Yesterday, the nation got a glimpse down the Washington, DC, rabbit hole, when the Senate Armed Services Committee held its confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense.

What we saw was performative Kabuki theatre at its finest. Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) and his staff orchestrated the hearing to leave no doubt that Hegseth is their guy. In his opening statement, Wicker called today’s Pentagon “sclerotic” and said Hegseth “will inject a new warrior ethos into the Pentagon, a spirit that can cascade from the top down.”

The theme of the day might well have been that “warrior ethos.” Hegseth used the term in his opening statement and at least six other times when answering Committee Members’ questions. I stopped counting after six.

In fact, watching this greased skid performance, one could be forgiven for thinking Hegseth was actually auditioning for King of Sparta. At the top of his five pillars necessary to “bring the warrior culture back to the DoD” were “lethality” and “war-fighting.” The three-letter word, war, was the chorus to every verse sung at yesterday’s Hearing.

According to Hegseth, to restore a lost “war-fighting” mentality requires rebuilding the military, re-establishing deterrence, and restoring that frequently mentioned warrior ethos (and, quite frankly, after hearing that vague term throughout the Hearing, and, remembering my time as an infantry Officer, who served in Vietnam for a couple of years, I still don’t know what he meant — makes me think of someone salivating for a fight).

It is customary for nominees to meet with Committee Members prior to their Confirmation Hearings. This time was different. Although he met with every Republican committee member, the only Democrat he would grace with his presence was the Ranking Member, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI).

Reed is an interesting man. A graduate of the Military Academy at West Point, Captain in the 82nd Airborne Division, Platoon Leader, and Company Commander, he later taught for several years at West Point, before resigning and running for Congress. Maybe we should ask him what he thinks of all this “warrior ethos” stuff.

Another leitmotif sung over and over again at yesterday’s Hearing concerned Hegseth’s personal life, specifically allegations of alcohol and sexual abuse. The nominee’s universal response to these questions was that they were all part of a “smear campaign” from “anonymous sources.” This, despite the Democrats saying they actually have the names of accusers, but could not provide them, because the accusers feared retribution. They know what happened to Anita Hill and Cristine Blasey Ford.

Hegseth was also peppered with questions about his public comments that women should not be allowed in combat and that they have made the armed forces “less effective” and are an “unhelpful distraction.” Claiming that combat readiness can be negatively impacted if standards are lowered to accommodate women, he gave the example of a fully-filled, 100-pound, combat ruck (rucksack) weighing 100 pounds whether a woman or a man is carrying it.

When I was deep into Army training, I saw many other trainees, all of them male, wash out because they couldn’t manage the physical requirements. I’m sure the same thing now occurs with women going through the rigorous training the Army requires. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be there trying, though. Some will succeed; some will not. Just like the men.

Democrats on the Committee were understandably upset they never got to meet privately with Hegseth, as their Republican colleagues had. During her questioning, Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), a former military officer and a victim of rape, as well as someone whose vote was in question, told about the “very direct discussion” she had with Hegseth in their private meeting. Immediately after the Hearing, she issued a press release announcing he has her vote, which likely was never in doubt, anyway.

On the other hand, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was nearly apoplectic in her questioning, complaining about his refusal to meet with her privately so she “could ask the same questions” Senator Ernst had had  the opportunity to ask. I could have told Senator Gillibrand it wouldn’t have mattered, but she probably knows that all too well.

Although we didn’t learn much at Pete Hegseth’s Hearing, there are two things about which I am certain: first, unless something unforeseen and huge happens between now and the full Senate voting on his confirmation, he will be the next Secretary of Defense; second, during the next four years, something will happen, something big — it always does —  that will test the extent to which a Secretary Hegseth is up to the job.

How does that make you feel?

By now, it has become clear to anyone paying the least attention that the apocalyptic fires ravaging southern California have caused nearly incomprehensible human and property damage. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Governor Gavin Newsome told NBC’s Jacob Soboroff, “Just in terms of cost, these fires will be the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history.”

The insured losses from last week’s fires may exceed $20 billion, and total economic losses could reach $50 billion, according to estimates published by JPMorgan on Thursday.

Those losses would far exceed the $12.5 billion in insured damages from the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85, displaced more than 50,000 people, and destroyed around 18,000 structures. Until now, that was the costliest blaze in the country’s history, according to data from Aon.

Caused by a poorly maintained Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) transmission line, the Camp Fire caused the massive PG&E company to declare bankruptcy.

Thus far, no one knows the exact cause of the current inferno, but humidity of 8%, hurricane force winds of up to 100 miles per hour sweeping down LA’s canyons, and a single spark could easily account for the horrific devastation.

Sunday’s 18 minute interview with NBC’s Soboroff showed a leader at the top of his game. Newsom’s humanity was on full display as he sought to reassure Californians, especially Angelinos, as well as the rest of the nation, that the state’s resources and response are equal to the immensity of the task.

Watch the full interview, and you’ll see what I mean.

During the interview, Newsom described his conversation with President Biden. Newsom asked Biden for the federal government to cover 90% of the state’s costs; Biden replied he’d authorize 100% for six months. Soboroff asked about conversations with President-elect Trump. Newsom said he’d publicly asked Trump to come to California to view the damage. As I write this on Monday, Trump has yet to respond.

This is a disaster where all who can, should help. If you choose to contribute, you can donate through the Red Cross website or by scanning this QR code.

Thank you.

It’s been an interesting week in America, chock full of news guaranteed to titillate even those who don’t routinely pay attention.

During this week, we saw America say a graceful goodbye to its 100-year-old, 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter. That was the nicest thing about the week.

During this week, we also saw the 45th, and soon to be 47th, president officially designated a convicted felon, the first president ever to swan dive into that particularly deep, stink-filled hole. Naturally, with his usual bluster, he draped the whole thing with a Trump-monogrammed, victory, whitewashed toga, saying on Truth Social (what an oxymoronic name):

The Radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, unAmerican Witch Hunt. After spending tens of millions of dollars, wasting over 6 years of obsessive work that should have been spent on protecting New Yorkers from violent, rampant crime that is destroying the City and State, coordinating with the Biden/Harris Department of Injustice in lawless Weaponization, and bringing completely baseless, illegal, and fake charges against your 45th and 47th President, ME, I was given an UNCONDITIONAL DISCHARGE. That result alone proves that, as all Legal Scholars and Experts have said, THERE IS NO CASE, THERE WAS NEVER A CASE, and this whole Scam fully deserves to be DISMISSED. The real Jury, the American People, have spoken, by Re-Electing me with an overwhelming MANDATE in one of the most consequential Elections in History. As the American People have seen, this “case” had no crime, no damages, no proof, no facts, no Law, only a highly conflicted Judge, a star witness who is a disbarred, disgraced, serial perjurer, and criminal Election Interference.

OK. I cut it off there, but there was more, and I’ll spare you that.

For the record, Judge Juan Merchan, in sentencing Trump to nothing, said that Trump’s only reprieve from punishment was his looming presidency: “Donald Trump, the ordinary citizen, Donald Trump the criminal defendant, would not be entitled to such considerable protections.” Merchan probably issued his ruling while holding his nose.

Merchan said the law required him to issue an “unconditional discharge.” This is not an exoneration or a dismissal. Merchan was firm that Trump’s jury conviction on 34 counts of falsifying records stands. He is, and will remain, a convicted felon.

During this week, we have also seen horrific fires engulf Los Angeles and beyond. The fires have killed at least ten people thus far, as well as destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. And into this horrendoma parachuted convicted felon Donald Trump to blame the whole thing on Democrats and Governor Gavin Newsom (whom Trump labels “Newscum” — how clever he is, isn’t he? He makes a schoolyard bully look like Mother Theresa).

Trump claims Newsom diverted water necessary to fight the fires to save an endangered fish, a smelt. That’s sort of accusing Newsom of murder. Totally untrue, of course. There’s plenty of water to fight the fires, but because of electrical power outages (caused by the fires), there is not enough pressure in some water hydrants, and some of those couldn’t pump at all. It seems to me that everyone is doing the very best they can to fight this historic conflagration, and they deserve support and thanks. Doesn’t matter to what’s-in-it-for-me Donald.

Also during this week, we saw the official and peaceful transfer of power in a joint session of Congress, although it might only have been peaceful because the Democrats lost and the MAGA Republicans won — the same folks who lost four years ago, and we know what happened then.

Finally, during this week, we were treated to a vaudevillesque, Donald Trump press conference from his tromp l’oeil, faux-luxurious Mar-a-Lago, the place where he packed away in bathrooms and ballrooms all the high security files he stole from the White House when he left in 2021.

For a man who doesn’t drink, Donald Trump is acting more and more like a guy on a barstool talking gibberish to anyone who’ll listen. His press conference was a good example. Delivered in what can only be described as a bastardized form of stream of consciousness that would have made William Faulkner cringe, he circled around broad policy points without ever landing on one, which is pretty much his usual modus operandi. Along the way, he continued his more or less constant attack on America and what it has become over the last four years, in his befuddled opinion. We all know that at some point in late January or early February he will declare the ship of state turned around, sailing in the right direction with wonderful results, and all because of him. He is as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow.

And, just to show what a tough guy he is, at the mid-point of his presser, he flew off into his own twilight zone, waxing ineloquent about using America’s armed forces to conquer Greenland, the Panama Canal, and maybe even all of Canada. What’s next? The planet Venus?

But I don’t want to end this event-filled week on a downer. Oh, no. I have an announcement to make. I have been offered a job! A very, very, VERY BIG ONE!

A wonderful Team Trump lady named Mary, who may or may not exist, wrote me to say that the big boss himself WANTS MY HELP! Get ready, now — I have been asked to become an Official Trump Cabinet-Level Advisor. And, yes, you read that right.

Don’t believe me? Think I’m just bragging? Au contraire. Here’s my invitation to the big dance:

The “he’s very smart” Elon Musk will probably be sitting next to, or at least, near me at a highly polished table conducive to the gravity of the advice we’ll be giving.

At this point, I’m just waiting for my briefing folder and plane ticket to DC. I wonder where I’ll be sitting for the inauguration?

What a week! My life is now complete.

Today, at Washington’s magnificent National Cathedral, America stopped for just a moment to witness the State Funeral for Jimmy Carter, the 37th President of the United States.

His was a presidency badly misunderstood during his time in the Oval Office, but over the years, historians have re-examined his accomplishments and awarded them high marks.

Don’t believe me? While president, Carter created the Departments of Energy and Education. Conservatives seethe at each, and each is now in jeopardy, but both have furthered the nation’s interests by combating the effects of climate change and educational inequality. He was the first president to attempt any of that.

Carter was also the first president to not only acknowledge, but also do something about climate change. In addition to creating the Department of Energy, Carter created the first national energy policy that included conservation, price controls, and new technology.

He installed solar panels on the roof of the White House, which Ronald Reagan promptly removed. The solar panels may have been a bit of a gimmick, but Carter was serious about America’s energy trajectory.

Although he did not get credit for it, he successfully negotiated the release of the Iranian hostages, a release that happened minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Reagan, who did nothing to deserve it, was the political beneficiary of this achievement, as he was for Carter’s successful efforts to lower the high inflation rates of the mid-1970s.

The Carter Administration negotiated the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the Panama Canal Treaty, which, with Donald Trump’s ascendancy, is also in jeopardy.

Carter also personally and successfully negotiated the Camp David Accords between Anwar Sadat, of Egypt, and Menachem Begin, of Israel. To this day, that is the only real peace treaty ever achieved in the middle east. And for it, Sadat was assassinated, but the treaty he signed lived on. At today’s funeral, Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s Chief of Domestic Policy, described how for thirteen straight days Carter personally drafted treaty proposal after treaty proposal for Sadat and Begin to ponder.

Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. When Carter was awarded the prize in 2002, Gunnar Berge, the Nobel Committee Chairman, said he should have won it with Sadat and Begin. Perhaps he should have won two, one for the Camp David Accords and one for his post-presidency.

Today’s eulogies were both moving and enlightening. Carter’s grandson, Jason, describing  the Carter Center’s successful effort to eradicate from Africa the parasitic guinea-worm disease, said, “Before he took it on, guinea-worm disease killed three and a half million people a year. Last year, the number was 14. He didn’t do that with medicine; he did it with better water management in tiny 600-person villages.”

Growing up deep in the Jim Crow south, Jimmy Carter was elected Governor of Georgia in 1972, succeeding the axe-handle-wielding racist Lester Maddox. He immediately set civil rights as a cornerstone of his administration, blazing a trail that has now led Georgians to elect Raphael Warnock the state’s first African American U.S. senator, as well as the first African American Democrat elected in the entire South.

Ninety-two-year-old Reverend Andrew Young delivered today’s penultimate eulogy. Carter appointed Young to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Young was the first African American to hold the position. It was Andrew Young who described one, small moment in Jimmy Carter’s life that struck a chord with me. Carter was a Naval Academy graduate, and, when he first got to Annapolis he learned that the Academy had also enrolled its first black midshipman. Carter asked if he could be that midshipman’s roommate. “As a minority himself, Plains, Georgia, being only 20-25% white,” Young said, “he thought he might be able to make things easier for his classmate.”

That small moment of moral generosity seems emblematic of Jimmy Carter’s entire time on earth.

Requiescat in pace.

In revolutionary France, public executions were entertainment events. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens created Madame Defarge and memorably described her blissfully knitting beside the guillotine as its blade drops on another aristocrat’s neck.

In the centuries spanning pre-civil rights in America, crowds would gather  to watch, or even  participate in, racist murders, many of them communal lynchings.

Some people have always had an atavistic need to torment other human beings, and some people have always had a ghoulish desire to watch them do it.

On 22 December, this was on full and monstrous display in New York City, specifically on a stationary F Train in Brooklyn’s Coney Island station. A homeless woman, 57-year-old Debrina Kawam, was sitting on the train, apparently sleeping, when Sebastian Zapeta-Calil  walked over to her, took a lighter from his pocket, and  set her on fire. Her clothes instantly ignited, and, screaming, she began to burn.

Zapeta-Calil watched her burn for a while and then, unsatisfied, took off his jacket to fan the flames.

An undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, Zapeta-Calil was deported in 2018 and later reentered the US illegally, according to federal immigration authorities. This is his first arrest in the U.S. He has told the authorities he has no memory of the attack, as he was intoxicated at the time. That seems to defy credibility.

In high school, Ms. Kawam had been a cheerleader with what her classmates called a “million-dollar smile.” She had hopes of becoming an airline flight attendant. That never worked out, and, after a number of setbacks, she wound up homeless on a New York F Train in late 2024 waiting for her rendevous with a horrid destiny.

Zapeta-Calil and Ms. Kawam were apparently total strangers. When he boarded the train in Queens, she was already on it, and they rode the same train for the long journey to its terminus in Coney Island, an official told reporters. Homeless people often ride the trains as far as they go in New York City to keep warm in the winter.

You might think from reading this that the burning lady and the arsonist man were the only people there. You’d be wrong. There were a number of people on the platform — as well as two police officers — none of whom moved one inch closer to help. CCTV video shows one of the police officers glancing at the burning woman but making no move to help her; his partner  strides in the other direction, speaking into a walkie-talkie without slowing down in the face of the F Train immolation.

Eventually, police officers appeared with a fire extinguisher to douse the flames, but by then Ms. Kawam was long dead.

In addition to failing to aid the victim, Police didn’t even detain Zapeta-Calil, who stood right there in front of them. He wasn’t arrested until hours later in another subway station. For some reason beyond me, a Police Department spokesman later commended the officers on the platform for doing their job “perfectly.”

And how do we know all this? Because the patrons waiting for their trains, rather than trying to help, decided instead to become Steven Spielbergs and film the event on their phones.

Ms. Kawam died in unimaginable agony. She was burned to such an unrecognizable state it took nine days to identify her by analyzing fingerprints, dental information, and DNA evidence.

And lest you decide to quickly move on from this tragedy, I thought it might be helpful if you could put a face to the unfortunate lady. Here is her high school photo from 40 years ago showing so much hope and promise. The girl next door. America’s sweetheart.

The story of Debrina Kawam calls to memory one of the most notorious crimes in New York City’s history. It happened in 1964, and it is the story of 28-year-old Kitty Genovese, a bar worker, who was on her way home from work at 2:00 AM, on 13 March, when she was approached by a man named Winston Moseley, who was waving a knife at her. She ran, screaming, but he caught her in her apartment’s entryway, where he raped her three times and then stabbed her to death. After her murder, the nation learned that 38 people, most of them neighbors, saw or heard what was happening, yet did nothing to help. No one called the police. At Moseley’s trial, prosecutors called five of the neighbors to testify. All said they saw or heard the attack, but none seemed to think what they were actually seeing or hearing was really something terrible that was actually happening. Besides, it wasn’t their business.

What have we become that we can let a person burn to death in front of us, or suffer rape and stabbing death without lifting the proverbial finger to help?

Psychologists attribute this to the Bystander Effect. In the late 1960s, John M. Darley and Bibb Latané (1968) initiated an extensive research program on the “bystander effect.” In their seminal article¹, they found that any person who was the sole bystander helped, but only 62% of the participants intervened when they were part of a larger group of five bystanders.

The more witnesses, the less likely any one person will intervene, as the Kawam and Genovese cases demonstrate.

In Ms. Kawam’s case, police and New York train riders have offered their own ideas for why no one tried to help. They told reporters it’s a matter of the subway system being a dangerous place where you must never make eye contact and at all times keep your head down. But all the gruesome videos of this obscenity that were posted on social media — most of which have now been deleted — suggest there could not have been many downed heads.

Perhaps we have simply become a society of Madame Defarges. If cell phones had existed in 1964, I have no doubt there would have been quite a few videos of the final minutes in the life of Kitty Genovese.

__________________

¹ Darley J. M., Latané B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 377–383.

Yesterday, we saw something we haven’t seen in eight years — the peaceful transfer of power. Vice President Kamala Harris, showing the grace that characterized her campaign, recorded the 2024 electoral college votes before a joint session of both houses of Congress. Unlike four years ago, nobody objected, nobody had to hide under benches, nobody had to run for their life, nobody died.

And unlike four years ago, when members of the Trump Administration made things as difficult as possible for the Biden transition team, Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s highly capable incoming Chief of Staff, has reported the utmost cooperation from the outgoing Biden team. One wonders how January 6th, 2025, would have unfolded had Trump lost and Harris won.

It is all preparing the way for the billionaires to be front and center, rather than in their usual roles of the guys pulling the strings behind the curtain. This is in stark contrast to their immediate reaction to the insurrection attempt four years ago.

As Josh Marshall wrote yesterday in his Talking Points Memo:

The now incoming President led a criminal attempt to overthrow the republic to reverse the outcome of an election he lost. One has to peel back so many layers of time to remember that a good percentage of corporate America announced at the time that they would stop backing members of Congress who had supported the effort by refusing to vote to certify the results of the election, a boast that required cutting off support to the bulk of congressional Republicans.

Well, that moral stance didn’t last long, and to see how far in the rear of the democracy battle corporate America has retreated, one only need look at Ann Telnaes, the only female editorial cartoonist to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the Reuben Award, the highest award a cartoonist can earn. Only two other cartoonists have ever done that.

A few days ago, Telnaes quit her job with the Washington Post, because editors had killed this cartoon lampooning America’s oligarchs, which included her boss, Jeff Bezos:

Telnaes has been creating magnificent editorial cartoons for the Post since 2008, and, as she wrote yesterday:

I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.

The job of the political, or editorial, cartoonist is to afflict the comfortable — quickly. What  takes me 800 to 1,000 words to say, persuasively I hope, people like Ann Telnaes can illustrate in the blink of an eye.

The pathfinder of political cartoonists was Thomas Nast, who, between 1857 and 1887, drew approximately 2,250 cartoons for Harper’s Weekly. Nast stuck his sharply pointed pens deep into the eyes of the high and mighty from the Civil War, through Reconstruction, and all the way to the Chinese Exclusion period.

When Nast died in 1902, the New York Times eulogized him as the “Father of the American Political Cartoon,” an honorific bestowed in no small part for Nast’s biting political caricatures of William M. (Boss) Tweed who ran New York City’s Democratic political machine at Tammany Hall.

The cartoonists who came after him, all the way to Ann Telnaes, have carried the baton he passed with scathing grace.

And they stick together. Immediately following Telnaes’s resignation, her friends began to pour it on. Here’s an example, published yesterday by Steve Brodner, the first artist to be inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame:

Here’s another, by Emma Cook:

Ironically, spiking the Telnaes cartoon may have caused it a far wider distribution than if WAPO’s editors had just let it run.

Because political cartoonists can connect so viscerally with the public, theirs is sometimes a dangerous life. During the 1930s, German Jewish cartoonists took their lives in their hands by skewering Nazi bigwigs. You could tell they were successful, because so many had to flee the country.

In the present time, we should not forget that today is the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo murders. On 7 January 2015, in Paris, two French-born Algerian Muslim brothers, Saïd Kouachi and Chérif Kouachi, targeted the employees of the French satirical weekly magazine in a terrorist attack. The brothers killed twelve and severely injured eleven.

Political cartooning can be a risky business.

Meanwhile, back here in what Ronald Reagan, in his farewell address, called the “shining city upon a hill,” the fun is about to begin. Trump’s cabinet picks will begin their confirmation process. As if we didn’t know already, we are soon to confirm just how much spine Republican senators have. Can they actually stomach the likes of retribution-minded Kash Patel leading the dedicated men and women of the Justice Department; accused sexual predator and beer-quaffing Pete Hegseth, running the Defense Department, the largest department in all of government; Bashar al–Assad and Putin buddy Tulsi Gabbard, overseeing America’s secrets as Director of National Intelligence; and Bobby Kennedy’s son and John Kennedy’s nephew, the vaccine-denying, loopy-thinking Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., making health care decisions for the nation?

Many of us were glued to our screens as we watched the House Special Committee investigate and get to the truth of the insurrection of January 6th, 2021, a day of infamy. But the hypocrisy and lies we are about to witness as these unqualified and dangerous people worm their way through to their new jobs will be an even better show not to be missed.

Ann Telnaes and friends are going to have a field day. If only it really mattered.

Perspective comes in many forms. As we near the end of a momentous year, many are overjoyed with the possibilities filling the empty cylinder of 2025; others see nothing but shapeless demons waiting to pounce.

Today, I want to suggest a different kind of perspective, one whose center is grounded in humility.

Memorial Day weekend of 1977 arrived with an intergalactic big bang as the first of George Lucas’s blockbuster Star Wars movies landed in American theaters. On that weekend, space travel at the speed of light, Jedi Knights and the “dark force” captivated moviegoers.

However, a little more than three months later, a mission of real intergalactic importance began. On 5 September 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1, a ship devoted to cosmic curiosity. Nineteen months later, after traveling 3.7 billion miles, the planetary pathfinder neared Jupiter. But before beginning its exploration of the gas giant and its moons, the little rover turned its camera back to where it all began and made an historic photo of what came to be known as “the pale blue dot,” tiny in the cosmic void. A photo that should inspire nothing but humility.

Here is that photo.

To mark the appearance of that amazing image, the astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan wrote the following:

Look again at this dot. This is here. This is home. This is us. Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you have ever heard of, every human being who has ever existed, lived out their lives on it. The multitude of our joys and sufferings, a thousand self-righteous religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and gatherer, every hero and coward, every builder and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every couple in love, every mother and father, every bright child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of ethics, every lying politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived here – on a speck of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage on a vast cosmic stage. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all the generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they might become the short-term masters of a fraction of a grain of sand. Think of the endless cruelties inflicted by the inhabitants of one corner of this dot on the barely distinguishable inhabitants of another corner. How often they disagree, how eager they are to kill each other, how hot their hatreds are.

Our posturing, our imagined importance, the illusion of our privileged status in the universe – all of them are worthless before this point of pale light. Our planet is but a lonely speck in the surrounding cosmic darkness. In this vast emptiness there is no hint that anyone will come to our aid, to save us from our ignorance.

“A fraction of a grain of sand,…a lonely speck in the surrounding cosmic darkness.” We’re on our own here. Now, 45 years later, Voyager 1 has left the solar system we call home and has soared through interstellar space more the 15.5 billion miles. A long way. It only has to keep going for about another 5.8 trillion miles to reach one light year away from us. That’s 5.8 with eleven zeroes after it.

Think about that and our tiny, pale blue dot when the crystal ball comes down in Times Square a little more than a week from now. Think about that when whatever happens in 2025 brings you either joy or despair. Think about that whenever you look into the eyes of a smiling child.

Despite our infinite smallness, our aloneness, despite all the harm we have done to each other since first walking the earth upright, I am filled with hope for our next trip around the Sun. In the vast void of space, we cosmic Lilliputians have survived, even prevailed, against astronomically fearful odds. We have proven capable of great goodness. I believe that whatever evil may lurk around the next corner, that spirit of goodness, our better angels, will see us through.

Can you believe that, too?

However you celebrate these holidays, may they be filled with happiness, good health, and a fervent desire that all of us will do whatever it takes to make this pale blue dot a better speck in the universe for ourselves and our progeny.

Happy Holidays!

Since 1980, there have been ten government shutdowns, and they all have led to federal employees being furloughed.

Shutdowns can be extremely disruptive — for citizens who depend on government services, for the nation, as a whole, and for the furloughed workers.

Most of the shutdowns have ended quickly after rational thought intersected with insanity. But some have been worse than others. The most significant include the 21-day shutdown of 1995–1996, during President Bill Clinton’s administration, over opposition to major spending cuts; the 16-day shutdown in 2013, during the Barack Obama administration, caused by a dispute over implementation of the Affordable Care Act; and the longest, the 35-day shutdown of 2018–2019, during the Donald Trump administration, caused by a dispute over funding Donald Trump’s ego-driven wall on the Mexican border.

We are now staring into the maw of more insanity, but this time things are different. For Continuing Resolution after Continuing Resolution, the nation has limped along. But this week, House Republicans and Democrats crafted an actual appropriations bill for the fiscal year. At 1,547 pages, it’s hefty. And it’s a compromise. No one got everything they wanted, but everyone said they could live with what they got.

Until, that is, about a half hour after they announced the deal, an unelected, mega-rich, very smart, but crazy, person killed the done deal with five words — on social media, no less: “This bill must not pass.”

Elon Musk, who the media now always refers to as, “Elon Musk, the world’s richest man,”  like the ready-to-spray skunk who turns up at the victory party, later expanded his demand with the promise to fund a “primary” against any Republican who dared vote for the bill. Because Musk had just spent $277 million helping Donald Trump and other Republicans get elected, he got the Party’s attention, and the live bill of a done deal was suddenly as dead as the nail on Marley’s door.

This, understandably, infuriated the Democrats who had thought they had agreement only to find themselves kneecapped. Richard Neal (D-MA), ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, who was a chief negotiator, was apoplectic. “Around here, currency is your word,” he fumed, adding, “You’ve never won a shutdown, and you won’t win this one,” referring to his Republican colleagues.

Yesterday, Speaker Mike Johnson, now running for his political life, bowed down to the pressure from Olympus and cobbled together a quickie bill he thought would satisfy Musk and Trump. That bill, now down to 178 pages, was immediately thrown back in his face by the dysfunctional Republicans he purports to lead. This morning, he told NPR he “had a plan” for how to satisfy everyone. Swell.

All of which brings us to right now — eight hours from someone turning off all the lights. A few minutes ago, Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters the House had agreed to — something. As the AP reported:

Veering toward a midnight Friday government shutdown, House Speaker Mike Johnson is proposing a new plan that would temporarily fund federal operations and disaster aid, but punts President-elect Donald Trump demands for a debt limit increase into the new year.

If Johnson can actually herd his cats to approving whatever it is he has in his pocket, we’ll be back to doing this all over again in March. Double swell.

Regardless of what happens today, I would like to make three points.

First, this horrendoma should make every American over-the-moon angry, regardless of voting preference. To me, it does all that is necessary to show the extraordinarily corrupting influence money now has in our allegedly democratic process. That one man could toss nearly $300 million into any election, thereby turning those he supported into instant puppets, would be incomprehensible, if it weren’t actually true. Money has always played a big role in elections, but we appear we have reached, and passed, the tipping point for democracy.

And who elected Elon Musk to anything? I didn’t, and neither did you, regardless of who you voted for. In the blink of an eye, he now seems more powerful than Donald Trump, who did not take to social media to demand the first bill be killed until hours after Musk had done.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, this is a situation up with which we should no longer put.

Second, the Founders and Framers of our Constitution brilliantly designed three co-equal branches of government — Congress, the Judiciary, and the Executive. John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison wrote 85 Federalist Papers between October, 1787, and August, 1788, to persuade the new nation that the carefully crafted Constitution was infinitely better than the Articles of Confederation, because, among other things, each branch would be a check on the others.

I ask you: Does that beautiful construct still inure when five words on social media can stop one of those branches — the Congress — in its tracks and bend it to the will of its allegedly co-equal Executive branch?

Third, I cannot resist once again calling attention to the harm a shutdown will do to the men and women of our armed forces, who have done nothing to deserve it.

The military ranks of E-4, E-5, and E-6, (Specialist [or Corporal], Sergeant, and Staff Sergeant, respectively), make up the backbone of the U.S. armed forces. As of 1 January 2024, the men and women of these three ranks, after accumulating four years experience, earn annual gross income ranging from $36,795 (E-4) to $45,011 (E6). They can make a bit more if they are married with dependents and live off-base. Our E-6 can jump to about $67,000 in that situation.

It should be clear that the members of our armed forces live paycheck to paycheck.

In 2019, in its National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2020, Congress directed the Secretary of Defense to report on food insecurity among members of the armed forces and their dependents. The Department of Defense (DOD) contracted with the Rand Corporation to conduct a study to fulfill Congress’s directive. After an exhaustive analysis, Rand concluded the level of food insecurity was 25.8% in the armed forces, which is nearly double the level in the civilian population. The DOD then published a report citing Rand’s work and outlining steps it would begin taking to address such a high level of need.

The  Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, (WIC) are both available to members of the armed forces who qualify for them, but take-up of these programs is tiny (6%), compared to the civilian population, as the Rand study pointed out. No study has yet been done to learn why this is so, but Rand theorized the culture of the military with its “Can do” attitudes, as well as feared stigma—both social and career— attached to asking for aid have a lot to do with it. That’s probably true.

With all of that in mind, earlier this week, in true bi-partisan fashion, the Senate passed, and President Biden has promised to sign, a new National Defense Authorization Act for 2025. The legislation provides for a 14.5% pay raise for junior enlisted service members and a 4.5% increase for others. The bill takes effect 1 January 2025. It’s a big raise, and it will help a lot, but, remember, the junior ranks are starting from a low rung on the economic ladder.

Regardless, tonight, at 12:01 AM to be precise, pay, at the current rates, will stop for the armed forces if Republicans force a government shutdown, and lower and middle rank soldiers, who don’t have much money to begin with, which is shameful, will have none.¹ Of course, they’ll all still be on the job defending America.

As has happened after every shutdown, federal workers, whose pay is stopped, will likely receive retractive back pay following the shutdown, but this will not happen for the armed forces. Under current law, only those deemed “essential” would receive backpay once a shutdown ends and new federal funding is approved.

In 2018, at the last possible minute, Congress approved legislation allowing DOD service members to be paid for the duration of what was to become a 35-day shutdown. The legislation excluded the Coast Guard, because it comes under the Department of Homeland Security, not the DOD.

I’m guessing (but I wouldn’t bet on it) that tonight at about 11:59 PM Congress will do something to ensure our men and women in uniform, all of whom have volunteered to defend the country—and to die if necessary—continue to receive their paychecks. Failure to do so will bring even more ignominy on the fools driving the clown car over the cliff.

Maybe this time they’ll include the 57,000 members of the U.S. Coast Guard.

_______________

¹ The Rand study found that middle and lower ranks had average savings of less than $3,000.

Imagine for a moment your name is Anthony Fauci. You are a physician and an immunologist and were the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, from 1984 to 2022. You were also the face of the medical profession throughout the Covid pandemic, which took more than a million American lives. You repeatedly advised citizens to avoid close contact with others, to mask when in public, and to wash hands often. You once quipped to a journalist that you washed yours “about fifty times a day.” A long time ago, decades really, you saved the life of a friend of mine who had contracted a disease that was always fatal, but you discovered a cure, and today he still walks among us doing good for others.

Somehow, your integrity, professionalism, and loyalty to medicine and your Hippocratic Oath did not sit well with many in the MAGA galaxy, including Donald Trump. Mask mandates, and requirements to stay home away from contagion, and, most of all, your popularity with the general public, got severely under his skin. Now, they’re calling for your head with loose cannon Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) telling you in a June House Hearing that you should be “prosecuted for crimes against humanity” and don’t deserve to have a medical license.

Or, imagine for a moment your name is Liz Cheney. You were the third ranking House Republican until you co-chaired the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, a horrific attack in which lives were lost. The Capital had not been attacked, breached, and ransacked since the War of 1812. The Committee you co-led concluded that Donald Trump had instigated the insurrection, failed to prevent it, and refused to take immediate action to end it.  For this, the Republican Party tossed you from leadership and  primaried you in the last election, which you lost by a lot.

Trump has been saying you and your fellow Committee members “belong in jail.” On Sunday, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, he repeated that. What’s more, on social media, some Republicans have even called your service on the Committee “treasonous,” a charge Trump reposted, apparently agreeing with it. Treason is punishable by death.

Or, your name could be retired General Mark Milley, former Chair of the Joint Chiefs, who told Bob Woodward for his new book, War, that Trump is a “fascist to the core” and that, “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country.”

Milley angered Trump repeatedly over his refusal of the President’s orders to have the Army “crack skulls” and shoot protesters during the George Floyd protests of May 2020. “Just shoot them,” the president reportedly said. Trump could never understand Milley, or the Armed Forces, for that matter.

Now, Milley has warned former colleagues he believes he may be called back to active duty to be court-martialed. And, yes, Trump could do that.

Fauci, Cheney, Milley, and many, many others now sit smack dab in the cross hairs of a MAGA movement for retribution against the perceived enemies of Donald Trump. And to this point, neither Trump nor his inner circle minions have taken the trouble to disabuse anyone of that notion. His nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel, a true believer if there ever was one, has gone so far as to amplify the rhetoric and has publicly vowed to pursue Trump’s critics.

And if that’s not enough, an October NPR investigation found that Trump, himself, has made more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents.

No one knows if this is anything more than talk, a symbolic bread and circuses, a little red meat for the faithful. But is it responsible to ignore the possibility? Should the Biden Administration sit back all the way to the 20th of January insulated in the White House running out the clock. Should the President and his team stand by and do nothing while Trump’s “enemies” in what he considers the “deep state” wait for a knock on the door?

MAGA seems to have a collective itch it needs to scratch, and the itch is revenge.

Time for some anti-itch medicine.

There are credible accounts, first reported by Politico, that the Biden Administration is considering pre-emptive pardons for those unfortunate enough to have run afoul of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, although no one in that weird world can come up with anything illegal done by any of Trump’s enemies targeted for vengeance.

“It is both legal and probably prudent for President Biden to consider pardoning people who could be hit with bogus charges or harassed with the elements of law enforcement just because he doesn’t like what they say or what they’ve said,” Norman Ornstein, senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative public policy think tank in Washington, told ABC News.

Anyone charged by an incoming administration bent on destructive retribution would incur legal costs mounting a defense, and that may be the whole point of the exercise if it ever happens — to make enemies squirm and pay where it really hurts, reputationally and economically.

End-of-term pardons have become common, but they are generally done after someone has been convicted of a crime. In this case, pardons would be given before anyone has been charged with anything.

There is precedent for this. In 1972, Gerald Ford pre-emptively granted a full and unconditional pardon to Richard Nixon, his predecessor, for any crimes he might have committed against the United States. Many people were not happy with this, and it could be why Ford lost the next election, but the nation got over it, and Ford’s magnanimity is now viewed as the right thing to have done.

This time, things are different. Biden would not be pardoning a former, disgraced President, but, conceivably, a host of people, from government staff, to senators, to representatives, to journalists, and others.

But would Fauci, Cheney, Milley, and the rest accept the pardons if offered to them?

Accepting a pre-emptive pardon would come not long after Biden’s highly controversial, and hypocrisy loaded — “I never would,” but “I just did” — pardon of his son Hunter. The men and women who may have to wrestle with this conundrum may prefer to stand and fight the revenge-laden charges of MAGA extremists. They might do that just out of concern of being forever glued to Hunter Biden’s free pass.

My own opinion is that Biden should offer the pre-emptive pardons, and that those to whom they are offered should accept them. Then, everyone can concentrate on the future, dire though it may be, without having to worry about legal costs and precious time out of their lives dealing with MAGA nonsense.

One final point. Trump has already vowed to pardon all of the people convicted or charged with any crimes during the 6 January insurrection (he doesn’t call it that). That includes those convicted of assaulting and injuring police. During Sunday’s Meet the Press interview, he repeated that pledge. That’s a lot of people — 749, to be precise, according to the Department of Justice.

It might soon be raining pardons in Washington, DC.

Donald Trump’s nominees for cabinet positions come in four categories: moderately qualified, unqualified, highly unqualified, and dangerously unqualified.

Yesterday, Matt Gaetz, a member of Category 4, ended eight days of turmoil by “withdrawing” from consideration as Donald Trump’s Attorney General nominee.

If I were a betting person, I would put all I own on his not walking the plank voluntarily.

The Senate was never going to confirm him, the allegations of sexual criminal behavior were going to be published — that will probably happen, anyway — and we’re left to wonder the level of Donald Trump’s hubris that would bring him to nominate someone so fatally flawed in the first place as the nation’s chief prosecutor.

Wherever he is, Kevin McCarthy is sporting a great big smile. It was Gaetz who engineered McCarthy’s ouster as Speaker of the House.

Yesterday evening, just hours after Gaetz was out, Master-of-the-quick-draw Donald Trump nominated Pam Bondi as his latest pick for AG. Bondi was Florida’s Attorney General from 2011 to 2019. A true Trump loyalist, she has none of the Gaetz baggage and actually knows what the job of attorney general entails. Moreover, she has the most important qualification for the job — she is a 2020 election denier and was right from the start of the “stop the steal” movement. Bondi bonded with Trump so much that she became his defense counsel during his second Senate impeachment trial.

Trump’s AG in his first term, Bill Barr, testified before the Congressional Committee investigating the insurrection of the 6th of January. He testified that he told Trump over and over again that he’d lost, and, like a game of whack-a-mole, Trump kept coming up with new conspiracy theories, each of which Barr debunked for the clueless leader. To his credit, that was Barr’s job as U.S. Attorney General. With Bondi, Trump will no longer have that guardrail when the inevitable moment of ethical concern arises.

She’ll probably glide into confirmation, which might have been Trump’s intent all along.

My other nominees for Dangerously Unqualified are Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Kristi Noem, Governor of South Dakota, as Secretary of Homeland Security.

If Trump somehow succeeds in avoiding confirmation hearings and slides his nominees in through recess appointments, it would be nice to know something about them, wouldn’t it? Something more than media varnish?

So, today, let’s examine South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.

Noem, 52, served two terms in the South Dakota Legislature, rising to the post of assistant majority leader. In 2010, she narrowly defeated four-term incumbent Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin to win the one and only South Dakota seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2018, she ran for Governor, won, and suddenly found herself in charge of 13,000 state employees. Since then, she has been an ardent member of Donald Trump’s MAGA cult.

At the NRA’s annual meeting last year in Indianapolis, Noem, to the delight of the gun-totin’ crowd, shared this nugget about her one-year-old grandchild, Addie: “She already has a shotgun and she already has a rifle and she’s got a little pony named Sparkles, too.”

Knowing what Noem did to her 14-month-old wirehaired Pointer, Cricket, for “misbehaving,” I hope Addie doesn’t one day decide to put some high speed lead between the eyes of Sparkles if he “misbehaves.”

Cricket, a pheasant hunter, was apparently difficult to train. He was good at catching pheasants, but even better at catching a neighbor’s chickens. Noem says he killed a few one afternoon after pheasant hunting. So, she walked him over to a gravel pit and shot him in the head.

She also owned what she called a “nasty and mean” male goat. So, right after sending Cricket to the big kennel in the sky, she grabbed the goat, dragged it to the same gravel pit, stood it beside Cricket’s carcass, and shot it too. But because the goat jumped at the moment of execution and did not immediately die, she went back to her truck, reloaded, and finished the job properly.

Noem proudly confesses all of this in the memoir she published when she was auditioning to be Trump’s pick for vice president. She titled the memoir No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward. Why do politicians always write long titles? It’s like they’re pretending to be academics.

In her long-title memoir, Noem explained she included the double-killing gravel pit episode to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.

The Cricket and goat affair is illuminating when one considers what Donald Trump now wants her to do — become Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS).

With more than 260,000 employees, the Department of Homeland Security was created after 9/11 by combining 22 federal agencies into one cabinet level office. DHS responsibilities are weighty and numerous:

• Border security: Protecting the U.S. borders from illegal people, weapons, drugs, and contraband;
• Immigration: Administering the immigration system of the United States;
• Cybersecurity: Protecting cyberspace, which is essential for national security, economic vitality, and daily life;
• Emergency response: Responding to natural and manmade disasters;
• Antiterrorism: Working to prevent terrorism;
• Election security: Ensuring a secure electoral process;
• Economic security: Working with the private sector and international partners to secure global trade and travel systems;
• Human trafficking: Combating human trafficking, which is a form of modern-day slavery that involves the exploitation of children and adults; and,
• Transportation security: Ensuring the security of transportation. 

With the exception of being Governor of an expansive, sparsely populated, midwestern U.S. state which is home to less than a million people, 13,000 of whom are state employees, Kristi Noem has no security experience. Her principal qualification seems to be Trump’s endorsement of her as, “very strong on Border Security.”

In 2018 (the year Noem became Governor), according to the American Immigration Council, South Dakota was home to 35,175 immigrants (foreign-born individuals) comprising 4 percent of the population. More than a third of them were naturalized citizens. Another 5,256 immigrants were eligible to become naturalized citizens the following year. South Dakota’s immigrant population has roughly a similar level of educational attainment as native born citizens.

All of which shows there is no migrant crisis in South Dakota. Consequently, Noem has no experience defending “border security.”

In her memoir, the stories of Cricket and the goat are true, and she’ll be asked about it in her senate confirmation hearing, presuming there is one. What was not true was her claim to have canceled a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and actually meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. These “minor errors,” according to her publisher, will also come up if Senators get the chance to grill her.

In their political memoirs, politicians don’t seem able to resist the urge to gild the lily.

Regardless of her poetic license, if she is confirmed, this is a person who will have the massive task of overseeing the security of America. It is a profoundly demanding job for which she is utterly unprepared.