Racing Through Italy

Some idiot once told me Milan is “the Pittsburgh of Italy — skip it” which, apart from being unfair to Pittsburgh, is just nuts: what a beautiful city!  Don’t miss the Fondazione Prada.

And Venice!  (And Murano, where we watched a master glassblower swiftly craft a vase and then a delicate glass horse.)  What an utterly impossible, yet impossibly charming, enterprise Venice is.

And Rome!

Tomorrow, off to Vico Equensa to the site of Mikey’s Last Breakfast and a boat ride to Capri and Positano.

Italy’s trains put ours to shame.

Everyone is so nice!

(Americans are nice, too.)

Did you watch Hillary with Rachel Maddow?  Here and here.

The thing is, we’re under attack from Russia; and far from doing anything about it — Nixon would have!  Ford would have! Reagan would have!  the Bushes would have! — this president does nothing but deny it’s even happening.  He takes Putin’s word — most recently, on Venezuela — over the findings of America’s intelligence community.

That takes only 11 words to say — he takes Putin’s word over the findings of America’s intelligence community — but think about it.

And the Republicans in Congress back him.

He is a constant liar and a sociopath.  (No, really.)

That takes only 8 words to say — he is a constant liar and a sociopath — but think about it.

It is kind of a big deal to be losing our democracy, beacon to the world, after 243 years’ struggle to create, preserve, and improve it.

But the market’s high* and unemployment low** and it’s fun, frankly, to make the well-educated squirm.***  So tens of millions of good people don’t see what’s happening and/or can’t much bring themselves to care.

We need to change that.

*Because he borrowed a fortune to slash corporation taxes, boosting after-tax profits; and stocks sell at a multiple of earnings.

**Obama brought it down from 10% to 4.9%; Trump, a little further.

*** “I love the poorly educated.”