GoodFellas and what I'm reading today
Only 1,453 days to go...
When I was in high school, Mario Puzo’s seminal novel, The Godfather, was published. It was an immediate best seller. It was a shocking novel and just about everyone I knew was reading it. Even the lifeguard at our neighborhood club had his eyes fixated on the book, rather than on the little ones splashing in the pool.
My parents bought a copy of the book and then they both read it. Then my brother and I read it. I was utterly mesmerized by the scenes, the story and the characters. I was pretty naive at the time. If you can believe it, I had no idea what the Mafia was. My only previous awareness about organized crime was the 1959 TV series, The Untouchables, with Robert Stack as Eliot Ness. However, when that show was being aired, I was pretty young. My parents considered it inappropriate for me to watch.
So, to state the obvious, The Godfather was eye-opening for me. I couldn’t put the book down. One time I was home alone reading it, when the phone rang. (In those days, we always answered the phone. There were no texts, cells, answering machines or voicemail.) I was annoyed at the interruption, and was so engrossed in the book, that I actually debated, whether to answer the phone or not.
What struck me, as I was reading the novel, was how utterly ruthless and vicious these people were; how amoral and corrupt their behavior was. They thought nothing of harming communities and killing others, who got in their way. It was like, well, the cruelty was the point.
And these mobsters even had the audacity to go to church on Sundays and call themselves Christians, while they were murdering and destroying their rivals. I’ll never forget the final lines of the novel, which still haunt me even today over fifty years later.
“She emptied her mind of all thought of herself, of her children, of all anger, of all rebellion, of all questions. Then with a profound and deeply willed desire to believe, to be heard, as she had done every day since the murder of Carlo Rizzi, she said the necessary prayers for the soul of Michael Corleone.”
(Actually, the fact that this scene was eliminated in the film, made the movie a little disappointing to me.)
I was thinking about Vito Corleone yesterday, when I read that Colombia President Gustavo Petro had backed down from his principled stand about receiving migrants from the United States. (Co-operate or else: Trump's Colombia face-off is warning to all leaders).
Apparently, The Don(ald) had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Thought for the day in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas Feast Day…
“Fear is such a powerful emotion for humans that when we allow it to take us over, it drives compassion right out of our hearts.”
~ Thomas Aquinas
What I read every day…
I’ve decided to eliminate a few sites from my posts, specifically, Letters from an American and The Bulwark. You can go directly to their Substack accounts to read what I read every day. I very much encourage you to subscribe to both. The links to their sites are below.
Quote of the day:
“Vladimir Putin is a gangster, but he is also the law. Putinism is what happens when you put a gangster in charge of a state. Yet the great and good American people decided to put a convicted felon who consorts with gangsters in charge of their state. And they did this after their Supreme Court invented a writ of criminal immunity for him. What did they think was going to happen?”
~Jonathan V. Last
What I’m reading today…
The Proud Boys Are Plotting a Comeback. And They Want Revenge
Fresh out of federal prison, former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio suggests he’s still in charge as the far-right organization looks to regroup.
Kristi Noem Stood Up JD Vance at Her Own Swearing-in Ceremony
The new Secretary of Homeland Security was reportedly late to her own swearing-in ceremony.
Isn’t it comforting to know that she’s going to be in charge of our homeland security?
The Foreign Policy of an American Kleptocracy
Trump expounded on his vision for Gaza as a luxury resort. "It could be better than Monaco. It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything. They never took advantage of it, you know, as a developer. It could be the most beautiful place, the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate."
We live in a world in which algorithms controlled by American and Chinese oligarchs choose the messages and images seen by millions of people; in which money can move through secret bank accounts with the help of crypto schemes; and in which this dark money can then boost anonymous social-media accounts with the aim of shaping public opinion. In such a world, how can any election rules be enforced?
How key Republican senators are responding to Trump allies’ primary threats
Tillis has reason to expect a right-wing challenge…. North Carolina is expected to be among the most competitive states for Senate Republicans to hold in 2026.
Trump’s week of dicey nominations
Once it was clear Hegseth was within the ideological mainstream of the current GOP — and once the president and his allies made clear that departures from the party line would result in primary challenges — the Pentagon was his for the taking. The obstacles facing RFK Jr. and Gabbard are different, rooted in their unorthodox views and non-traditional backgrounds. They are as exotic as any Cabinet-level nominations in decades, which, even in a tribalized capital, makes Republicans uneasy.
Musk’s Trump Endorsement Could Backfire as Tesla Sales Set to Stagnate
Wall Street banks expect Tesla’s vehicle sales to grow much more slowly this year than its boss Elon Musk has forecast, as US President Donald Trump seeks to dismantle Biden-era climate policies that favour electric vehicles.
Shove the Presidency Down Trump’s Throat
Trump has historically faltered when he’s been forced to contend with the actual pressure of the presidency and its myriad responsibilities because his ideas are bad and he doesn’t have a deep and abiding interest in public service to really make a sustained effort to confront, let alone solve, the biggest problems we face.
Cryptocurrencies serve no useful purpose other than the purchase of other crypto assets, money laundering, extortion and scams… And if they infiltrate Wall Street, they could destabilize the entire financial system
Worth Watching:
President Donald Trump seems to think the US is a patsy. Fareed Zakaria argues the US has been the biggest beneficiary of the world order it built after World War II, but Trump’s transactionalism could undermine that world.
“We all accommodate American requests and wishes more than we do from any other country.”
Things I read everyday….
I read Letters from An American everyday, so I am no longer going to reference it in my Substack posts. Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletters are fabulous, so I encourage you to subscribe on your own.
I’m also a big fan of The Bulwark. I started subscribing to it shortly after I discovered it in 2019. The Bulwark was founded to provide analysis and reporting in defense of America’s liberal democracy. That’s it. That’s the mission. I find their podcasts and articles thoughtful and helpful in making sense of what is going on with the US.
