It’s getting quite cold in DC tonight but a large group of young black men gathered for a protest. I was curious what it was they were protesting in the cold on a Saturday night and approached. It turned out that the men were there to discuss the situation in Israel.

I think it’s deeply touching that in a city where it’s very obviously very difficult to be black these young men would care enough about what’s happening all the way across the world and would get together to discuss it. It’s not important whether you agree with them or not, I believe, to feel proud of these young men.

I just read Kissinger’s article in today’s WSJ, and I’m very unimpressed. Just as we have finally buried the silly idea that Reagan destroyed the USSR, Kissinger comes up with an outlandish suggestion that Nixon actually caused it to break up by initiating negotiations with China. That’s a very bizarre idea.

Then he shows that his understanding of what Putin is doing in Syria is extremely shallow. I understand that the fellow is in his nineties but I thought he ar least managed to follow the trajectory of the USSR.

In all honesty, my plumber offers a more nuanced analysis of foreign affairs than this article.

Has anyone figured out what’s supposed to be so wrong with gentrification? I keep reading one angry article in the European press after another about neighborhood bars being displaced by nail salons and yoga studios and can’t figure out what drives the outrage other than the erasure of the traditionally working class male spaces in favor of those associated with successful professional women.

Yes, the demand for unskilled blue-collar labor has plummeted while the need for highly specialized, professional workers soared. Are we still mourning that? Because it’s been a while, and one would think it’s time to start getting over that.

In short, where is drama in ugly, dilapidated neighborhoods being spruced up and made more beautiful (and more comfortable for women)?

Even conservative media are convinced that Putin’s regime is about to fall because the people of Russia just have got to be upset about the country’s economic crisis and their plummeting standard of living.

This, of course, is a deeply Marxist idea that, like all Marxist ideas, collapses when confronted with reality. Last week, a survey was released indicating that Russians consider Putin’s greatest achievement to be. . . the way he dramatically improved the economy and – get this – raised the price of oil on the world market.

How can that be, you’ll ask? Easy. The people of Russia find out about the state of the economy not from their wallets but from their TVs.

Remember, people, money is nothing. Ideas are everything. Yesterday Putin told his people that the US is weak and Russia rules the world. And that feeling is much more enjoyable than being able to go buy crap at a store. People only go buy crap at a store because it helps them get a certain idea of themselves in place, anyway.

At the Russian restaurant, N became very tense and nervous.

“I’m wary of all these Russian people,” he explained.

“But why?” I asked. “They aren’t doing any harm.”

“Yeah, right, that’s what Ukrainians thought, and then you saw what happened,” he retorted.

The producers of “Homeland,” a TV spy drama, were filming a scene (shot in Berlin) in which one of the show’s main characters walks through a refugee camp run by Hezbollah, and they employed a group of Arabic-speaking graffiti artists to daub the walls with authentic slogans saying “Muhammed is the greatest.” But they forgot to hire a trusted Arabic-competent linguist to proofread. They had no idea what the artists had written on the set walls. It turned out to be slogans like “Homeland is not a series,” “Homeland is racist,” and “Homeland is rubbish.”

And it’s true, a show that is too cheap to find a translator is, indeed, rubbish.

We just discovered a Black Lives Matter street here in DC. Every other house in it has a BLM sign in the front yard.

I’m waiting for N in front of the Russian Consulate. The women who enter the building look like they never met a bottle of peroxide they didn’t like.

I’m absolutely loving Washington, DC, my friends. I probably like it even more than Chicago and Philadelphia, my favorite US cities.

For one, I love the nature in this region. The city is extraordinarily green and the nature is recognizable to me. (There are beautiful landscapes in California, for instance, but l don’t recognize them and that makes them difficult to enjoy).

I don’t even remember the last time I saw as many beautiful old trees. In the St Louis metro area where I live, there are no trees to speak of (unless you go to the Gardens or hiking trails). Shade is non-existent. Everywhere is the relentless, unmitigated sun. I haven’t been able to go for a walk during the day since April because of the sun and the heat. Does that sound normal to you?

The architecture in DC is beautiful. Private houses and apartment buildings look very attractive and very much unlike the ugly houses back in Connecticut. There are crowds of bikers and great bike trails downtown. I obviously don’t ride bikes but I like cities that accommodate bikers.

The downtown area is vibrant and exciting, unlike the perennially dead St Louis downtown. One thing I hate here in DC, though, is seeing the enormous number of indigent black people begging for money in the streets. Not even in St Louis is there anything like this. The last time I saw this kind of thing was back in New Haven, CT. And it just slaughters me.

The conclusion is that if a job opens up in my field and in my area somewhere around here, I will be applying in a flash.

The Wall Street Journal features a photo of an Israeli border guard searching a Palestinian. The two men look so much alike that, save for the clothes, they could be twins.