Friendship, loss and Yom Kippur

A good friend is a precious thing. It is painful and difficult to live without friendship. Sadly, sometimes friendships die, like every one of us must in the end. There are various reasons why this happens, some are the fault of circumstances and have little to do with the friendship itself. We hope to keep our most important relationships to the end. This is not always possible.

Sometimes a friendship depends on pretending that things your friend does that hurt you are not really a big deal. We justify this forbearance because of the value of the friendship to us, because of our fond memories of the friend. Tolerating these things requires us to accept the unacceptable by pretending not to feel what we feel. This kind of pretend, with someone who takes no responsibility for inflicting pain on you, always ends badly.

You can either remain unhealthily bound to someone who mistreats you, or, if you stop pretending, you will be angrily blamed for heartlessly killing a beautiful friendship. There is no winning in a scenario where someone reserves the right to hurt you (outside of escaping it); everybody always loses in the end.

Tonight at sundown the holiest day of the Jewish Year, Yom Kippur, begins. This is the spiritual deadline every year for Jews to make peace with people they’ve hurt and to forgive those who come to them to make amends. In light of recent Yom Kippurs, and the eternal silence of friends I loved for decades without reservation, people who did objectively unfriendly things with no remorse, I’ve come to see this day the way Frederick Douglass regarded the celebration of July 4th, in his famous 1852 speech, a hollow sham that would disgrace a nation of savages:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every day practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival . . . [1]

I think of the ugliness of the recent endings of lifelong friendships with those who will insist to the death that they are actually my victims because I can’t forgive them for things they did that I claim hurt me, things they are incapable of admitting they did. I picture these moral paragons dressed in white, fasting and praying tomorrow, rising and being seated, having “productive” “meaningful” fasts and experiencing the glory of God’s forgiveness, even if they are not capable of asking for forgiveness from trusting friends they’ve treated badly. One of these old friends, a rabbi/fundraiser I’ve known since high school, told me two Yom Kippurs ago that God has the right to tell a person who lays his heart bare to his friend on Yom Kippur to go fuck himself. Why not?

May their foul fasting breath (they are too religious on Yom Kippur to brush their teeth before they head off to synagogue) continue throughout 5786, and may it be so inscribed in the Book of Life. Amen.

[1] Right now this speech can be accessed at Constitutioncenter.org. I suspect that will not be the case once Big Balls gets back to work.

Comedic genius plays to quiet room

This great opening, comic gold, like the new, real 24 karat ornamentation in the Oval Office, was met with restrained laughter from the 800 top US military leaders forced to assemble at Quantico, from around the world, for a speech/photo op by the newly dubbed Secretary of War and the commander-in-chief himself.

As with any comedian, you really need to hear the bit from the comic’s own mouth. The laugh comes from the music of the delivery.

If I were them, I probably wouldn’t have done more than laugh politely either, although personally, not being a military man myself, I find the gag darkly hilterious.  Got to give props to our Genius-in-Chief, whether those stodgy generals and admirals are cool enough to get his sharp sense of humor, after their long, compelled journeys, or not.

Listen to this brilliant deadpan parody of Joe Biden at the debate Mr. T improvised for his audience of 800 military leaders

The master continues his brilliant work, owning the cucks, as he forces them to shut down the government, with some puckish AI and a nice cut and paste of a sombrero and mustache for the hapless brown skinned guy! 

USA!  USA!!!

Here’s Heather will the full story

The Madness of President Project 2025

Mr. Trump’s agitated, increasingly irrational dementia doesn’t get 1% of the media attention former president Joe Biden’s occasional gaffes, stumbles, age-related hesitations still get.

It’s as if by his longtime assertion of brash incoherence Trump has inoculated himself, perhaps with one of Dr. Brainworm’s non-harmful, anti-scientific health injections, against anyone questioning even the most insane things he says or does. It’s just Trump being himself. Take two Tylenol and call me in the morning, when you have autism.

Heather Cox Richardson, American historian writing for future historians, records some of the latest insane Trump actions, posts and pronouncements, in her most recent Letter from an American. If you don’t subscribe to her free nightly email, you really should, her perspective is super well-informed and often illustrated with fascinating historical parallels. She is also a brilliant writer. Here’s the last paragraph of last night’s impressive inventory of floridly insane actions by the Commander-in-Chief:

Late this afternoon, Trump praised his remodeling of the Oval Office to include copious gold fixtures, some of which match polyurethane appliqué available from the home improvement store Home Depot. On social media, Trump posted: “Some of the highest quality 24 Karat Gold used in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room of the White House. Foreign Leaders, and everyone else, ‘freak out’ when they see the quality and beauty. Best Oval Office ever, in terms of success and look!!! President DJT”

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Innocuous enough, out of context, perhaps, a vain compulsive old liar bragging about his impeccable 24 karat taste. But read along with everything else this increasingly mad, impulsive, vindictive man has done the last few days, weeks, months and years and the many objectively false things he repeatedly, angrily insists are true, it sends a chill up the old spine.

The good news, such as it is, is that in order to remain the smartest man in the room (always very important to Trump, as he has said, in moments of candor) he’s had to surround himself with fools and spinelessly ambitious people willing to meekly perform being even stupider than old Stupid Is As Stupid Does. To me, that collection of loyal incompetents is one of our greatest advantages in this perilous moment.

The cream of the wealthiest 1% who are dying for a permanent one party government run by a corrupt, pliable authoritarian, to protect their vast, inheritable privileges in perpetuity and screw everybody else, have a very problematic front man for their Project 2025 in America’s President Project 2025.

Stark Raving Mad

Heather Cox Richardson, not AI, describes the speech President Project 2025 delivered at the UN last week:

Trump’s speech went on to depict a fantasy world in which he had single-handedly saved the world. He claimed to have forged peace on two continents during his first term but said that “era of calm and stability gave way to one of the great crises of our time.” He then turned to the United States, claiming that “four years of weakness, lawlessness, and radicalism under the last administration delivered our nation into a repeated set of disasters. One year ago,” he said, “our country was in deep trouble, but today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world and there is no other country even close. America is blessed with the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the earth.”

And that was the frame for the next hour of rambling boasts and insults.

Trump claimed that he had reversed the “economic calamity” left by former president Joe Biden. He had brought down costs and inflation, he said, and economic growth and manufacturing were both booming. He claimed that in his four years, Biden had attracted less than $1 trillion in investment while he had secured $17 trillion. Tax cuts and deregulation had, he said, made the U.S. “the best country on earth to do business.”

“In my first term, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world,” he said. “We had the best economy ever, history of the world, and I’m doing the same thing again, but this time it’s actually much bigger and even better. The numbers far surpass my record-setting first term.”

Trump claimed: “On the world stage, America is respected again like it has never been respected before. You think about two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, or one year ago, we were a laughingstock all over the world.

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Take courage, citizens

An insane bully has crippled one of our two political parties, rendered it a mere flapping appendage to his overbearing will.  The incoherence of the crazed leader is fervently embraced by his most ambitious and ardent followers, everybody else in the party simply does his bidding, out of fear of his rage.

He orders criminal acts because the Supreme Court already told him, the 6-3 winner of Trump v. US, that he’s allowed to do whatever crimes he wants as much as he wants and plus he “has his Article II” and no pardon, even if he sells it openly for $10,000,000, can ever be challenged in court  (see Trump v. US).

In spite of all the long-time professional prosecutors at the Department of Justice reporting that there is no righteous case to be brought against James Comey, (and others [1]) leading to the resignation (firing according to Trump) of President Project 2025’s own recent appointee who refused to bring this legally infirm indictment, he will appoint somebody, totally unqualified, to do what he wants them to do and they will do it.  With the cringing blessing of the righteous, blonde attorney general, Pamela Jo Bondi.

So James Comey is indicted the other day on two counts stemming from the same supposedly lying sentence, elicited by supreme weasel Raphael “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz a former debating champion.  The DOJ’s inspector general has already found Comey’s statement to have been truthful. Cruz tried to lay a clever lawyerly trap, during Trump’s first administration, but it didn’t work.  Still, it is good enough for Trump’s latest inexperienced Acting State Attorney. That single sentence of claimed perjury is the sum and substance of two serious, and extremely flimsy, felony counts against James Comey with a penalty of up to 25 years in prison. Yer typical Trump case.

Watch Lawrence O’Donnell explain that all to you in the first minute or two. Then watch James Comey address the country to express his resistance to tyranny and his confidence in the American system of justice and the strength of our democracy. 

Let it add a little bit of steel to your spine during these nerve-wracking days, (talk about the times that try men’s souls.) Let it be a tonic like that top rated Jimmy Kimmel monologue, like all acts of courage and clarity during a time of terror, cowardice and incoherence.

Woof, woof…grrrr!!!!

They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets!

[1] or NY Attorney General Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, Fed governor Lisa Cook, NJ  Representative Lamonica McGiver, or anyone else who catches the Orange Polyp’s evil eye.

Lyin’ Ted Goodfella scores one for the First Amendment

It doesn’t seem right to mock despicable hate monger Lyin’ Ted, days after he stood up for the First Amendment, but his imitation of a mafioso is too good to not be enjoyed. I’d hate for anyone to miss it, so I’ll share it with you (in case you missed it), and have it here for future reference. The clip is from John Oliver’s recent show (hence the laughter when Ted goes into his marvelous Goodfellas mode).

A happy, healthy 5786 to my Jewish readers (and to everyone else)

Jewish new year starts at sundown on September 22nd this year. The day before, slain highly influential MAGA promoter Charlie Kirk’s life and work were celebrated by MAGA nation.

Shortly after Charlie Kirk was brutally murdered, the NY Times published where he stood on various issues. They republished it yesterday, when thousands of the faithful are lined up to pay homage to this martyred Christian champion of free speech (to hear some tell it) at a mega-MAGA-rally celebrating his life and work.   Look how mercilessly the super-judgmental New York Times smeared him for exercising his First Amendment rights to express a tiny bit of arguably antisemitic rhetoric! (The preceding sentence is an example of irony).

Antisemitism

Mr. Kirk was repeatedly accused of antisemitism, including by fellow conservatives.

He was a proponent of “replacement theory,” a once-fringe conspiracy theory positing that Jews are trying to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants. That ideology motivated the gunman who killed 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

Mr. Kirk also accused Jewish philanthropists of fomenting anti-whiteness by supporting liberal antiracism causes like the Black Lives Matter movement.

“The philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country,” he said on his show in 2023.

Not long after, he accused Jews of controlling “not just the colleges — it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.”

Allies of Mr. Kirk often sought to defend him against accusations of antisemitism by citing his support for Israel. Mr. Kirk defended Israel’s actions in Gaza. After his death, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel mourned him as “a lionhearted friend of Israel” who “stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization.”

Heh, takes one to know one, eh, Bibi?!

Read the article for more of the lionheart’s highly commendable free speech views:

Nothing to see here! Witch hunt!

Would I be out of line, on the day thousands of the faithful are lining up for a mega-MAGA memorial service for slain MAGA icon Charlie Kirk, to note that these accidentally publicly divulged messages to his “apolitical” Attorney General come off as the ravings of an even whinier version of history’s own Mr. Hitler?

I hasten to add, to be scrupulously fair, that Bill Clinton got off a plane to speak, secretly, with Obama’s US Attorney General while his wife was a candidate trying to illegally steal the US election for president in 2016 after conspiring with George Soros!

One can’t be too careful these days.

Great interview with an FCC commissioner

This piece by Chris Hayes lays out the mafia style shakedown by Trump appointed Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr [1]. Carr issued a direct threat to the parties who need FCC permission to make an $8,000,000,000 deal. He delivered his threat on a far-right podcast. Hayes talks with a sitting FCC commissioner (one of only three, the law requires five, but what does Project 2025 care? Brendan Carr wrote, and denies he wrote, the FCC chapter in Project 2025) who confirms that Carr’s actions are the audacious, unethical, dangerous, illegal actions of a lawless, partisan, rogue chairman.

Even Lyin’ Ted, who applauded the firing of Jimmy Kimmel (no friend of the Senate’s most hated member), deplored this mafia style demand on Disney, Nexstar and other mega-entities whose love of monetary profit erases all other considerations. Check out Lyin’ Ted’s cool imitation of a mafioso, wicked cool.

These are desperate acts by desperate men making a desperate run to overcome the will of the vast majority of Americans of all political persuasions, before their time for seizing authoritarian control runs out. They may be acting exactly like Nazis, but we call them Nazis at our peril, because Nazis always kill as many of their enemies as possible, even after they lose the war. This is not a time to hesitate out of fear, it is a time to remain clear-eyed and resolute in resistance.

Grey Lady cracks wise

Every few years the NY Times, without breaking character, cracks me up with their deadpan delivery. Here is the latest example, from their recent article on being sued by Donald Trump for the paper’s allegedly “deranged hatred” of Donald Trump. The distracting temper tantrum packaged as an incoherent $15,000,000,000 lawsuit was summarily dismissed by the judge for lack of an actual legal theory. Here’s the Grey Lady, from the day she was sued:

The complaint also took issue with the endorsement of Kamala Harris by the editorial board of The Times in September 2024, describing it as “deranged” and criticizing the editorial board’s arguments.

Mr. Trump has sued The Times on a previous occasion, without success.

In 2021, Mr. Trump sued the paper over a series of articles that investigated his finances and tax records. (Ms. Craig and Mr. Buettner were two of the reporters who wrote them.) The suit was dismissed in 2023 and Mr. Trump was ordered to pay The Times’s legal expenses.

In addition, in 2020, his re-election campaign sued for libel over an essay in the Opinion section titled “The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo.” The lawsuit was dismissed in 2021. . .

In an effort to prove “malice” against Mr. Trump, the lawsuit cited more than a dozen articles from The Times dating back to his first term in office that it claimed “maliciously and falsely portray him as dishonest, erode public trust in him and tear down his achievements.”

The lawsuit also claims that the defendants “baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way.”

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The lawsuit also claims that the defendants “baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way.”

Indeed.

Hatred is fine, according to the Hater-in-Chief, unless you oppose, or even question, anything about him, in which case you are hating in a deranged way. Rare to get this level of clarity from the boss.