Reserve member banks to deal in non-government securities, invest in non-investment grade securities for themselves, underwrite or distribute non-government securities or affiliate with those doing so. Collectively, these new laws protected depositors, curtailed the reach of speculators and ended outright fraud.

In his Inaugural Address, Mayor Mamdani remembered that past.

"Here," he said, "where the the language of the New Deal was born, we will return the vast resources of this city to the workers who call it home." In his version of a (limited) 21st century New Deal for NYC, the cost of child care does not stop "young adults from starting a family", a rent freeze ends "the dread of the latest rent hike", and the buses (at a savings of  $6 per round trip) will be "fast and free". 

"For too long," he argued, "we have turned to the private sector for greatness, while accepting mediocrity from those who serve the public." 

For him, those days need to be over.

And . . .

Unless the free marketeers and ostensible centrists who decry him as a socialist can come up with some better ideas -- for the last thirty years they haven't -- maybe those days need to be over for the rest of us too.

In discussing her apparent embrace of the new Mayor, Governor Hochul said "I enjoy him immensely." 

As The Times put it in capturing the moment, she was "singling out the mayor's positivity. She noted that her own children are close to the mayor's age, and that she enjoys working with younger people, because, she said, 'it's just more fun.'"

Score it as one for Mamdani . . .

And one more for Dylan.

    May your hands always be busy

    May your feet always be swift

    May you have a strong foundation

    When the winds of changes shift

    May your heart always be joyful

    May your song always be sung

    May you stay forever young

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

I have been thinking about Christmas this week.

Actually, I have been thinking about Christmas Eve, which is today. And which, it seems to me, captures more of the essence of Christmas than even the day itself.

Christmas is about anticipation. About what will happen, not what has occurred. It's about the future, whether that future is mere hours in the offing or a millenia away. And it unites, in perhaps a way that no other holiday can or does, the pedestrian with the profound. In fact, it makes the pedestrian profound.

Kids will go crazy tonight. Most won't be able to sleep. Those not afraid of some cosmic retribution will sneak a peak out the window or down the stairs in search of Santa Claus. Others will become inveterate Holmes-es (Sherlock, that is), carefully processing every errant sound from a squeaky baseboard to determine if he has come down the chimney, with care or otherwise, along with a satchel of goodies. A few years ago, a friend told me his son had come into his bedroom in the middle of the night, swearing to his father that "Rudolph was in the driveway."

Two thousand years ago, it was all about anticipation too. We have encrusted that day with layers of theological speculation, so much so that we are now almost in need of theo-archaeologists to carefully remove the layers without destroying the initial insight. It was, after all, about the future, about hope -- cosmic and otherwise. Lots of us call it salvation, and tonight or tomorrow, when many of us cross the church threshold (some for our biennial visit, others for the second time this week), we will hear the ancient story of the incarnate One and be told it was the day we were saved.

Which has, of late, got me to wondering.

What for?

And the best answer I can come up with is . . .

Tomorrow.

And so that's what Christmas is about for me. Tomorrow. All the endless tomorrows. With their hopes and dreams and disappointments. Their risings and fallings. And tears and laughter. Even on the day I die, when tomorrow will be unpredictably exciting. In fact, especially then.

A friend recommended a book earlier this year by a theologian named John Haught. In it, Haught talked about the need to square Christian theology with the fact of evolution. One point he made is that theology should never compete with science, that the truths of the latter are not to be denied by the former, and vice versa. So the earth and all its inhabitants weren't created in six days, the universe (or multi-verse, we really do not know) is billions of years old, the human story represents hardly a nanosecond in this evolutionary time line, and the possibility of intelligent life in spheres beyond our third rock from the sun is hardly remote. The one thing certain is that, whoever and whatever we and our world are, it will not be the same tomorrow.

In fact, in the deep time of our evolutionary tomorrow, it's gonna be very different.

Which brings me back to Christmas. Or more precisely Christmas Eve. The one day when we think about nothing but tomorrow. And really look forward to it.

I am ready this year. All the presents are wrapped. The house is clean (I vacuum). Charles Darwin and Jesus Christ have become bosom buddies in my mind, the former telling me that nothing is forever as the world and its inhabitants constantly morph into newer forms, the latter teaching me that this in itself is a good thing and that somewhere over this evolutionary rainbow there is still a tomorrow that embraces us all.

And I have a shovel ready.

In case Rudolph leaves something in the driveway besides a missing sleigh bell.

Merry Christmas.

(This post was first published on Christmas Eve 2008.  A lot has changed since then. But not my view of Christmas.)

SEASONS WARNINGS

In this interregnum between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there has been a lot of news.

Most of it has been bad.

In case you're still noticing.

And in those three sentences, I believe I have summarized the core problems facing America today:

(1) The flood of information at rates and in amounts impossible for any of us to process; 

(2) The fact that much of this onslaught is bad; and 

(3) The fact that not noticing it has become a means of survival for many of its victims and a source of power for its proponents.

On Saturday afternoon, there was another mass shooting. This one killed two and injured nine on the campus of Brown University in a classroom where students were taking a final exam days before their Christmas break.  

On Sunday, two shooters killed fifteen people in an antisemitic attack on Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Australia. That same day in Los Angeles, Rob and Michelle Reiner were murdered in their Los Angeles home, apparently by their troubled son Nick. 

On Monday, Donald Trump claimed Reiner, a long-standing Trump critic, had been killed "due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME." (The all caps, of course, are his.)   Later that day, in the face of almost universal condemnation, Trump doubled down on this comment.

In the world in which we now live, and in particular in the country in which we now live, none of this was surprising and none of it shows any sign of stopping anytime soon.

On mass shootings, we have decided that psychology and surveillance are the only solutions and that any form of gun control is either unconstitutional or counter-productive. It does not matter that the assault weapons ban in the '90s actually reduced shootings or that the actual words of the Second Amendment have been ignored in an effort to make common sense regulation illegal. 

At Brown, where the actual shooter is still on the run, critics are upbraiding the university for not having enough cameras in the precise area where the assault occurred and into and out of which the shooter had to travel.

Cameras?

Really?

Last I checked, they never stopped a bullet.

On antisemitism, the debate over Palestinian rights has become a cover for well-organized and well-financed hatred of Jews throughout the world. 

I have a Jewish friend in New York City who is neither a disciple of Netanyahu nor a supporter of illegal West Bank settlements but who is now literally afraid he may be attacked on his own streets because he wears a yarmulke. The same fears were expressed for months by Jewish Australians before Sunday's attacks.

Some people do have more to fear than fear itself.

On Trump, of course, his condemned post was just another act in what has become an endless example of moral degeneracy and mental imbalance.  

Whenever you think he cannot go lower . . .

He exceeds expectations.

I do not have ready-made solutions to any of these problems.

But I do know enabling cannot be one of them.

Following Trump's ugly rant on the Reiner tragedy, The New York Times  ran an article on Tuesday previewing a Vanity Fair piece interviewing Susie Wiles, Trump's current Chief of Staff. She holds the same job in Trump's second term that Reince Priebus, John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows held in Trump's first term. 

In the interviews, she claimed that Trump had "an alcoholic personality". Though the president does not drink, Wiles explained that, with "high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink", and that the analogy with Trump is that, like the alcoholic, he behaves as if "there's nothing he can't do."

So, said Wiles . . . 

"Score settling" prosecutions of his enemies, lies about his opponents (she admitted there is nothing in the Epstein files that implicates Bill Clinton, Trump's claim to the contrary notwithstanding), "mistakes" on immigration (like deporting American citizens), or blowing up boats in the Caribbean "until Maduro cries uncle" just come with the turf that is that personality.

This, however, is all a bunch of hooey.

Which Wiles more or less admitted in her interviews.

To function, alcoholics require enablers.

Trump has made sure he is surrounded by them.

And Wiles, in her interviews with Vanity Fair, confirmed she is one.  

According to the Times, she "does not view her role as constraining Trump.  Instead, she makes clear that her mission is to facilitate his desires even if she sometimes thinks he is going too far."  The President, of course, is fine with this. Most alcoholics, especially "functioning" ones, would be.  In fact, Trump doesn't even dispute her analogy. In reacting to her interview, Trump conceded his "possessive" or "addictive personality". 

Other fellow enablers in the White House have joined her Amen chorus.  

JD Vance, who Wiles calls "a conspiracy theorist" in the Vanity Fair interview, confirmed her claim with "I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true." He thinks one of them is that Trump won the 2020 election. Russell Vought, the budget director Wiles calls "a right-wing absolute zealot", has no problems with her. "In my portfolio," he said, "she is always an ally . . . And this hit piece will not slow us down." Pam Bondi, the Attorney General who Wiles claims "completely whiffed" on the Epstein files, echoed Vought. She called Wiles a "dear friend" and then said "any attempt to divide this administration will fail."

In the '80s, Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, removed the emperor's clothes by admitting that supply-side economics was a "Trojan horse" that would ultimately benefit the rich and that tax cuts would not generate the growth and therefore revenue needed to close the budget deficit, all of which were the central economic claims Reagan had made in his successful bid for the White House. 

In his own famous words ,Stockman was then promptly "taken to the woodshed".

Things, however, have changed.

Wiles is not being sent to the woodshed.

She's being sent to the head of the class.

As . . .

Enabler-in-Chief.

Memo to Susie:

It never works.

The reality here is that, given his job, Trump is not at all functional.  For all intents and purposes, he has turned the job into half days at the office punctuated by a social media/tv addiction that lasts for some or all of the hours outside the office in which he does not sleep. He does not leave the Oval with a briefcase of binders he later studies.  Either there are no binders or he dispenses with the notion of any study. 

Whatever policy exists is a function of either his own prejudices (for, example, favoring Putin on Ukraine, for reasons unknown but highly suspect, and tariffs on the economy, probably because they were the way the government raised revenue before the Sixteenth Amendment made income taxes, which he hates, legal) or the prejudices of those he leaves alone (for example, Russell Vought on budget cuts and RFK Jr. on the destruction of America's hitherto unequalled public health infrastructure) so long as they are willing to praise him (and in Kennedy's unfortunate case, destroy a legacy).

Meanwhile . . .

The problems mount.

Mass violence.

Affordability.

Antisemitism.

Even on issues where it appears on board, his dysfunctional presidency does not get it right.

Antisemitism is the best example.

The administration stood behind Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. It also backed Israel's attack (and launched its own) on Iran's nuclear facilities. In this environment, one would think it wants to confront the current worldwide wave of antisemitism and come up with effective means to remove it.  

But it doesn't. 

And hasn't.

From all I can tell, Trump thinks antisemitism in America resides exclusively in the precincts of Ivy League universities. Since he is certain that liberalism and the so-called deep state that opposes him also reside in those precincts, his attack on Harvard and Brown and Columbia has the advantage in his mind of eliminating two problems. 

In truth, however, it eliminates neither. 

Not the first (because the problem is a lot larger than a cadre of students at elite colleges). 

Nor the second (because the deep state he has conjured actually includes all the experts Elon Musk and RFK Jr. have sidelined and Russell Vought no longer wants to pay).

At this point, the solution to antisemitism is remembering, revising and recommitting.

The world has to remember what happened in the 1940s and beforehand. 

Jews have been vilified, hated and slaughtered for centuries. There is no history in which the peace held or the protection of others worked. Their survival has been entirely a function of their own courage, their own perseverance, their own unity. 

Many non-Jews think the powers-that-be gave them Israel is 1947.  This is false. Nothing was given. Israel had to fight even to exist. It had to fight to actually create one of the two states (its own) authorized by the 1947 United Nations Resolution dividing Mandatory Palestine.

Next, the world has to revise and correct its misunderstandings about those two states. 

The 1947 division could have worked. It failed not because Jews were illegitimate occupiers of a land they never knew or one that was not their own; they have been there for as long as history in any form has been recorded. Instead, it failed because the other side would not allow them to be there in the only form  -- as a nation, beholden to no one, dependent only on themselves -- that could ever make sense to anyone who is Jewish. 

For Jews, the existing and historic alternatives -- pluralism, assimilation, the legal protection of minority rights -- had failed them. 

Repeatedly. 

And often catastrophically.

Finally, after the remembering and the revising, there has to be a recommitment. 

Not to a two-state solution that today cannot exist. 

Rather, to the two-state solution that showed signs of being born in the 1990s. 

When the two state solution is discussed today, those who oppose it say it is impossible either because they do not want Israel to exist (the position of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian government and many Palestinians and other Arabs throughout the middle east) or because they think Palestinian society and culture is inherently antisemitic (the position of those who cite the antisemitic content of Palestinian Authority school curricula and those who think Israel should just seize the entire West Bank).  

So long as either form of opposition exists, two states are impossible.  

The notion, however, that this was always the case is not accurate. 

As recently as the 1990s, the West Bank was not overrun with settlements that are illegal as a matter of international law, and there were significant numbers of Palestinians willing to accept Israel, peacefully coexist, and create a Palestinian state. Sari Nusseibeh, a philosopher, former president of Al-Quds University and Palestinian moderate whose own family's roots in Jerusalem extend back more than a millennium, was one of them.

Remembering, revising and recommitting is complex, requires constructive leadership and enormous patience, and will take time.

It requires an all of society approach.

It cannot be done on the fly . . .

In social media posts . . .

Or by an executive whose attention span is at best limited.

It also cannot be done by real estate investors pretending to be (part-time) diplomats . . .

Or by businessmen seeking to line their own pockets.

And it cannot be done in  an environment in which a president flooding the zone with accepted or trivialized outrage, dishonesty and incompetence creates an overwhelming need in the rest of us to shut down just to survive.  

Anyone who does not support Trump, and right now that is about 60% of the country, could literally spend their entire day cataloguing his latest attack on his enemies or on reality and fashioning an appropriate warning and response.  

Because none of us have the time to do this, we turn him off. 

Like alcoholics, he depends on this.

In twelve step programs that provide tools for alcoholics to obtain and retain sobriety, two of the steps ask alcoholics to list all the people they have harmed and then attempt to make amends with those individuals. After overcoming denial, these are two of the more difficult steps to fulfill. Mostly because the list is long and the harm is deep. 

Many enablers -- those who excused, justified, ignored or denied the alcoholism -- are on that list.

In the case of Trump, most of his turn out to be.

And we who turn him off are among them.

The hard to take advice is to not do this.

Don't excuse, justify, deny or ignore.

It is advice especially hard to take this time of year.

Because this is the season to be jolly.

And confronting him is anything but.

As if on cue, last night Trump seized the airwaves to give a loud 18-minute speech repeating some of his standard lies. Gasoline prices are not $2.50/gallon. He did not inherit the “ worst” inflation “in 48 years". He has not cut drug prices by 600 %. 

After the speech, a doctor on CNN called it “manic” and the President “unwell”, and today Robert Hubbell called it “an awful speech delivered in a style of your MAGA loving drunk uncle trying to win a family argument at Thanksgiving by being the loudest person in the room.” 

But Trump had an excuse.

As he told reporters once he had finished . . .

“Susie . . . told him he had . . . to”.

THANKSGIVING 2025 -- HOW EMPATHY AND INTELLIGENCE CONQUERS EGO AND INSULT

For as long as I can recall, birthdays in my family were the only day of the year when it was perfectly acceptable (indeed, required) to focus solely on the one person for whom that day was historic.  

They got to pick their birthday dinner, their birthday cake and their birthday present.

And whoa unto anyone who violated that rule.  

One year on my sister's birthday, my father and I were sent out to buy her birthday cake.  He decided that she would like a lemon cake.  I kept telling him that was not what she wanted.  But I was very young (single digits) and he liked lemon cakes.

So . . . 

Lemon cake it was.

You would not have wanted to be him when we returned home with that cake.

My wife Debbie was born on November 27, 1965. 

Some years her birthday actually falls on Thanksgiving itself.  

In fact, this has happened eight times in her life. 

And will happen for the ninth time tomorrow. 

When the calendar is particularly cruel, it happens on milestone birthdays. 

Her tenth birthday in 1975 was on Thanksgiving. So was her 21st in 1986. Most of us get to close bars with our friends the day we are, as they say, legal. She had more stuffing.  Another milestone, her 60th, is tomorrow.  

And since many in her family never made it that far, this is a milestone on steroids.

But . . .

On the day meant to celebrate her personal triumph . . . 

Friends and family will be forced into celebrating . . .

The Pilgrim's.

What to do?

Could I conquer this veritable lemon cake of  a problem?

A friend of mine has a different family tradition.  

With him, everyone gets a birthday . . .

And a birthday aura. 

The first is a single day.  

The second begins anytime within the birthday week and lasts for two.

According to him, there's no reason you can't celebrate on all -- or any --  of those days.

So . . .

Last Saturday, I convinced Debbie that a lawyer from Los Angeles wanted to have dinner with us at West Point's Thayer Hotel. 

When we arrived, the lawyer was not there. 

But thirty of her friends were.  

Debbie Reilly McCarthy, who turns 60 tomorrow, was the legislative director for a ranking member of Congress; was indispensable to Generals and CEOs as she helped raise millions for a national "do tank" known as Business Executives for National Security; helped raise millions more for non-profits as diverse as New York's Westchester County Food Bank and its Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation; walked a marathon to raise money for cancer research in honor of her best friend felled in her thirties by that disease; was a mother to two step-children whose lives would have been significantly more difficult without her; and saved the life of the guy who was the last opponent her Congressman-boss defeated. 

In an era of ego and insult, she is empathy and intelligence.

On Saturday, her friends came from across the country . . . 

And across the decades . . .

To surprise and celebrate her.

It was not tomorrow but it was in the aura.

Happy Birthday, my love.

And to everyone else . . .

Happy Thanksgiving.