“And what the NYT can still do to find an audience for its Trump tax story.”
This blows. I was hoping he’d have been fined $400-500m dollars and impeached by now. Maybe some jail time for good measure.
2. Can’t help but wonder if the bombshell bombed because people have been distracted by what Tay is up to. I got you. Taylor Swift Succumbs to Competitive Wokeness. Wokeness a future Olympic event? How might one begin training?
3. We Slow as We Age, but May Not Need to Slow Too Much. Finally, some good news. Footnote. Last Thanksgiving I ran my first marathon in a long time. My time was only 5 minutes slower than my personal record from a decade earlier. Probably my greatest athletic performance ever. A legend in my own mind.
One in five Americans are affected my mental illness in a given year.
I knew nothing about mental illness until ten years ago. I’m still skiing on the beginner slopes, but thanks to Kay Redfield Jamison, I am making up for being late to the game.
Her “memoir of moods and madness”, Unquiet Mind, is incredibly illuminating and highly recommended. In addition to being a preeminent scientist, Jamison writes exceedingly well. Of her memoir, Oliver Sacks wrote, “It stands alone in the literature of manic-depression for its bravery, brilliance and beauty.”
A few take-aways.
No one chooses bipolar illness, it’s inherited. It’s also treatable with a combination of medication (typically lithium) and psychotherapy. Things do not turn out well for patients who choose not to take lithium. In Jamison’s case, small doses worked better than medium ones.
With a combo of meds and psychotherapy, people with bipolar disorder live life as fully and “successfully” as any other cross-section of people. Jamison has done okay.
Jamison enjoys numerous, positive friendships. Being mentally ill doesn’t have to limit one interpersonally.
Jamison was fortunate to be surrounded by highly educated and caring scientists who were, with one notable exception, incredibly supportive of her upon learning of her condition.
Jamison’s colleagues and friends, with their unconditional positive regard for her, provide a model for the rest of us to help acquaintances, friends, and family with bipolar and other mental illnesses thrive.
Based upon tax case law, estate tax compliance is like speed limit enforcement, 5 miles an hour over the posted limit, troopers look the other way. Similarly, stretch property valuations and annual gift discounts +/- 5 or 10 percent on estate tax returns; no harm, no foul.
How Fred and Donald, and then just Donald, via their estate attorneys, drove 120 miles per hour on streets marked as “40”, year after year, I have no idea. Does the “I” in IRS stand for “Incompetent”?
Something else I have no idea about. How do any honest, hardworking people of modest means, who pay all of their taxes, support this serial short cutter whose actions suggest he doesn’t give a damn about the common good?
“They (father Fred and Donald) were both fluent in the language of half-truths and lies, interviews and records show. They both delighted in transgressing without getting caught. They were both wizards at manipulating the value of their assets, making them appear worth a lot or a little depending on their needs.
Those talents came in handy when Fred Trump Jr. died, on Sept. 26, 1981, at age 42 from complications of alcoholism, leaving a son and a daughter. The executors of his estate were his father and his brother Donald.
Fred Trump Jr.’s largest asset was his stake in seven of the eight buildings his father had transferred to his children. The Trumps would claim that those properties were worth $90.4 million when they finished converting them to cooperatives within a few years of his death. At that value, his stake could have generated an estate tax bill of nearly $10 million.
But the tax return signed by Donald Trump and his father claimed that Fred Trump Jr.’s estate owed just $737,861. This result was achieved by lowballing all seven buildings. Instead of valuing them at $90.4 million, Fred and Donald Trump submitted appraisals putting them at $13.2 million.
Emblematic of their audacity was Park Briar, a 150-unit building in Queens. As it happened, 18 days before Fred Trump Jr.’s death, the Trump siblings had submitted Park Briar’s co-op conversion plan, stating under oath that the building was worth $17.1 million. Yet as Fred Trump Jr.’s executors, Donald Trump and his father claimed on the tax return that Park Briar was worth $2.9 million when Fred Trump Jr. died.
This fantastical claim — that Park Briar should be taxed as if its value had fallen 83 percent in 18 days — slid past the I.R.S. with barely a protest. An auditor insisted the value should be increased by $100,000, to $3 million.”
1. I Know Brett Kavanaugh, but I Wouldn’t Confirm. Long, but well worth your time. The single best thing I’ve read on the beleaguered nominee and the state of our political (dis)union. Even made me regret my knee-jerk “no need to even listen to Kavanaugh” quip.
I am struck by how many of the accusations — from various women, not just Ford — suggest a role for alcohol in tales of abuse. Whether or not you believe any particular story, few can argue that alcohol is never connected to this kind of behavior. In the 1980s the U.S. had a major crisis with teen binge drinking and alcoholism, and many of those problems persist today, albeit at lower levels.
You might think the hearings would lead to a new consideration of alcohol as a major social crisis. If so, I haven’t seen it. Just a few weeks ago the World Health Organization released a report suggesting that 3 million deaths annually could be attributed to alcohol, or 1 of every 20 deaths worldwide. That barely made a splash in the news.
2) There is an asymmetry between male and female perceptions.
Most men are not abusers, yet very large numbers of women have been abused. So if a man is an abuser, there is a good chance he has abused a fair number of women.
That means many well-meaning men experience sexual abuse as a relatively rare phenomenon. They haven’t done it, and most of their male friends haven’t either. At the same time, most women have abuse, rape or #MeToo stories, and they experience these phenomena as relatively common and often life-altering. Probably they also have heard multiple such stories from their female friends. This structural asymmetry of perspectives is crucial to understanding the discourse and the often fundamental differences in opinion.
I would go further. This structural asymmetry of perspectives is why it’s crucial out-of-touch men get with the program and listen, learn, and empathize.
I slipped out of bed early Sunday morning and tiptoed downstairs in the pitch black to fire up the TIVO which had dutifully recorded the first few hours of the Ryder Cup singles matches in Paris, France.
First rule of the Ryder Cup, one must watch on tape because the pace of play is twice as slow as normal. Not to mention the steady stream of commercials.
Sports are a great diversion from more depressing matters such as the state of our (dis)union and Supreme Court.
I was rooting for the red, white, and blue, but they got clobbered. The damage was mostly done on Saturday. Sunday was perfunctory. The loss was no big deal because as I tweeted to a golf writer, I’ll take unadulterated joy over random nationalism every day of the week.
The paradoxes are so layered as to be humorous. Many of the Euros played college golf in the U.S. and have homes in the U.S. where they play on the PGA tour full time. At best, like some of their long irons, they’re Euro-American hybrids. Many of the U.S. players’ grandparents and great grandparents are from Europe. And when you have class personified in guys like Francesco Molinari (Italy) on one side and asses like Patrick Reed (USA) on the other, who really cares who wins. Just relish the drama.
And really relish the victory celebration, especially if the Euros win. Unadulterated joy. They care about it way more than the Americans. Tiger was so bored he somehow put on rain pants. DJ and Koepka, too cool to care. Phil, seemingly past his expiration date.
The simplistic analysis is that the American’s edge in power and talent is offset by their relative individualism and materialism (players don’t receive any money other than large contributions to the charity of their choice). Sometimes the conventional wisdom is right.
Others say the deciding factors were the course set up which deprived the Americans of their power advantage, Furyk’s incompetence as bossman, and the hectic September playoff schedule. On the U.S. side, the Ryder Cup is like the Senate, time for a serious turnover. Time to tag in Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay, Kyle Stanley and other younger, hungrier guns by 2020 in Wisconsin. And if asked, yes, I will coach.
See the Euros’ passion for the Cup and team camaraderie for yourself.
“I want to tell you a story about how my mum taught me that I’m allowed to leave an uncomfortable situation.
I was maybe 7, I think it was my first sleepover at someone else’s house. I don’t remember the girl’s name. But before I left Mum told me that if I was uncomfortable at any point, for any reason, even if it was in the middle of the night, I could call her.
She was very clear. She said even if her parents have gone to bed I want you to knock on their bedroom door and ask to use the phone. I could call her even if it was late. And if her parents didn’t answer the door to just go find the phone and call her anyway.
She said it doesn’t matter what time it is, you won’t be in trouble and I’ll come get you.
I think I was being teased about something. It definitely wasn’t just I can’t sleep, there was something social going on. But that’s what I did.
The girl’s mom tried to discourage me. She said it was late, I said my mum didn’t care. She said I could sleep on the couch. I said I wanted to go home. She said I was upsetting her daughter, I said she was mean to me.
I remember holding the phone and my mum answered. I said “hi Mum.” She said “you want me to come get you?” I said “yes please.” She said “ask her Mum to help you pack up your things and get your coat on. I’ll be right there.”
And my mum showed up on her doorstep in pajama pants and a coat. The girl’s mum kept apologizing for me calling, my mum put up a hand and said “don’t apologize for my daughter. I want her to know she’s allowed to leave and I’ll be there for her at any time.”
I remember the little crowd of sleepover girls huddled in the far doorway that led to the bedrooms, watching all of this confused and silent. And I remember that mom apologizing. She didn’t seem to know what to say after my mum asked her to stop.
I had more incidents like that as I grew up. My mum did a lot around boundaries with me. I remember her marching me down the street to another girl’s house to ask for an apology in front of her parents.
I remember her telling 3 friends to sit in the front room with their bags packed while they waited for their parents to come get them, after I had told them all to “get out of my house” for teasing me and bullying me.
I remember her coaching me through a speech on how to resign and leave from a hostile work environment when I was in the middle of nowhere at a camp for the summer, and she offered money to get a cab to pick me and my friends up.
I can’t say I’ve always followed my gut on boundaries and discomfort. I can’t say I’ve never swallowed it in order to make others comfortable. But I can say what she taught me was important. It was and still is radical.
It’s radical to have boundaries. And to exercise them. Three things I think were really really important in what she did: 1. She always explicitly said ‘you can leave if you want to.’ 2. She never questioned why, or whether I was overreacting. 3. She showed up.
But I think a lot about the girl’s mum apologizing and how… that’s the norm, actually.
What my mum taught me was radical, what that girl’s mum was teaching was the norm. ‘Just deal with it, don’t trouble anyone, go back to sleep, it’ll be over soon, don’t ruin it.’
And I still get that message from a lot of places. But my mum taught me that I’m allowed to leave.
I see what a privilege that is as an adult. For some people, for some situations, there is no way out. But sometimes, also, we don’t leave because we think we’re not allowed.
So, just in case no one ever told you (or you need a reminder): YOU ARE ALLOWED TO LEAVE.
You can leave a date, a party, a job, a meeting, a commitment. You are allowed. If you’re worried about keeping your word remember that your boundaries are also your word, your integrity.
I wanted to tell this story because the message to stay to make others comfortable is so pervasive, that without actively teaching me that I’m allowed to leave, that’s what I would’ve absorbed.
Hell, I absorbed a lot of it anyway. As an adult, at that camp job, I remember her on the phone saying ‘what do you want to do?’ And not knowing, until she said ‘do you want to leave?’ And I said ‘can I?’ She said ‘You can always leave. What do you need so you can leave?’
So, if you’re a person like me, who was taught that you’re allowed to leave, keep an eye out for those who weren’t. They may need the reminder. They may need to hear that it’s okay. They may need help. And keep telling yourself that you are allowed. You’re allowed to leave. 💜
Wow this is really taking off! Before it goes too far I wanted to say: I’m seeing this being gendered and while I am a woman and my mother is a woman there’s no gender on this message. I understand the impulse to teach your daughters this but please teach all children.
When you know that you are allowed to leave, when you exercise that boundary, the idea that others are allowed to leave also comes up. Boys stay in uncomfortable situations to fit in as well, they also deserve this lesson.
Trans, non binary and gender non conforming folks often shrink themselves for the comfort of those around them. They deserve this lesson too. Everyone is allowed to leave. No one is obliged to be uncomfortable for others’ comfort or enjoyment. 💜”
I’m not an elected official or quasi-public figure and have no constituents or pending election to worry about. Just one citizen, who, after listening to Christine Blasey Ford, doesn’t feel compelled to assume Kavanaugh’s innocence.
Besides, today’s hearing is not a court of law, it’s a job interview. I believe her to the point where I don’t even need or want to listen to Kavanaugh. She is an inspiration. He’s done.
To Lindsey Graham and his fellow whiney Republicans who are crying that there’s not enough time to confirm anyone before the midterms, two words. Merrick Garland.
Pressing Pause 