My in-laws live in Emerald Isle, NC, just down the block from David Sedaris. When I first sent them one of his essays about there, they didn’t quite get his sense of humor. Now, they stalk him and notify me when a Sedaris is in residence. And they send me links to his latest essays.
The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2019.
Going to see the Nutcracker is a very expensive, but awesome NYC-area tradition. We’re going this year with an added bonus of more diversity. Truth be told, Jonah isn’t totally excited about this, because he associates the show with matching sweaters and other terrible things that we did to the boys when they were children. He’ll get over it, after we let him wear his scruffy beard and get a beer at the microbrew across the street from Lincoln Center.
For anybody who has read the Federalist Papers, it’s very clear what Madison and Hamilton would have thought of Donald Trump. I’m not sure if we will ever recover from his presidency. I think that one of the first jobs of the next president and Congress should be putting in place all sorts of laws that limits the power of the president and reforms election laws, so this NEVER happens again. I think that proposals for these reforms should be part of every campaign.
Apt. 11d 
“I think that one of the first jobs of the next president and Congress should be putting in place all sorts of laws that limits the power of the president and reforms election laws, so this NEVER happens again. I think that proposals for these reforms should be part of every campaign.”
I couldn’t possibly agree with you more. If anything like this happens, then, bizarrely, the Trump presidency will have had some positive effect.
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Iskierka wrote, “I couldn’t possibly agree with you more. If anything like this happens, then, bizarrely, the Trump presidency will have had some positive effect.”
Arguably, the Trump presidency has provided a sort of constitutional stress test.
I think that the domestic side has gone pretty well, but a lot of stuff involving foreign relations (where the president currently has a pretty free hand) has been a mess.
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laura wrote, ” I think that one of the first jobs of the next president and Congress should be putting in place all sorts of laws that limits the power of the president and reforms election laws, so this NEVER happens again.”
I don’t think that anybody who is running now wants to limit the power of the presidency. In fact, they keep promising that they are going to do various outlandish and virtually impossible things as president, like abolish the electoral college.
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The Republicans seem to be aiming for a government in which they maintain power even without the consent of the majority of the governed, so I don’t think there will be any change in powers of the executive unless all branches of government are controlled by the Democrats (and, well, even then, I’d be surprised). And, all branches of the government won’t be controlled by the Democrats because of the courts (well, without court packing).
Our country was organized with a balance of powers but also to support the system of slavery, which required slave-owners to have more power than their numbers (and not just in their wealth, but in the very operation of democracy). That suppression of the will of the majority continued into with Reconstruction. I hope that we are seeing the last resurgence of willful minority rule, but I am ever the optimist (but not nearly the optimist that Laura is!).
It will be interesting to see if the Democrats in Virginia really do implement independent redistricting.
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