Tin Foil Hat Fitting

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

01.12.25

by notesfromachair

City on Fire

January 11, 2025

Greetings from fiery Los Angeles.

I am one of many thousands of people who had to evacuate their home with little notice and in mere minutes. To say it was shocking surreal, horrendous and many other adjectives I can’t think of at the moment, and probably wouldn’t do it justice at all, does not tell even a fraction of the story.

But I am also one of the lucky ones who survived, and whose home and immediate neighborhood stands pretty much untouched in comparison to what’s left of the Mad Max terrain in the former gorgeous towns of Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Altadena and others.

Thanks to the L.A. Fire Department, the response of local officials and the fact that the winds had died down enough for it to be tackled by air, the massive flames in the hills of Hollywood, aka the Sunset Fire, were contained relatively quickly. Though if you lost your home, or someone close to you, this doesn’t mean very much at all.

Over four decades, I have grown to love Los Angeles as much as my hometown of New York City and that’s really saying something. I can’t really tell you exactly why other than to say L.A. is part of California and that people have been coming to California for years for the freedom to be who they are and live the way they choose. It’s a mirage of sorts but not fully. There is something about the vastness of the state and what has become its melting pot of a population during the many years I’ve been here that has more and more made that mirage a bit more real. I mean, you might not get what you want but you have a ton of space to do it in and a vast number of tribes you can sample if you’re looking for a place where you can truly belong.

Also, if you don’t like it you can always leave. Literally no one will judge you for it. Out here most of us eventually learn that it’s up to an individual to make themselves happy. California won’t do it and especially L.A. won’t make it happen for you. You have to figure out how to make it happen.

This is one of the many reasons these L.A. fires have been so devastating for me. Watching it happen is like watching the beauty of all those dreams and all that stunning space get fried to a crisp in real time right before your eyes. Everything is ephemeral but the breadth and randomness of such mass destruction feels unusually, and most particularly, cruel.

Which does not mean we don’t feel that and more for all kinds of cruel destruction. No one has the market cornered on those type of regrettable feelings. In fact, maybe if there were more recognition of the latter, the world wouldn’t feel like the hateful place it all too often does these days.

Still, watching firefighters from neighboring states and countries flying in to help the people of L.A. has been quite something. Not to mention how quickly the American Red Cross, World Central Kitchen and dozens of other organizations and volunteers have opened outlets, service areas and phone lines to help us begin to cope and, eventually, recover.

But here is what is NOT helpful. Playing the Blame Game.

I get the country is divided and L.A. is an easy and often willing target (Note: Yes, we’re in on the joke. Duh). But you’d think an estimated $50 billion in damages from the largest city in a state that sends more money than any other to the federal government, would be enough to satiate the naysayers at this point.

Because I don’t trust myself to 1. Explain this properly and 2. Not go on a tangential, unhelpful and hysterical tirade in this sensitive moment, I want to instead share a very wise social media post from my friend Michael Colleary. This weekend he very smartly and very succinctly explained what happened in L.A. in an effort to offer some truth and reality to friends, family and acquaintances from out of state who have been hearing and reading all kinds of things. It goes as follows:

Dear FB Friends – I have received many messages and emails particularly from friends and family on the East Coast, asking after our safety. A million thanks for your care and concern. I would like to answer a few questions I have been asked repeatedly, particularly about fire hydrants and firefighting crews and LA’s overall response to the fires.

Let me try to provide a little perspective for those of you back East …

The Palisades fire began as a wilderness brush fire at 10:30AM on January 7th.

Driven by 80 MPH winds – hurricane-fast winds – within 24 hours it had burned 12,000 acres and hundreds of structures.

Any chance of LA fire crews – the best trained and most experienced in the world – containing it, let alone extinguishing it, drop to zero because air tankers and water-hauling helicopters can’t fly in 80mph winds.

So, to recap: 24 hours, 12,000 acres burned.

For my New York friends: Central Park is 850 acres. So, imagine a firestorm that incinerates 14 Central Parks in 24 hours. Or more to the point perhaps, imagine a firestorm that blows through Central Park, incinerating every blade of grass FOURTEEN TIMES in 24 hours.

For my NJ friends: our hometown of Montclair gets off a little better. At 4,000 acres, it would have been reduced to ash only THREE times in 24 hours. Imagine every single resident of Montclair becoming homeless on one night. Imagine the violent energy required for that to happen. Because it did, 3 times over.

And Palisades is only one of the massive fires burning here. The Eaton fire has burned 14,000 acres on the eastern edge of LA.

And it’s still going. As of this minute, the Palisades fire is closing in on 40,000 acres. That’s bigger than San Francisco (thankfully most of it is – for the moment – in remote canyons teeming with scrub foliage; yes, LA is that huge).

As shocking and overwhelming and devastating as this has been for so many thousands and thousands of people – my sister and brother-in-law lost their home; his niece and nephew both lost homes in separate fire areas – it is excruciating to hear these endless lies and blaming and gibberish about how DEI and budget cuts somehow caused or contributed to this absolute apocalyptic disaster.

No city, no county, no state, no country on the planet would or could be prepared and equipped to confront what’s happened here.

Because what has happened here is much closer to a volcanic eruption than a “brush fire.”

Our neighborhood is now within sight of the Palisades fire which overnight spread to Brentwood. Shan is packing her clothes. I have to go inside now and get my mother – already evacuated once with just the clothes on her back – up and ready to go should we be ordered to leave.

Friends, I know there’s not much you can do from far away – aside from donate to the Red Cross, etc.

But I humbly ask that – if you hear someone spreading the all-too prevalent lies being spewed for political score-settling – tell that person – from me – to STFU. Because they have no idea what’s really happening here.