Jailhouse Rock

Time on Her Hands (A Question)

What do you wear on a visit to one of the world’s most notorious prisons? If you’re Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary who visited El Salvador’s massive Terrorism Confinement Center on Wednesday, the answer was a white long-sleeve top, gray slacks and a baseball cap emblazoned with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement logo.

Oh, and a gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona that sells for about $50,000.*

Now, my feeling has always been that if you've earned your money in an honest way, you can spend it (or save it) any way you like.

In defense of Noem's purchase of her Rolex,

Tricia McLaughlin, homeland security’s assistant secretary for public affairs, wrote that Ms. Noem used the proceeds of her books “to purchase an item she could wear and one day pass down to her children.”

In case you don't know or remember Noem's Great Books of the Western World literary efforts, she relates in her tome No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward how she cold-bloodedly murdered her pet dog, Cricket. 

How will her children in the future feel about putting on their wrist a watch that comes with blood on the hand? 

 *

Three More Questions

(1) Why does Donald Trump like the song “YMCA"?

Answer: He’s attempting to learn the alphabet.

(2) Who is blame for the so-called Signalgate screw-up?

Answer: Nancy Pelosi.

(3) How much did it cost the American taxpayer to fly Usha Vance to Greenland to not see a dogsled race?

Answer: Your guess is as good as mine.

*

 

A Parable for the Trump Years

A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he said to himself, “What’s in it for me?”

And he continued on his way.

*

I suppose that it should come as no surprise that Donald Trump granted pardons to the three co-founders of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, 

who had pleaded guilty in 2022 for failing to implement a Bank Secrecy Act-compliant anti-money laundering program. . . .

Prosecutors had accused BitMEX and founders Delo, Hayes and Reed of willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act between 2015 and 2020 by failing to adopt anti-money-laundering and "know your customer" programs, Reuters reported in January.

Also pardoned this week by Trump was Trevor Milton, the founder of bankrupt electric and hydrogen-powered truckmaker Nikola, who had been convicted of fraud.”**

And that’s not all.

Last week,  

Mr. Trump applied the choppy marker strokes of his signature to a full and unconditional pardon for Mr. [Devon] Archer, wiping away his conviction in a scheme to defraud investors and a Native American tribal entity of tens of millions of dollars. . . .

It freed him from having to serve any part of his prison sentence of one year and one day, and from having to pay nearly $60 million in forfeitures and restitution.***

But as the Times points out, “For the defrauded tribal entity — as well as the prosecutors who brought the case — it was a blow.”

As mentioned above, these pardons should be no surprise—a convicted felon pardoning felonious fraudsters.

It should also come as no surprise that

Mr. Archer has told associates that he is interested in serving in Mr. Trump’s administration or for his political operation at some point.

After all, birds of a feather fly together.

*

The French do these things much better. Today’s headline:

French far-right leader Le Pen barred from politics in embezzlement verdict

***

Update (Next Day)--The Sleaze Knows No End:

Headline:

Trump commutes sentence of Ozy Media founder Carlos Watson

just before prison surrender

Watson was due to begin serving a 116-month prison term for a multi-million-dollar scheme****

*  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/style/kristi-noem-venezuela-prison-rolex-watch.html

** https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-pardoned-bitmex-co-founders-203835230.html

*** https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/us/politics/journey-from-biden-loyalist-to-full-maga-ends-in-a-trump-pardon.html?searchResultPosition=3

**** https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/trump-commutes-sentences-of-ozy-media-founder-carlos-watson-and-company.html

 

The Shoelace

A few Sundays ago, I went shopping at my local supermarket. Half way through my circuit, I noticed that the lace of my left sneaker was undone. I was at the end of aisle 15, too far from the few available seats and afraid to bend over as my back was bothering me. I tried to balance my foot on a slight outcropping of metal about two feet up the nearest frozen food cabinet, but was unable to do so. At that moment, a Black lady came up to this old Jew and asked if I was all right.

“Could you tie my shoelace?”

*

In early February, the Trump administration began a concerted attack on a prime United States foreign aid agency: USAID. Operations were abruptly shut down—even trials of new medical programs—and thousands of staff were fired. This except from a New York Times report gives us some grim statistics:

The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw foreign aid and dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development is likely to cause enormous human suffering, according to estimates by the agency itself. Among them:

• up to 18 million additional cases of malaria per year, and as many as 166,000 additional deaths;
• 200,000 children paralyzed with polio annually, and hundreds of millions of infections;
• one million children not treated for severe acute malnutrition, which is often fatal, each year;
• more than 28,000 new cases of such infectious diseases as Ebola and Marburg every year.

Those stark projections were laid out in a series of memos by Nicholas Enrich, acting assistant administrator for global health at U.S.A.I.D., which were obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Enrich was placed on administrative leave on Sunday.*

While the long-term effect of  the withdrawal of funding for tracking and fighting disease will, of course, eventually cause United States mortality rates to rise, the main impact immediately is on countries such as South Africa, where “a research study that was testing a new device to prevent pregnancy and H.IV. infection”** was abruptly canceled. 

In 2021, long before the current administration started its campaign against American aid to foreign countries, the Department of Defense posted the following report:

The Ebola outbreak of 2014 is an example of what U.S. aid can achieve in Africa. When the disease first appeared, U.S. military epidemiologists worked closely with African medical professionals to contain the disease. They worked to educate populations on ways to stop transmission and developed procedures to care for those infected. U.S. Army units deployed to the region to build care facilities, laboratories and more.

The epidemic ended without becoming a global pandemic. "Ebola is still present in some countries in Africa, but they learned how to contain it," [Army Gen. Stephen J.] Townsend said. "Sure, we helped them develop their capabilities, but they have [the] capacity to manage Ebola on their own now.”***

 *

Why help other people? Yes, someday they may be able to reciprocate, but we should do so, not because we (may) need something (someday), but because they need something now. I donate to HIAS several times a year. Their slogan is “Welcome the stranger, protect the refugee.” HIAS originally stood for “Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.” The organization has proclaimed that its help for the downtrodden and oppressed is not given because they are Jewish, but “because we are Jewish.”****

*

William Blake wrote of seeing “the world in a grain of sand.” I think we can also see a world of common humanity in a shoelace.

***

*   https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/health/usaid-cuts-deaths-infections.html?searchResultPosition=15

**  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/health/usaid-clinical-trials-funding-trump.html?sASearchResultPosition=2

***   https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2580930/commander-says-africa-is-too-important-for-americans-to-ignore/

**** A recent New York Times article about the Sudan was accompanied by photographs in which HIAS aid vehicles were prominent and testimony by displaced people about the help HIAS was giving them. 

Update 3/27/25: "On his first day in office, Trump signed executive orders halting refugee resettlement, slashing foreign aid, and eliminating critical protections for immigrants and displaced people worldwide.

For Fatehiyya Mohamed Adam, a Sudanese refugee, these policies had devastating consequences.

After fleeing Sudan in 2023, Fatehiyya lost everything when a fire tore through her refugee camp along the Chad-Sudan border. For the past two years, HIAS has been there, providing aid to refugees in this camp. But this time, Trump’s stop-work order and drastic foreign aid cuts stopped us from helping."

HIAS newsletter (their emphasis)

No Telling Tomorrow

What time is it? What day is it? Are we tariffing Canada and Mexico, or not? 

I’m not the only one confused. Think of all those stock market mavens, who don’t know whether to buy or sell. 

Trump, the great yo-yo, imposes tariffs on our neighbors, then delays them, then announces they’re coming, and then puts them off for a month or so. Are cars going to be tariffed, or exempt? What’s today’s date?

All this would be comical except there’s a truly dark side to this yes-maybe-no scenario. One would say that Trump has learned this behavior from a tyrant’s handbook, but we all know that Trump doesn’t read anything (and probably never has).

But somehow he has sussed out one major weapon in a tyrant’s armory. He has learned that tyrants must keep the populace and, more importantly, his courtiers off  balance. Whereas in a non-tyrannical state there are laws, rules, and regulations that guide the actions of the state, in a tyranny only the whim of the tyrant is law. And if the tyrant is canny, he will exercise his whim at random to wrongfoot the general population, but, more importantly, to keep his courtiers (his ass kissers, in other words) from presuming that, being close to power, they might someday take power. The danger for those courtiers is that being on the right side of the tyrant’s whim today, might lead to the gulag (or worse) when the tyrant changes his mind, his whim, his policy tomorrow.

The artful (or lucky) courtiers who bob when the tyrant bobs and weaves when the tyrant weaves can keep it up for only so long. There are no guidelines to follow, no rehearsed dance steps to trace, and no way to predict tomorrow. 

The next time you are summoned to the palace it could be to receive a medal—or a bullet. 

Iced

A man is known by the company he keeps.

Aesop

*

Wayne Gretzky . . .

Wayne Gretzky, the greatest ice hockey player . . . 

Wayne Gretzky, Canadian icon . . .

Wayne Gretzky, a pal of the man who would deprive his country of its freedom . . .

Wayne Gretzky—a man with a broken heart.

                           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0qW9P-uYfM

That’s according to Mrs. Gretzky, who commented after her husband was supported by another hockey hall-of-famer, Bobby Orr, after attacks on Wayne for his friendship with Donald Trump, who invited the hockey legend to the President’s swearing-in ceremony and who had gone a few rounds of golf with him. (1)

Bobby Orr . . .

Bobby Orr, Canadian icon . . .

Bobby Orr, considered by many the greatest defenseman (or in Canadian, “defenceman”) in NHL history . . .

Bobby Orr, who has history of supporting Trump in the past . . .

Bobby Orr, defenseman, who can defend Gretzky, but not defend the independence of his country, a country whose national anthem asserts, 

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

God keep our land glorious and free!

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

*

Bill Shankly, legendary manager of Liverpool Football Club:

Some people think football [soccer] is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.

On the other hand, Jesse Marsch, the head coach of the Canadian men’s soccer national team, knows that sport does not outrank life:

Jesse Marsch . . . offered a strong rebuke of President Donald Trump’s quips on the country potentially becoming the 51st state of the United States.

Speaking to reporters at Concacaf Nations League Finals media day in Inglewood, California, Marsch called Trump’s ongoing comments “unsettling and frankly insulting.”

“Canada is a strong, independent nation that is deep-rooted in decency, really, and it’s a place that values high ethics and respect,” Marsch said. (2)

And Marsch is an American!

*

Lesson for Wayne Gretzky:

Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas.

***

  

(1) https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/janet-jones-gretzky-criticism-of-wayne-has-broken-his-heart/

Even when Trump tries to get Gretzky off the hook, his innate nastiness is still there, for he degradingly calls the Prime Minister of Canada “Governor.” "Wayne and Janet, his wonderful wife, love Canada, and they should only support Canada, and whatever else makes the Canadian People, and Governor Justin Trudeau, happy,"

 

 (2) https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/26/sport/canada-jesse-marsch-president-trump-spt/index.html

***

Suggested Reading:

https://thehockeywriters.com/canada-deserves-a-better-hockey-hero-than-wayne-gretzky/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/trump-masculinity/681828/