Blog/October 2020/Oct 30th

Oct 30th

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This week wasn’t much cooler than last week, unfortunately. End of October and still in the 30C range. I hate you, 2020!

On a less dramatic note, we had a normal week. I was taking Mom to various medical appointments, which is always a lot of fun. Esther worked. Sarah didn’t. Daniela and Jeremy did. So like I said: normal.

On Twitter I’ve got nearly as many Arab (UAE/Bahrain/KSA/Egypt) friends as Israelis these days. Had you told me that was going to happen, even three months ago, I would have just laughed. But here we are. Thank you, POTUS, for overturning decades of “expert” meddling, and changing the face of the Middle East so radically! He really does deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for this.

What’s up?

• In that vein, here’s a list of his top 10 acheivements according to one paper.
• A libertarian guy says you should vote for Trump, a long-time conservative says why he’s not voting for Trump, and Dave Rubin (a left-leaning centrist) explains why he did. In a few days, the choices will have been made, for better or worse.
• The Chinese forced the French to take down an exhibit on Genghis Khan.
• How to celebrate Halloween without causing offense.

As my long-time readers are aware, I didn’t vote for anyone in 2016. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either of the choices. I’m not a doctrinaire adherent of the Left or of the Right, I’m basically a small-“L” libertarian centrist, so both Hillary and Trump offended my sense of rectitude. Now it’s 2020, and both Biden and Trump offend that sense; but things not the same as they were in 2016.

For one thing, we’ve got almost four years of tangible Trump achievements. I don’t like everything he’s done (especially with respect to fiscal policy), and I certainly dislike his manner of expressing himself; but the burgeoning peace in the ME is so overwhelmingly huge, it almost overshadows all else in my view. He’s methodically reduced US involvement in foreign wars, another huge thing. He’s appointed Supreme Court judges who primarily care about upholding the Constitution, yet another huge thing. So taken together, in my opinion, those give Trump a strong “thumbs-up” despite his obvious flaws.

As for Biden, he’s had nearly 50 years of gov’t service in which to enact all the things he’s claiming he’ll enact now, if only you elect him. I call BS on that; but regardless, he’s in no physical or mental condition to remain POTUS if elected, which means a vote for him is actually a vote for a Harris presidency. And she is in fact a radical. Lest you’ve forgotten: she’s a co-sponsor of the “Green New Deal”, which is the most wide-ranging Socialist platform ever proposed (anywhere, ever, as far as I’m aware). She is an actual danger to the Republic as the Founders envisioned it.

As things currently stand, nobody knows who will be POTUS come January. But if Biden/Harris wins, it will be the beginning of the end for America as we know it, make no mistake. A Trump win will at least delay that specific decline for four years, though it may exacerbate other instabilities. I’m not optimistic about the future of my birth country, I’ve gotta say, and it saddens me greatly.

Good news: the random “freezes” my new laptop computer was experiencing seem to have been fixed by an OS upgrade. Now things are working perfectly! The upgrade also went smooth as silk, which is always a good thing.

More good news: the weather is supposed to get cooler and possibly rainy this coming week! It’s been too long, my friends, since I’ve seen real rain or felt the need for a sweater. And peace, peace in the ME!

The scheduled shabbat menu is:
homemade ḥalla, zucchini soup, sweet’n’sour meatballs, rice, asado cholent, various salatim, and banana-chocolate cake.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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