There is a growing sense that Mr. Trump seems unwilling or unable to do the things necessary to keep himself out of trouble, and that the presidency has done little to tame a shoot-from-the-hip-into-his-own-foot style that characterized his campaign.

That would be the campaign that he won, of course. Yes, it’s a total mystery why anybody would refuse to throw away the strategy that gave them the biggest win of their life. 

People who are preparing to speak at the upcoming NATO summit are urged to edit their talks to last under 4 minutes because President Trump refuses to listen to anything much longer. And good for him. 

I detest long-winded speakers who blab uselessly for hours. It’s not like anybody at the summit has invented the cure for cancer and needs to describe the scientific process. There’s no justification for members of such a frankly useless organization speaking for too long. 

Governmental organizations are famous for endless, boring meetings that have zero value whatsoever. The culture of “meetings” should be eliminated. I wish in academia we adopted the culture of standing or walking meetings that are fashionable in business circles. 

So good for Trump for making blabberers shut the ef up. 

Vladimir Putin just wants to help. The Russian president offered Wednesday to provide transcripts of President Trump’s Oval Office conversations with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other top Russian officials last week to the U.S. Congress if necessary, during which Trump reportedly disclosed highly classified Israeli intelligence.

Of course. Because he’s thriving on this chaos. And his life’s goal of being able publicly and loudly to condescend to hapless Americans has finally come true. The position of “Oh, don’t worry, little ones, I’m always here to help” is precisely what he’s wanted this entire time. 

Kindle editions of books by foreign writers are cheaper in the Spanish translation than in the English. 

I wonder how the idiot immigrants who supported Trump “because he will be good for Israel” are feeling now. 

Every time I sit down to write, I feel amazement at how darn hard it is.

On one of our walks, we passed a Mexican family and I stopped to chat with them. N was stunned because my normal reaction to running across people is that of annoyance. It’s weird how happy I feel about meeting Spanish-speakers. It’s the same as most immigrants feel when meeting people who speak their own language. I feel so comfortable and at home that it makes my whole day. And it was the same when I was starting to learn Spanish and didn’t even understand much of what was being said. 

I never had a serious Spanish-speaking boyfriend, though. The cultural differences are too strong. I don’t think I could have ended up with anybody but a fellow Soviet person.

And still the “psychological” explanations of why Trump revealed classified intel to Russians prevail. “He’s a braggart, he can’t control himself,” writes one chirpy fool after another. 

As I keep saying, nothing will convince losers to get their heads out of their asses. The fellow is a billionaire and the president of the US, and they can’t let go of the ridiculous idea that he’s a bumbling fool who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. 

Since such folks are so into psychoanalyzing everything that moves, here is an explanation for their psycho fixation on seeing somebody enormously more rich and powerful than them as a loser: they have unresolved oedipal issues and keep battling the symbolic Daddy because he’s still too big and scary to be seen realistically. 

Klara now learns a word a day. Yesterday’s word was “cupcake” which she pronounces as “caca.” She first saw a cupcake in her alphabet book where it illustrates letter “c.” On that same day, a bunch of new bathtub toys arrived from Amazon Vine, and some of them were rubber cupcakes. 

She looked at a rubber cupcake, thought about it, and asked “Caca?” I confirmed that yes, it was a cupcake, just like in the book. She was so happy that she could identify and name the toy that she fell asleep clutching it in her little fist. 

In the morning, the first thing she did when I came into her room was show me the cupcake and announce “Caca!!” And you should see the joy on her beautiful little face. She’s so happy when she can communicate and have actual little conversations. 

I have a friend whose parents were German Jews who’d escaped right before the Holocaust. They were both college professors and completely secular. And deeply messed up by the Holocaust, as you can imagine. 

My friend has no interest in her Jewishness and never even mentions it. It’s not a part of her life at all. So one of her daughters went on that birthright trip to Israel, and now she feels completely Jewish, even started a Jewish organization on her campus in the deep South. 

I might have told this story before and I don’t remember because with thousands of posts it’s impossible to keep track. But I just met this daughter, and she confirmed the story. It’s fascinating to me how identity works. My friend says she feels very weird whenever she hears het daughter say, “I’m Jewish” because every time she has to remember where that comes from. 

The entire family speaks fluent German, by the way, and travels to Germany all the time. And the girls’ father is actually an ethnic German who learned the language of his ancestors from my friend.