6/3/2023

June 3, 2023

JRB,

            Good news, bad news. How do we attend to both in one sitting?

When my daughter was born, one of my basketball friends gave me an empty journal with a smiling baby & a crying baby on opposite covers so when one was right-side-up the other was upside-down & you could open the book either way. The idea was to write happy thoughts from one end & sad thoughts from the other. I filled it with more positive stories than negative ones, but I always appreciated the acknowledgement that motherhood was not going to be all fun & games.

You shared a similar equanimity in your oval office speech last night. “Compromise and consensus… No one got everything they wanted. Americans got what they needed.”

That’s a long way of saying, since these letters can be only 1950 characters, you will find jarring shifts from good news to bad. That’s just how it has to be.

According to the UN, time is running out to save Myanmar’s Rakhine from hunger & disease post-Cyclone Mocha. They say, “Households have completely lost their seed stocks. We are anticipating, unless there's an effective response, that food availability & affordability will become huge issues.” The junta is impeding aid. Please do something.

Isn’t it wonderful that Patrick McHenry is such a budget nerd? He looks like a leprechaun with his cute smile & bow tie. According to the WP, he was one of KOM surrogates at the bargaining table with your peeps who we all need to thank for averting a crisis.

Thanks for commending KOM. The NYT’s Ross Douthat opines that KOM likes his job & has “enthusiasm for the actual vote-counting, handholding work required of his position” & lacks “Gingrichian egomania & get-me-out-of-here impatience.”

Did you have fun at the Marine parade last night? Why do the marines have an ENGLISH bulldog as their mascot? Wouldn’t a Boston Terrier or an Alaskan Malamute be more appropriate?

BYBS,