The past two years have witnessed sustained and bitter differences between the Biden administration and two Western democracies that it has pledged to protect against foreign attack and invasion: Israel and Ukraine. The differences in these ongoing conflicts are not over ends but over means. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, about six months after the Biden administration executed its botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, a move that went against the advice of all the president’s military and civilian advisers. And then, on October 7, 2023, Hamas broke its tenuous cease-fire with Israel with a full-scale assault on both Israeli settlements and the Nova music peace festival near the Gazan border. The one element that links these three conflicts is not just the perceived weakness of the three target nations, but also the inescapable perception that the United States cares more about short-term peace than long-term security in these vital theaters of war.

That perception has hardened over recent years as it becomes possible to extract a consistent, if disastrous, policy pursued by the Biden administration. The dominant impulse is to make sure that these localized conflicts will not expand into an open war that will lead to intensification of the current hostilities, followed by further entanglements with other nations, followed by an increase in the amount of death, injury, and property destruction. To achieve that end, the consistent Biden trope is to always play defense, never offense. The supposed logic of this position is that it will prevent Russia (along with, as it turns out, its allies China, Iran, and North Korea) from taking over Ukraine, even though it will not be enough to stop the continued bloody encroachment into key towns and cities in the Donbas, located in the far southeast of Ukraine. Similarly, the Biden administration has put a go-slow sign on Israel, seeking to delay its military efforts to remove the last elements of Hamas from Rafah by negotiating a cease-fire that could not, definitionally, result in the decapitation of Hamas, which would have to be a signatory to any such agreement. Any proposed deal might be for a short hiatus, or, as seems more likely, one that would insensibly morph into a permanent arrangement—at least until a rebuilt Hamas renewed its efforts to obliterate Israel and its citizenry.

Free-market economist Milton Friedman was hardly anti-immigration. He acknowledged that pre-1914 immigrants came “for a better life for them and their children. In the main they succeeded,” broadly benefiting their adopted country.

But there was an important caveat. “It is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare.” Immigrants dependent on public benefits don’t boost their host country, they have the effect of “a reduction of everybody to the same, uniform level.”

I strongly recommend a book that goes deep into the character and actions of a truly principled and patriotic President. Eisenhower For Our Time looks at defining moments of Ike’s political life, including his decision to run for office, along with his handling of McCarthy, the Indochina War, the beginning of the space race, and school segregation.

What is clear is that Eisenhower sought balance in everything he did. He took a lot of criticism for it, but he was true to his “Middle Way.” We could use that sort of principled patriotism. I’d be glad if there was a politician in the present landscape that I could look up to as a person, whether I agreed with them or not.

As with all of my Audible titles, drop me a note if you would like a promo code for a free review copy.

This morning SpaceX conducted its first successful landing of the Starship first stage booster.  After separation from the Starship payload, the booster returned to Earth where it was caught by the “chopsticks” on the launch tower.  The amazing video below is queued to a few seconds before landing, when the booster emerges from the clouds, hurtling groundward at 3,500 kilometers per hour.  At less than a kilometer in altitude, the rockets ignite, slowing the booster to a standstill and gently depositing it into the waiting arms of the launch tower from which it had departed 7 minutes earlier.

Beer can artwork accidentally thrown in bin by staff member at Dutch Museum

You would think that the tiresome joke that is modern art would be over by now.

The song I chose for tonight is probably in my personal top 10 favorites. The song is “Waterloo Sunset.” It is by the Kinks, was written by Ray Davies, and is on their 1967 album Something Else. It was released as a single at the time and made the top 10 in Britain, but made nary a dent in the U.S. pop charts. I just think it’s a lovely song.

It was September 1969. The future Mrs. Pessimist and her roommate had moved into the apartment just above the one that my two roommates and I occupied. My two friends had asked them out for pizza and I met my future bride that night when they came back to our apartment. Strangely enough, I was actually studying for a college assignment and had not joined them. That was the last time she saw me studying for quite some time. I heard my roommates talking later that night about how hot Mrs. Pessimist was and I decided I should preempt any attempt on their part to claim her affections. I went up to her apartment the next day and invited her to a Jose Feliciano concert that was scheduled for later that week. My enthusiasm and Jose’s romantic charm made for a delightful first date.

So she invited me up to her apartment the next day. Her roommate was working the evening shift at the hospital. She cooked the best meal I have ever eaten although I suspect it might have been the first meal she had ever cooked. She served store-bought breaded veal patties sautéed in a pan with mozzarella cheese on top with a side of canned Franco-American spaghetti. I didn’t know that spaghetti came in a can but it was absolutely delicious. They don’t make that anymore. The closest thing is Spaghettios which is not nearly the same.

Former president Barack Obama “[spoke] some truths” about his problem with the relatively low enthusiasm for Vice President Harris’s presidential bid compared to his own 16 years ago. His stern remarks, delivered at a campaign field office in Pittsburgh, were particularly directed at “the brothers,” whom he believes may be reluctant to support Harris because they “aren’t feeling the idea” of having a female president.

Looking back at my life, I find many examples of interests that come and go. Sometimes I will become quite passionate about something, even obsessed, for a while, before dropping it unceremoniously and moving on to something else. I used to view this as a character flaw, a short attention span; but as I have gotten older I have realized that it comes instead from a desire to constantly seek out new things to learn. I tend to take on hobbies and pursue them long enough to get a feel for what they’re like. But once I reach the “been there, done that” stage, I lose interest.

One of the earliest of these flings was acting. My entire career as a stage actor was coextensive with my years in high school. When I say “career,” of course, what I mean is that I was active in the drama club; I auditioned for pretty much every play, and I always got cast. That was my main extracurricular activity in high school, and in fact, I lettered in drama. (I still have the sew-on letter somewhere, but I never bought a letter jacket to attach it to.) There were at least two big productions each school year, one in the fall and one in the spring, and occasional smaller ones; it seemed that I was always auditioning or rehearsing for something.

As Halloween approaches, many of us will think of the 1978 film Halloween. Some of us even have the theme music going through our heads right now. That music is as iconic as the theme from Psycho, but Bernard Herman, not Alfred Hitchcock wrote Psycho’s theme. John Carpenter didn’t merely direct Halloween, he wrote the music, too. And he wrote the screenplay. This is a talented guy.

It was great fun to hear this talented but cranky man, John Carpenter, in person, at Joe Bob Briggs’ International Drive-In Jamboree at the West Wind Drive-In in Las Vegas. He’d been invited to talk about his filmmaking career. Last year, at the Fourth Annual Jamboree, the honored filmmaker was Roger Corman in his last interview.

Carpenter was introduced with a fun montage with scenes from Starman, Christine, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, They Live, Vampires, The Fog, and others mentioned throughout this post. His first, a student project made at USC that received a theatrical release, came out in 1974. And his last film, The Ward, was released in 2010. He is 76 years old and for the last decade and a half, he has concentrated on music.

I have often described Judaism like a wagon wheel on a road. The wheel turns, and so in a sense, we are going through a cycle each and every day, and each and every year. A wheel in a wheel, as the gospel song goes.

The difference between Judaism and classic circular religions (basically all religions that model themselves after the natural world with its seasons), is that our wheel is not suspended in space. Instead, we are bouncing along a road. We have an origin, and we have a destination. And it is the touchpoints of the road that give us continuity and a sense of belonging. It is why we sing familiar melodies. We reground at the very same time as we look forward.