80 years ago, August 6th, the U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. It was meant as a message to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union got the message and the nuclear arms race was on.

Hiroshima after the Bomb.

August 6th is Hiroshima Day, a moment to reflect on what the U.S. did on that day and did again three days later to the Japanese city of Nagasaki.

And reflect on today’s renewed arms race.

Between 120,000 and 220,000 people died in the blasts or from burns, other wounds and radiation exposure over the next few months.

I was born three years after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

As a child growing up three hundred miles downwind from the above ground nuclear testing facilities in Nevada I breathed the air polluted by nuclear fallout and drank the milk poisoned by strontium 90.

An article today in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists recounts the history of the development of the bomb, its use against Japan and the follow-up leading to the atomic arms race that continues to this day.

The United States had long argued that the use of the atomic bomb on Japan was necessary to bring an end to the war and save American lives.

The choice of Japan (as opposed to Germany) as a target was determined early in the war planning.

Germany had been de-targeted long before—on May 5, 1943—when the Military Policy Committee, headed by Bush, first considered bomb targeting options. The committee decided that it was too risky to target Germany; German scientists might be able to reverse-engineer their own nuclear bomb if the Allied bomb turned out to be a dud. Targeting would be in the Pacific region, and it would be kept secret.

Was there a racist component to the decision to target an Asian people rather than a European country? It is difficult to believe otherwise.

There is now plenty of evidence that the use of the atomic bombs on Japan had less to do with ending the war than in sending a message to the Soviet Union, which at that point was still an ally but was viewed as the next enemy.

It was, among other things, a message to the Soviets. General Groves had believed since 1942 that “Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis … Of course that was so reported to the President.” Joseph Stalin got the message after the United States dropped its first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Yes. The Soviet Union got the message and the arms race and global nuclear weapons proliferation was on.

Just the other day Donald Trump threatened Russia by saying he was moving submarines armed with nuclear warheads into attack positions.

*No AI was used in writing this post. All spelling errors and errors of syntax are totally human. Let me know if you liked the post.

New York's Jews are voting for Mamdani. I'd like to think my grandpa Louis would be glad.

In the early days of the last century my grandfather, Louis Klonsky, was a rabbi in a working class neighborhood of Brooklyn on the border between Brownsville and East New York.

He had four sons. They all had great voices and sang in temple.

His son and my Dad, Robert, was one of the boys. At the age of 18 my Dad left Brooklyn to fight the fascists in Spain.

My grandfather Louis died over 70 years ago.

I never got to know him so I can’t say for certain what he would think about a so-called Jewish state waging a war of genocide.

I choose to think he would be appalled.

Outraged.

Most Jews are.

Recent polling in the New York race for mayor shows that in spades.

In spite of consistent attempts by the media and his opponents to paint Zohran Mamdani as antisemitic, the most recent poll shows him with a 17% lead over Andrew Cuomo among Jewish voters. His lead is even larger among Jewish voters over incumbent Eric Adams and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

Mamdani has not distanced himself at all from his criticisms of Israel or from his support for Palestinians and Palestine.

New York’s Jewish population is the largest of any city outside of Israel.

The attempt by non-Jewish politicians to pander to the Jewish vote is a long New York tradition.

Adams has even named his independent ballot line, “End Anti-semitism” in an attempt to curry favor with Jewish voters.

In the first debate leading up to the Democratic primary, candidate were asked about what country they would visit first after they were elected. All said Israel except Mamdani.

Mamdani - and only Mamdani - was then asked if he recognized Israel’s right to exist.

He answered, as he has consistently answered, that he supports Israel’s right to exist as a fully democratic state with equal rights for all its citizens.

That is not the Zionist answer.

The Zenith Research and Public Progress Solutions poll surveyed 1,453 New York City residents between July 16 and July 24.

Among Jewish respondents likely to vote in the November mayoral election, 43 percent said they supported Mamdani, compared to 26 percent for Cuomo, his closest competitor.

Yes. I hope Grandpa Louis would be pleased.

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With New York's ranked voting, most voters knew exactly what they were doing.

Zohran and Brad cross endorsed in the primary.

After Anne and I voted early in the New York Democratic primary last June we walked out of John Jay High School with a woman who said she didn’t know she could vote for more than one person in the ranked voting election.

We wondered how she did not know this? We also wondered if she was typical. Was ranked voting just too complicated for the voter to understand?

And would it help or hurt our candidate, Zohran Mandarin?

Looking at the results from June 24th, it seems most New York primary voters understood it pretty well.

It helped Mamdani win by double digits in the final calculations.

The Don’t Rank Evil Andrew for Mayor (DREAM) campaign worked exceeding well.

All of the leading progressives reminded voters to vote for five candidates but not to include Cuomo on their ballots.

Voters got it.

70% did not include Cuomo’s name on their ballots.

Key was Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander cross endorsing each other.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander’s cross endorsement of Mamdani resulted in Mamdani receiving another 85,000 votes when Lander was eliminated.

Nearly 60% of all voters included Mamdani somewhere on their ranked-choice ballot, with Lander, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, and Cuomo coming in second.

Roughly 78% of primary voters took advantage of ranked-choice voting and ranked more than one candidate, but 37% of Cuomo voters instead “bullet voted,” meaning they only ranked him.

But the way, although Hakeem Jeffries has yet to endorse the Democratic nominee, Mamdani won House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ Brooklyn-based district with 46% of the vote in the first round and 56% in the final round.

November’s election which, as of now, will include current mayor Eric Adams, Cuomo, Republican and perennial candidate Curtis Sliwa along with primary winner Mamdani, will not offer ranked voting.

Nothing should be taken for granted.

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NEA Representative Assembly votes to break ties with the ADL. The NEA leadership overturns the vote.

Union delegates to the 2025 NEA convention.

I was taking a break from posting new stuff while I was on vacation with the family. We get back to Brooklyn on Sunday.

It is beautiful here, a perfect escape from all the crap that is going on in Washington D.C. and in so much of the world.

But I can’t stay away from the internet while having my cup of decaf and a donut (or two), still warm from Payne’s Killer Donuts just down the road.

This morning I had to shake my head when I read the news that the Executive Committee of the National Education Association, the largest union in the United States, had overturned the vote of their national convention which took place in Portland, Oregon over the July 4th weekend.

I was a NEA career member and local president for ten years. I attended every NEA Representative Assembly for 20 years.

The NEA likes to refers to its yearly national meeting as “the largest deliberative body in the world”. It claims it as a sign of the NEA’s democratic processes.

Except, it appears, when it disagrees with the delegates, elected from every union region across the country.

In an action passed by the vote of 7,000 delegates, the NEA was to break its ties with the Anti-Defamation League.

Classrooms have long used ADL produced educational materials. But many teachers have found the ADL materials to be biased in equating antisemitism with criticism of Israel.

The ADL has made claims of a rising tide of antisemitism by including in their numbers recent campus protests directed at the genocide in Gaza.

In a statement released by the NEA Executive Committee, the union’s leadership said that they would reject the resolution passed by a majority of the RA delegates.

“After consideration, it was determined that this proposal would not further NEA’s commitment to academic freedom, our membership, or our goals. Today’s vote by the NEA Board of Directors to not adopt this proposal completes NEA’s process.”

In reaction to the NEA Executive Board’s decision, the ADL continued their misrepresentations.

“We welcome the NEA Executive Committee and Board of Directors' decision to reject this misguided resolution that is rooted in exclusion and othering, and promoted for political reasons. We urge NEA leadership to communicate clearly with its membership that not only has this measure been rejected, but also how this approach is harmful to educators, students and families concerned about the rise of antisemitism and hate in our schools and communities.

“This resolution was not just an attack on the ADL, but a larger attack against Jewish educators, students, and families. We are grateful for the leadership shown by the members of the NEA Jewish Affairs Caucus and teachers across the country, whose words and stories serve as both a reminder and warning of why our work is so important. We thank the nearly 400 Jewish and community organizations and dozens of elected officials around the country who made clear their concerns about this dangerous and antisemitic resolution.”

The ADL equates criticisms of itself with antisemitism, just as it equates criticism of Israel as antisemitic.

Links:

https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/jewish-community-welcomes-nea-executive-committees-decision-reject-boycott

https://www.nea.org/about-nea/leaders/president/from-our-president/2025-representative-assembly-update