May 20, 2020: Perchance to Dream

Rona said, "If you want to sleep through the night, don't talk about COVID-19 after 8:00."

I hadn't been sleeping well. That is not new.  It is not unusual for me to wake up with a jolt at 4:00 a.m. and though I try to get back to sleep frequently it is to no avail.

With ear buds, seeking distraction, on the radio, I listen to late night talk shows but for the most part they rant about the pandemic and how it was caused by a conspiracy that somehow involves Barack Obama and Bill Gates with one or the other of them also the Antichrist. 

Some distraction!

Rona said, "The other night one of your ear buds popped out and I could hear what you were listening to--a doctor of some sort who was talking about doing radiosurgery on someone's prostate."

I remembered that. Dr. Lederman. He's on the radio frequently during the middle of the night.

"With that blasting in your ears it's a wonder you can sleep at all."

I knew she was right, but I've been doing this for decades and am addicted to middle-of-the-night radio. Sometimes there's a baseball game to listen to, but not this year.

"I know that . . ."

"You need to try to stop this. With everything going on in the world, you don't need more aggravation. You're making yourself crazy and soon you'll be making yourself sick."

"I know . . ." 

"One thing you can do immediately is stop talking about COVID after 8:00. Maybe that would help. You're already taking Zoloft and I'm not comfortable adding a sleeping pill to the mix of your meds." I shrugged, beginning to feel hopeless. 

Rona said, "It's nearly eight o'clock now so why don't we start tonight? I won't let you draw me into a discussion about Trump and the pandemic. That also should help you sleep through the night."

I agreed and less than an hour later we went upstairs to watch some mindless TV before letting ourselves fall asleep. 

That night I woke up for good at 3 a.m., a little better than my usual, but still I knew it would lead to an agitated day.

The next night over dinner, we talked about Rona's city garden, not a word passed between us about the virus. And thus I expected to have some uninterrupted sleep. 

That was not to be.

Though I fell asleep a little past midnight, and that should have launched me into at least a decent night's sleep, by four I was wide awake, waiting for "Morning Joe" to go on the air. I was slipping backwards and losing my motivation to keep experimenting.

The next night, breaking all the rules that just a few days had me feeling optimistic, at about 9:30, as if out of the blue, I asked Rona to summarize for me the two types of tests they give people who they suspect might have COVID.

"The first one is the swab test," Rona said. "It can tell if you actively have the virus, the other one is a blood test and it . . ."

She broke off and punched the mattress. "I can't believe this. After talking about this an hour ago and agreeing we would not allow ourselves to talk about the virus after 8:00, here I am," she smacked the bed again, "here I am doing just that. Talking about it. You've turned me into your enabler. I'm sure Dr. Lederman and his prostate machine are waiting for you."

Rona was right in everything she felt and said.

Weakly I said, "But everything you've been saying about it tonight has been very interesting. I learned a lot. And . . . "

"I give up." Rona said, and with that she turned out her light and rolled onto her side, facing away from me.

At 7:30 am we got out of bed and hugged each other. I tried to apologize. 

Rona said, "Forget about it. I know you're struggling with this."

"I am. I really am. I don't want to be this way. Please, one more time, forgive me. I am trying. I really am."

I knew Rona had heard all this before.

"But one crazy thing," I said with a smile.

"What's that?"

"Like last night when out of nowhere I asked you about the tests, well past eight o'clock, and you began to respond, I assumed I would be lucky to sleep at all. My head would be filled with COVID anxieties. But, maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. Amazingly, I slept very well. No antichrist. No conspiracies. Just beautiful sleep."

"And what are you taking from that?"

"Maybe a little medical talk is not a bad but a good thing?"

"I think I've heard this one previously," Rona said. "But let's give it a try. We don't have much to lose."

And we have for the past few days. And, in spite of myself and my sleep history, I'm feeling optimistic. I'm sleeping quite well.

January 15, 2018--Davos

Donald Trump is going next week to the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 

This is to say the least a little surprising because the people who attend are for the most part the kind of "globalists" he and his base of supporters abhor.

But treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin has his boss's back. He claims those who show up are not elitists but, according to a report in the New York Times, more akin to "Average Joes."

They quote him--"I didn't realize that it was the global elite. I don't think it's a hangout for globalists." 

On that basis alone, if he is sincere and thus that ignorant about some of the forces that shape the world's and America's economy, he should be summarily fired. How can a U.S. secretary of the treasury be so, how to put this, out to lunch? Or, out shopping with his wife?

For example, though neither Trump nor Mnuchin will have to reach into there own pockets to pay the $70,000 for a ticket--we the taxpayers will--this smacks of elite to me.

It does allow participants to hobnob with the likes of Bill Gates and the IMF's Christine Lagarde (assuming she's not in jail) and of course other pundits such as Bono, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Shakira.

Here, though, is my favorite part of the Davos schedule--

To help people keep their heads screwed on straight, to have the semblance of an authentic experience, to quote the Times, "for more interactive entertainment, one popular event is the simulation of a refugee's experience [where] attendees crawl on their hands and knees to better understand what it's like to evade an advancing army."

When I read this to Rona, she cried, "NOOOO. Please, tell me it isn't true!"

Sorry girl, but I checked other sources and it appears to be true, though I doubt Mnuchin and Trump will get down for that.   

February 10, 2014--Hillary? Mitt? Bill? (Not that Bill)

We know Hillary's running.

There's a book just published, HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, that provides behind-the-scenes glimpses of her tenure as Secretary of State, a book that could almost be considered a neo-version of the classic "campaign biography." And then there is Hillary's forthcoming book, also largely about her days in the Obama administration.

This will have the HRC authors, Jonathan Allen and Amie Rarnes, making the rounds of the talk shows--coming to Morning Joe I am sure this week--and Hillary herself at the end of the year, taking time off from $200,000-a-pop appearances, also appearing everywhere. All just in time to launch the unofficial stage of her campaign for the presidency. The official announcement will occur during the spring/summer of 2015.

So that's settled. Hillary is a go and, maybe, as reported over the weekend, so is Joe Biden. But he trails Clinton by about 65 points in the latest polls--65 points!--and so, unless there is a looming Clinton scandal (which with them can never be fully ruled out), this plan of Biden's sounds masochistic.

Then, what about the other side? What's happening with the Republicans?

Most dramatic and politically meaningful is the decline and soon-to-be-seen fall of Chris Christie. He was universally acknowledged to be Hillary's most potent opponent because of his ability to attract independent and undecided voters.

But with Christie ostensibly out of the race (no senior Republicans wants to be seen in the same room with him), who has a chance to secure the nomination and can plausibly beat Hillary in 2016?

Rand Paul has a chance to be nominated by the Tea Party and Libertarian GOP base, but in a general election against Hillary would fare as badly as Goldwater did against LBJ in 1964. Mike Huckabee also looks like a base-pandering contender but also would have general election problems--women, for example, will not forget his recent dumb comments about their "out-of-control libidos."

Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio still look like boy scouts. The half-dozen Republican governors talked about as possible candidates are all excruciatingly borrrring. Think Scott Walker and  Bobby Jindal. Jeb Bush has the Bush problem--he's the brother of George (and that's a problem) and Mama Bush has been saying enough already with the Bushes. (And, to be fair and balanced, enough already with the Clintons--more about that in a moment.) Newt, Michele, Rick and Rick, and--my personal favorite from last time around, Herman Cain--have all been there and done that.

In the face of this undistinguished field, the Harold Stassen of the 21st century (young folks google him to find out who he was), Mitt Romney, it is reported, is again beginning to crank things up.

He apparently will be talking very soon with wife Ann to see if she's OK with another campaign. Mitt's 10 or 12 or 15 sons are apparently all on board. The Romneys are finished renovating their California house, with its twin car elevators, and all Mrs. R's dressage horses and Cadillacs are in good shape, so, what the heck, the money's there, life is short, why not.

So with the prospect of Hillary versus Romney I'm having a back-to-the-past moment.

I think Barbara Bush is right--enough with the Bushes, Clintons, and, I'll add, Romneys. We need some outside-the-box candidates to help us think in new ways about how to solve our problems, grow our economy, and restore our place in the world.

Thus, I'm thinking about Bill. Not that Bill. He's inside the box and thankfully the Constitution will not allow him to run again. Not to mention Hillary who would have a few objections. In there cosmology, it's her turn. And then Chelsea's and then . . .

Get Barbara's and my point?

The Bill I'm thinking about is Bill Gates.

Beginning in a college dorm room (OK, it was at Harvard) he built one of the largest and most successful companies ever. Talk about being a job-creator. With all of Microsoft's limitations, its products changed the world for all time. And now as the operational head of the world's largest foundation, he has been intimately involved in education reform, health care, resource conservation, renewable energy, and many other things we as a country, as a society need to pay attention to.

I'm also interested in a president who has real experience running things, not just a Senate staff of five, and is not timid about holding people accountable. Ask Microsoft senior staff about Gate's leadership and fierce efforts to hold them accountable for their work. If people were to screw up in a Gate's administration they wouldn't be retained for months after messing up and then allowed to resign so they can claim to want to spend more time with their families. Enough of that.

We need more than change we can believe in.