What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give . . . .

Dealing and discussing things with grandchildren for a long time obviously makes one wonder what’s it all about. Here are some of the issued that seem to have risen lately.

Were Adam and Eve Jewish?  I never thought that they had any particular religious beliefs but if you believe in the Bible which is the book of the Jewish history, poems, tales and songs as they pursue the will of Yahweh you have to say that they must have been.

Did Jesus talk about the billions of stars?   Not that I’m a Bible scholar but my limited study in the area never indicated that he did. From that question comes the expected why are there so many stars? Did Jesus know about those stars or did he only know what a person born in Bethlehem would know about the universe?  Never mind the stars, did he know of the people living in other continents of the earth. If he is God wouldn’t he know about all the stars and galaxies and other people? Did He forget He was God when he came to earth and was only a regular man?

Looking at the Democratic candidates, none of whom really gets me quite enthused, I see that Massachusetts own Elizabeth Warren is among those considered contenders. Her great proposal is – as she puts it – to have people with over 50 million in assets to pay two cents. That’s all she’s asking, two cents on the dollar for every dollar over 50 million in wealth. Well that’s not exactly correct for if you own more than a billion dollars then for every dollar over a billion it is three cents.

Two or three cents doesn’t sound like much until you start attaching it to large amounts of dollars., then it becomes quite significant. One person discussing the wealth tax noted: “Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is worth about $57 billion. A 3 percent tax on that fortune would cost $1.7 billion in the first year, . . .” So it all adds up as you can see.

On Thursday, July 25, 2019, Jennifer Rubin wrote in the Washington Post:

“Democratic presidential candidates and voters had better get their act together to find someone to beat Trump. If not, Trump with the complicity of a craven party and the indulgence of those who know better will further fray our tenuous attachment to democracy and truth.”

Earlier she had written that Mueller: “confirmed that President Trump accepted help from a hostile foreign power and lied about it, that he lied when he claimed exoneration, that he was not completely truthful in written answers, that he could be prosecuted after leaving office and that he misled Americans by calling the investigation a hoax . . . . “

Mueller testified before Congress on Wednesday, July 23, 2019. He did reaffirm his conclusion that Russia attacked America during the 2016 election in a systematic manner. He spent the first section of his report spelling this out and noting that the purpose of this attack was to benefit Trump during the run up to the election spelling out the enormous amount of time and effort put in by Russia to do this.

It’s about Dershowitz’s attacks on Bill Bulger in relation to the 75 State Street matter that have no facts to support them other than half truths drummed up by Dershowitz.  You know the Boston Globe did a Spotlight report on 75 State Street. It continued to report on that for several months. Dershowitz is one of the Globe’s favored people using the paper whenever he has a grudge to exploit. Dershowitz wrote: “Billy got a free pass from prosecution for extortion after he received a quarter of a million dollars from the developer of 75 State Street, when the acting U.S. attorney on the case just happened to be the only Justice Department lawyer in on the Connolly-Whitey secret.”

The truth is that Bill Bulger’s involvement in 75 State Street was examined by two Massachusetts attorney generals and by two federal investigations. All exonerated him. There was no free pass. There was no extortion.

This is not about Jeffrey Epstein.

Nor is it about Dershowitz’s constant defending his buddy Trump.

Nor is it that “Dershowitz and the president share a number of friends and acquaintances, including Patriots owner Bob Kraft. The two men met years ago in Kraft’s suite at a Patriots game, he said. “I liked him,” Dershowitz said. “He was very nice, he was very affable. We talked football.” 

Just as an aside. Trump and Kraft are best friends. I read, “Just a reminder, the “spa” where Kraft committed his alleged crimes is located about 20 miles north of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.” In early July Kraft was sitting at the same table as Trump, the Qatari Emir, and next to Christine Lagarde,  in a dinner honoring the Emir while criminal charges against him were pending. I’m sure Lagarde had that itchy, creepy/crawly feeling after she left.

Nor is it about Alan Dershowitz telling us how he did get a massage, or massages, at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion in Palm Beach but he kept his underwear on and the masseuse was an adult and not one of the thirteen year old girls that seemed to be ubiquitous around Jeffrey’s den of iniquity. Why he was getting a massage at Jeffrey’s diddling house of horror he did not explain. He’s now pathetically telling the world that he couldn’t have raped some young girls because he had a “perfect, perfect sex life during the relevant period of time.”  Ah, it recalls Hamlet telling his mother: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”,

Rene Alexander Acosta (born January 16, 1969) is an American attorney, academic, and politician. Today, he serves as the 27th United States Secretary of Labor. He was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida between June 11, 2005 and June 5, 2009. During that time he committed to the most egregious sentencing deal in the history of American jurisprudence. Despite this with all the cringe inducing aspects to it, he maintains his position as Secretary of Labor.

As U.S. Attorney on an October morning in 2007, he had a breakfast appointment with a former colleague, Washington, D.C., attorney Jay Lefkowitz. Instead of meeting at his Miami headquarters. It is reported: “the two men — both with professional roots in the prestigious Washington law firm of Kirkland & Ellis — convened at the Marriott in West Palm Beach, about 70 miles away. For Lefkowitz, 44,  . . .  the meeting was critical.” Why is Acosta holding a secret meeting?

Here we have a U.S. attorney meeting secretly with a lawyer who represented “Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, [who] was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found.” Epstein is involved in raping many, many young girls

Harvard, a recipient of many gifts from Epstein, has been asked about them: “Former University President Derek C. Bok, then serving as Harvard’s interim president, stood by his longstanding assertion that the University should not “have an obligation to investigate each donor and impose detailed moral standards.” University spokespeople said in 2006 that Harvard had no plans to return any money it had received from Epstein.” I suppose it won’t have any problems taking money from Mohammed bin Salman the Saudi Arabian butcher.  

I assume when you have the type of money that Jeffrey Epstein had there are very many who bow and scrape looking for scraps from his table. Harvard has received a gift from the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation of 30 million dollars to study the evolution of molecular biology. It is said the Foundation gives out 200 million dollars in gifts every year to scientists. The Foundation “has helped fund NeuroTV, the largest online network devoted to academic interviews on everything neuroscience.”  Through his generosity and Foundation Epstein has done much good and built many contacts. He has been a member of the Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations.