I live in Los Angeles and Adam Schiff is my senator. 

Yup.  Him. 

The guy who was head of the House Intelligence Committee from 2019-2023.  The one who was lead impeachment manager in the first impeachment trial of the 45^th president of the U.S. 

The Jewish guy Trump still refers to as Shifty Schiff.

I can’t claim to know FOR SURE what POTUS means by the nickname, meaning I can’t prove it in a court of law.  But what I do know is that one of the racist stereotypes about we Jews is that we’re shifty.  Meaning you can’t trust us. 

Apparently this dates back to the 12^th century when French theologian Peter of Blois introduced the idea that we Jews could change shapes in order to deceive people.  He likened us to The Devil, who I guess is a guy able to morph into monstrous shapes in order to advance his own nefarious, and bottom line poisonous, agenda to turn the world against itself.

Obfuscating who you really are and what you truly want to do by posing as a bottom line nice guy who cares?

Imagine!

Well, what do I know? The fact is, we Jews don’t believe in the Devil or even Hell. 

Though nefarious and bottom line poisonous agendas are a fact of life you accept the older you get.  You can’t prove them in a court of law but, like obscenity, you get to know them when you see them.

As I watch tens of thousands of federal workers fired without reason by button-pushing twenty-something DOGE bros, many of them self-avowed racists; veterans benefits being slashed, and the hollowing out of every major government agency by new leadership who previously questioned the very necessity of that agency, my obscenity buzzer has been going off non-stop. (Note: As opposed to getting off, which seems likely to soon become a punishable felony if Project 2025’s plan to outlaw porn on the Internet becomes the reality there is no reason to believe it won’t be.)

I mean, it doesn’t take a genius to wonder if it’s a good thing to have our new Secretary of Health and Human Services reacting to a concerning outbreak of measles in the southwest by suggesting the use of cod liver as a remedy before a proven 97% effective measles vaccine.  A shot that quickly became a CURE for a lethal and HIGHLY contagious disease that infected 3-4 million people annually and killed many, many thousands, mostly children, prior to the mid-1960s.

A disease that was deemed eradicated in the U.S. in 2000, before vaccine skeptics like Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., began muddying the waters.

Can I prove in court Sec. Kennedy is responsible for the rise in measles, or that his heroic father, the late Robert F Kennedy, Sr., is rolling over in his grave at his son’s actions?  Certainly not.

No more than I can prove it’s not a good idea to have a guy who has zero medical training who very publicly waxed nostalgic recently about his early days as a heroin addict because it allowed him to finally focus in college, as HHS secretary for 360 million people.

You just get a feeling about things. 

And when you pay attention to facts and deeds – not as you want them to be but as what they really are – you begin to find that your instincts about more than you can imagine turn out to be spot on.

For instance, imagine literally watching one very large and powerful country – okay, let’s say Russia –  drop a bunch of bombs on a much smaller country – fine, for argument’s sake let’s say the Ukraine – three years ago in videos from right, left and center news sources all over the world. 

Then imagine, just a week or two ago, the president of another large country – YOUR country – and for lack of a better example and because so many readers live in America, let’s say it’s the United States – claiming that Ukraine was the real culprit because it was Ukraine that actually invaded Russia three years ago?   

Would you believe that leader of the United States, or what you and everyone else saw through their own eyes.  More importantly, based on facts and experience, would you blanketly believe ANYTHING said, by that particular leader of the United States, about anything important ever again?

And let’s go further, would you even believe them about the price of eggs???

When the richest man in the world – Elon Musk – gleefully bounced up and down brandishing a bejeweled chain saw a few weeks ago at an ultra-conservative political conference, reveling in all the billions of dollars in government jobs and services he was, ahem, cutting  (Note:  In fact, it turned out it was merely in the low hundreds of millions, not billions) it was bad enough. 

But once you heard the president of U.S. encourage him to cut even more, it began to make me wonder about…a lot of things.

And as I listenied to #47 bore into Social Security during his speech before Congress last week, lying about billions of dollars of payments to scamming and dead US citizens up to 350 years old that were still listed on the digital payroll (Note:  It turns out that these dozens of thousands of people listed digitally receive ZERO payments because it’s more expensive and confusing to the system to erase their names digitally) my obscenity buzzer began to go off. 

Again. 

And incessantly. 

Especially after in his speech he declared Mr. Musk the head of DOGE, publicly and forcefully contradicting the legal briefs he had government lawyers file just days before that Mr. Musk was NOT running the agency but was merely an advisor.

And especially in light of DOGE’s most controversial move weeks before.  The courts granting them permission to copy ALL of the digital information on EVERY AMERICAN the social security administration has on file in the entire country.  That’s everyone who works or has ever worked.  Almost ALL of us.

And not just our payments.  Where we live. Where we bank.  How much we earn.  Our next of kin.    Our medical records.  Where we vote.  What we own. 

ALL. OF. IT.

Now, what could the richest man in the world – a tech genius with billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts, a guy who contributed approximately $300 million, likely more, to get #47 elected, be planning to do with that information, along with the guy he helped get elected?  What did that money buy him but, more importantly, was his technological acumen able to provide #47 anything ELSE in return?

If you believe what he was spouting while waving that chainsaw up in the air, like a Roman warrior about to make a kill, this is all about saving the government money.  But in what way?  And how will we ever know? 

Social security payments in the hands of the richest man in the world who grew up in apartheid South Africa with a father who was a proud neo-Nazi and has blamed the LGBTQ woke community for turning one of his children trans, does not bode well for people like me and Sen Schiff.  (Note: And forget he’s got 13 offspring. And counting).

Nor does #47’s proclamation in his speech last week that “God saved” him from an assassin’s bullet during his presidential campaign to make America great again.

Instead consider — what exactly does THAT mean?  And for whom?  And how?

I can’t prove it in a court of law, but whatever it is it doesn’t bode well for democracy.

Ariana Grande + Cynthia Erivo – Oscars Opening Number