What a conversation you guys had on Wednesday following the so-called debate the night before. I didn't join in but I followed along and you were doing quite well without me.

I gave up the “debate” after the first 25 or 30 minutes. There was no point in going further. Well, there was no point after the first three minutes; we've seen that Donald Trump every day for nearly five years. Nothing changes except that he becomes more monstrous.

Apparently, he is now calling for militia at voting stations. Armed?

Undoubtedly, my patience is stretched because personally, it has been a rough couple of weeks in terms of my diseases. In a previous post I mentioned the lack of sleep – three nights (not quite in a row) without a single moment of shut-eye.

Finally, after a night of sleep for eight, uninterrupted hours, the world felt sunny again. I think that sleep may be a cure-all. Well, maybe not for cancer and COPD but it sure does help my mood.

Daily life has changed quite a bit in a short period of time. Here's what I do best: sit. Or lie down. Oh, I'm capable of personal care. And I cook, minimally but enough to eat. I clean up the kitchen. All of it slowly.

A cleaning services comes now every two weeks along with a food shopping-and-delivery service. I should have done those two things a long time ago but it is hard to give up the life-long routines of living – even when you know you are dying.

Or rather, it is for me – who knows about other people. When I arrived to care for her during her final months, my mother went to bed and assumed I would take care of everything – everything – from then on. And I did.

Back to our annus horribilus of politics for a moment:

What is wrong with people who are sitting on the political fence and say they don't know who to vote for. Come on. The Trumpers are irredeemable so we ignore them to the degree that we do not let them win or force a coup.

But undecided? Really? You can't tell the difference between life under Trump and life under Biden? Then begone with you. You're not fit to call yourself American.

Harsh? You betcha. The United States is fighting for its life.

Biden may not be the ideal candidate for this terrible time we live in but he is decent. He believes in democracy. He will do everything possible with the help of the best and brightest people we have to control the virus and set our poor, troubled, wobbly ship of state on a better course.

Trump, on the other hand, will do everything in his power to stay in office (there is plenty he can do and he has plenty of enablers already in place) and turn himself into dear leader for life. I am terrified for our country and you should be too.

Here is this week's Alex and Ronni Show. I can't recall right now what we talked about but it's not as important as what I just wrote.

You can check out Alex's online talk show here.

Two days after the New York Times Trump tax document dump.

I'm writing this note a couple of hours before the Tuesday evening debate between former Vice President Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump because I'll be too tired to think straight after the debate – or angry or frustrated or alarmed or...

And I won't be wide awake enough to be cogent first this on this morning after.

So it's up to you, dear readers, to write this blog post today.

What's your take on what may become the most important presidential stand-off in the history of the republic to date?

I'll follow along today and join in here and there.

In recent weeks, polls have shown that presidential candidate Joe Biden is leading President Trump in polls of people 65 and older by double digits. That might have something to do with Trump telling his followers that COVID-19 affects hardly anyone younger than 18, framing

”...the pandemic as largely impacting older Americans, as he argued for school districts to resume in-person learning,” reported AP.

. “'Now we know it affects elderly people with heart problems and other problems,' Trump said. 'If they have other problems, that’s what it really affects. That’s it.'”

That did not sit well with one elder voter in Florida according to AP:

”Trump’s recent remarks made Liz Cillo, a 72-year-old retiree from St. Petersburg, laugh bitterly. 'We’re dispensable. We’re old. I feel as though he’s never showed any empathy or compassion toward us.'”

Trump is flailing in many areas of the voting population but until now, elders have been a mainstay of the Republican Party. So – Trump being Trump – he announced last week that he will attempt to opening purchase votes from old people.

As CNN tells it:

”...President Donald Trump said Thursday -- less than six weeks before the election -- that he will send $200 drug discount cards to 33 million Americans on Medicare.

“The unprecedented move, however, has raised many questions, including how the roughly $6.6 billion in benefits will be funded...

The White House says that the cards will be offset by savings from another of Trump's drug price proposals, which would link the cost of certain Medicare drugs to the price in other countries. But that controversial measure was unveiled in an executive order in mid-September, and it's unclear when it will actually take effect, if ever.”

Translation: The drug card proposal does not exist.

After Trump's announcement on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the $200 discount cards

”...will be funded by a Medicare trust fund, an administration official said, using money rarely spent on such pilot programs.

“Medicare is funded by two trust funds held by the U.S. Treasury. The trusts pay for hospital care and administering the federal health-insurance program for seniors and the disabled. They are funded through payroll taxes, income taxes paid on Social Security benefits and other sources.

“The Medicare trust fund that pays for hospital care is expected to become insolvent by fiscal 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office, two years earlier than projections done before the coronavirus pandemic. The other fund is on more solid financial footing.”

This is crazy. It doesn't not work on any level. It is so bad that even big PhRMA has rejected it:

“The announcement comes after the Trump administration sought to negotiate a similar discount-card program with drug companies, but the drug industry’s main trade group, PhRMA, walked away from the discussions,” reported WSJ.

“'One-time savings cards will neither provide lasting help nor advance the fundamental reforms necessary to help seniors better afford their medicines,” an official at PhRMA said last week.”

It's not even clear to anyone with knowledge that this pay-for-votes ploy is legal.

Should Trump manage to push through this dubious scheme and get it done in time for discount cards to arrive before you vote, what will you do?

Here's what I have planned:

• Secure a sturdy envelope.
• Address it to President Trump at 1600 Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C. NW 20500
• Cut card in half and place in envelope
• Include a note - “You cannot buy my vote”
• Attach enough postage
• Place in local mailbox

Imagine if all 33 million U.S. elders do that.

Perhaps you have seen the news that President Donald Trump declared a Social Security payroll tax deferral through the end of 2020. It went into effect on 1 September which means the 6.2 percent of your pay that is normally withheld will show up in your paycheck.

However, that doesn't mean it is free money. You will be required to pay it back beginning 1 January 2021 when twice the 6.2 percent will be withheld to reimburse Social Security.

The employer half of the withholding remains in effect.

Of course, it is not as simple as I have explained. You see, participation is up to employers, many of whom have complained that it is too complicated to rearrange their systems for the deferral. Some others say they will delay implementing the deferral to take time to ask employees if they want to participate.

This causes additional difficulties, as CNBC explained:

”While it may be easy for a small shop with five employees to determine whether workers would be onboard with a deferral, larger firms with thousands of employees may ask each one whether they want to participate.

“In that sense, it may be easier for larger firms to either skip the deferral altogether or default all workers into it — as opposed to asking each employee what they want to do.”

Federal workers have no choice – they will have their payroll tax deferred.

As CNBC further points out, it would be wise for employees who opt in or whose employers do, to stash away the extra money so that the double-dipping to pay it back in January won't hurt so much.

In that case, obviously, the deferral makes no difference to employees, and it is, of course, useless to the 30-odd million unemployed Americans.

Which leaves one wondering what in the world the president was thinking when he dreamed up the deferral. Some fear his goal is to kill Social Security and according to Nancy Altman, that would be easier than you might think.

Altman, who has a 40-year background in the areas of Social Security and private pensions, is president of Social Security Works and Chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition and campaign, explains in a 1 September 2020 CNN piece how that could happen:

”According to estimates from the independent chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, if all Social Security contributions from payroll tax stopped on Jan. 1, 2021, the nearly 10 million people today getting Social Security Disability Insurance benefits, which averages about $1,125 every month, would see them stop abruptly in the middle of 2021.

“Those 55 million receiving Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance benefits, which average around $1,440 a month, would see them disappear two years later. Social Security would be without money to pay benefits by 2023 (Congress could only stop Trump by enacting veto-proof legislation, a highly unlikely proposition).

“Section 7508A of the Internal Revenue Code allows deferrals for up to one year, long enough to stop the disability insurance payments.

“Killing off the rest of Social Security takes two years longer, but a newly elected President Trump could interpret the statute to permit an additional 12-month deferral with the declaration of a new disaster.

“All benefits could be stopped with just two new disaster declarations. Concerningly, the Supreme Court has found that President Trump has 'broad discretion' in making findings.”

This is terrifying.

THE ALEX AND RONNI SHOW
My former husband, Alex Bennett, and I sat down for another cyber-chat from opposite ends of the country. Of course, Trump came up but we also discussed house cleaning, the virus, magic mushrooms and more.

You can check out Alex's online talk show here.

It has been going on for so long that it is hard now to remember what life was like before we had so many crazy politicians.

How about, just for the length of this blog post, we all try to rewind our mindset to a time past when politicians (with a few notable exceptions) mostly dealt in ordinary graft that could be reprehensible but not dangerous or life-threatening to people and our nation.

So-called leaders like that believe only that they deserve a bit more than the rest of us and take advantage of their positions to get it, but they aren't crazy. Now we live with daily crazy. Just this week:

The Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon, following the killing of George Floyd had dwindled to fewer than about 50 people in the streets near the federal courthouse when the president – the crazy-in-chief - sent in paramilitary soldiers to quell what he calls “riots.”

Those unidentified troops have snatched protesters off the street or bombarded them with pepper spray, flash bangs, tear gas and more until the number of protesters swelled again to thousands each night. CRAZY

Hydroxychloroquine as both a preventive and treatment for coronavirus is back again this week. Several members of the Trump family, including the president, have promoted the video of a Houston physician, Stella Imannuel, who says she has cured hundreds of people with the drug.

She also says that women can become pregnant by having sex with demons in their dreams, that doctors create medicines from alien DNA and that doctors are also working on a vaccine to make people immune to becoming religious. Trump tweeted the video promoting her beliefs. CRAZY

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Wednesday asked the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy to rescind its plan to ban hydroxychloroquine saying the choice should be between patient and doctor. CRAZY

When Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) tested positive for coronavirus this week, he said he could have contracted as a result of wearing a mask. CRAZY

In an attack on mail-in ballots, Trump suggested that the November election be delayed to avoid massive fraud thereby asking the people to forget that A: he does not have the authority to do that, Congress does and B: more than 20 states already have versions of vote by mail and anyway, it is up to individual states to determine how their citizens vote. CRAZY

Stating that many people think it is fake news, Trump said he did not discuss, in a recent telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the issue of Russia offering bounties to those who kill American soldiers. CRAZY (and traitorous)

If you are anything like me, that little list – as awful as it is - doesn't seem to be enough to get exercised about because it is only one week's worth and we know how much overall craziness I have omitted.

But I think we are wrong about that. Instead, I suspect we are no longer capable of returning our minds to that time when politics in Washington was not crazy.

We have forgotten what it was like when we saw the president on television once or twice a week if he was introducing a visiting foreign dignitary, perhaps, or signing a bill in the Rose Garden or on rare occasions, speaking to us of important matters from the Oval Office.

Now for nearly four years we have been living with a vulgar manchild overflowing with grievances for perceived slights. Every day. Have you ever seen him laugh, genuinely laugh in enjoyment of anything? Of course not. He feels only anger and resentment.

There is one more group of American crazies, millions of them. The people, like some Congress members, who refuse to wear a mask.

Some have been known to spit on store employees who ask them to mask up, some believe not wearing a mask is a macho political statement and some even think there is no such thing as the virus. CRAZY Not to mention, stupid.

Make no mistake: people who refuse to wear masks are killing people. That's not hyperbole or fake news. it is fact.

Yes, yes, yes. I know we are not supposed to say such things aloud but I have no reason to care anymore what people think so here goes: anyone who refuses to wear a mask and to maintain distancing deserves to die. I have no sympathy beyond those who may mourn them.

There is way too much crazy and too much crazy-stupid in this country. It has infected millions of Americans but it starts at the top.

This is not a Republican versus Democrat matter. It is about saving lives and our sanity. Whatever else Joe Biden may be, he is not crazy. Trump and his enablers are.

You cannot have missed it these past two weeks – the clashes, between protesters and some shady, heavily armed paramilitary force in the streets of downtown Portland, Oregon.

Black Lives Matter demonstrators have been dragged off in unmarked cars, locked up in what one described as a “nondescript” location and later released without being told why or by whom they were arrested.

One protester was hit in the face with a “munition” - whatever that is – 12 days ago and is still in hospital recovering from facial reconstruction surgery.

Christopher David, a 53-year-old Navy veteran, was beaten and pepper sprayed for trying to ask a question of these “soldiers”. He was left with two broken fingers. Take a look:

Wednesday night, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler was tear-gassed by the federal force as he spoke to demonstrators.

Please think hard about what is happening in Portland. Please think about how you would perceive it if it were happening in another country – that is, unidentified people in combat uniforms, wielding batons and guns attacking their fellow citizens.

This is happening in America. Right here. Right now. And President Trump has already sent similar troops to Chicago and Albuquerque this week to shut down what he says are “heinous acts of violence.” He says more will be sent to other cities all of which, he admits, are run by Democrats.

”Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat, tweeted on Tuesday evening: 'Under no circumstances will I allow Donald Trump's troops to come to Chicago and terrorize our residents.'

“Earlier in the day, she said she would 'welcome actual partnership, but we do not welcome dictatorship.'

“And New Mexico Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich tweeted after being informed the operation was expanding to Albuquerque that federal law enforcement wasn't welcome.

"'Given the mess it created in Portland, I let him know in no uncertain terms that this isn't the kind of 'help' that Albuquerque needs,' he wrote on Twitter.”

These armed men (women too?) can only be called secret police. Their faces are fully covered with gas masks. Their camouflage uniforms are empty of agency identification, badge numbers and personal names. They carry fearsome weapons.

Apparently, these troops are members of several participating federal agencies led by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It is said they were mobilized to Portland to quell attacks on a local federal building.

By the time this force arrived in Portland on 4 July, daily protests in Portland – begun in the wake of the murder of George Floyd - had dwindled to no more than a hundred or so demonstrators but the presence and violence of the federal forces have swelled their numbers again.

Beginning last weekend, the protesters were joined by “The Wall of Moms” - hundreds of local mothers in yellow shirts who stand in front of the protesters each evening to protect them from the federal troops.

Portland officials did not ask for these soldiers and have all but begged the acting DHS chief, Chad Wolf, to withdraw what is, essentially, an occupying army. Mayor Wheeler, Oregon Governor Kate Brown and both Oregon Senators have called for the troops to leave.

The attorney general of Oregon and the ACLU have each sued the federal government on Constitutional grounds.

As part of these attacks on American citizens by federal troops, Trump has taken to calling himself the “law and order president.”

His base loves their law-and-order and Trump is way behind in recent election polls so these street clashes, which appear to be provoked by the federal troops, will supply just kind of footage Trump wants for his campaign videos.

Public demonstrations are protected by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. But if the armed federal troops Trump sends into cities can goad demonstrators and others into damaging federal buildings – graffiti seems to be enough cause for bodily harm to the protesters - he can make a plausible case that troops are defending federal property.

What I see is an insurgency of anonymous federal troops taking over the job of local police without being asked to do so and behaving like storm troopers. It feels to me like Portland is a dress rehearsal for more of the same and maybe worse in bigger cities.

Most of us who read this blog were around when the last law-and-order president ran for re-election in 1968. It was an ugly time in the United States then, it is uglier now (and I'm not even counting the pandemic).

There seems to be no way to stop Trump no matter what laws or norms he ignores. I am deeply worried for the safety of the demonstrators and not incidentally, for our democracy. Something terrible is happening in our country.

Are you following this? What's your take?

(Because I needed a free day on Sunday, this was written early on Saturday so it doesn't reference anything important that may have taken place on the weekend.)

What an extraordinary time of political activism we are living through. Like so many others, I was struck speechless last Monday at the president's ludicrous Bible walk which was preceded by law enforcement firing rubber bullets and pepper-spraying peaceful protesters while also hitting them with shields and batons to clear the path for dear leader and his entourage.

Taking a moment today to re-watch the spectacle of the stone-faced president waving a Bible around to no apparent purpose, I saw a man who looked weak and pathetic.

Nothing he did during the rest of the week changed that impression.

What did make an impression on me are the hundreds of thousands – in total, probably millions - of protesters in dozens of cities and towns marching day after day, transforming themselves into a powerful new movement even in the face of a deadly virus and police in some cities determined to thwart them by force.

In the process, Black Lives Matter has become the anthem that cannot be ignored. Remarkably, too, the crowds of demonstrators against racism are a lovely mixed bag – black and white and brown, young and old.

It was, of course, the asphyxiation death of George Floyd under the knee of a police officer in Minneapolis that set off the protests which have now become a international phenomenon.

Some of us who hang out at this blog took part in the protests of the 60s – the anti-Vietnam War marches, the civil rights and women's movements. And here we are again – the work has only just begun and the determination in the streets has become a powerful force.

This time, I am too old and too ill to be out in the streets and I am sorry for that. I would like to be there but I think this kind of political action has always been young people's work for the most part. It is their turn this time.

But they have my full and heartfelt support. (If you would like to donate to help the protesters with hotlines, bail funds, legal aid, medical bills for inevitable accidents, etc., Paper magazine has a list of links to donation sites for cities throughout the United States.)

A few changes have already been made. Some municipalities have banned tear gas and choke holds by the police. There is polling, tentative so far, that the protests are having a negative impact on President Trump's approval rating. It's a start.

Meanwhile, apparently believing peaceful protesters present a grave danger to the president in the White House, that new metal fence behind which he cowers has been enlarged to include the entirety of Lafayette Park. DCist reports:

”By Thursday afternoon, construction crews had used additional fencing and concrete barricades to block off all entrances to Lafayette Park, the Ellipse and other open spaces around the White House that have hosted First Amendment protests for more than 100 years.”

That man sure does love his fences.

Meanwhile, the White House and Attorney General William Barr have been squabbling over which of them gave the order to forcefully disburse the peaceful demonstrators in front of the White House for the president's Bible walk.

(I was particularly dismayed at the helicopter with a red cross painted on its belly flying low over the area to help chase away the protesters that Monday evening. The red cross, by Geneva Convention, is used on vehicles, buildings and people to indicate humanitarian and medical workers to protect them from attack in battle situations.)

I'm not the only person who believes something bigger than we have seen in a long while is happening and that Trump's distasteful Bible walk was a turning point. Somehow it was enough to make a whole lot of people believe there is much hard work to be done, the time is now and that we the people can do it.

What do you think?

Last week, protests erupted in dozens of U.S. cities over the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd. They have continued for days - buildings have been burned, people injured, several killed and thousands have been arrested. As I write this on Sunday, it continues and has even spread to Europe.

President Trump publicly gloated over the quality protection he received when demonstrators, on Friday night, gathered across the street from the White House. It's worth noting how he said it:

"The front line was replaced with fresh agents, like magic. Big crowd, professionally organized, but nobody came close to breaching the fence. If they had they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That's when people would have been really badly hurt, at least. Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action.”

America is burning. The national shame of dead black men and women at the hands of police over many years has come to a boiling point. (It appears to also be an opportunity for provocateurs with other agendas to join the demonstrations, but that's a story for a different day.)

It cannot be incidental that this explosion of unrest is happening as a global pandemic has kept people in most of world under lockdown in their homes for more than two months.

And the president appears eager to have protesters attacked by “vicious dogs”? But that's the way he rolls. On Thursday, he warned the governor of Minnesota in another tweet,

“Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

And so on. You have undoubtedly seen the wall-to-wall coverage of the protests on television and online.

For people our age, it must immediately bring to mind the summers of the late 1960s and early 1970s: Newark, Detroit, Orangeburg, Dr. Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Columbia University, Democratic National Convention, Stonewall, Kent State.

And those are only the ones I can recall off the top of my head. There were dozens, if not hundreds more. It is unnerving now to see it happening again.

It seems to me that something is building now toward a level of violence fueled by ignorance, lies, misinformation, stupidity, fear along with justifiable revulsion and frustration at the number of dead black people year after year for whom no one pays a price.

Is it just me, or is there a sense in the air that something more terrible than what we are seeing now is going to happen?

But then this came along - a sliver of hope.

Over the weekend, The Guardian published an essay by Dorian Linskey about W.B. Yeats poem, The Second Coming which was published 100 years ago.

The entire essay is interesting and you would probably enjoy reading it but here is the salient part to my thinking today:

”As the world is wrenched out of joint by the coronavirus pandemic,” writes Linskey, “many people are turning to poetry for wisdom and consolation, but The Second Coming fulfills a different role, as it has done in crisis after crisis, from the Vietnam war to 9/11 to the election of Donald Trump: an opportunity to confront chaos and dread, rather than to escape it...”

If you think you don't know the poem by it's title, just notice all the astonishing number of phrases within it that you have heard and read in reference to many situations throughout your life.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Maybe this helps a little. You can read the full essay here.

This is a longer post than I would usually do but I also think that we should not stop talking about COVID-19 and keep reminding one another what we must do to stay healthy.

So, here are some of those reminders from me, a poem about our predicament and the latest episode of The Alex and Ronni Show which is also about the virus this time. I know, it's a lot. Choose what you want and leave the rest.

But let's do talk about this below in the comments.

It's a pandemic now, says the World Health Organization (WHO). That doesn't change anything - it just means that the virus has been formally declared to be a worldwide problem.

Whatever the president says, this Corona virus is not a small thing. It will not, as he told us on television, fade away next week. It is here for the long haul. No one knows when it ends.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified in Congress on Wednesday in stark terms: “Bottom line,” he said, “it’s going to get worse.”

GO WASH YOUR HANDS

Every person must do their part to try to keep the virus at bay. But particularly if you are old or your immune system is suppressed or you have an underlying condition such as heart disease, lung disease, kidney disease, cancer, diabetes or high blood pressure, you are at greater risk of dying from the virus than children and younger adults.

Because the U.S. government has so badly botched testing for the virus, all statistics are dubious but according to Fauci on Wednesday,

“The [seasonal] flu has a mortality rate of 0.1 percent. This [COVID-19] has a mortality rate of 10 times that. That’s the reason I want to emphasize we have to stay ahead of the game in preventing this.”

GO WASH YOUR HANDS

Here's another important thing Dr. Fauci has said: “Every infected person will, on average, infect two-to-three more people who each will infect two-to-three more people and so on.”

So you see how this goes and how quickly the number of infections multiplies.

Because I am 78 years old and have two serious conditions – cancer and lung disease – that make COVID-19 more dangerous to me than if I didn't have those conditions, I've gone full-tilt boogie on prevention.

• Washing my hands constantly.
• Close to succeeding at not touching my face.
• Using hand sanitizer whenever, wherever it's available.
• Not going to crowded places.
• Not shaking hands.
• Not hugging.
• Keeping six feet away from other people, if possible.
• Mostly staying home.

GO WASH YOUR HANDS

Doing all this is tricky. I am down to one travel-size bottle of hand sanitizer and can't find any (I trust) to buy online or off.

At the market one day this week, the sanitizer dispenser was empty so now I keep nitrile gloves in my car so I will have something between my hands and whatever I'm buying that an unknown number of people may have touched.

GO WASH YOUR HANDS

In his Oval Office speech Wednesday evening, Trump's big announcement was a ban on travel from a bunch of European countries. However, the U.K., where Trump owns three golf resorts, is exempt. There are other loopholes too.

But, really, what is the point of the travel ban even without loopholes and exceptions? The virus is already in the United States and most other countries with the number of infections growing daily from community transmission.

The most important thing the U.S. needs to do is test, test thousands of people as other countries do to give us an informed look at what we are up against. But Trump did not mention testing in his speech on Wednesday and the next morning, Vice President Mike Pence could not say how many tests have been done or what any results are.

I don't know about you, but I am now officially terrified.

GO WASH YOUR HANDS

Yesterday, both remaining Democratic presidential candidates, former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders, delivered addresses to the nation covering the policy proposals they would institute if they were president. Both behaved as a steady, normal leader would do facing such a pandemic.

My god I wish one of them were president.

It's hard to live without hugging or touching the people we love but we are stuck with that for the foreseeable future during which we will not be congregating at ball parks, theaters, museums and all the other places in the public square we like to go.

Daily life is dramatically changed now and, probably, for a long time to come.

What to me is obvious as we live through this virus is to help one another with all the care and love for one another we have within us.

TGB reader, Ann Burack-Weiss, who contributes to Reader Stories now and then, sent this yesterday from poet, Lynn Unger. It is titled, Pandemic.

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love-
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

As Ann said to me in her email, I find this comforting.

Now, here is the latest installment of The Alex and Ronni Show – also about the Corona virus. (I keep asking if he can't find a better still shot for the static image; he says he can't. Oh well.)

GO WASH YOUR HANDS

Before we get to the political turmoil we are currently living through, there is something else.

Last week we held a good discussion about the friends we make online and the hole that is left in our lives when they disappear. On Saturday, Kate Carlson left a note on that post about her mother, Pat Trimbell, whose name turned up regularly in the comments here for many years.

”My name is Kate,” she wrote. “I am reading this blog for the first time as I saw that it was bookmarked on my mother's computer. I now have her computer because she recently died...so this has been an interesting and timely blog for me to read.

“I have no idea if she (Pat Trimbell) was an active voice here or not. But I know that the content and people of this blog were a blessing in her life, so I thank you all for that.”

And thank you, Kate, for letting us know. Most often, we don't.

THE AMERICAN POLITICAL PREDICAMENT
[What follows may not be directly related to age or growing old, but as a U.S. citizen living through a crisis that makes Watergate and the Nixon resignation feel like a day in the park, I believe it is important to make some space for those of us who gather here to talk about what I see as our national shame.]

On Friday evening, the U.S. Senate voted mostly along party lines to reject including documents and witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Donald John Trump. (Before you read further, it might be helpful to read Maureen Dowd's weekend column in The New York Times if you have access.)

Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins did her usual “maybe, maybe not” tap dance about her vote for a few days, eventually siding with the Democrats in the hope it will help her re-election campaign which is under water.

Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney, on the other hand, voted with the Democrats because, apparently, he believes a trial requires evidence and witness testimony. What a concept.

While the trial was underway, there were several leaks from John Bolton's upcoming book, The Room Where It happened, a memoir of his time as National Security Advisor in the Trump administration.

Bolton had said he would testify at the impeachment trial if subpoenaed but the Republicans were having none of it. Nor were they having any of it from Lev Parnas, the indicted cohort of Rudy Giuliani, who is eager to testify.

The president's legal team at the trial didn't deny the details of the leaks and didn't have much of a defense beyond stating, “He didn't do it.” The more awful truth, in fact, is that the defense came down to this: “If the king does it, it's legal.”

And that is where we are now – living in a monarchy.

Next up is the annual State of the Union address at which the president will address the entire Congress on Tuesday evening. At least he cannot crow that he was acquitted in the Senate (that won't happen until Wednesday) but never one to hide his light, he is certain to make the speech all about himself.

As, I suppose, befits a king.

The thing is, leaks and more books already in the pipeline along with photographs, videos, recordings and brave patriots like Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, Ambassador Fiona Hill and others will continue to tell the truth out loud. Eventually.

What worries me is what this president will do to our republic between now and eventually. It can easily be catastrophic from which there would be no return. In fact, I wonder if we have reached that point already. Certainly we have in regard to the Republican Party.

You may have noticed that the language in this post is a little more stilted than usual. That's because I couldn't trust myself to remain civil on this subject without coloring carefully within the lines.

The comments are open for discussion. Keep yours on topic. Do not attack other commenters or respond to attacks. Keep a civil tongue and respect one another. Violaters will be permanently blocked from future commenting without notice or recourse.

What with “All Impeachment All The Time" news on television, in newspapers and the internet, it's hard to know there are other things going on in Washington, D.C. But I did come across one last week that is important to most of the people who read this blog.

According to a press release at the House website of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. House of Representatives this week will vote on H.R. 3, the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act. The legislation will give Medicare

”...the power to negotiate lower drug prices and make those prices available to people with private insurance [Part D]. No longer will Americans have to pay more for their prescriptions than what Big Pharma charges in other countries for the same medicines.

“We are reinvesting the more than half a trillion dollars the federal government alone saves from lower drug prices to expand Medicare to cover vision, dental and hearing for the first time. We add billions to the search for breakthrough cures and treatments, confronting the opioid epidemic, strengthening our community health centers, and more.”

There are 106 co-sponsors of the bill, all Democrats. Text of the bill is here.

The White House opposes the bill primarily on grounds that it will prevent drug companies from creating new life-saving drugs. You can read the White House response here.

On the other hand, The Journal of Clinical Pathways reports

”Republicans in Congress have expressed concerns with the legislation citing, like the White House, that it would discourage innovation in new pharmaceutical product development, but the President has nevertheless praised Pelosi’s plan.”

Neither the publication nor I have a source for the president's praise.

Meanwhile, under current regulations, Part D costs to enrollees will increase next year. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) analysis of changes for the year 2020:

”...Medicare Part D enrollees are facing a relatively large increase in out-of-pocket drug costs before they qualify for catastrophic coverage.

“This is due to the expiration of the ACA provision that constrained the growth in out-of-pocket costs for Part D enrollees by slowing the growth rate in the catastrophic threshold between 2014 and 2019; in 2020 and beyond, the threshold will revert to the level that it would have been using the pre-ACA growth rate calculation.

“For 2020, the out-of-pocket spending threshold will increase by $1,250, from $5,100 to $6,350.”

Here's the chart:

Further increases for Part D enrollees, according to KFF, include

”...higher out-of-pocket costs in 2020 for the deductible and in the initial coverage phase, as they have in prior years.

“The standard deductible is increasing from $415 in 2019 to $435 in 2020, while the initial coverage limit is increasing from $3,820 in 2019 to $4,020 in 2020.

“For costs in the coverage gap phase, beneficiaries will pay 25% for both brand-name and generic drugs, with plans paying the remaining 75% of generic drug costs—which means that, effective in 2020, the Part D coverage gap will be fully phased out.”

There are additional changes (what else is new) that you can read here.

H.R. 3 is not the only proposal in Washington to modify Part D costs. There is a bill from the Senate Finance Committee (SFC) and another from the Trump administration's fiscal 2020 budget (TAdmin). They would cap enrollees' out-of-pocket spending as follows:

H.R. 3 – at $2,000 out-of-pocket
SFC – at $3,200 out-of-pocket
TAdmin - Unknown

Here's the chart:

Whew. I'm nearly cross-eyed from sorting out all this information and trying to translate it from the government-ese. With that, I've left out a lot but you now have the general idea. You can get more detail from the links above.

Even given that no House Republicans signed on as co-sponsors, H.R. 3 is likely to pass in the House this week.

Over the past three years we have learned what happens to Democratic sponsored bills when they get to the Senate. But if you think this is a good proposal, you should urge your representative to vote for the bill – even if you already know he or she will do so. At least their offices will have tallies of constituents' leanings.

The Congress telephone number is (202) 224-3121, then ask for your representative's office by his/her name. Or, go to the House of Representatives website and enter your Zip Code to reach your representatives page.

Only once before have I done this and only two weeks ago. On 11 November in a post titled This is Wrong and I am Exhausted, I let loose about the frightening, lawless government President Donald Trump and his henchmen have made for us in the past three years.

It was a popular post with both pro and con advocates. An extraordinary number of readers unsubscribed in anger, a few making their point to me (mostly via email instead of publicly) in impolite terms I could not miss understanding.

But what the hell, here I go again. Because it is that important for everyone, even people who don't agree.

This time it is not what I have to say. Instead, in is an interview with the brilliant and estimable Yale University historian, Timothy Snyder – he of two remarkable books about the times we now live in: On Tyranny about how democracies can succumb to authoritarianism and The Road to Unfreedom about how Vladimir Putin is destabilizing western democracies.

Recently, Chauncy DeVega, a staff political writer at Salon magazine, interviewed Snyder about the state of the United States after three years of Trump in the White house. A couple of not-so-random excerpts.

SNYDER: Mr. Trump must be opposed, because if unopposed his administration is capable of doing damage that future generations won’t be able to repair. That structural and moral damage will get in the way of making America a more just country.

SNYDER: What has to be normal instead is an America which can renew itself, because it’s capable of thinking about the future and drawing conclusions from the past. Donald Trump’s specific terrain is that there is no truth and there is no future. If you cannot keep yourself in a world where there is truth and therefore there’s a future, then Trump is actually winning.

SNYDER: But I think the harder question, and the one that I personally worry about most, is what to do when he loses. We need to think about catching up on all this lost time. These last three years are lost time, in terms of our survival as a species. We needed to have climate policy. Instead we just messed around.

SNYDER: I worry that the Democrats will win and not hit the ground running...If the Democrats do not hit the ground running it will seem as though they are not a real alternative to what came before. We’re going to need political leadership which says, “Yes, really good things have to happen really fast right now.”

Professor Snyder is so clear-headed, so clear-thinking, so informed that he should be required reading. Here is a great starter – DeVega's interview below. It is only 20 minutes long and more wide-ranging than my excerpts. Why not give it a whirl.

Or, there is a transcript of most of their conversation at Salon magazine.

It is Saturday as I type out these words and with coffee at hand, my intention is to spend the morning writing Monday's blog post – something about growing old.

But. But. First, there is the day's news – if not familiar in precise detail, it has certainly become ad nauseam in its never-ending repetition.

ITEM: The president announced that on the same day public impeachment hearings begin in the U.S. Congress this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erodğan will visit the White House. Really? The man who just recently sicced his armed forces on U.S.-allied Kurds in northern Syria?

ITEM: The president dangled a White House visit in front of the president of Ukraine but made clear it would be forthcoming only if said president would dig up dirt on Trump's possible election opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.

ITEM: The president was fined $2 million this week for using his charitable foundation over several decades as his and his children's personal piggy bank.

ITEM: On Friday, the president said he doesn't know Gordon Sondland. You know, the man who gave Trump a million-dollar campaign contribution to purchase an ambassadorship? Is anyone counting the number of people Trump has thrown under the bus so far?

ITEM: It was revealed that for two years the Trump re-election campaign has been running fraudulent fundraising contests in which at least 16 winners were promised a meal with the president that never materialized.

Look at that list, a quick compilation of some of one day's main headlines and all of it, every item, is petty, chintzy or corrupt. Trump is such a small, vulgar, little man, a two-bit grifter, a chiseler who never met a person he didn't want to cheat.

He makes me feel grubby, embarrassed and ashamed. Ashamed to be an American.

Angry too. To go with the above headline news, the president began the paperwork last week to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement – just when the scientists are telling us it is more dire than anyone had thought.

And don't get me started on Congressional Republicans. Are they the clowns they show us every day or are they playing every person who voted for them for fools?

Not to mention Republicans appointed to high positions by the president who have refused Congressional subpoenas. Isn't there a penalty for that? But before it even gets that far, it must be asked where their principles are. Their patriotism. Do they even believe in the Constitution, in the rule of law?

Apparently not, which if true, makes the mess President Trump has made of the American government even worse than any of us could have imagined.

Nearly every move the president and his henchmen (there is no other word for them now) make has been and continues to be a disaster for our country and for the world.

It didn't have to be this way and as bad as you may think it is, it's worse. Even if we could replace Trump today with a president of known integrity, it would be decades until the ship of state is on an even keel again.

We all have our personal list of presidents we didn't like, but none shook the foundations of our country as this one has.

I'm angry but I'm more exhausted. I want this to end. Please, I am calling on all the gods who ever lived, make this stop.

(Thank you, dear readers, for indulging this tirade today.)

On Tuesday last week, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders suffered chest pain at a campaign event and was taken to a hospital in Las Vegas.

At first doctors said the senator had a blockage in an artery but when he left the hospital on Friday, the campaign issued a statement saying Sanders had suffered a heart attack.

“'After two and a half days in the hospital, I feel great, and after taking a short time off, I look forward to getting back to work,' Sanders said in the statement quoted in Slate.

It was announced on Thursday that Senator Sanders will attend the 15 October Democratic debate in Ohio.

Bernie Sanders is 78 years old and until this past week, few journalists had dipped their pens into the quadrennial presidential age conversation. But his heart attack seems to have loosened reporters' reticence and there has been a sizable uptick in the number of opinions on the matter in the past few days.

After skimming through a number of them, it seemed to me to make better sense to have a bunch of old people like us at this blog discuss the presidential age issue. So here we are today.

This year, in addition to 78-year-old Sanders, there are 76-year-old Joe Biden, 70-year-old Elizabeth Warren not to mention 73-year-old Donald Trump running for the office of president.

“'If I were just 80 years old, if I was 15 years younger,' Mr. Carter said, 'I don’t believe I could undertake the duties that I experienced when I was president,' according to The New York Times.

“'One thing is you have to be very flexible with your mind,' he continued. 'You have to be able to go from one subject to another and concentrate on each one adequately and then put them all together in a comprehensive way.'”

It's hard to argue with a guy who's been there, done that so I won't try. Another age limit proponent, Andrew Ferguson, writing in The Atlantic back in June, had a different reason for wanting a younger president: “to break the gerontocracy” of the Democratic Party:

”There is a huge gap between where the energy and creativity of the party lie, with a group of dynamic activists and House members in their 30s and even their 20s (thank you, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), and the ruling class of 70-somethings layered far above like a crumbling porte cochère...

“The trick for old folks is to adjust their search for purpose and meaning as they follow nature’s course and give way to their juniors.”

I'm ignoring that “crumbling porte chochere” crack along with the false assumptions about age stuffed into so short a quotation to offer the notion that some experience – as you might have noticed over the past two-and-a-half years – wouldn't hurt.

I think The Squad and some other young newcomers to Congress are terrific but I don't think one year is Congress is quite enough to tackle the biggest job.

Personally, I oppose a cutoff age for presidential candidates for the same reason I keep arguing against lumping all old people together. Come on now, you can sing it with me: People age at dramatically different rates.

Some 50- and 60-year-olds would be incapable of keeping up with the demands of the top job. Some 70-somethings and even 80-somethings can. But you don't need to hear that from me. Almost any geriatrician or gerontologist would agree:

”Gerontologists and other experts in aging say there is simply no way to definitively address the question of an upper age limit on the rigors of the presidency, reports The New York Times.

“'There’s no answer. It’s unknowable,' said Dr. Mark Lachs, co-chief of Geriatric and Palliative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian. 'It’s true that rates of physical and cognitive impairment are age dependent but there’s all kind of variability.'”

And, hoping I'm not being too flip about it, what do you think vice presidents are for?

Ed Kilgore, writing in New York magazine last June came down on the side of no age limit:

”So from a historical perspective, Trump, Sanders, and Biden (and Elizabeth Warren...) aren’t too old at all as compared to the rest of the population. From a health point of view, it’s hard to say if they are riskier propositions than younger pols.

“There is the cautionary tale of Reagan, whom many observers thought was showing signs of serious cognitive impairment during his second term. On the other hand, another president who was clearly impaired, Woodrow Wilson, only 62 when he suffered a debilitating stroke...”

Now it's your turn, dear readers. Should there be an upper age limit for presidential candidates?

Fifteen years of experience at this blog tells me that when I write about Social Security, readership that day drops by about one-third, sometimes more.

Of course, I have no way to prove it but I'm pretty sure that a vast majority of U.S. TGB readers, most of whom collect Social Security, would have serious challenges to face if the program's benefit was reduced.

Some people would not fill prescriptions or they might cut dosages – the poorer among us are known to do this. Others would go hungry.

The Social Security benefit is small enough but it is also the most successful social program in the history of the United States raising, according to 2017 statistics, 22 million Americans in all 50 states above the poverty line. That includes 15 million elders.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of Congress members and some presidents who have been and still are hell bent on cutting Social Security. So you of the TGB one-third who skip Social Security stories – maybe take a couple of minutes to skim this post so you'll understand the threats.

During the 2016 campaign and beyond, President Trump repeatedly said he would protect, and not cut, Social Security (and Medicare, Medicaid). Here's the compilation video from the Washington Post:

Since his election, Trump has mostly ignored Social Security and then, in his 2019 proposed Budget last March, he called for “$25 billion in cuts to Social Security over 10 years, including cuts to disability insurance” according to Vox.

The president's budget is not legally binding and Congress is free to ignore it or any parts of it whe they craft each year's budget for the country. However, it does provide Congress a sense of the chief executive's priorities, budgetary objectives and recommended spending levels.

Since Social Security was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, Congress members, especially Republicans, have been eagerly standing in line to not just cut Social Security benefits but to kill the program entirely.

The most recent is Republican Senator Joni Ernst who is up for re-election next year. She spoke at a town hall in Estherville, Iowa, about Social Security and how to “maintain” it:

The audio was poorly recorded so if you missed it, here is Ernst's salient point on Social Security (emphasis added).

”...as various parties and members of Congress, we do need to sit down behind closed doors so we’re not being scrutinized by this group or the other, and just have an open and honest conversation about what are some of the ideas that we have for maintaining Social Security in the future.”

“Closed doors.” “Not scrutinized.” “Open and honest.” All in one sentence. And in public, too. Which, I suppose, isn't too bright when you're holding secret conversations about cuts that would impoverish millions of people.

This is not imminent. Most of Congress and the president are caught up in election fever now so changes to social network programs (and most everything else that needs attending to) will not be attempted until 2021. But it behooves us to understand what could happen and what the consequences would be so we are prepared when the time comes.

All this is not to say that Social Security doesn't need some shoring up, something that has been known but Congress has ignored since 1984. Here is a quick overview from The Motley Fool which starts out saying that Social Security is in “some pretty big trouble.”

”According to the April [2019]-released Social Security Board of Trustees report, the program won't bring in enough revenue over the long term (the next 75 years) to cover outlays to beneficiaries, inclusive of cost-of-living adjustments.

“The silver lining for seniors who are dependent on Social Security as a major source of income is that the program is in no danger of disappearing or going bankrupt.

“Recurring sources of revenue, such as the payroll tax and the taxation of benefits, ensure that there will always be money to divvy out to eligible beneficiaries.

“But the bad news is that Social Security is facing an estimated funding shortfall of $13.9 trillion between 2035 and 2093. If this shortfall isn't dealt with by adding revenue, cutting expenditures, or some combination of the two, retired-worker benefits could fall by as much as 23% within the next two decades. That means Social Security's future is in our elected lawmakers' hands.”

For all the years I've been writing about attacks on Social Security benefits, there have been numerous solutions to the shortfall many of which alone or in combination would work without burdening beneficiaries.

We will discuss some of these here in the future because it is vital to increase Social Security revenues and our Congresses have let us down since the aforementioned 1984 by doing nothing in all that time.

Meanwhile, Nancy Altman is the number one expert and advocate for Social Security in the U.S. Even when, like now, Social Security is not a front-page item, she keeps us informed on the program, what officials are or should be doing about it at Forbes and other publications around the web.

Or just Google her name and click on the “news” header in the results.

Friends and others have asked me what I thought of the Democratic debate last week. Short answer: Phooey.

I had thought to skip them (two in two nights????). Nevertheless, I tuned in at the top of night one and tuned out 30 minutes later. Nothing to see here. Same old political platitudes carefully memorized from debate preparation, each one calculated by paid consultants hoping to “create a moment” that would go viral online.

In the weekend following the debates, TV hosts, pundits and candidates themselves stretched any thinking person's credulity trying to make these debates the most important event of the campaign. And crown a winner too.

HELLO! IT IS 17 MONTHS UNTIL THE 2020 ELECTION. But the media is already in the tank for Kamala Harris. Well, until the next shiny object appears.

Doesn't anyone in the media know how much can – and will – change between now and November 2020?

Given who the U.S. president is, some things at least as disturbing as the current southern border crimes are likely to occur.

The president may sound like a buffoon most of the time, but as we have seen in the past two-and-a-half years, he can do deep and lasting damage to our country and beyond (it seems to me to be his goal), and he will do that many times in the next 17 months.

In addition, especially because she is being anointed so early in the campaign, Ms. Harris will suffer slings and arrows similar to those Joe Biden is currently experiencing over his forced busing comment at the debate which caused a 10-point drop in his favorability ranking.

It is absurd to be conducting a presidential campaign this long before the vote. Absurd and stupid. In England, they announce an election and the campaign period follows for only 25 days, then the vote. That sounds about right to me.

And the number of Democratic candidates? Also absurd. No more than 25 percent of them deserved to be on that stage. It looked to me like they know they don't have a chance of getting far but they are betting they can raise their national profile enough for a future run.

Again, phooey. And don't get me started on the reported tiff between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer over last week's border bill.

It doesn't matter which one of them you think is right. The Democrats have a decades-long history of screwing up every advantage they've had and they are already well along that path again. You can't trust the Democrats to organize a picnic let alone a winning political strategy.

In the nearly four years since Trump descended that escalator in Trump Tower, I have come to despise his voice and have made myself master of the mute button.

As soon as his face appears on the screen, I silence him. Or, if the clicker is too far away, I can hum loudly to bury his voice in brain noise until I can get to the mute button.

With Trump's insatiable need for constant attention and the media's insatiable need to supply it, I'll get a lot of exercise these next 17 months lunging for the TV clicker.

And then, mark my words, the campaign for 2024 will begin the morning after the vote.

For 15 years, Time Goes By has reported on and contemplated aspects of age and ageing, expanding that topic two years ago to include a terminal diagnosis, something that afflicts elders in greater numbers than other age groups.

A month or two ago, I strayed from that topic for one day to give us a chance to talk about the horror that is the executive branch of the U.S. government. I've lost count of how many times I have thought Trump et al could do no worse. I was wrong.

According to a variety of sources, our government is currently keeping hundreds of children – infants, some of them – in cages without adequate food or water and without soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and showers. For days. To sleep, the children lie on concrete floors in their own filth covered only by alumfoil blankets.

This is so far beyond the pale, I think we who are old enough to remember and who know a concentration camp when we see one, need to have a say.

In case you missed it on the news this past week, this is a clip from a hearing in which a Department of Justice lawyer, Sarah Fabian, tries to argue that toothbrushes and soap are not required to be provided to detainees:

(It is worth noting that one of the judges at that hearing, A. Wallace Tashima, an American-born (1934) Japanese, spent World War II with his family in Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona. I suspect he has a reasonably good idea of what a concentration camp is.)

Earlier this week, a father and his two-year-old daughter were drowned while trying to cross the Rio Grande River into the U.S. Here is a video with the story of what happened:

Is it possible not to weep watching that video? Every day when Trump unleashes another sadistic horror, is it possible not to weep?

When you're in your comfortable home, small or large, having showered, put on clean clothing and now sit reading news on your tablet, laptop or desktop maybe while drinking coffee or tea, is it possible not to weep?

There is a reason the federal government does not allow cameras, cell phones and, most of the time, reporters themselves inside the buildings and tents that hold these children in unspeakable conditions.

A week ago in The New Yorker magazine, Russian-American journalist, Masha Gessen, made note of Representative Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez's (OAC) tweet reference to the facilities holding these children as “concentration camps.”

Uproar ensued at the expense of OAC but she stood her ground. The next day, according to Gessen's New Yorker story, OAC tweeted that

”Andrea Pitzer, a historian of concentration camps, was quoted making the same assertion: that the United States has created a 'concentration camp system.' Pitzer argued that 'mass detention of civilians without a trial' was what made the camps concentration camps.”

What followed, for days, were editorials and op-eds on the subject of calling these detention centers “concentration camps” followed by more attacks and counter-attacks.

In her New Yorker piece, Masha Gessen has some interesting things to say about this:

”Ocasio-Cortez and her opponents agree that the term 'concentration camp' refers to something so horrible as to be unimaginable. (For this reason, mounting a defense of Ocasio-Cortez’s position by explaining that not all concentration camps were death camps misses the point.)

“It is the choice between thinking that whatever is happening in reality is, by definition, acceptable, and thinking that some actual events in our current reality are fundamentally incompatible with our concept of ourselves — not just as Americans but as human beings — and therefore unimaginable.

"The latter position is immeasurably more difficult to hold — not so much because it is contentious and politically risky, as attacks on Ocasio-Cortez continue to demonstrate, but because it is cognitively strenuous. It makes one’s brain implode. It will always be a minority position.”

“Never again” is now.

With way too much on my to-do list yesterday, I never got around to writing a “real” blog post so let's try this.

My former husband and I recorded our bi-weekly video chat on Tuesday and unlike so many of them in the past, we hardly discussed health issues.

Instead, we talked mostly about something I hardly ever write about here, national politics: Trump, the Mueller report, crime in high places, and those 437 Democratic presidential hopefuls (at least it feels like that many).

Of all those potential candidates, I told Alex I have a leaning toward Mayor Pete Buttigiag. Still, it's a long way until the 2020 election and god only knows what will happen or what we'll learn about the candidates by then that will change our minds.

So, here is the video. Take a look and then have your go at the campaign so far, in the comments below.

On Wednesday this week, Representative John Larson (D-CT), Chair of the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, announced the introduction of the Social Security 2100 Act.

There are more than 200 co-sponsors for the legislation – all Democrats – even though the bill includes some conservative elements. As long-time Social Security and Medicare advocate, Nancy Altman, explained in Forbes:

”These include a tax cut for middle-income seniors and other Social Security beneficiaries who are currently required to pay federal income tax on their benefits.

“They also include the restoration of Social Security to long-range actuarial balance for three quarters of a century and beyond.

“In addition to requiring the wealthy to contribute their fair share, the legislation would gradually increase the Social Security contributions (FICA) of workers and their employers. FICA, which currently applies to wages up to $132,900, would also apply to wages above $400,000.

“The FICA rate, currently at 6.2% on employees and employers, would increase by .05% a year — 50 cents a week for an average worker — until it reaches 7.4%.”

Even with such strong support among House Democrats, the bill is unlikely to pass the Senate or White House this time. But in the past few years, the political atmosphere about Social Security has shifted from all talk all the time of cutting it because the program is bankrupt (it is not) to expanding it.

Representative Larson is committed to holding hearings throughout the country to debunk such myths and educate the public on the importance of Social Security to all Americans:

“'We need to educate and unmask so many of these myths,' Larson told [Reuters reporter Mark Miller].

“'We need to talk about why Social Security is an earned benefit and not an entitlement. Certainly it is something you are entitled to, but the word makes Social Security sound like a poverty program or a handout. Nothing roils people who have been paying into the program their entire lives more.'”

Keep that in mind: don't let anyone tell you Social Security is a “entitlement”. It is an EARNED BENEFIT that every working American pays for through payroll deductions during his and her working life.

Be sure you let your Congress person know you support this legislation and remind them every now and then how important this is – even if they already support the legislation. You can do that here via telephone, email or postal mail.

The legislation may not make it through the Senate this year, but it will happen eventually. A majority of American support it – even President Trump during his 2016 campaign (although I do know that he can change his mind on a dime).

My former husband, Alex Bennett, and I had our regularly scheduled Skype conversation on Tuesday.

Somehow it turned into mostly a bitch session - complaints about minor things that are unlikely to get fixed so what's the point. Maybe it's just blowing off steam on entirely unrelated issues going on with the government in Washington, D.C.

This seems to be happening a lot lately – that time gets away from me and I can't finish a proper post in time to publish. Mainly, it just takes longer for me to do everything these days than in the past so I get backed up.

I put this together quickly on Wednesday as I knew I would be gone all day on Thursday getting my new chemotherapy infusion – seven hours (!) of it at the chemo clinic.

It's hard to know if this list is funny or horribly worrisome.

Yep. That Rudolph Giuliani quotation took the top spot this year in Yale Law School librarian Fred Shapiro’s annual list.

A few of the others in the top ten should bring back some political memories from recent months:

“I liked beer. I still like beer.” — Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh

“While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.” — Sanofi drug company

”(I am) not smart, but genius...and a very stable genius at that!” — President Donald Trump

Do you have any favorite quotations from these past 12 months you think should be included?

You can read the rest of Shapiro's picks for quotations of the year at Huffington Post and AP News.