Predictions I hope Won't Come True

 It’s hard keeping up with the destructive mayhem of the second Trump administration is bringing to nine decades of progressive government, but here are some predictions of radical actions I believe the Orange Dervish will try to impress upon the rest of humanity. I don’t mean to scare you but the best defense is to be aware of a possible attack: 

* Electoral boards in MAGA-controlled states will try to disqualify strong/likely-to-win Democratic candidates for House and Senate in both state and federal elections;

* To assure reactionary, conservative opinion on the Supreme Court, Trump will increase its members to 15, nominating six more justices; 

* Sooner, rather than later, Trump will order an air strike on suspected “terrorist” camps run by drug lords in Mexico and other countries south of our border. Trump recently expanded military options against terrorists in countries like Somalia and Yemen. Trump also designated drug cartels as terrorist organizations. The New York Times recently noted, “The relaxation of the rules suggests that the United States is likely to more frequently carry out airstrikes aimed at killing terrorism suspects in poorly governed places that are not deemed traditional battlefield zones. …  It also means there may be greater risk to civilians.”

* Trump is particularly focused in on exacting revenge against people and entities he believes disrespected him. Chief among them is the USPS, the US Postal Service which delivered crucial mail in ballots that cost him the 2020 election. Don’t be surprised if he dismantles the USPS so it can no longer fulfill its function as a quasi-public institution. Trump will endeavor to privatize mail delivery, putting at risk the timely delivery of absentee ballots. 

* Privatizing the postal service would be a step in banning delivery of mail-order abortion medication. 

Tomorrow Is Another Day, Sunday Was for Pruning

 Had I been a pioneer in America 150-200 years ago we would still be living along the Atlantic coast, or the Pacific had I been of Spanish descent. Clearing the land so settlements could be built is not in my DNA. 

Extreme winds of the last few days blew down a 20-foot sapling in the corner of our back yard. Homesteader Gilda saw a Sunday chore for me, now that I have a mini battery-powered chain saw. 

Eager-beaver that I am, I quickly assented. 

I know, some of you skeptics out there already question my sincerity. First, that I was eager to perform. Second, that I quickly agreed without a fight. 

Let me assure you I am not fabricating or exaggerating. The fallen tree was ideal fodder for my relatively new machismo toy—not too big in length or girth. Besides, it was a sunny and not too windy or cold day. Perfect for outdoor activity, which if I didn’t have her assigned chore to complete would have required me to spend an hour or so walking with her. 

I spent the better part of an hour prepping the trunk—chopping off the branches into bite-size twigs small enough for city public works crews to pick up from baskets I filled and hauled to the curb. 

Next, I attacked the trunk starting at the narrow top. A clean cut every 16 inches or so. Nearer to the base the mini saw was too mini to complete the task. Hand-sawing was required. Tiresome, back and forth hand-sawing. 

Releasing the base and root system from the outcropping of rock where the sapling had staked out its short life was relatively easy. My chore, all in all about three hours, was seemingly complete, until Gilda assigned two more spring garden prunings. 

As Scarlett O’Hara used to say, “After all, tomorrow is another day.” So I packed up and went inside. 

Logic, Reason, Appeals to Morality Won't Work

And now a few words trying to explain Donald Trump. 

Yes, he’s an unabashed autocrat. But it’s not to be unexpected. He is just acting out to type. 

When you are chief executive of a private, family-owned. family-run organization you are acculturated to lording over your underlings. You are dominant. They are subservient. Every whim that crosses your lips becomes a command your vassals fulfill. They are sycophantic to the extreme. 

Trump sees America, if not the world, as his private domain. Naturally he expects fealty from all, foreign and domestic, immediate follow-through on even his most outlandish thoughts, especially now that his second administration is not staffed as the first was with intelligent, patriotic professionals who curbed his most extreme wishes. 

Sadly, the public face Trump projects is mostly as a quick-witted, even comedic, personality, strong-willed, yes, but always espousing what sounds like initiatives in the best interest of the population. It’s not his fault too many Americans are too naive, even too dumb, to see through his charade. 

Is there any hope Trump will change? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar doesn’t think so. In a Substack post he wrote, “Bad people won’t stop being bad because they have some sort of spiritual epiphany. They do not have a nagging conscience thumping like Poe’s tell-tale heart. They feel justified in every evil they perpetuate because they believe they are superior to others. Even if they are secretly miserable (which they aren’t), they don’t know how to be anything else, so their behavior won’t change.

“Yes, their lives could be better, happier, and more fulfilling, but they will never understand that any more than a person raised in a remote tribe in the Amazon misses television. Logic, reason, and appeals to morality will not have any effect on bad people.” 

Whose fault is it? Let’s consider tariffs. Trump considers “tariff” to be his favorite word. Little wonder, since a tariff is a cudgel used to force compliance by another country. Here’s what Ronald Reagan had to say about tariffs: “We should beware of the demagogues who are willing to declare a Trade war against our friends, weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world, all while cynically waving the American flag…”

Too bad the Trump Party has forsaken its once iconic leader. 

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday foreign nations have been “ripping off our country for decades,” thus the need for tariffs. Trump is correct—Americans spend a lot of money on imported goods. 

But he is misguided in placing blame overseas. No one forced American companies to manufacture their products outside our borders. China didn’t hijack our manufacturing plants. Neither did Mexico. Nor South Korea, Vietnam or the nations of the European Union.

Simply put, American companies sought cheaper venues of production overseas, much the same way in the middle of the 20th century they abandoned factories in northern states in favor of southern non-unionized states. 

The priority of all companies, especially public companies, is to maximize profits for shareholders. By moving production overseas management accomplished its objective.

Meanwhile, collectively, America’s standard of living rose because of the availability of less expensive but equally if not better quality products, from apparel to furniture to electronics to pharmaceuticals.

Trump has his view about the efficacy of tariffs. Most economists and Wall Street see tariffs driving down the economy while unemployment rises. 

Even assuming Trump is right, his desire for companies to open plants in America would take months if not years to ramp up production. All the while, consumers and workers will suffer. 

How Does It Feel, Mitch, To Be Responsible?

How does it feel, Mitch McConnell, to know your opinions no longer carry any weight with your fellow Trumped senators? 

When you were majority and minority leader you could cajole or more frequently coerce your subordinates to vote your way. But now you are their equal, maybe even their inferior given your lame duck status, and they no longer look to you for direction. Even on a deeply personal issue such as the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services, which you opposed given your childhood bout with polio and his ambivalence toward the vaccine, your colleagues ignored you, as they did when you voted against Pete Hegseth’s investiture as defense secretary. 

How does it feel, Mitch, to be an afterthought? A shell of your former self?

How does it feel to see America slide into complicity with Russia? Your life’s work devoted to strengthening America’s deterrence to tyranny reduced by the shameful exhibition of a president and vice president (the latter from your state of Kentucky, no less) berating a president of Ukraine for standing up to Putin’s immoral aggression. Did you not teach JD Vance anything? Maybe you did. Maybe he learned from you that in politics it is okay to do any and all things to advance your position. 

Do I sound cruel? Perhaps if you had not practiced aggressive, partisan power in thwarting the nomination process of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, or waffled on your vote to hold Donald Trump responsible for the January 6 Capitol insurrection after voicing that belief in the days after the assault on democracy, or manufactured the ultra conservative Supreme Court that has emboldened Trump to act without fear of accountability, perhaps I would feel sympathy for you. But you deserve all the grief I hope you are experiencing and feeling now that you witness Trump’s progressive dismantling of American leadership at home and abroad. 

A few days ago Turner Classic Movies aired “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” As he is dying from wounds near the bridge he has built for the Japanese that is being blown up by British, American and Burmese commandos, Colonel Nicholson, played by Alex Guinness, utters words that you should relate to: “What have I done?” 

We who love our country are praying for a Trumpian train wreck that will save our democracy. Are you patriotic enough to stand up to tyranny from within what was once a principled party but is now a gathering of toads and unprincipled lackeys?

Here's an Idea: Some Billionaire Philanthropy

From the list of international aid programs Donald Trump the Impaler has killed, perhaps his billionaire friends would like to show their humanity by funding them, individuality or collectively. 

The programs listed Thursday by The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/health/usaid-contract-terminations.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare), were part of a total USAID 2024 fiscal year budget of $21.7 billion, pocket change for Trump’s well-heeled crowd. 

As per ABC News, Trump’s cabinet is the wealthiest in history (https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-tapped-unprecedented-13-billionaires-top-administration-roles/story?id=116872968). Pair that with billionaire moguls like Meta’s Mark Eisenberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who attended and help fund Trump’s inauguration, and not to be forgotten richest-person-in-the-world Elon Musk, there’s plenty of capital that could be deployed to feed the starving, to save lives. 

So, how about it, Jeff B? Choose your program. Maybe instead of exploring space you’d like to invest some of your billions on Earth to “manage and distribute $34 million worth of medical supplies in Kenya, including 2.5 million monthlong H.I.V. treatments, 750,000 H.I.V. tests, 500,000 malaria treatments, 6.5 million malaria tests and 315,000 anti-malaria bed nets.”  

Hey Mark Z, you’re a competitive guy. Show Bezos up by taking on the $90 million contract Trump ripped up with “Chemonics for bed nets, malaria tests and treatments that would have protected 53 million people.”

And let’s not forget you, Elon. You could probably cover all 5,800 contracts USAID had. You could subtract the fraud you allege each program committed to make your contribution easier to swallow. Just to get you started, how’s about sending “a $131 million grant to UNICEF’s polio immunization program, which paid for planning, logistics and delivery of vaccines to millions of children.”

Don’t dilly-dally. Lives are being lost from lack of food and medical care throughout the Third World. Your products, your technologies, are enjoyed worldwide. Here’s a chance to help your customers and their countrymen, wherever they live. 

Don’t hesitate. Pick a program, or two.   

Cruelty Personified. For Shame

To read this compilation from The New York Times of international aid programs Donald Trump has stopped funding is a litany of acts of extreme cruelty. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/health/usaid-contract-terminations.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

If he is aware of the impact it is beyond belief he could sleep peacefully. If he is ignorant of the impact it is beyond shamefully irresponsible. Either way, he has disgrace the good name of the United States of America. We should all feel ashamed. 

Ostensibly, Trump acted to terminate fraud in the programs. But even if half of the money was stolen, the lives saved were worth the investment, then and going forward.. 

For shame, Donald Trump. For shame, America. 

U.S. Future: A Battle of Competing Values

As Donald Trump and his Kool-Aid intoxicated minions led by Elon Musk rip apart the progressive democratic values of the last 90 years, it would be instructional to ponder the values of the prior 90 years, from 1843-1933, and how they serve as a template for events in 2025.

Twin original sins darkened our history: slavery and the near annihilation of Indigenous Peoples, their culture and their major sustenance, buffalo. Even after the Civil War “freed” Blacks slaves, Jim Crow laws kept them segregated and deprived of basic rights enjoyed by White Americans. Meanwhile, treaties that protected Indigenous Peoples were ignored, their land usurped, their relocation forced.

Discrimination was not confined to African-Americans and Indigenous Peoples. Each successive wave of destitute immigrants seeking a better life than in their homelands—the Irish, Italian, Chinese, southern and eastern Europeans, and Jews—faced bias in housing, employment, education and the ability to attain citizenship. 

The forceful taking of land extended beyond the legal acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France, Florida from Spain, Alaska from Russia, the Virgin Islands from Denmark, the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico. Texas violently broke away from Mexico and was later annexed by the United States. The Mexican-American War ended with the U.S. gaining territory that included all of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Colorado, Kansas and Wyoming. 

The 19th century was a period of industrialization brought about by the rapid expansion of the railroad, communication through the telegraph and telephone, and electricity. It was an age of Robber Barons accumulating wealth beyond the dreams of the masses who worked at the pleasure of their employer, with no minimum wage, no union protecting them, no safety standards and no funds set aside for their retirement. 

Pollution of the air, waterways and land, few if any public health standards, little compulsory education, and no national parks until Teddy Roosevelt was president at the turn of the 20th century, characterized the era. 

Trump is aggressively wiping away the legacies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and subsequent legislation passed by Democratic and even Republican administrations to safeguard our planet and its inhabitants. Under Trump, America no longer will be the champion of good versus evil, philanthropy versus selfishness and greed, democracy versus autocracy and oligarchy, community versus isolation. 

We have two 90-year eras showcasing a dichotomy of bygone values. Despite Trump’s actions, which era we will live under for the next 90 years has not yet been decided. 

Fenster: A Recurring Story

My brother Bernie turns 80 today. Over this past weekend Gilda and I drove to his home in Rockville, MD, to celebrate with him. Our sister Lee flew in from Los Angeles. 

Saturday we went to synagogue. Ritual confirmation. Aside from Bernie having an honor reading from the Torah and having an aliyah, Gilda and I were given an aliyah, as well. 

That’s when the bizarre took over. Reading the Torah for an aliyah while we were standing on the bimah was a man we had never met before, Jeff Fenster. 

Fenster. In two previous blogs I recounted how an Israeli high school teacher misread the Delaney attendance card on which I had spelled out my name in Hebrew. Instead of Forseter he called me Fenster. Throughout my junior year he called me Fenster. It became my nickname among my classmates. That was in the 1965-66 academic year.

Fast forward to 2010. A notice from our temple said a man from Riverdale—Matt Fenster—was seeking bone marrow donors to treat his acute myelogenous leukemia. I knew nothing about him except his name and medical need. I felt a kinship with Matt Fenster. 

Gilda and I drove to the testing site the next day, only to be turned away because we were 61, one year older than the donor age limit. We gave a donation but were bummed out we couldn’t do more. 

A year later we learned Matt Fenster passed away, leaving four young children.

Fast forward again to June 2022. Our high school class scribe who keeps us abreast of happy and sad news of fellow alumni and their families sent a note relating that Leah Fenster of Riverdale, daughter of Matt Fenster, had become engaged to Gabriel Miller, the grandson of one of our classmates. 

Standing on the bimah Saturday I couldn’t ask Jeff Fenster if he was related to Matt Fenster. To no avail I couldn’t find him during the kiddish after services. 

Will Harriet Tubman Be Trump's Next Target?

Donald Trump made news when he ordered the U. S. Treasury to stop minting pennies. But I’m wondering how long it will be before he quashes the planned makeover of the $20 bill that is to feature abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the front of the bill, moving slaveowner/president Andrew Jackson to the back side? The new $20 bill is not expected to be circulated until 2030. 

Trump is, after all, not only trying to erase all aspects of diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) initiated by prior Democratic administrations, he also is a big fan of Jackson who, folklore says, notoriously disregarded a Supreme Court ruling that rejected Georgia’s attempt to control activities on Native American soil. The court ruled Cherokees possessed sovereignty over their land. 

Eventually the Cherokee Nation sold its land and the tribe was forcibly relocated to Oklahoma Territory in a post-Jackson presidency action known as the “Trail of Tears” that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Cherokee (https://search.app/Zdft3AC4tjYRKERT6). 

Much like Marie Antoinette’s maligned but never spoken comment concerning starving French peasantry—“Let them eat cake”—Jackson’s reaction to the Supreme Court is probably apocryphal. He is often quoted as saying, “John Marshall (chief justice of the Supreme Court) has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” But the first citation of this admonition “appeared 20 years after Jackson’s death in newspaper publisher Horace Greeley’s 1865 history of the Civil War, The American Conflict,” according to Wikipedia. 

In earlier currency action upon taking office again, Trump partially cast aside the likeness of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, by directing the U. S. Treasury to stop minting pennies because their value is significantly less than it costs to produce them. 

Lincoln’s visage has been on the penny since 1909, the centennial of his birth. Honest Abe remains on the $5 bill. The initiative to honor Tubman began during Barack Obama’s presidency. And we all know how fond Trump is of anything Obama-related, DEI-related or not. 

Eggspectations, Expectations & Prognostications

Heard Wednesday night on CBS Evening News that if only one hen is found to have avian flu the whole flock must be euthanized and it would take eight months for replacement chicks to mature to egg-laying status. So, don’t expect the egg shortage with its resulting price escalation to go away soon. 

Unless … Dr. Trump brushes off his non-existent biology/medical degrees and decrees amnesty for chickens sentenced to death if only one sister is tainted. After all, you can trust his medical judgment. Recall Trump’s enthusiasm for swigging hydroxychloroquine and other pseudo remedies to combat Covid 19. 

According to CBS, “since the current strain of bird flu, H5N1, reached the United States in 2022, over 148 million birds have been ordered euthanized.” Here’s a look at how the bird flu has affected one family’s poultry business—https://www.cbsnews.com/news/as-bird-flu-ravages-poultry-industry-the-damage-spreads/.

Drug Cartels Are Terrorists: I wonder how long after drug cartels are designated as terrorist organizations will they be targeted by American military strikes? Trump has already attacked terrorists in Somalia.

Cartels are based in Mexico, Colombia and other countries south of our border (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/us/politics/state-dept-terrorist-designation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare).

Don’t expect Trump to honor Mexican or Colombian sovereignty. With or without local government agreement, expect missile or air force attacks on suspected cartel strongholds. Ground troops would not be employed.

Hostage Release: Vladimir Putin couldn’t be happier. His useful idiot has returned to the White House. 

In exchange for releasing Americans innocent-but-found-guilty-in-Russian-courts on trumped up charges, Putin has secured the release of a Russian cybercrime kingpin. More importantly, he has suckered Trump into negotiating with him the future of Ukraine, with little if any interference from Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have signaled Ukraine would have to cede territory to Russia and not be a candidate for inclusion in NATO. It’s a win-win for Putin. With such a deal Trump is setting a precedent for a U.S. Big Power takeover of the Panama Canal, Greenland, and the Gaza Strip. 

 

Teach Your Children Well: As any Israeli, or student of the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab conflict, would tell you if asked, rapprochement between the two sides will be a loooong time coming as long as Arab schools continue to teach Jews are bogeymen. Without a sea change in curriculum there will be no hope for lasting coexistence, much less peace. 

Closer to home, we in America are about to embark on an educational journey backward to a time when our ancestors could do no wrong. They could kill native people and their cultures with impunity and take their land. Blacks could be enslaved, for after all, their lives here would be better than in “uncivilized” Africa. And when they were freed, it was okay to keep them in squalor, for, again, they lacked the intelligence necessary for a civilized citizenry. 

Under Trump, education curricula and library literature will be wiped clean of any inference that America is anything less than God’s Manifest Destiny gift to humanity. That is, gifted to straight white men and, perhaps, straight white women. 

Charging Ahead: Elon Musk is about to get a payback windfall for the $250 million he spent to support Trump’s election. The State Department has plans to spend $400 million on Musk’s armored Tesla vehicles (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/us/politics/trump-tesla-musk-cybertruck.html?unlocked_article_code=1.wk4.bQB1.yzF5URbn-dKX&smid=url-share). 

Aside from the obvious conflict of interest, the purchase is quizzical because Trump is negative on electric vehicles. Is he ok with spending taxpayer dollars on a fleet of electric cars? Are there enough recharging stations worldwide that accommodate Teslas? 

Breaking News: The State Dept. has suspended the plan to buy the armored Teslas.

The GOP Needs a Name Change

 It’s time to stop calling them Republicans.

They do not stand for traditional Republican values of the last 80 years. Ronald Reagan would not qualify as a MAGA mate. 

Correction. Actually, the Grand Old Party no longer reflects the even older values of Teddy Roosevelt at the turn of the 20th century, nor the values of Abraham Lincoln during the prior most extreme time of contention among Americans.

So let’s stop the illusion and call their cult allegiance by a new, more accurate party name: The Trumped. Or maybe The Trumpster Party. We’ll call its adherents Trumpists. Or Trumpers. Or Trumpsters.

 

The Trumped share none of the values and achievements of past Republican presidents—Reagan, Bush I, Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln. Even Nixon left a positive policy legacy by creating the EPA, engaging China and the Soviet Union. 

I wonder how today’s Trumped U.S. senators sleep at night? Because they surely were sleeping through the nomination hearings. Sleepwalking through their responsibilities as U.S. senators to searchingly evaluate a president’s nominees. 

The Constitution empowers the Senate to “advise and consent” on all nominations (plus treaties and declarations of war), but as a New York Times headline recently blared,  “G.O.P. Senators Choose Consent.” 

“The party-line committee votes to send both nominees to the floor for confirmation next week provided the clearest evidence yet that Mr. Trump’s pressure tactics and the threat of a barrage of abuse by his allies against would-be defectors had sapped whatever remained of a G.O.P. impulse to balk. And they suggested a broader impulse among Republicans on Capitol Hill — even the few who have maintained some degree of independence from Mr. Trump — to shrink from confrontation with him and allow him to have his way at the dawn of his second term,” The Times wrote.

Trumped legislators are remaining silent about the massive butcher knife Elon Musk and his youthful posse are wielding upon workers at departments as diverse as the FBI, USAID, and the CIA.

Perhaps they are keeping quiet because as long as they toe the Trump/Musk line they can feel comfortable they will not be primaried and, perhaps more importantly, they will continue to rake in their annual federal salaries, benefits, pensions, and speaking fees even as thousands of dedicated civil servants lose their paychecks and millions of needy across America and the world lose sustenance and hope that the United States has provided for six decades. 

So much for caring about others as long as “I get mine.” 

It’s almost impossible to read all the commentary analyzing the impact Trump’s assault on federal programs will have on ordinary Americans, in blue states and red ones. My desire to keep my sanity limits my reading. 

Let’s consider the effects of cutting healthcare benefits and neutering clean energy project funding. 

As Aaron Carroll, president of the health policy organization AcademyHealth, wrote in The Times, it would be foolish for Republicans to gut programs that help their constituents find medical solutions. 

“We should be honest about these trade-offs: Families lose health insurance if we cut Medicaid or slash A.C.A. (Affordable Care Act) premium credits.” Children go without care. Clinics and hospitals in rural areas close. People suffer (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/opinion/medicaid-tax-cuts-republicans.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare).

Cutbacks in Biden-related projects have “put Republicans in the tricky position of defending a White House that deems money for clean energy a “waste of taxpayer dollars” while working behind the scenes to protect their towns from the loss of new manufacturing jobs, The Times reported.

“This is where we get a test of whether the Republican Party is a real political party serving its constituents, or a personality cult,” said Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental advocacy groups.

“I expect thousands of people to be laid off, I expect workers to be furloughed, and I expect construction projects to halt,” Mr. Walsh said.

Sadly, we have repeatedly witnessed Trumped legislators opt to bend their knees before their master rather than protect the best interests of their constituents and country. 

Almost eight years ago, on February 27, 2017, I deplored Republican legislators for being unwilling to challenge Trump’s nominees. History is repeating itself. So I will end with a paragraph from from that blog eight years ago:

“The bottom line is the public should not count on Republicans to counter any Trump initiative no matter how shameful it is, how obvious a conflict of interest it may be or how any nominee might lack the experience or credentials to effectively manage the people’s interests.”