1-Jun-2025

8 days ago, I looked at Meg and noticed enlarged teats …and girth. “OMG!”, I thought to myself, “You’re pregnant, Meg.”

I am not sure how it happened or which male was responsible. I thought I was being very careful.

Today, Meg delivered 5 healthy pups. The markings are indefinite. I will do a DNA paternity test to confirm before I register them.

No one I like to be with more at the end the day than ‘Perfect Peter‘.

If only EVERY dog could be like Peter.

Pete is better than his sire, Clwyd Bob. On par with his grandsire, International Champion Jock …but smarter. Without reservation, the best dog I have ever bred or owned, more perfect than I could have imagined possible.

Peter is available at stud in Vermont. Frozen semen ( in 150+ million post-thaw motile sperm doses ) is available as well.

Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy quoted in Thomas Edsall’s 22-April-2025 column in The NY Times, Trump Is Insatiable (free link), tells us “there is good reason to be worried.” Not only has the Republican majority in Congress “exhibited little interest in monitoring, much less checking, the president,” but “the ultimate guardrail against tyranny, the electorate,” cannot be relied on:

A decisive chunk of the American electorate elevated Trump to the presidency after he had shown his authoritarian proclivities. And even now after Trump has menaced the civil service, unions, universities, news media and professions in a reckless, dangerous, dictatorial fashion, the number of Americans vocally upset is disturbingly small.

Edsall notes, “a crucial tactic adopted by Trump in his second term is to isolate a target. Justin Gest, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, elaborated on that point”:

In each case, the president isolates key targets and threatens them, and seemingly them only, if they don’t bend to his will. And for each target, the calculation is simple: Resisting entails concentrated costs to their organization and diffuse public benefits to American democracy, whereas capitulating transfers diffuse costs to American democracy and concentrated benefits to their organization.

Edsall warns us:

What appears to be happening is that recognition of the fact that making even small concessions will only encourage the administration to keep asking for more is spreading.

Why? Because Trump is insatiable.

Sound (too) familiar ???

In all respects: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

Michael Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School, writes:

Republicans in Congress have done nothing. They are fully beholden to Trump and will do nothing to resist his authoritarian inclinations. It is one of the most shameless capitulations in American history.

It is hard to believe these people genuinely love their country. They have confirmed cabinet nominees who are the most unqualified in history. And they have raised not a finger to resist DOGE’s assault on Congress’s constitutional powers to appropriate funds and create federal offices.

Robert C. Post, a law professor at Yale, argued in an email to Edsall that by acting with such speed that his adversaries have been caught by surprise, Trump has been unexpectedly successful in the opening months of his second term:

The entire society has been taken aback by the suddenness and violence of Trump’s first 100 days. He has worked astonishing innovations in the exercise of executive power. Much of what he has done is obviously lawless.

Trump has seized the high ground in the belief that possession is nine-tenths of the law. He has dared the courts to defy him. And the courts are on this point cautious, because, as has been true for hundreds of years, their authority depends upon the force of their reason.

Many of Trump’s executive orders suggest that he cares little about legal reason. To speak figuratively, Trump cares only how many divisions the courts can mobilize. In such circumstances, the force of judicial reason depends upon public opinion, and Trump is presently still on a honeymoon with the sectors of the public that elected him.

Trump’s strategy is to divide his adversaries, Post wrote:

Unbound by law, immune to shame, the Trump administration has unleashed the full force of the executive branch on institutions of civil society like universities and law firms.

Civil society is splintering under the assault. Harvard resists; Columbia bends the knee. Paul, Weiss bows in obeisance, Perkins Coie sues. Resistance is genuinely difficult, because the main institutions have left themselves exposed to blackmail from the federal government that has determined to trash all previous norms of behavior.

For those who think things will just bounce back, Edsall’s panel has some bad news, Jack Balkin, at Yale Law School, said in an email that the wreckage will be hard to repair: “A great danger of the Trump revolution is that it may be very hard to reconstruct the public and private institutions that he has damaged. Even when Trump leaves office, he will have created a playbook for future administrations to follow.”

Enormous amounts of expertise and institutional memory have departed from the U.S. government in multiple areas. The purges have badly compromised the professional culture of government institutions. That culture was premised on people making long-term career commitments to gaining expertise and working in the public interest.

And finally, Edsall refers us to an essay, Universities in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union Thought Giving In to Government Demands Would Save Their Independence,” by Iveta Silova, the associate dean of global engagement and a professor at Arizona State University, in which she reminds us “after Hitler took office in 1933, his regime moved swiftly to purge academic institutions of Jews and political opponents.”

Gail’s 9-week-old pups exhausted themselves by mid-afternoon on Memorial Day. Shortly after 3 pm, I put them back to the kennel to dine on sautéed chicken hears and kibble. Litters of 3 tend to form a tightly bound unit of mutual aid, comfort and safety. They do everything together.

21-May-2025

The 3 Gail x Max puppies turned 8 weeks over the weekend. They are out exploring their world together on fine spring days. THIS is why I keep my pups until at least 12 weeks. They need those extra weeks together, as a unit, for socialization and development.

There are no boundaries here, only the puppies’ good sense. I trust they will not go too far and they will look after one another. This is a particularly nice litter. A happy, “Babies! Bay-bees!!” brings them running. [The name ‘puppy’ is taken by one of the now-adults, so they are ‘babies’.] I will miss their joy when they leave.

20-May-2025

An op-ed by my favorite NYT columnist, Thomas Edsall, captures the sadness I feel for the gross error Americans made 6 months ago. Some of his points:

One thing stands out amid all the chaos, corruption and disorder: the wanton destructiveness of the Trump presidency.

Some of the damage Trump has inflicted can be repaired by future administrations, but repairing relations with American allies, the restoration of lost government expertise and a return to productive research may take years, even with a new and determined president and Congress.

“The gutting of expertise and experience going on right now under the blatantly false pretext of eliminating fraud and waste,” Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton, wrote by email, “is catastrophic and may never be completely repaired.”

I asked Wilentz whether Trump was unique in terms of his destructiveness or if there were presidential precedents. Wilentz replied: “There is no precedent, not even close”

Wilentz continues: “Trump’s closest allies intended chaos wrought by destruction which helps advance the elite reactionary programs. Chaos allows Trump to expand his governing by emergency powers, which could well include the imposition of martial law, if he so chose.”

Edsall quotes Robert Strong, a professor of political economy at Washington and Lee:

I previously felt that the predictions of authoritarian government in the United States were exaggerated. The pace and scope of actions in the early months of Trump 2 have changed my assessment.

The levels of open corruption, the direct challenges to the rule of law, the assaults on institutions have been larger and more consequential than I expected. We are in a period of grave political peril.

Sharable link to op-ed.

PDF version as well.

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There is another op-ed in The NY Times this morning that confirms what I have been saying since Trump started on his path of destruction. Trump has irreversibly ceded American leadership and global advantage to China.

America, by contrast, may end up as a profoundly diminished nation. Sheltered behind tariff walls, its companies will sell almost exclusively to domestic consumers. The loss of international sales will degrade corporate earnings, leaving companies with less money to invest in their businesses. American consumers will be stuck with U.S.-made goods that are of middling quality but more expensive than global products, owing to higher U.S. manufacturing costs. Working families will face rising inflation and stagnant incomes. Traditional high-value industries such as car manufacturing and pharmaceuticals are already being lost to China; the important industries of the future will follow.

Shareable link to op-ed.

PDF version as well.

“Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. Life shapes the face you have at thirty. But at fifty you get the face you deserve.” ~ Coco Chanel

Faces of hate are a common feature of MAGAt abusers who lack empathy and kindness. Pam Bondi, Kristie Noam, Kellyanne Conway, Laura Ingram, Marjorie Taylor Green, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller… There is a deeply unkind, hard MAGA look to them. Cruelty, whether by word or deed, settles into faces.

Compare those faces to the joy and tranquility in the face of performer Bruce Springsteen. [see earlier post] Coco Chanel, the doyenne of fashion, saw how truth finds its way to the face.

The Boss had something to say about things in America during a concert in Manchester, England. Seems a true patriot got under Dear Leader’s diapers.

GO BRUCE ! ..Thank you Bruce !!!

In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.

Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!

…

They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.

They are removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.

A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American.

We all need to speak up and act to save America

…from despotism, corruption and hate

Friday, 16-April-2025

If you listen to Donald Trump, you will hear him repeat his keep-’em-happy phrases, “We are winning!”

DON’T BELIEVE IT!! The only ones who are ‘winning’ are corrupt plutocrats and our adversaries. Ordinary Americans are worried. Bond holders are worried.

In today’s news, reality hits. We are in a recession a of Trump’s own making. His tariffs and assaults on government hit home.

The proposed tax cuts for the rich are warmed over, debunked Supply Side nonsense from the 1980’s, when Reagan started us on the road to unsustainable debt. The ratings agencies have something to say about the proposed Trump party budget and taxes.

Way to go, Dear Leader!

So this is what Make America Great Again means??

• Chaotic and incompetent governance
• Disregard for the Constitution and rule of law
• Punishing and harassing enemies (politicians, universities, media)
• Extension of tax cuts for the wealthy
• Endless lies
• …and the list goes on and on

From the Financial Times today…

The US has been stripped of his top-notch triple-a credit rating by Moody’s on concerns about rising levels of government debt.

The agency on Friday afternoon cut its credit rating on the US to Aa1 form Aaa .. Fitch and S&P, the other main agencies, and previously removed the US’s pristine rating.

From Moody’s

“If the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is extended, which is our base case, it will add around $4 trillion to the federal fiscal primary (excluding interest payments) deficit over the next decade. As a result, we expect federal deficits to widen, reaching nearly 9% of GDP by 2035, up from 6.4% in 2024, driven mainly by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending and relatively low revenue generation.” – Moody’s

“Relatively low revenue generation” means …the rich and corporations not paying their fair share! DOGE is not going to fix this. The ‘big, beautiful tax bill’, which is a laundry list of bad policy and gifts to special interest, is not going fix this —it will add to the debt. The markets have spoken: they don’t like what they see in America and in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful budget’.

The truth is: Republicans have be WRONG about deficits for 45 years!

The Republican Party (once the party of fiscal responsibility) sold the public supply side / deficit snake oil, which created an uber-rich class with the public picking up obligations for future payments on debt for irresponsible, unneeded tax cuts. It is probably the biggest political con in American history.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed the downgrade, saying it reflected conditions already in the market (although Moody’s explicitly said it was concerned about the potential passage of the Republicans’ Big, Beautiful Bill). House speaker Mike Johnson said that the credit downgrade just proved the need for the measure with its “historic spending cuts” to pass (although Moody’s named that bill as its reason for the downgrade).

What has driven rising deficits are the George W. Bush and Donald Trump tax cuts, which had added $8 trillion and $1.7 trillion, respectively, to the debt by the end of the 2023 fiscal year.

But rather than permit those tax cuts to expire— or even to roll them back— the Republicans continue to insist Americans are overtaxed.

In fact, the U.S. is far below the average of the 37 other nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an intergovernmental forum of democracies with market economies, in its tax levies. According to a report by the Center for American Progress in 2023, if the U.S. taxed at the average OECD level, over ten years it would have an additional $26 trillion in revenue. If the U.S. taxed at the average of European Union nations, it would have an additional $36 trillion.

Discretionary spending has fallen more than 40% in the past 50 years as a percentage of gross domestic product, from 11% to 6.3%.

At some point, deficits really DO matter. We · are · there !

Markets have spoken.

Canada, Denmark (with Greenland as its territory) and 8 other nations all have AAA credit ratings. America is now second tier.

Maybe THAT is why Trump is so interested in Canada and Greenland?? Maybe ‘winning’ is paying for good assets with debt, and when it doesn’t work out, declaring bankruptcy …or in this case defaulting on US Debt. Rating agencies see a Donald Trump patter. Markets see a pattern.

A wag on the internet said mockingly of the self-styled ‘King of Debt’, “Everything he touches goes bankrupt…“

The lies will just keep coming, cover for ineptitude, mistakes and self-dealing.

In the 2024 campaign, Trump insisted that foreign countries would pay for further tax cuts through tariffs, no matter how often economists said that tariffs are passed on to consumers.

…you mean, just like Mexico paid for the border wall??? One of the big lies of the 2016 campaign, for which Trump is never held accountable.

DO NOT BELIEVE THE LIES FROM TRUMP AND HIS STOOGES IN CONGRESS AND IN THE ADMINISTRATION. MARKETS ARE TELLING US THE HARD TRUTH.

WE · ARE · NOT · ‘WINNING’ !!

We will pay more to service our debt in the future because of diminished confidence in ability to meet out obligations. Trump’s recklessness and stupidity have reduced confidence in America and sent a message to the markets that America is not serious about managing its fiscal affairs (as well as its political affairs). Executive orders to other nations and rating agencies demanding their restore our credit rating will not change spooked bond markets requiring a higher premium for American debt. Markets don’t take orders from Trump –even though American corporations seem to…

The responsibility for the failing economy and debt downgrade rests with MAGAts and MAGA voters, who will never admit their responsibility for electing chaos, corruption and despotism …and failure.

We had a choice in 2024, perhaps not the choice we wanted, but we had a choice between responsible government and vengeful mayhem. Still incredible to me that we chose Trump and his party –when we KNEW what we were getting. The destructive consequences of that crazy choice have just begun.

If only our dogs could save us…

…but they can’t.

So, if live in a state/district that has a MAGA party representative, act up and make your voice heard. Tell them to stop the “big beautiful budget bill”. It is the ultimate con from the ultimate con man and his party.

…and remember, while Trump and his party lie, markets do not. We are not winning. And the ‘big beautiful budget bill’, like Trump himself, is a loser.