4/26/2021

JRB,

            I am off to the dentist this morning. I love her. When I chipped my tooth in a slow-motion bike accident, she came to her office on a Sunday morning to give me a temporary fix.

My teeth are in pretty good shape, although they are not bright white like yours. When I did a google search to find out who your dentist is, I found lots of sites discussing your smile including Joebidensteeth.com. A blog post at drterryshapiro.com explains that your full mouth reconstruction looks fake because, “the crowns are too white, too opaque, and too long and bulky.” Perhaps it’s time for a new dentist.

Did you watch the Oscars last night? Isn’t it great that Chloé Zhao a Chinese immigrant won the award for best director & that she spoke some Mandarin in her acceptance speech, specifically, “人之初，性本善?” She explained it by saying, “I have always found goodness in the people I met, everywhere I went in the world. So, this is for anyone who had the faith, and the courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves and to hold on to the goodness in each other, no matter how difficult it is to do that.”

            So, when Sen. Shelley Moore Capito “circles back” with you today to discuss the infrastructure bill, keep that in mind. She’s a a good person who happens to disagree with you about some things. She wants to spend $900 billion. You want to spend $2 trillion. Why not compromise on $1.5 trillion? If you cut out the $400 billion for caregivers, that would do the trick. You can put that in a different bill which would be VERY popular with baby boomers, so it would probably pass. It would be great to get something through with bipartisan support.

            Please weigh in on the ASEAN plan to have a special envoy of the ASEAN facilitate "mediation of the dialogue process” between the junta & the National Unity Government, & call on the junta to release their prisoners. They could use some encouragement to do the right thing.

            As my dad would say, Keep Smiling,