Dispatches from Vilnius

What was interesting in hearing the Donald respond to questions about the New York Times expose of his tax returns, is that he didn't really deny the story.  He hemmed and hawed and said he paid a lot of other taxes, but seemed genuinely taken aback that his tax record for the past 20 years has finally been revealed.   The New York Times paints an ugly picture .  It's not jsust that he paid so little in personal income taxes, it is the methods he used to avoid paying those taxes.  To hear Trump talk, he's the world's greatest businessman, but to look at his record, he's the world's greatest tax cheat, finding highly questionable ways to avoid paying any income tax for 10 out of 15 of those years, thanks largely to the enormous losses he reported on his hotels and golf clubs. Of course, tax avoidance is nothing new.  If you have a good tax accountant, or an army of tax accountants in his case, you can find ways to write off anything like $70,000 in haircuts or c

Watching Ryan Murphy's latest creation, Ratched , I've noticed he likes twisted happy endings.  It was the same with American Horror Story .  No matter how macabre each season became, it ultimately came to a happy ending of sorts.  Basically, he is a romantic at heart.   This should have made it difficult for him with the infamous Nurse Ratched, truly one of the  cruelest, most heartless bitches conceived in a book or movie, but no bother.  He finds a way to reach into her heart over 8 episodes, justifying her seemingly amoral behavior.  Sarah Paulsen gives a bravuro performance as a younger Mildred, but nothing compared to the steely-eyed nurse in One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest , who never broke character for one moment.  Hers was such a cruel role that no leading actress wanted to take it until Louise Fletcher came along.  She was rewarded for her efforts with an Oscar.  Watching the series, Judy Davis was closer in character to the infamous nurse, until Murphy decided t

Donald Trump has had a rough time during the pandemic.  What seemed like a no-brainer has turned into a never-ending nightmare for him, as he continues to deny the reality of the situation.  All he had to do was put pressure on recalcitrant Republican governors to impose mask mandates, at the very least, and he would have escaped the scathing criticism he has received throughout this six-month ordeal.  Even when he finally accepted that masks are good, he trots in a Fox News doctor as part of his pandemic team, who has openly questioned the use of masks, and is pushing herd immunity again. As with global warming, the conservative news media is determined to make COVID-19 an innocuous flu bug that will go away at some point as we all become immune to it.  They claim that the ever growing number of cases and death toll has been grossly inflated, part of a conspiracy by the Democrats and indeed the whole world to bring down Trump.  In their scenario of Infinity War, Thanos is good and t

I don't know who said, "you don't own a cat, the cat owns you?"  It could have been Mark Twain or Ernest Hemingway, both avid cat lovers, or just one of those sayings that gets passed down over the years.  That certainly is the case with the little gray and light brown tabby that has decided to make our yard, and us in turn, her own.   My wife hasn't exactly warmed up to the cat, which I call Ash, but she seems to like it hanging around the yard.  We lost our beloved dog in March and the cat helps fill the void.  Ash has been coming around for three years now.  Chuey would sniff her out and chase her from under the bushes each morning.  A friendly game of hide and seek.  Ash had her ear clipped, suggesting she was a stray that had been spayed, but her coat was remarkably soft, which also suggested someone was taking care of her.  In recent weeks, Ash had been getting more plaintive in her calls.  I sensed she wanted more than just to be petted, when she tried to t

Leave it to the New York Times to spark another culture war.  The newspaper that conservatives love to hate initiated a 1619 Project last year that marked 400 years since the first slaves were sold to English colonists at Jamestown.  It is not about the history of slavery so much as it is how slavery has impacted the American psyche.  Most essays have a contemporary feel to them.  The creator of the project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, hoped it would spark discussion and debate, but I doubt imagined it would become the focal point of Trump's recent attacks and subsequent attempt to initiate a 1776 Commission to promote "patriotic education." There is no mischievous socialist agenda in the 1619 Project, as being suggested by conservative pundits.  The project provides a platform for contemporary essayists to weigh in on the residual effects of slavery in contemporary society, such as the  lingering impact on the criminal justice system , written by Bryan Stevenson. It is a whol

An already tumultuous week was turned on its head Friday, with the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, aka the Notorious RBG.  Moscow Mitch and His Trumpness wasted no time in saying they would rush through a replacement by the end of the year, barely pausing to honor the beloved justice, who had captured the public imagination like no other SC justice in recent memory.  Even conservatives loved her.  She had a very warm relationship with SC Justice Antonin Scalia before his untimely death in February 2016.  However, Mitch stonewalled Obama's nominee Merrick Garland for the remainder of that year, refusing to consider a replacement until after the November election.  Ironically, he referred to the so-called Biden Rule to defend his actions.  Even Trump said the choice should be made by the next president on the campaign trail 2016.   We shouldn't expect these two to honor their previous commitments, but the speed with which they are seeking to put a nominee to

Hard to believe it is the 40th anniversary of Caddyshack.  Most of us remember the movie for the ongoing battle between Bill Murray's groundskeeper and the furry gopher , but there were many standout performances, not least of which Ted Knight as the tight-fisted judge and co-founder of Bushwood Country Club, who finds himself at odds with a crass rich new member, played by Rodney Dangerfield, who turns his golf club on end.  I never thought much about a political edge to the movie until I read about all the golf courses that Donald Trump owns around the country and indeed the world.  It's kind of like Al Czervik buying out the Bushwood Country Club only to run it as Judge Elihu Smails would. Typically, country clubs are bastions for the rich, but I remember my Dad got together with a number of local military retirees and built a small 9-hole golf course and beach club in Santa Rosa Beach back in the early 70s.  They called it Sarogobi, an acronym of sorts for Santa Rosa Golf

A rough week got even rougher for the Donald when the CDC threw a wet blanket on his plans to roll out a vaccine next month just in time for the general election.  Dr. Redfield doesn't see a coronavirus vaccine being made widely available until the middle of next year, which of course led our SCROTUS to lash out at him on twitter.  What's worse for the Donald is that the leading pharmaceutical companies who are in a race to produce a vaccine say they will follow the CDC guidelines when it comes to testing their products to determine their efficacy.  So, unless Dr. Hydroxychloroquine has a magic serum up his sleeve or Trump can get the FDA to approve Putin's Sputnik V , the Donald's October Surprise is effectively scotched. According to our SCROTUS it doesn't matter anyway, as we will all have "herd mentality" by the end of the year and we won't need a vaccine, or masks either.  This was one of the many jaw-dropping moments from his Town Hall debacle

Al Gore said the US had squandered the good will of the world when George Bush declared war on Iraq a year after 911.  Al was a little late, as Bush had already squandered that good will in declaring war on Afghanistan , although he had more support for that action, as the world seemed willing to offer this beleaguered Taliban-led nation as a sacrificial lamb to Bush's War on Terror .  Little did the world know that it would set the US foreign policy for two decades.  While I don't believe the conspiracy theories that the US staged the event to further its devastating foreign policy in the Middle East and Central Asia, I do believe the Bush administration quickly saw the strategic value of this terrorist strike in promoting its Machiavellian agenda.  Bush had two old war horses in the White House - Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld - both heavily tied to the military industrial complex.  They needed wars to justify the massive expansion in military contracts they wanted.  As Rum