Washington

I always said the best entertainment on television are the live broadcasts from the Senate and House of Representatives sessions. I find them funny how they are trying to show the American people that they are the ones who know what is good for us. C-Span stations are the ones who show daily these sessions without any interruption. I don't deny it, I like watching it.

I made an interesting observation while watching. Clicking on the program mode on my remote a short description of each current program comes up. In the case of the Senate and House also there are some generic descriptions, however...

Every day these institutions are in sessions the description notes it as Episode XX (XX denotes the Episode number). Now, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, and other tv comedies are tagged as Episodes. This proves my opinion about these institutions that they are nothing more than circuses and their sessions are just plain comedies.

TV show episodes survive on sponsor financing. I wonder how these governmental episodes survive, who is sponsoring them? Oh, I forgot, me the taxpayer. Then maybe there should be announcement at certain intervals saying that the next segment of this episode is being brought to you by the good taxpaying people of this great country!   

Travel

In the middle of all these Eastern European problems, my wife decided to travel to Hungary. She had a few legitimate reasons. One, her mother is in poor shape, and she wanted to see her before a new pandemic breaks out and makes travel impossible. That is a good, strong reason to go. Then her godson, her sister's son is graduating from high school and the two have a strong relationship therefore she wanted to be there. 

Because that idiot country has no airline, it had to be shut down due to mishandling its finances, traveling to Budapest is a little more complicated. LOT, the Polish airline is the one offering the most reasonable fares and easiest connections. So, that was the route she chose to take. As far as I know, the trip was uneventful, and she got there with no problems. Now, hopefully she is having a good time with her family and tasting good food.

I stayed behind to babysit Abigail and Robin even though as far as my schedule is concerned, I could have gone with her. It seems that now there are no (for a time) Covid-19 restrictions. They were not asking for proof of vaccines either at the airports or at the destination point as they used to, and no masks on the planes. I will hear all the travel stories when she returns. The only thing I know that the flight from New York To Warsaw, the transfer point, was totally full. 

People complain that things are getting expensive yet, the planes are full. So, what do we believe?

Commies

Good old Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, later known as Lenin and Stalin started their revolutionary career standing on the backs of trucks or whatever makeshift podium was erected back then and riling up the working class against the evil of riches and haranguing the beauty of proletarian rule. We all know what happened afterwards. They won and created a les than utopian workers' paradise.

Right now we have two upstart communist/socialist politicians who probably have a similar goal in their sights. Bernie Sanders the US senator from Vermont and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez US representative from Bronx,  New York are these two people. I am sure there are more with similar views but these two are the most vocal.

Bernie Sanders foams at the mouth when he talks about the wealthy. Tax them, take their money away, cut their wings. Ocasio-Cortez pretty much advocates the same cliche. What the two must understand that in this country of private enterprises, businesses are owned by the wealthy and thus provide employment to the non-wealthy. There are no businesses employing 100 or more people that are owned by poor people. We know that nationalizing businesses will result in a chaos. We saw that happening.

In those businesses productivity goes down, quality suffers and eventually they all fail. To be wealthy because business is doing good is not a crime as Sanders and co. is trying to present it. Amazon was one man's creation. Other people could have thought of it but did not. Bezos did and became extremely wealthy. They are employing 950,000 or more people in the US and over 1,600,000 people worldwide. That is a lot of employees.

Now, if one has a lot of money, he buys expensive things. It is normal. Good old Bernie makes it appear it is a sin. He or they preach to take it away from the super wealthy and give it to the poor. I am sure the super wealthy support more charities than anybody else. I wonder how many Bernie supports.

Ukraine

It seems to me that the sympathy towards the Ukrainians is waning. Aside from the terrible damages the war is causing both in human lives as well as material values the war appears to be very political. Actually, every war is political. But in this case one can not decide who is igniting the fire. England and the US are loud voices in their support for Ukraine. It is very easy for them. They are far away from this conflict, off the European continent. It is like a street fight and people from the third floor ara urging the parties to continue fighting.

An American media person said that if the US wants peace, why do they continue supplying the Ukrainians with weapons. I agree with her. I know that Russia is not the most US friendly country, but this fiasco will throw the relationship back to the darkest days of the Stalin era. Is that what they want? Zelensky is not concerned about creating a huge international tragedy, like a world war. He is so stuck on power that he wants to drag every country in without considering the consequences. He is asking for NATO membership, no-fly zone, more weapons and foreign troops. None of these will appease Russia. It will just extend the bad situation. 

Russia is a big country which should not be ignored. Biden's childish acts about sanctions will not have its expected results. Putin does not take Biden seriously. I don't even think he would take his calls. This man has absolutely no respect as a world leader.

I spoke to a lot of people recently and their opinion is that the devastation shown on tv are manufactured or created by the Ukrainians themselves to gather world sympathy. As the saying goes "a picture is worth a thousand words". I know what the Russians are capable of doing but...

I earlier expressed my feelings and opinion about Ukraine and the Ukrainians. No matter how hard I try I can not feel much sympathy towards them. This is a perfect example of "what goes around, comes around".  

Older

We are living in very exciting times. I came to the conclusion that being old(er) is a very unique thing. For one, life is not boring as the younger generation believes it. For us life is full of surprises and unexpected events. At every corner something new is waiting for us. Every day brings new joys and new things. And all these put together should bring smiles to our faces. So why are we not smiling?

Because one of the surprises that starts off the day is that we woke up in the morning. That means we are part of the woke generation! Not the woke the media is occupied with but the woke up generation. At our advanced age just waking up in the morning is a surprise. Another surprise if we remember what we did the day before. As the day progresses there are more surprises are awaiting us. Like remembering our spouses' names and remembering all our grandchildren's names. Evening might hold the biggest surprise when we have to remember what we ate for breakfast.

The new things we are frequently encountering the aches and pains. At every move we are making another part of our bodies are responding to in a negative manner. Pains in places we never knew existed. Movements we made million times in our lifespan are suddenly become a hassle. And unfortunately, these do not go away. If money could accumulate as much as our aches do it would be good.

So, every day I am anxious to see what surprises are in store for me. What used to be able to do things are not readily possible. That is why we are living in exciting times. Any comment?  

Sunday

 Sunday - one word says it all.

Friday

Here is the reason why I was tardy with my "work".                                                                                      In the past couple of days, a lot of unexpected (by me) assignments came my way.  Actually, there are times when I have several ideas and then I sit and write a few days ahead. The problem with that is that then I tend to forget that I should write again. And that is what happened now, I was very comfortable doing nothing and just didn't think of sitting down and write. Sorry!

Yesterday (Friday) I had a very trying day. Besides doing my stuff, my wife announced that in the evening she would like to go to Friday evening services. There is nothing wrong with this. We occasionally go into Manhattan to the Central Synagogue or to Temple Emanuel. Yesterday she said she wanted to go to Temple Emanuel. Ok, I said, what should I wear?

For a long time I didn't have a decent piece of clothing on me. I live in warmup pants and tee shirts. I love the pants because as I said earlier they are very forgiving. But one can not go to a temple in warmup pants, right? So I started a long and upsetting process of finding a pair of pants that still fit me. At the end I succeeded! I found the pants, the shirt and jacket. Now, I have to remember for the next time I have to dress up. But still this is very upsetting when one can not close his pants in the front.

My wife, Abigail and me went into the City and to the temple. It was very nice service, about an hour long and since I have no idea about the Hebrew language it helped that the service is primarily in English. After the service we drove home and had a very nice Passover dinner. It was a long day but it turned out very well.