this will reduce the
deficit, not increase it …
that is simply false

Three times in the past half-century, Republicans have enacted large tax cuts that necessitated significant increases in federal borrowing. Each time they insisted the cuts would drive economic growth, even claiming that the expansion would be so large that the government would collect more tax revenue. Each time, they’ve been proved wrong.

Mr. Trump’s bill would be the fourth iteration of this failed experiment, and some Republicans are still retailing the same fantasies about the consequences. “This will reduce the deficit, not increase it,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate majority leader, said last week. That is simply false.

The expected increase in the debt is particularly absurd because the government would borrow much of the money from the same people who got the biggest tax cuts from the bill. Roughly half of the government’s debt typically is sold to American investors, and those investors are disproportionately affluent. When the government borrows from them rather than raising taxes, it is getting the same money from the same people on less favorable terms. Instead of taxing the rich, the government pays them interest.

From The National Debt Is Already Causing Bigger Problems Than People Realize by THE NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD in an opinion piece on June 39, 2025.

The expected increase in the debt is particularly absurd!

I am also struck by the phrase, That is simply false.

In my day, that was called … a lie.

Somewhat along the lines of, we are only departing gang members and drug dealers.

And telling a lie was considered bad.

Bad to tell it.

Worse to get caught telling it.

Today … who cares.

But why no one cares, is beyond me.

moral failure for
American society
as a whole … all … each

Adapted from the New York Times article, Catholic Bishops Try to Rally Opposition to Trump’s Immigration Agenda (NYT June 29, 2025), where Elizabeth Dias writes:

Leading Catholic prelates including Cardinal McElroy and Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark went even further in an interfaith letter to Senate leadership on Thursday night, strongly urging them to vote against the bill entirely.

In their letter they claimed that the bill, which calls for billions of dollars to bolster ICE, would spur immigration raids, harm hard-working families and fund a border wall that would heighten peril for migrants.

“Its passage would be a moral failure for American society as a whole,” the letter states.

The letter was organized by Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, N.M., who attended an ecumenical protest against the bill last week.

“This draconian, heavy-handed, meanspirited way that the country is dealing with immigrants today, it is not fair, it is not humane, it is not moral,” he said.

“It’s something we have to really be earnest about, and do everything we can within the law to make our voices heard.”

I think that last needs to be repeated.

This draconian, heavy-handed, meanspirited way that the country is dealing with immigrants today, it is not fair, it is not humane, it is not moral.

It’s something we have to really be earnest about, and do everything we can within the law to make our voices heard.

Is that hard to understand?

This is not statement from a national news service not named FOX.

This is a statement in a letter to the United States Senate (as it us understood) from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in America.

This draconian, heavy-handed, meanspirited way that the country is dealing with immigrants today, it is not fair, it is not humane, it is not moral.

It’s something we have to really be earnest about, and do everything we can within the law to make our voices heard.

Will folks dismiss this as just something from a bunch of liars?

I will wait to see anything similar for organizations like the Southern Baptist Church or Protestant leaders like Franklin Graham.

I will wait, but I won’t hold my breath.

I will add that this would be a moral failure for American society as a whole.

As a WHOLE.

That’s all of us.

As Mr. Lincoln said, “We … will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.“

That also is worth repeating.

We … will be remembered in spite of ourselves.

No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us.

Christians talk about a judgment day.

When that day comes, no personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us.

Where do you want to line up on that day?

farewell, friends, farewell
I cannot tell you why; but
here I go, goodbye

Based on the poem:

Farewell, my friends, farewell and hail;
I’m off to seek the holy grail;
I cannot tell you why;
Remember, please when I am gone,
’twas aspiration led me on;
Tiddly-widdly-tootle-oo,
all I want is to stay with you,
But here I go, goodbye.

The poem, written by Clarence Day, was published in the New Yorker Magazine on Dec 12, 1934, along with an original drawing by Mr. Day.

Day was famous for his Life with Father stories about Turn of the 19th Century New York City.

They were so good that the editor of the New Yorker, Harold Ross, said if he had done nothing more than published Day’s stories, he would have been satisfied with the standing of his magazine.

It was the last bit of Clarence Day published in the New Yorker and Day died a year later.

Clarence Day was also famous for once commenting:

“The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man.

Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish, civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others.

But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead.”

I turn to that today because of the news from Washington.

A feel like a piece of the jenga pile of things that made America, America was pulled out today and the whole thing is coming down.

Suffice it to say I have no words for how I feel because I have no words for how I feel.

I have asked myself often what will cause me to stop writing these writings and having no words may just be the push off the cliff.

I have no words left it seems.

I have questions.

I have questions like, how do people have so much hate inside themselves.

I have questions like, when does the Statue of Liberty come down?

Won’t that be a day to rival the book burnings in Berlin?

But as Mr. Day said, Monuments fall, nations perish, civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others.

I should not be surprised.

Liberty lasting wasn’t ever in the cards.

For today, we still have books.

The world of books where there are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead.

But they will come for the books next.

Safe money bets, they will come with masks on as they know its wrong and deep down, they will ashamed.

Not enough to stop them.

But enough that they will wear masks.

Shame.