My Brushes with the News

Filled up my car Wednesday, first time since January 19. $31.95 for 8.5 gallons of regular, $3.759 a gulp. With gasoline prices reaching intolerable peaks, more than ever I am trying to limit my driving to less than 40 miles a day, the battery-powered range of my 2022 plug-in hybrid Ford Escape. 

I’m averaging about 100 miles per gallon equivalent, keeping my gas consumption generally limited to times when I travel by highway to New York City, Boston, Rockland County, the metro area airports or into Manhattan to see a play. 

Gilda and I have been happy early adopters of energy-saving technologies. Her car is a 2013 Ford C-Max hybrid that averages a little more than 40 miles per gallon. 

We put solar panels on our roof 11 years ago, cutting about 40% of our annual Con Ed electricity usage. We upgraded attic insulation several years ago to save on home heating oil. 

Our environmental concerns have been transmitted into the next generation. Our son Dan has a full electric car (not a Tesla) on order, delivery expected around June. Maybe the war with Iran will have ended by then, resulting in declining gas prices. No matter. Saving the planet is a long term project, generation to generation. 

Meanwhile, though the Big 3 American car companies have pulled back on their commitment to electric vehicles in favor of gas guzzling trucks and SUVs, pain at the pump has more drivers exploring the buck-saving impact of battery power (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/opinion/electric-vehicles-solar-gas-prices.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share).

Dinner Time: We ate dinner Thursday night at 7, a quarter hour past the time a preponderance of diners the world over sit down for their final meal of the day, according to Tasteofhome.com. Gilda strives to finish cooking around 6:30, a carryover from pre-VCR time when our kids were young. We’d watch the evening national news on CBS over dinner. 

No doubt some of you might think exposing young minds to death and destruction, plus politics, was not conducive to proper consumption and digestion. We thought otherwise. We valued the educational benefit of sharing important news of the day. As Gilda was the research coordinator of infection diseases at Westchester County Medical Center during their formative teen years in the 1990s, our kids’ dinnertimes also included discussions about her work on HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis and Lyme Disease. 

Gilda and I still watch the CBS Evening News over dinner. I’m not a big fan, any fan really, of Tony Dokoupil as the anchor, but he is getting better, though he tries too hard to find humor in each broadcast segment. We’ve sampled newscasts on NBC and ABC, but they’re no better, to our tastes. So we stick with CBS despite the turmoil at the network and the departure, forced and voluntary, under news chief Bari Weiss, of correspondents we trust and respect. 

Our breaking point, I believe, would be if she compromises two of our most favored newscasts—CBS News Sunday Morning and 60 Minutes. 

Flooding in Paradise: Scenes of recent sustained flooding in Oahu and Maui evoked memories of our two trips to Hawaii. 

In 1993, Gilda and I attended the annual conference of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. Why? Because it was being held in Maui and we’d never been to Hawaii. 

The annual NACDS meeting had a reputation for lavish programs, from guest speakers to cocktail receptions to entertainment. President of NACDS was Ron Ziegler, Richard Nixon’s former press secretary. He used his political influence to bring heavyweight speakers to appear before the heads of retail companies like CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreen, and their suppliers like Revlon, Johnson & Johnson, Lever Bros. The year we attended keynote speakers included former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto and William Safire, then a New York Times columnist after being a speechwriter for Nixon. 

Liza Minnelli performed at the closing banquet. Bob Hope—a not so spry 90-year-old with jokes at least as old as he was—came to Maui to appear at a private gala hosted by one of the beauty care vendors (Gilda and I snuck in). 

The most memorable parts of our trip were an outdoor Passover service overlooking the Pacific Ocean and a trip to Hāna. 

Many of the NACDS attendees were Jewish. The conference overlapped the closing days of Passover. Few, I imagine, adhered to the stringent Passover diet that prohibited anything made of leavened grain (I also can report that never before and not since have I seen as much shrimp cocktail boats proffered at daily cocktail receptions). 

But I digress. The last day of Passover is when Yizkor, the memorial prayer for deceased relatives, is recited. Even in Maui, executives recalling departed family members filled the some 100 white lawn chairs placed along a sloping hillside. 

Later that day, Gilda and I went with Marianne, one of my staff who succeeded me as editor of Chain Store Age, on the Road to Hāna, renowned for spectacular waterfalls along the 52 mile highway. We also planned to go beyond Hāna to visit the gravesite of Charles Lindbergh. The climb to Hāna passes through tropical rainforest. It’s mostly a switchback single-lane road, with some 620 curves. Without traffic it takes almost three hours to get to Hāna.

Our trip turned out to be an excursion to hell and back. On the way up the mountain we got stuck behind slow moving cars we could not pass because of the numerous curves. Maui had been suffering from a drought. Ergo, there were no waterfalls to behold. There also were no restaurants along the way, no rest stops to relieve ourselves. We finally arrived in Hāna a few minutes after 2 pm. We had hoped to eat lunch in the only sit-down restaurant in Hāna, but discovered it closed sharply at 2. The only open food shop was a greasy spoon shack we reluctantly patronized. 

We had to get back to our hotel for the conference evening event (Liza Minnelli) so we had to forego visiting Lindbergh’s grave. On the way down the mountain, Gilda and Marianne got car sick from all the sharp turns mixing with our greasy lunch. On numerous occasions they opted out of the car to walk a half mile or so in the mist that was now swooping in off the coast. We didn’t get stuck behind any cars or trucks, but our pace going down was significantly slower than when we went up to Hāna. Happiness was reaching the straightaway at the bottom of the road and opening up the throttle of the Mustang to whisk us back to our hotel. 

Our second trip to Hawaii was in 2004 during our daughter’s post-college graduation stay on the north shore of Oahu. The beaches of the north shore attract top level surfers from around the world. Every day in Oahu the temperature was 81-83 degrees with a short rain shower around 4 pm.

The rains of the last week or two have filled the waterfalls along the Road to Hāna and swamped Oahu’s north shore. 

Banksy: Perhaps you saw a recent article identifying the identity of Banksy, the secretive British graffiti-street artist whose paintings have sold for more than a million dollars (https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/fine-art/banksy-reveal-art-cost-buyers-b54c109d?st=qLkvx6&reflink=article_gmail_share).

No mind. I’m here to tell you that the first and only “true” Banksy was Arthur David Banks, a journalist of immense talent and proportions whose editorial skills over five decades influenced newspapers and electronic media in Great Britain, Australia and New York. To his fellow journalists on three continents he was known as Banksy.

He was—still is—my dearest friend. Was because Dave passed away February 22, 2022 (https://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2022/02/goodbye-to-most-dearest-of-friends.html). 

Outrages and a Hope

Like many writers I keep a list of story ideas. Many don’t pan out. I recently thought of writing about frivolous law suits, like the class-action one two California women initiated against Costco because its $4.99 “preservative-free” rotisserie chicken failed to note the presence of sodium phosphate and carrageenan. The women got Costco to change its messaging, but they presumably didn’t mind the chemicals being in the chicken as they have been quoted as saying they would continue to buy the budget-beating staple. They also said they did not suffer any physical injury from consuming the chicken. 

Then there was the lawsuit faced by Buffalo Wild Wings for allegedly misleading the public because, a plaintiff argued, its boneless chicken wings did not have chicken extracted from a wing. U.S. District Judge John Tharp Jr. dismissed the case, stating the lawsuit had “no meat on its bones” and that diners do not expect “boneless wings” to be derived from a chicken’s wing meat any more than they expect the poultry to actually have chicken fingers.

Then there were lawsuits against Alaska Airlines, Delta and United filed by disgruntled passengers who paid more for what they thought to be window seats only to discover themselves staring at solid walls (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/us/seat-11a-no-window-ryanair-airlines.html?smid=url-share). This story hit home with me as the “window” seat on my recent Delta flight home from Omaha also was windowless, but I didn’t care. I was in an aisle seat, sleeping almost the entire time we were airborne.

It seems to me Americans are expressing outrage over inconsequential issues when they really should be demonstrating their revulsion at actions by Donald Trump and his spineless enablers. (FYI, there’s another “No Kings” nationwide protest planned for Saturday, March 28.)

Where is the outrage? Trump hid the extent of injuries to troops from Iran’s attack on a Kuwait military base. Six soldiers died and many others suffered extensive brain injuries; 

Trump wore a baseball cap to a solemn ceremony greeting bodies of the dead soldiers returned to American soil; 

The slur was magnified by Fox News falsifying images of the ceremony to hide Trump’s indignity; 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spent more than $45 million on expensive food and furniture while millions of Americans have been cut off from federal food and housing assistance;  

Four weeks into the war with Iran Trump has yet to address what his plans are for the uranium canisters buried under the “obliterated” nuclear facility he claimed to have destroyed last June. Removing them from Iranian control can and must be the only legitimate conclusion to Trump’s and Israel’s war with Iran.

There is a reason the Nobel Prize is handed out for peace, not war. 

With every statement Trump makes attempting to justify his bombardment of Iran in the name of removing a threat to America and world peace, one has to wonder why he is not as vocal in his denunciation of North Korea (which actually has nuclear capability and is refining its delivery system) and Russia which, with its illegal invasion of Ukraine, has embarked on a mission to reconstitute the Soviet Bloc. 

Assuming—a big assumption—that Trump will honor the 25th Amendment and not seek an illegal third term, and won’t declare a national emergency to cancel elections in 2026 and 2028, Trump is leaving a mess for a successor to clean up. 

My hope is that Donald Trump is alive and cognizant enough to see and comprehend when a Democratic president takes office and declares that the Trump name, portraits, statues and likenesses be removed and erased from all government buildings, documents, monuments, institutions and monetary currency and coin, that America’s true history—warts and achievements—be represented on all official plaques and descriptions, that his era of personal aggrandizement and greed be forever assigned to the trash can of American extremism and demagoguery. 

I hope he is alive to witness and take in the repudiation of his reign of turpitude that has tarnished America’s position of leadership among democratic countries and among people shackled by despots, autocrats and war lords.  

Trump: Combat Partner or Fair-Weather Warrior?

Oh boy. Here’s what Donald Trump and his battalion of sycophants and inept politicos have not told us about Iran’s nuclear capabilities:

Buried underneath the underground nuclear site that Trump says he “obliterated” last June are some “18 to 20 scuba-tank-like canisters, each of which contains up to 55 pounds of highly enriched uranium, the main material for making a nuclear weapon.”

They are there for the taking, only to do so America or Israel would have to undertake a risky commando operation that surely would result in numerous casualties.  

America and Israel can bomb Iran back into the Stone Age but those uranium canisters would still be available to Iran or whomever digs them out. 

The end game for this war with Iran was to fully disable its ability to produce nuclear weapons. But as W.J. Hennigan and Massimo Calabresi pointed out in The New York Times, “If President Trump ends the war without getting control of the canisters, Iran will almost certainly speed toward going nuclear. Grabbing it, on the other hand, would entail huge risk and the inevitable deployment of American or Israeli ground forces (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/opinion/trump-iran-nuclear-weapons-enriched-uranium-war.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share).

Capturing Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro was child’s play compared to the task facing Trump and Bibi Netanyahu. They have disrupted the global economy, initiated a regional conflict with casualties across multiple countries, and bottled up seafaring trade, air travel and oil production, all for naught if they fail to secure the uranium before the shooting stops. 

Prior military ventures with few American casualties have emboldened Trump’s feeling of invincibility. The question now is, does he have the fortitude to deploy ground troops that almost certainly will have members killed or injured? Is he ready to accept responsibility if the mission fails? Or has a high casualty rate? 

Israel is facing an existential threat. Netanyahu cannot risk leaving enriched uranium available to Iran or any other entity. Israel must be all-in on securing those canisters. 

Netanyahu will shortly find out if he has a true combat partner in Trump or a no risk fair-weather warrior. 

  

Everyone’s a Terrorist to Trump But Putin

To Donald Trump, anyone, any entity, that doesn’t agree with him is a terrorist, foreign or domestic. Maduro. Antifa. Renee Good. Alex Pretti. Ecuador. Iran. El Mencho. Congressional Democrats. Any entity but Putin.

He’s right about Iran. Under Islamic Republic leadership Iran sponsored terrorism. It cultivated and exported attacks within its borders and across the Middle East, South America, Europe and the United States. 

The hope is that under whatever new leadership emerges in Iran the world will be a safer place. That may be true when it pertains to Iran’s nuclear missile ambitions. But terror has many facets. State sponsored or by lone actors. Bombings. Attacks by guns, swords and knives. Chemical warfare. Technology disruptions. 

No doubt, millions among Iran’s population adhered to the extreme vision of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei so it will be difficult, to say the least, to expect new leadership to be conciliatory towards Trump’s vision of a pliant Iran. Anyone Trump finds acceptable will automatically be suspect to a vast segment of Iran’s 90 million residents. Iran will be a shell of itself but still committed to extreme Islamic values.

Trump does not want an “endless war” with American troops occupying Iran. But he is no student of history if he believes Iran can self-police its conversion to a non-belligerent trusted state. Allied troops were needed for years on the ground to rehabilitate Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan after World War II. 

Trump is finding out it is a lot easier to give the order to shoot than to deal with the aftermath of his carnage. Without boots on the ground to prop up a more moderate government that has no guarantee of enduring a la our experiences in South Vietnam and Afghanistan, Trump merely has given Israel more security in the short term. A worthy benefit, but one that may well leave America vulnerable because our ordinance reserves may be severely depleted. 

We really should be arming Ukraine with the firepower to thwart Russia’s illegal land grab. Putin has spun Trump around like a marionette on a string. Trump can easily display American military might in Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador and Iran, but he dares not stare down Putin by appropriately arming Ukraine. 

An unchecked Russia is a true and real terror to Europe and the United States. 

A Purim Surprise For Iran

 

Whatever one thinks about the joint American-Israeli war on Iran, the timing could not have been more mystical. 

The timing was not lost on anyone with even a modicum of knowledge of Jewish history, the Bible and the Talmudic imperative, "If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” 

Purim begins Monday night, just days after the joint Israeli-American attack began. Jews celebrate Purim as a triumph over evil conceived by the imperial officer Haman to annihilate them throughout the ancient Persian empire. 

Jews have lived in Persia, modern day Iran, for some 2,600 years, ever since their first temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BCE (before the common era) by the Babylonians who exiled them to modern day Iraq and eastward to Persia. 

Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonians in 539 BCE. Cyrus permitted Jews to return to Jerusalem. Many did. The majority remained in Persia and Babylon for the next 2,500 years until Iraq and Iran responded to the creation of the State of Israel and Islamic extremism by forcing all but a few remnants of their respective Jewish communities to emigrate, mostly to Israel.

At one time Iran had strong relations with Israel. After the shah was replaced by the Islamic Republic, Jews and Israel became Iran’s enemies.

Recent Jewish holidays have not been strictly moments of religious reflection and joy. Egypt and Syria launched the Yom Kippur War on October 6, 1973, Judaism’s holiest day. Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, came on Simchat Torah, the day Jews celebrate the completion and the start of a new annual reading of the Five Books of Moses. 

Trump’s wars have been marked by flashpoints of military prowess followed by unplanned, unknown aftereffects. In Venezuela, regime change was not a priority beyond capturing Nicolas Maduro. Trump had secretly courted Nicolas Maduro’s vice president to succeed him, leaving the impression that he just wanted Maduro out and assurances America would get access to the country’s oil. Instituting democracy was not top of mind. Trump is not a champion of democracy, at home or abroad, as his cozying up to autocrats abroad and his denigration of American election integrity have amply displayed. 

Trump’s comments after his Irani adventure have waffled as to expectations of whom will replace the decapitated Irani leadership. His picks were thwarted by Israel’s success in killing most of Iran’s leadership in the opening minutes of the air campaign. 

So now he envisions a four to five weeks long air assault with as yet no plans for boots on the ground. Has he reached agreement with Israel on the type of Irani leader acceptable to both combat partners? Who knows? Is he prepared for weeks, months or a longer disruption of Persian Gulf oil supplies? Who knows? Is Trump ready for body bags to come home encasing American airmen? Well, we know he said combat deaths were inevitable. How large is America’s tolerance of casualties before dissent ripples through the heartland?

Extremism—political and religious—are here to stay, in the U.S., Israel, Europe and the Middle East. No one can predict when Israel will confront the next Haman bent on its destruction, when it will be forced to “rise up and kill” first. But it surely, sadly, will come to pass. 

For America, existential threats are to be found in Russia and China, if their leaderships so choose. But disaster is far from a realistic certainty. 

Iran has been a rogue state for decades, leading many Western countries and Sunni Moslem states to support the attack. Domestically, Trump faces negative feedback for failing to seek congressional approval for initiating what clearly is a war, as required by the Constitution. Few legislators will be crying tears for the Irani leadership killed, but another embrace of an imperial presidency has many worried about our slide away from representative democratic government.

Yet another example of our race toward degeneracy is news that fortunes have been made on betting sites, especially one affiliated with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., predicting when war would break out and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be killed. 

Through a lottery (a “pur”) Haman chose the date Jews would be massacred throughout Persia. How ironic that betting on a date came full circle for Khamenei (https://www.npr.org/2026/03/01/nx-s1-5731568/polymarket-trade-iran-supreme-leader-killing).

Another Day, Another War

Only the most militant Trumpster can glorify in America’s latest foreign assault on Iran under Donald Trump. Perhaps this time we will truly “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear bomb-making capacity. The “peace” monger has started another war without congressional approval, even as he continues to appease Putin’s takeover of parts of Ukraine more than a year after he said he could end that conflict in one day. 

Not content with foreign excursions, Trump has unleashed thugs across our land to corral, shoot and kill Americans he labels domestic terrorists. 

Congress? Fuhgeddaboutdit. Trump has neutered it. He is considering a plan for  a federal takeover of next November’s congressional elections under a pretext of national security linked, in his Machiavellian mind, to alleged Chinese involvement in Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/us/politics/trump-elections-midterms.html?smid=url-share).

Once an editor, always an editor: I do not mean to minimize the agony Ukrainians are going through this winter but I feel reporting from the embattled country must be accurate and appropriate to its audience. 

Last Tuesday night Holly Williams reported on “CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil” that Ukrainians were living through bombardments in 0 degrees temperature. Harsh conditions, to be sure. 

But Williams’ report and review by her editors failed to inform viewers that the 0 degrees she noted was on the Celsius scale, equivalent to 32 degrees Fahrenheit most Americans are familiar with. 

Yes, 32 degrees is cold and difficult to live in day in, day out, all the more so in a war zone. But using 0 degrees is an unfortunate misrepresentation to viewers. 

Williams grew up in Australia after the country switched to Celsius in 1972. It is understandable she might revert to her formative years of education when reporting on climate conditions. 

Her audience, these days however, is predominantly Americans who think of temperatures in a Farenheitan way. 

I Instagrammed a similar critique to Dokoupil that night but have yet to hear back from him. 

I haven’t seen Williams do any reporting since last Tuesday. 

Related CBS news: CBS has more to worry about than an errant temperature report. With Netflix dropping out of the quest to absorb Warner Bros. Discovery to the delight of CBS’ parent, Paramount Skydance, I was depressed to see the following on Facebook:

“Trump’s billionaire allies will now own CNN, Fox News, CBS, WaPo, WSJ and NY Post — plus 185+ local TV stations and news in 100 markets.

“They also control X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, TikTok, Truth and Twitch.

“They control the AI you’re integrating into your lives, the algorithms feeding your content, and your personal data you’ve given up for access.

“This is all by design to manipulate and surveil us, and we’re not talking enough about it.

“Pay attention.”

As a lifelong CBS News watcher I have always been impressed by the quality of its journalism. Its anchors, correspondents, reporters, producers and editors have been top notch, never shrinking from calling out politicians and other notables and entities. 

The Tiffany Network has much to lose if it abandons its sense of balance and objectivity. We are living during times of stress on our institutions and political system. 

Growing Up: One of my best friends as a youngster growing up in the 1950s-early 1960s was Richie Posner. Richie lived three doors down from my home, in the corner house on Avenue W and East 18th Street in Brooklyn. 

Though we didn’t talk a lot about it, Richie’s cousin was singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka. It was the heyday of Sedaka’s career. Sedaka grew up a few miles from our homes. Sedaka was 10 years older than us. I never met him. He died Friday (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/arts/music/neil-sedaka-dead.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share).

I lost touch with Richie after we graduated from Brooklyn College.