Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

After the New Orleans New Year attack, Trump wrote that this confirmed that our country was unsafe because criminals were crossing the border. A Fox News host said that the country would soon be safer after Trump closed the border. Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested the same. This was said even though the terrorist, an Army veteran, was an American citizen born and raised and living in Texas. Perhaps what Trump and the others were really suggesting is that we close the border between Texas and the rest of the country. This might not make the United States safer, but it would make me feel better.

I was surprised that the New Orleans terrorist was flying an ISIS flag. Trump destroyed that organization in 2019. Or at least that is what he said.

The Washington, D.C., homicide rate, which increased while Trump was president, has been decreasing.

His death brings to mind some Jimmy Carter trivia as well as a story about his mother. This is drawn from Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (2020). Because he was a veteran, Carter qualified for and lived in a new government housing complex shortly after leaving the Navy. He thus became the only president to have lived in public housing.

Carter is the last president not to have golfed while in office.

It was loudly proclaimed that the Carters did not lie. A reporter asked Jimmy’s mother about this, and Lillian Carter conceded that the family told white lies. When the reporter asked for an example, Miss Lillian replied, “Remember how when you walked in here, I told you how sweet and pretty you were?”

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” Walter Lippman.

I had a dream I was in hell; I was trapped in a corner at an endless cocktail party by a birder.

Given our divided country, I like to recall the words of some political and historical observers: “Conservatives are but people who learned to love the new order forced upon them by radicals.” And: “Radicals: Those who advance and consolidate a position for the conservatives to advance a little later.”

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

“I wouldn’t mind paying taxes, if I knew they were going to a friendly country.” Dick Gregory.

President Biden is a disappointment. He has visited scenes of natural disasters and not once flicked out rolls of paper towels.

How old do you have to be to understand why I was taught to squeeze the toothpaste tube only from the bottom?

I am wondering when Florida or some other state will ban reruns of “Star Trek.” Tony Horwitz in Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1998) reports that some white supremacists protested the show because to them, Mr. Spock—half human, half-Vulcan—was a coded promoter of miscegenation.

A story in a Jimmy Carter biography that I hope is true: Carter had said that he followed what his parents taught him, and he would never tell a lie. A reporter interviewed Jimmy’s mother and asked whether it was true that the Carters told no lies. Miss Lillian replied, “Maybe a little white one.” Asked for an example, Miss Lillian continued, “Remember how when you walked in here, I told you how sweet and pretty you were?”

Some people have tact and others tell the truth.

We had made it to the open sky after ascending the steep, slippery, worn, damp stairs. We were wet from the plunge in the cave’s pool, a cenote. At the picnic table next to us, two women were also toweling off. One then began putting on suntan lotion. I said that if she were planning to go into another cenote a few hundred meters away, that was mistake since she would just have to wash it off. To keep the waters in cenotes uncontaminated, swimmers must shower off lotions, perfumes, deodorants, and the like before going into the water. Even though you might think of Yucatan as a warm place, the cenote showers are colder than any mixed drinks I had there. I learned that the women were from the Netherlands. I asked to see their thumbs. They looked puzzled. I said that I heard that the Dutch all had large thumbs to plug holes in the dikes. This is a witticism I invariably drop when meeting someone from Holland because it invariably amuses me and no one else. One was a nurse and the other a social worker. They worked together in a drug addiction clinic for 18–24-year-olds. Even in the civilized Netherlands addiction destroys lives. It was sad that they said that fentanyl was becoming an increasing problem.

A boss a while back was being interviewed on television. He said that, of course, no one actually made the median salary. Yet another reason, I thought, to get out of the job I was in.

An elderly woman at the pharmacy was deciding which of her drugs she should take home because she could not afford them all. I felt very sadly American as the scene unfolded.

A few years back an observer said, “Our forefathers objected to taxation without representation. Now we would be glad to get taxation without misrepresentation.”