I moved inside from my first day sitting on the deck because the sun was in my eyes. Turned on the television, and stumbled across a movie that was just starting: The Prize, from 1964, starring Paul Newman, Edward G. Robinson, and Elke Sommer.
It caught and held my attention. It’s a combination of a mystery and a romantic comedy.
It’s set in Stockholm, Sweden. Newman, Robinson, and a few others have all come to town as this year’s Nobel laureates. Paul Clark (Newman), winning the prize for literature (though his career has turned from important books to detective novels) is a misanthropic alcoholic who is only there for the money. He meets Max Stratman (Robinson), physics, who was one of the scientists brought to the US in Operation Paperclip). The next day, however, Stratman doesn’t know Clark, and then at a press conference, Clark makes up a plot for a mystery novel in which a Nobel laureate is kidnapped. (Remember, this is 1964; not everyone has their photo available on the internet.) Inge Lisa Andersen (Sommer) is the official delegated to watch over Clark, make sure he gets to his appointments on time.
Interactions with the other laureates provide some of the comic relief, along with some drama, but the main thrust is Clark’s investigation of the mystery he thought he’d created on the spot. That, and the meet-cute romcom of Clark and Andersen’s relationship.
Overall, it’s an enjoyable and engaging movie from an era when car chases and battle scenes weren’t ubiquitous.
While I’m glad President Trump wised up and paused the tariffs, I’d have been much happier if he’d canceled them outright. But the whole activity—indeed, the past week’s worth of financial news coming out of the White House—points out that we don’t have a thoughtful, considerate person sitting in the Oval Office. We have a capricious, egotistical fool. And while such a person is not normally dangerous, the fact that he’s the president of the United States gives his every utterance global import.
I have to wonder how much of his decision process was driven by a recognition of the global pain he’d caused, and how much of it was yet another misuse of governmental power for his own financial benefit. A week ago, he started a global trade war all on his own (on the flimsiest of reasons and with absolutely execrable math to justify it). He continued harping on his attacks for a week. Last night, he told us he was thrilled with how other countries were “kissing his ass” to negotiate lower tariff rates (all class, that president of ours, just not high class). And just after 9:30 this morning, he apparently truthed out [is “truthed” the word for tweeting on his proprietary Twitter competitor?] “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.” He followed it up with “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!”
Remember, this is the only presidential candidate in a generation to not release his tax returns, and the only president in memory to not divest himself of his non-presidential businesses. Will we ever know how well he and his super-wealthy buddies did today after he “paused” the tariffs and popped the stock markets more than we’ve ever seen before?
I don’t think he knuckled under, and I don’t think he’s stupid. I think he’s an excellent grifter, and he’s just pulled off a brilliant scam for himself and his friends. For those of you not seeing it: he depressed the price of almost every stock in the US by fifteen or twenty percent, in one week, giving his cronies a great chance to buy. And today, he popped those prices back up ten percent.
He’s in the Oval Office to steal as much as he can, and he’s doing a pretty good job of it.
Outsiders. Rebels. Free-Thinkers. Who doesn’t love an underdog? Deep inside, most of us identify with those who are a little—or a lot—different. Those who choose their own path, or for whom fate chooses for them. Sometime in our lives, we’ve felt like we didn’t quite fit in.
This doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Forging your own way builds strength, and makes for a damn good story!
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I want to comment on President Trump’s long “announcement” of a global tariff agenda just now in the Rose Garden, but what the hell was he talking about? He rambled from “my predecessors were stupid” to “there were shenanigans during the 2020 election” to “the United States is broke because every other country has been taking advantage of us forever.” The one specific that did catch my ear is that, in the world according to Trump, the Great Depression was caused by the Sixteenth Amendment (which introduced the income tax, in 1913), and that it did not end until sometime in the 1950s or 1960s (he said it was a long time after Franklin Roosevelt left office).
The one thing I can say is that he’s gotten away from claiming all those other countries will be the ones paying the United States for the tariffs. Apparently, somebody finally got to him to point out that the United States doesn’t pay “tariffs” to any other country.
After I posted the above on April 2, I saw what happened to the world’s stock markets, and late on April 3, I emailed President Trump the following:
I just looked at my accounts: I’m not happy with you, President Trump.
The economy was good, despite your campaign rhetoric saying otherwise. And then I watched your Rose Garden bloviating yesterday, and I looked at your chart of tariffs being charged against the US. And then I looked to see just where you got those numbers. We know where they came from, we know those aren’t actual tariffs charged on us, and we know you’re destroying the country (and quite possibly the global economy).
I also notice you never did bother releasing you tax returns. Are you, indeed, working for a foreign country?
And then this morning (April 4), I found this video from CNN, in which Phil Mattingly explains where the “tariff” numbers on that chart came from.
And then I found this other CNN video, in which Jim Cramer explains just how wrong these tariff over-reactions are.
What is the value of intellectual freedom? of academic integrity? of political independence? The story just now on MSNBC was about the forthcoming meeting and negotiations between Harvard University and the Trump administration; that the government is demanding… well, I’m not entirely sure, other than the Trumpians are angry with the “liberal agenda supported by colleges and universities.”
I’m wondering what will happen if the leadership at Harvard can bring themselves to say “Our intellectual freedom, our academic integrity, is more important to the Harvard community than our federal funding. We have this massive endowment, so we’re going to draw on it to make up for the shortfall in federal funding. President Trump: you can shove your ideology.” Such a move, I think, would lead to an alumni fund-raising windfall. While the Trumpians might tout it as cutting needless federal spending, it could be viewed as a win by both sides. And who better to take that hit to show that Trumpism is not forever and ever than a university which was founded more than a century before the country in which it stands?
Mind you, I am emphatically in favor of rooting out the antisemitism poisoning college campuses. But it doesn’t seem to me that Harvard is dragging their feet on this issue.
And I’m going to throw in a few numbers which caught my ear. According to that MSNBC story, Harvard receives “$9 billion in federal grants and contracts.” Though the same report did also say that Columbia, after having theoretically acquiesced to similar demands, is still waiting for the $400 million in federal funds it receives to be restored.
I question that $9 billion, which may actually be an aggregate of many universities. This Washington Times piece from 2023 said Harvard had $3.3 billion in grants and contracts over the 2018–2022 period.
And in January, the Harvard Crimson said “In fiscal year 2024, the University received $686 million from federal agencies, accounting for two-thirds of its total sponsored research expenditures and eleven percent of the University’s operating revenue.”
But the point remains: can—should—a university bow to political whims, and change its policies to suit a presidential administration, which is by design temporary?
Yes, there is no place on college campuses—or anywhere else in the country—for supporters of kidnappers, rapists, and murderers. But on the other side of the discussion: is this what we have a government for? Isn’t this rather an issue to which a true Republican would have a laissez-faire attitude? Let the market decide, such a Republican would say. If people disagree with the university’s policies, they’ll stop donating to it, stop applying to be students there, stop respecting it. Apparently, the Trumpians are not so secure in their own beliefs to think they’ll win out in the marketplace of ideas, so they have to put the government’s financial thumb on the scale.
Listening to Vice President Vance speaking just now at Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, he said “we expect the people of Greenland will choose independence from Denmark,” and then we’ll cut a deal with them. What happens if the people of Greenland ultimately decide to not associate with the United States? To not become a US territory or protectorate?
All of this, mind you, came after the Vice President spent a long time bad-mouthing Denmark, saying they’ve done a terrible job. And looking at the broader picture, why does it seem to be that President Trump and his administration spend nearly all of their time denigrating, insulting, and attacking every ally the United States has had for the last eighty years, without expressing any real concerns about the countries which have not been our allies?
As I’m writing this, Chris Jansing on MSNBC just called it “antidiplomacy,” and I think that’s a very apt description of the Trump administration’s activity.
I’ve said it before in a different context: when only one side is playing by the rules, they’re setting themselves up for a moral victory accompanied by a crushing actual defeat.
The Democratic party’s insistence on moral purity is what led them to purge their own Senator Al Franken. It’s what allowed Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat to sit vacant for ten months, while Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s was filled in ten days. And it’s what continues to cause massive headaches for those of us who actually worry about the future of the country.
Chuck Schumer was absolutely correct in his vote for the “continuing resolution” to keep the government funded: voting against it is what the Trumpians wanted. There may have been moral purity in rejecting the bill, but then what? Shut down the government? Declare moral purity by not voting for the bill? That is exactly what the Trumpians wanted.
Indeed, they’re already doing it. Look at what has happened during Trump 2.0: USAID has been shut down. NOAA has been shut down. The Department of Education is nearly shut down. They’re shutting down the government piecemeal while patriotic ex-employees file pitiable lawsuits, hoping to keep their jobs.
Not adopting Speaker Mike Johnson’s continuing resolution would have done in one fell swoop what Trump & Co. are doing slowly, department by department: it would have shut everything down.
“But then shutting down the government would have been the Republicans’ fault,” the purest of the pure cry.
“So what?” respond the rational people. “That’s what they’re doing today. That’s what they want to do.” And that appears to be what the voters asked for.
Regardless of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s commentary, there was no pathway to negotiate a clean four-week extension. If that negotiation could have occurred, it would have happened weeks ago. But Trump’s minions in the House had no interest in doing so. They have the majority there, so they don’t need to talk to the Democrats about anything.
Had the staunch Democrats succeeded in delaying the bill and shutting down the government, the Trumpians would have been celebrating. And they would have had no reason to negotiate anything to re-open it. We would be suffering through a government shutdown that would last until the next election, all while Trump and Elon Musk determine which pieces of the government are “necessary” and which are not. They would have had the time of their lives, selling off pieces of the government to their cronies at bargain prices, while the Democrats would be mewling for negotiations to fund and re-open the government.
I disagree—vehemently—with almost every action taken by the president and his gang of thieves. I disagree with their policies, their stated goals, and their methods. But the moral purity of the Democrats is a danger we can no longer afford. Adherence to the rules is a path to victory only if both sides are playing by the rules, and if the judges of the contest care about them. November 5, 2024, showed us that a plurality of American voters don’t care about following the rules, and that saddens me. But if we’re going to save our country from the predations of Trump 2.0, we’re going to have to get dirty, get down in the mud with our foes to fight back, hard.
Was Schumer morally impure for allowing the continuing resolution to pass the Senate? Yes. But was it the right thing to do in an attempt to save the country? Also, yes.
I’ve just learned of the death of Clotilde “Cloty” Cepeda, at the age of 91. She was Greater New York Mensa’s Testing Coordinator when I was president of the group, and served as Secretary during my second term. I remember her as an always-cheerful participant and volunteer, and with her companion, Marty Merado (who also served on the board), she was a ubiquitous presence at GNYM events and Regional Gatherings far and wide.
In addition to making the Mensa experience so welcoming for so many, she also brought her grandchildren into the fold: Daniel “Danny” and Kathryn “Katie” McNickle were regular participants in our then-burgeoning Young Mensans program.
Born in Colombia, she had been living in a nursing home the last several years. Danny passed along the news that she passed away peacefully on March 11.
Tonight, Donald Trump bloviated for an hour and 39 minutes. It was a campaign speech, it was a complaint, it was a brilliant example of verbal masturbation, Donald Trump-style. It wasn’t terribly surprising, and it wasn’t at all unifying.
It took him only eight minutes to get around to telling us that Joe Biden was “the worst president in American history.”
He gave a long list of programs he called “fraud”—which in Trump English seems to be a synonym for “programs I don’t like or disagree with”—including money for a program “in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of.” I’ve heard of it.
And he continued to threaten Panama and Greenland, saying “to enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal.” And that the canal was built for Americans, not others. He also encouraged Greenlanders to voluntarily associate with the United States, but then said “we need Greenland for international world security. And one way or another, we’re gonna get it.”
He rambled on about many other things, but frankly, there wasn’t enough new or interesting for me to bother reporting on it again.
One thought I did take away from the speech: whether he’s read the story or not, he seems to have completely embraced the idea in my story “The Necessary Enemy.” Specifically, that it takes a villain to make a hero, that we need an enemy in order to be the victor. Perhaps that’s why he’s always talking about enemies, and why he declared a variety of emergencies the day he was inaugurated. Perhaps that’s why he’s always struggling to “make America great again,” as if someone had somehow made America less. The only one making America less is Donald Trump, as he cedes our position of economic, political, and moral leadership on the world stage.
On CNN just now, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick expressed shock and amazement, that President Zelenskyy is demanding “all the land” back. That he can’t possibly want peace if he’s demanding reparations from Russia and all the land.
Let’s be clear, Secretary Lutnick: Russia attacked Ukraine, and Russia is occupying Ukrainian land. The president of Ukraine is not demanding something outrageous, not asking the world to give him a gift. He is saying he wants a what was taken from Ukraine: a return to status quo ante, the return of their occupied lands.
If Canadian troops had bombed Albany and crossed the Niagara River to take Western New York, wouldn’t we be demanding their departure in order to stop fighting back? Of course we would. Why is it so surprising that Ukraine wants their territory returned?
Either we recognize the territorial integrity of the nations of the Earth, or it’s open season for anyone with weapons to attack their neighbors simply because they want to.
Ian Randal Strock 