The Herpes of Hate ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Viral Hate: I started writing this blog a few months after Trump became president in reaction to what I thought or at least hoped was just a brief blip of profound stupidity that wouldn’t last long. Just an outlier on that much-promised bending arc of moral history.  Was I ever wrong.  Trump is still here and could actually win the next election and though he remains a big problem, he’s only part of what keeps me up at night.  Sure, Trump’s responsible for the unleashing of a lot of hate, who can forget his both sides reaction to the neo-Nazi tiki torch carrying Charlottesville marchers, his targeting of Hispanic judges and Black prosecutors, his reaction to the killing of George Floyd, or the effect on Chinese Americans of his calling COVID the China virus.  He made ethnic hate more acceptable, but these days he’s just part of the problem, because anti-Semitism, one of those hates that he refused to clamp down on has fully erupted.  Sadly, not surprising because as Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism pointed out when she compared the hatred of Jews to the herpes virus,  “it never goes away,” it “thrives and comes out under several conditions: stress and hospitable conditions.” Apparently, we are living through those conditions, again.  Jews are once again an acceptable target, across the globe and here in the US, in colleges, cities and even in resort towns like Montauk where swastikas have been spray painted on local stores.  FBI Director Christopher Wray reports that anti-Semitic attacks are at record levels, that in the US 60% of religious based hate crimes are targeted against Jews who only make up 2.4% of the US population.  That’s a lot of targeting against a relatively small population and a lot of dangerous hate.  I really hate having to write about this, it’s too personal so it’s hard for me to separate my feelings from the subject, but how can I possibly stay silent?     

Back to Politics:  Newbie Speaker Mike Johnson, whose experience for his job wouldn’t fill a thimble, is now running the House.  He says he’s all in on sending funding to Israel but wants to forget about Ukraine and also wants to offset the Israel aid by cutting IRS staffing and funding. Not only is ignoring Putin’s attack on Ukraine unconscionable and shortsighted, assuming keeping Putin under control is of interest,  but tying aid to cuts in IRS spending is just stupid.  That’s because according to the Congressional Budget Office cutting the IRS budget increases the deficit while keeping it fully staffed increases revenues which in turn cuts the deficit.  Johnson has got to know that, but he’s playing politics.  Most, though not all of the Senate is not expected to go with Speaker Johnson’s plan.  Neither will Leader Chuck Schumer nor Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who do not want to leave Ukraine out to dry.  And Biden says he won’t sign an aid bill that doesn’t cover both countries so fireworks will likely ensue before an aid package passes.  In all likelihood the final package will include both Israel and Ukraine but getting it passed will require a coalition of House Republicans and Democrats because neither party will be able to do so on their own as the Democrats have a bunch of anti-Israel representatives, and the Republicans are unpredictable or maybe just predictably weird.   

Santos Who? Got to run this morning but not before mentioning my favorite story of the week.  Another lawyer has been drawn down by the George of many Santos mess. Derek Ross, a lawyer, who represented Tom Datwyler whose name appeared and then was removed from one of Santos’ financial filings had written a letter to the FEC saying that Datwyler had never served as Santos’ treasurer.  Well, it turns out that Datwyler, a well-known so-called professional Republican political accountant, actually did work as Santos’ shadow treasurer but tried to hide his role and set up his own lawyer to make a false statement to regulators. Not a good thing.  Don Jr is set to testify today in his dad’s NY fraud trial. More lying maybe or just pleading the fifth?