4/30/2023

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            What are your plans for this last day of April? I have too many of them – including hosting our Zoomers at DFM, watching the Kings, talking with Quakers about the Doctrine of Discovery, planting tomatoes & attending a vigil. We’ll see what I can pack in.

Yesterday’s morel hunt did not yield any mushrooms, but the drive to the burn scar in the mountains fueled fellowship among our crew of nature lovers.

It looks like you had fun last night. I enjoyed the G’s video of your quips at the “nerd prom.” Your timing was brilliant, especially when you said, “I believe in the first amendment, not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it.” I also appreciated Roy Wood Jr.’s observation that the truth is getting too expensive because it’s behind a pay wall.

Was “Climate Defiance” successful at interfering with your access to the event? Have you heard that they accuse you of committing ecocide? They are incensed that you have reneged on your campaign promise to end fossil fuel extraction on federal land. If you want to keep the vote of the young folk, you need to do more to protect the planet.

Speaking of the election, according to Dan Balz at the WP, you “could suffer political fallout from a debt ceiling train wreck this summer, even if Republicans bear most of the blame for causing it.” He notes that you’ve been to this rodeo before in 2011 when you “linked raising the debt limit with efforts to reduce spending and deficits.” It’s ok with me if you have to do that again, but I would prefer you cut defense spending.

I’d also like you to recognize the NUG as the legitimate government in Burma. According to the Diplomat the junta has the support of a “collective of authoritarian states” & the response of the international community has been a policy of “outrage without action.”  Surely there’s something we can do.

BYBS,