One advantage I have as to having passed algebra 1 on the curve (and then not learning any other math above that) is that I am completely useless to my kids with their math homework and they know it. I’ve had a bye with both kids for all of high school when it comes to math.
I pretty much ignore whatever Trump says. It is said: If you don’t like the weather, wait 20 minutes and change the channel.
In the Can You Believe this category: There is more processing power in an iPhone than an F-35 fighter plane, which is the newest model out there. Years ago they said there was more power in a desktop than the space shuttle.
What bothers me about Biden’s reports of his senility is that years ago early in his presidency I had lunch with a Chinese person who is close to Chinese senior government officials, and he told me that they all saw Biden as a senile old man. That was not apparent to me at the time. They obviously knew something and we didn’t. It’s hard to believe that nobody knew Biden had cancer till now. That kind of cancer doesn’t just pop up one day and say Here I am at Stage 4.
Here are some consumer issues that might be helpful to you:
When traveling, it’s great to have pants that have zippered pockets. You don’t want passports or wallets falling out of pockets on airplanes or in cars. It’s actually hard to find such pants, both long and short. I have the best luck buying cheap stuff from China on Amazon which suits my needs. “MIER” and “HMYIA” are companies that sell shorts with both pockets zippered for around $20-40. “GGradual” sells full length sweat pants with two zippered pockets for about $30. The prices seem to have increased maybe due to all the tariffs but it’s still a great deal.
In the suitcase department, many manufacturers stopped making 22 inch carryon size suitcases because regulations came out telling people to limit carryons to 21 inches. You can get a 22 inch on board but it’s getting harder to find people that make it. The latest batch of luggage I bought about 2 years ago came from Ricardo Beverly Hills. If you value getting the most suitcase on board a plane, look for stuff and put something away because it’s getting harder to find that stuff anymore.
We had a scare in the kitchen when water poured over a grease fire only made it worse, and we figured that it would be wise to have a fire extinguisher because if there really is ever a fire there that we cannot control, the whole place will burn down before anyone ever gets to it. We also figured that you might have to decide 30-60 seconds to evacuate and that it might be smart to have a small bag packed with a change of clothing and some essentials so that if you had to leave on a moment’s notice, you could just grab that along with your wallet, passport and keys and get out with something. Of course, good luck finding that bag when you need it.
My son constantly loses his wallet, and we’re tired of replacing photo IDs. Apple produces a magnetic wallet that attaches to iPhones that you can put a few essential items into. Jeremy loses wallets and things but he doesn’t misplace his phone. The iPhone wallet links to the Find My Phone app so that if it separates from the phone it can broadcast its location. To top it off, he doesn’t really need his photo ID and insurance card – a photocopy will do. The only thing he needs that is actual is a bank card and the bank can always print out a new one (and he’s linked his bank card to Apple Pay). So what we did was make some photocopies and write down our contact info on the back of the photocopied photo ID. The real one can stay at home for when he gets on an airplane. I think those 4 items are the essentials a teenager needs to have at all times. You crash on a bike and are unconscious – you need those things on you to get into a hospital and to notify a parent. P.S. Jeremy lost the magnetic wallet within a day. Said it fell off his phone. My daughter has one and never lost it.
As much as kids don’t remember the trips they took when they were little, when I look through the photos albums, I see the kids all dressed up as we wanted to dress them up and they smile a lot and look very cute in all those beautiful places we took them. Now that they are older, they wear (especially Jeremy) what they want to wear and they don’t look nearly as enthusiastic and cute as they did. Jeremy’s hair looks like a mop now and he likes it that way. They don’t want to recreate the funny poses they made on earlier trips to the same place so you can compare the photos. I don’t regret that we took them on nice holidays when they were young because now that they are old enough to appreciate them, it is not necessarily as fun as it was because now we parents are considered a drag to them and the fun they want to have is usually not the fun we want to have. When they were young, we didn’t have to be as punctilious with missing some school as now. As college sets in and scheduling becomes much harder, we will do less of these family trips and they will be by invitation only on our part. My son keeps telling me he prefers to go to a basketball or football game than to be with us in Europe and that a weekend with his friends in Boston was better than any trip he ever took with us. If my son thinks he’s doing us a favor by showing up and giving me attitude such as telling me that he’d rather stay home in bed or spend the week with his friends, he may not need to come with us on our dime. It’s not as if I didn’t know that you need to take the family trips before they turn 18. I knew and we did and at least I have no regrets and we have all those nice photos on the wall to remember them.
I like being able to jump on a plane and go to the Bahamas for 24 hours and return on the turnaround flight the next day as if you were a flight attendant on a layover. It’s a great mental health day for me and it helps make lingering colds go away. I know that sounds ridiculous but if you do it right, you get in 2 beach days and it’s just 2.5 hours in the air. A train from Manhattan to Montauk beach in Long Island is almost 4 hours and it’s cold water. The airport is pretty quick and the Bahamar resort is exactly 10 minutes by taxi from the Nassau airport. I ran an experiment: I bought the cheapest room at the Hyatt you could buy through American Express for about $400 and then offered to pay for an upgrade at the front desk. For $250 I upgraded to an ocean view suite which would have cost nearly $1,500 more. If you book through the Amex Hotel Collection, you get free breakfast, a late checkout and early check-in, and $100 property credit you can use for food or spa or whatever. Basically, that paid for all my food. There is a kosher restaurant that serves dinner and a food truck by the beach called Knosh that serves a large menu for breakfast and lunch. This hotel works – it doesn’t offer the solitude and exclusivity that you can get at the Ocean Club, but that is a 40 minute drive from the airport and can stress you out when the cruise ships are in. Also, under Four Seasons management, the price has really gone through the roof with less than you used to get before. The SLS and Rosewood are also part of Baha Mar but I don’t see the value in the extra money they charge and the SLS is loud even past midnight with blaring hip-hop music you can hear even outside the hotel. All the facilities are built around the Hyatt. The food is good, the pools and the ocean are really nice although a little cooler than I expected for early April (often at the Ocean Club it is rough and you can’t swim), there is fun stuff at night all around you with dancing fountains and a jazz club and lots of restaurants, the water park has been expanded and they are building a new gym this year. Nassau airport now has a Priority Pass lounge near gate 40 in the US departure area and with TSA Precheck and Global Entry facilities pre-clearing customs, the airport is a breeze for departures. In Palm Beach, the Breakers hotel is 10 minutes from the airport and in Fort Lauderdale, there are plenty of hotels along the beachfront about 10 minutes from the airport. No passports needed.
When I talked to my parents last fall about Trump, they said “don’t listen to what he says, see what he does.” They figured, like most of his supporters, that he didn’t really mean what he said. After all, in his first term, he didn’t do all that much. Surprise, surprise – the man actually is trying to do what he said he would do. But he is extremely uninformed and surrounded by incompetent sycophants, and failing miserably. And he is really hurting the country and his supporters. 2025 was supposed to be a great year for the economy; now, nobody wants to invest in anything having no idea from week to week what will happen. His supporters are learning that it is not so great to have a president who couldn’t care less what anyone thinks since he doesn’t have to be re-elected; they have noticed that he is not listening to them. They might have created a Frankenstein. They will become less deferential when they are up for re-election and feel the heat. It’s embarrassing seeing everyone kowtow to him in fear. And he doesn’t reward them – he pisses on them anyway.
I find reading the newspaper in print rather aggravating and I am reconsidering some of my print subscriptions. I stopped watching TV news 25 years ago and haven’t missed it.
Trump is scaring America’s allies and I think that even in 3 years from now, when Trump is no longer president, people will hesitate to make alliances with America knowing that lots of Republicans don’t really care about having allies. This experience is a good time to really rethink NATO; the question is not whether NATO is effective but whether the commitment is real. Europeans don’t really want to fund it and Americans can’t be counted on to defend Europe. Everyone needs to get real, because if the Russians attacked Europe, NATO wouldn’t defend very well. Maybe after the West takes a hit either from China or Russia, they will rediscover the value of alliances.
So far Trump has been all bluster and shown to be a paper tiger when it comes to the tariffs and other countries are laughing at him behind his back. There are a few reasons why he is headed to failure: 1. China is stronger than the US is in this trade war, meaning we need them more than they need us, and Xi can afford to hang tougher than Trump can because he truly doesn’t have to worry about what anyone thinks since he is president for life. 2. Trump is alienating everyone because he doesn’t seem to know what he wants, and giving into him doesn’t inoculate yourself from new demands a week later. Both allies and enemies are finding that to be true. At a certain point, there is no point in giving into him and resistance becomes more profitable than compliance. If Trump wants to maintain any type of deterrence, his best chance is to work with Israel and box Iran in militarily but he doesn’t appear to want to do that since the Gulf States gave him lots of goodies to convince him not to. Now he will be a paper tiger both on economic and foreign affairs and he might as well resign because it will be 3 years of everyone laughing at him and just waiting for him to leave. China, Russia and Iran could actually act in a tougher than normal way knowing that with Trump you just wait for him to blink and then walk off to the bank with your winnings. China for instance possesses escalation dominance, meaning they can escalate without fear of the US. For instance, China could invade Taiwan. Or China could just ban the export of things the US needs such as pharmaceuticals and rare earth minerals. By the way, so could Europe. Remember something I was told years ago which I have shared with you – Xi was elected by the elders of China precisely because he is an asshole and they wanted such a person in charge to take on the US. For the past 10 years, Xi has been preparing for this moment and, barring an act of nature, he will still be in charge of China after Trump is gone. Later in this paper is my military analysis of the Taiwan theater and it lists important reasons why China might not want to invade so quickly.
I think that after Trump finishes trying things that are not working, he will revert to being more like a normal Republican president. Especially once they head into an election year and the Congress gets more scared of being voted out than of not sucking up to him. Germans actually have tons of factories and investment in the USA (they are the largest automotive manufacturers here), and they are not interested in making investments not knowing what the tariffs will be. Trump will find out that manufacturers are not going to invest under a tariff regime and constant uncertainty. Lawyers tell us that no deals are happening now. People like Xi, Putin and Modi have Trump’s number and are learning how to play him. Watch Trump stomp around, make big pronouncements, back off under market pressure (especially if the bond market goes wild), make ceremonial concessions if any that look like a “deal” even if the terms are completely ambiguous, and then watch him give in. They are not stupid.
Americans and the rest of the world should be very concerned over China making moves on Taiwan faster than expected. Trump’s big card against a Chinese invasion was that he would initiate crazy tariffs. Well he drew that card this month and the Chinese countered with even higher tariffs causing Trump to back down. Now that the card has been played, it’s clear that the threat is empty. China might be wise to move on Taiwan while Trump is weak and not wait for America to figure things out later. Indications are that America is less prepared to defend Taiwan than China is to take it over and Taiwan itself is not serious about defending itself and has low capability. The world will be outraged at China for 2 years and then move on, just like it did with Saudi Arabia after they murdered the dissident in their embassy.
Whatever Trump is, I am afraid that we will be stuck with his policies for more than 4 years because the Democratic party is being taken over by young progressives who will be defeated at the general elections. They think the proper response is to double down on progressive ideas with younger people. They just don’t get it. They need centrists. If either party puts up a centrist, they will walk away with it next time around. Just watch NY elect Cuomo as mayor in a field filled with progressives.
Trump is gutting the secret sauce that makes the US do well in the world, such as with R&D in science that has applications in the military and in industry. We are losing our friends and the feeling all around the world is that we are unreliable. We will continue to be this way unless the two parties get together in DC and set the country on a track of more stability than veering from one direction to another with each round of elections. When Trump announced a ceasefire with Yemen all of a sudden without any warning 2 days after they hit Tel Aviv’s airport shutting down flights for days, the Israelis wondered how reliable this guy would be in a real crisis. And guess what? Arab countries are wondering if the US president can leave Israel in the ditch without any warning, what will he do to them?
I think after 4 months that Trump actually looks weak. They beat up on Yemen for 2 months and accomplished nothing after losing planes and a billion dollars, and basically America ceased fire. Nothing is happening with Iran, Russia viz a viz Ukraine, or China. None of the 3 have conceded anything to Trump. And it remains to be seen whether Israel will do what it wants without regard to Trump considering that he is doing what he wants without regard for them.
Consider this fact when you think about Trump’s and the Republican party’s future: 25 years ago, about 300 counties in the US had 25% or more of its residents’ income coming from US handouts such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Now about 2,000 counties fall into that category. 80% of those counties voted Republican. Come fall, these voters will notice that their government benefits are getting hit. Regardless of what Republicans say, they do not like seeing their benefits cut. I recall about a decade ago how a Republican congressman from upstate New York lost his seat because he favored cuts to social security benefits.
Some observations from my recent 3 day jaunt to DC for the annual conference of trustees from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy: The average age in Iran today is 32. At the 1979 Revolution, the age was under 19. If you look at the history of revolutions, they only happen when the average is below 20….There was a consensus among 5 top Israeli experts that the Gaza war is a phony war at this point and that the Israelis ought to stop it because they are foreclosing opportunities at the cost of minimal gain at this point. The Israeli foreign minister begged to differ; he said that only when they finish off Hamas will anything else happen because they are a veto to any progress….Here was a response: Can you finish off Hamas and free the hostages? Israelis say let’s free the hostages and then we can finish Hamas later. How stupid do you think Hamas is? We’ll have a ceasefire at 6pm and then at 7pm we’ll finish off Hamas. Do you think they will ever give over the hostages?
In my book it is best to write off the remaining 20 or so and get on with the deed of finishing them off if indeed it can be done. 3 months from now we can talk about all the other stuff. The UAE and Saudis will manage Gaza for an interim period if Hamas is gone and if the US pressures them to take over the place, but the elephant in the room is that none of the 25 Arab countries in the region want to deal with the Palestinians and instead find it convenient to tell the Israelis that it is their problem…. Jordan seems to be more serious trying to make domestic progress…. Lebanon is doing better than expected at trying to put Hizbullah out of business; it will be hard and a long slog but the current mode of operations where they work under US pressure and an Israeli military backstop seems to be working.
I asked 4 experts if the Saudis want Israel to take out Iran’s nuclear capability before normalizing relations. One said the Saudis don’t care at this point because they are 100% confident that Israel will do the necessaries if they have to. They will do normalization with Israel regardless but right now they want the Gaza war off the 24 hour news channels because the public is upset over it and would not allow the government to normalize at this time. One said that the Saudis don’t want Israeli military action because they fear unintended consequences, especially if the US doesn’t join in the action. The third said the Saudis accept that Iran is already a quasi-nuclear power and that if they go nuclear, they will get their own bomb to counter them. A fourth said that Iran would not actually go nuclear because the benefit is not worth having 5 countries around them all get the bomb to counter them. The consensus is that the ayatollah wants a deal with the US because he knows that his ring of fire failed, that he was sold a bill of goods by his IRGC commanders thinking they would damage Israel and not get hit back hard, and that his posterity will not be good if he doesn’t secure Iran’s future…. The US General who was in charge of the response to Iran’s volley of rockets and missiles against Israel last April spoke. I always find that US Generals are impressive. They look and talk like generals and are way cool.
I was at the VIP section of the US State Department on the 8th floor ballroom for a dinner and had this feeling of foreboding as if I were a German Jew in a German government building in 1930 just a few years before Hitler took power. I felt that in 3 years Jews will not be welcome in this building if Vance becomes president after the Democrats run another progressive and lose to him. If the two parties offer America a choice between dogfood and catfood, they will choose “red” dogfood every time. I hope I’m not right. I stood on the terrace looking out over Washington. To the right was the US Institute for Peace, which Trump and Musk shut down. I’m told there are cockroaches all over the lobby already. You might see a rupture between Trump and Netanyahu in the coming year; the two talk a lot to each other but they do not see eye to eye. The Israelis are being mum but they are very nervous that Trump will make a bad deal with Iran in search of any deal he can get and make it impossible for them to go after Iran militarily. Right-wing Jews who back Trump insist that what seems like an abandonment of Israel is a ruse and that Trump is still secretly in Israel’s corner. To me the jury is still out on all this. What I do know is that foreign airlines still don’t want to fly in and out of Israel and I can’t wait till my daughter gets the heck out of the country in early June after her year abroad.
It was amusing to see a video of the airport in Yemen after the Israelis bombed the living crap out of it and caused half a billion dollars in damages. This was to send a message after the Houthis sent a missile that landed at Israel’s airport and resulted in a several day’s worth of cancelled flights and a blot to their reputation. A serious question is why the Houthis got through after 2 months of daily bombings by the Americans who were asking the Israelis to stand back while they took care of things. Meanwhile, the Houthis seem to still be striking Israel at will now several weeks later. So what if anything is being accomplished? A real warning shot for Israel is a recent poll of American Jews that feel by a pretty large majority that Netanyahu should be replaced and that he is pursuing a war for political reasons. The poll is pretty devastating in terms of its findings and shows that American Jews under 40 are becoming more distant to Israel.
The US risks joining the UK as a declining power. The UK is a has-been country since Brexit and just lurches from crisis to crisis. It will take a generation to fix what Trump has broken. China is outclassing and outproducing the USA. This is all self-inflicted and stems from the US being a crybaby nation that wants to build walls and erect protectionist schemes to avoid competing head-on with China. America tried to keep China down and is failing miserably in its effort. It’s a stupid strategy. The US cannot win a trade war against China without allies and Trump is trashing his allies and somehow thinks that countries hostile to America will be better partners for this country. Not gonna happen. The leaders of Russia, Iran, North Korea and China are convinced that America sucks and that we are the enemy on autopilot against them. And to a decent extent they are right. Both Biden and Trump have essentially the same strategy and again it’s stupid and won’t work. It will take a good leader as president to summon a Congress to actually fulfill its functions and to cooperate for the better good and to explain to US citizens why we have to invest in our future and do the things that Trump and Fox News commentators have been telling us not to do such as to fund R&D, to promote soft and hard power, and promote immigration and free trade. And to reestablish the alliances necessary to compete with China.
We are hearing from people in hospitals and research centers that they are killing off experiments that ran for 50 years because of the cutoff of funds to research. It will take 2 generations to replace these lost studies. I wonder though why these places didn’t have enough money in their endowments to keep this research alive through a bad time like this or why they couldn’t ship experiments off to laboratories abroad who would have gladly taken them. Seems like poor management and/or poor priorities.
There is a kernel of truth to things the Trump administration is carrying on about, and one of them is that the US Government was funding all sorts of progressive causes around the world that made Republicans sick to their stomachs. They couldn’t wait to put a cudgel to these programs. The State Department’s section on human rights for instance was more interested in GBTL issues than actual human rights. I know about it in more detail than is necessary to write here. If there is a silver lining to what Trump has done, it will be that government becomes less partisan and more representative of values that a majority of Americans actually share when everyone cools down and figures out how to make government work again with taxpayers’ money.
I showed my son Jeremy pictures of the State Department and he said he would see those rooms when he becomes president. I know why I don’t want to be president – tonight I went to the supermarket to buy something we were running out of, and then later I ran around the block as I often do late at night to push dinner down. As president, for the rest of your life, you can’t do stuff like that without security agents trailing you and people stopping you on the street. I like my anonymity and don’t want to put a target on my back. You see how Iran and Trump Republicans threaten all sorts of people with their lives. Who wants that?
Interesting how cities rise and fall even during our lifetimes. San Francisco in 1979 was beautiful and has fallen very far. Someone told me that Moscow looks much cleaner and is more orderly than Manhattan; even the restaurants he said are better. Someone else told me that Toronto looks like Oakland and that it is a real mess; it used to be a very clean city. I saw this year how Buenos Aires deteriorated and how Rio De Janeiro improved.
Let’s end with a talk about Taiwan for a moment. I’m told that if China wants to attack by sea, there are only 2-3 months a year that they can do it – during the summer. So if you want to visit Taiwan, the most pleasant and probably safest time of the year is during the winter. That’s a good thing because I’d like to get a visit in there before China’s leader Mr. Xi takes the place. Something that augurs poorly for Xi attacking sooner than later – he keeps purging the military leadership, especially in the division that would be responsible for attacking Taiwan. He doesn’t have faith in his military leadership. Also consider that all of China’s military forces would have to deal with fighting a war to the east of China. They would have no military sitting out in the Gulf making sure oil got through to them. The USA is sitting there and would probably be blocking all the oil. China is building a large navy but it will be a while before they can have forces in place around the globe to back up their military campaign in Taiwan.
