And the fact that Steyer is a no bullshit New Yorker, whose mother worked at the Brooklyn House of Detention, goes a long way with me.

Steve Villano

Apr 24, 2026

(Campaign poster from Mario M. Cuomo’s 1982 New York State Gubernatorial Campaign against multi-millionaire Lewis Lehrman, heir to the Rite Aid Pharmacy fortune.)

In 1982, Mario M. Cuomo, ran for Governor of New York State as a Democrat. He had no money, but was the incumbent Lt. Governor of NY State, and Secretary of State for the four years before that. Those eight years were Cuomo’s sum total of experience in public office.

A lawyer by training, and a brilliant one of the highest integrity, Cuomo gained another kind of hands-on public service experience when he was called upon by NYC Republican/Liberal Mayor John Lindsay in 1971, to mediate a highly controversial public housing proposal in Forest Hills, Queens. Cuomo, acting as a private citizen, succeeded by cutting the size of the NYC Housing Authority proposal in half. He documented his work in the book, Forest Hills Diary: The Crisis oif Low Income Housing, by Mario Cuomo, 1973. The preface to Cuomo’s book was written by the journalist Jimmy Breslin.

During his campaign for Governor, Cuomo picked up the endorsement of the State’s progressive public sector labor unions, and mercilessly attacked his GOP opponent—Lew Lehrman, heir to the Rite Aid Pharmacy fortune—for his “excessive” wealth of what was then $25 million, and of his trying to “buy” the Governorship by spending $8.8 million of his own money on the campaign. All of that, came against the backdrop of a Rockefeller (Nelson) spending a total of $10-12 million for all four (4) of his NYS Gubernatorial campaigns from 1958 through 1970.

Fast forward to California, 2026, and the battle for the Governorship of the nation’s largest state, and the world’s 4th largest economy. Again, the issue between two of the leading candidates in our State’s June 2 “Open Primary” election, is coming down to experience vs. money. In this instance the money gap is much greater, but the experience differences are far more difficult to pigeonhole.

For California voters, we’ll be fortunate if it we get to choose between Progressive environmentalist and change-agent Billionaire Tom Steyer—who has already spent $121 million of his own money on his campaign, and Xavier Becerra, a self-professed institutionalist, and a steady, life-long staple of California’s public life, and former Biden Administration HHS Secretary. Because of California’s crazy “Open Primary” system, the alternative to either of those solid and sane candidates could be calamitous.

The latest polling averages as of April 23, 2026, from the Race to the White House/California 2026 Governor’s Polling have such a Democratic dream match-up within the range of possibility, with the polling—two weeks before mail balloting begins —reflecting a tight battle between: MAGA Fox News commentator Steve Hilton at 18.2%; Tom Steyer, 14.5%; former Far Right Oathkeeper Chad Bianco, 14.3 %, and former HHS Secretary, Becerra, 13.7%. Less than four percentage points separates all four of them.

Having grown up on the intensely competitive political party primary system in New York State—and waging my one and only campaign for public office as a “reform Democrat” more than a decade before I began working with Mario Cuomo—I’ve always found California’s “Open Primary,” multi-party, anything goes system of voting to be both bizarre and begging for abuse, since it’s inception 14 years ago. The only thing I see as more “Open” here, are more open-ended political spending, more never-ending campaigning, and more second and third rate and perennial candidates who somehow persuaded themselves that they were ready for prime time, or were what we needed.

Barring the unlikely catastrophe of the two MAGA monsters finishing first and second in the voting on June 2—with the looney law precluding any opportunity to write in a new candidate, run on a third party line, do the whole nightmare over, or declare a state of emergency—the best scenario for sensible Californians would be for either Steyer or Becerra to finish in the top two.

Ideally, if those two Democrats finish as the top two vote getters, than we voters—who receive our mail ballots for the ‘Open Primary’ in two weeks—will face the best of all possible choices, between Steyer and Becerra, which could be an informative campaign for the heart and soul and future direction of the Progressive movement in this country.

Unlike Cuomo’s campaign against Lew Lehrman 44 years ago, it won’t be a campaign of “experience” vs. “money”, but of substantively different and compelling experiences and backgrounds, and of who can best control the runaway wealth of billionaires, and best deliver public services to all Californians. It’s well worth taking a look at the backgrounds and stories of Becerra and Steyer, both 68 years old, to understand what drives them, how hard, and what could be in store for all of us.

BECERRA:

Xavier Becerra is a true American success story, especially for many of us from immigrant families. The Sacramento-born son of Mexican immigrants, Becerra is the first member of his family to ever attend college, and that was as a Stanford University undergraduate, and Stanford Law School graduate, Class of 1984.

Becerra first worked for Legal Aid, and then joined the State Senate Staff of Senator Art Torres, an early and consistent mentor for many young Latinos in California government and politics, and the longest serving chair in the history of the California State Democratic Party. The Sacramento native stayed close to home, working for three years as a Deputy Attorney General in the California Department of Justice from 1987-1990, before getting elected to the State Senate for one-term, in 1990. In 1992, Becerra ran for, and won, a Congressional seat in the Los Angeles area, which he represented until 2017, or some 24 years.

Yet, Becerra’s smooth political career glide path was just beginning. In 2016, he found himself on Hilary Clinton’s short list for potential Vice Presidential running mates. When then California Attorney General Kamala Harris was elected to the US Senate from California that same year, Becerra popped up on another high-level “short list,” and was appointed by California Governor Jerry Brown to become the State’s first Latino AG—a position to which he was elected in his own right in 2018. During his tenure as State Attorney General, Becerra sued the First Trump Administration some 122 times on issues from the Affordable Care Act to DACA.

When Joe Biden was elected President in 2020, he selected Becerra to become the first Latino to run the federal Department of Health and Human Services in U.S. history. Now, the man with the golden resume is running to become the first Latino Governor in California, since 1875.

While Becerra’s political path appears to have been charmed from the outset, he has been consistently criticized during his pubic career for not being a risk-taker; not rocking-the boat; for moving too slowly and methodically on crucial social justice, economic, public health and environmental issues in Congress, as a State Attorney General and as the head of HHS under the Biden Administration. In an opinion piece in the LA Times (4/23/26), he was again labeled as too “chill” by the writer Gustave Arellano, and his preternatural imperturbability and pre-boiled boilerplate answers to most questions can often come across as glib, insincere, or just a polished way of avoiding any answer at all.

For example in a recent televised interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, the journalist asked Becerra if he didn’t think it was a bit strange that even though he was a former HHS Secretary, California’s Nurses had officially endorsed Steyer. Becerra’s smiling, stonefaced answer was incomprehensible, leaving the fact of the Nurses endorsement floating out there like a hot air balloon.

STEYER:

Tom Steyer’s story of success is no less compelling than Becerra’s and completely different.

He was born on the other side of the country, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, to a mother who was a remedial reading teacher at the Brooklyn House of Detention, and a father with the white shoe law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, who served as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. Steyer’s mother was a devout Episcopalian, and his father was Jewish, a fact of birth that has not prevented Steyer from courageously criticizing AIPAC’s “dark money” influence on American Political campaigns.

Steyer earned his BA at Yale, where he captained the University’s Soccer Team, ironically, a position held a few decades later by California’s current Attorney General Rob Bonta, who succeeded Xavier Becerra as California’s current Attorney General.

Stanford’s Graduate School of Business brought Tom Steyer out to Northern California in 1981, putting him and Becerra on the same campus—but at different Stanford professional schools—Business and Law—at precisely the same time. They were both in their mid-20’s. While at Stanford completing his MBA, Steyer worked on Walter Mondale’s long-shot campaign for President, against former California Governor Ronald Reagan. Not many Stanford Business School graduates could be found working on Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign in 1984.

A passionate environmentalist, Steyer was active in every Democratic Presidential campaign from Mondale’s right on through both of Barack Obama’s, becoming the single biggest fundraiser for Obama, and securing for himself a speaking position at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. Already a leading voice on environmental and energy policy, and working with leaders like Bill McKibben, Steyer told the nation that the election of 2012 was “a choice about whether to go backward or forward. And that choice is especially stark when it comes to energy.”

Steyer, whose present net worth hovers around $2.4 billion, made his fortune through the San Francisco-based hedge fund he founded, Farallon Capital. When he left the hedge fund in 2012, at the age of 54, Steyer disposed of his carbon polluting investments and his investments in private prisons—both of which have come under fire during this year’s Governor’s campaign. Steyer has rebutted those charges by pointing to his impeccable environmental credentials since then—and his support from leading environmental groups and environmentalists like McKibben—and his no-holds barred position on ICE, calling for the complete abolition of the agency.

In addition to being the founder and driving force behind “Next Gen America,” Steyer—a consistent backer of major environmental and voter protection initiatives— was the biggest contributor (some $12 million) to the Campaign to pass Prop 50, the historic California redistricting Proposition passed in November 2025, with some 64% of the Statewide vote.

And, unlike several other leading Democrats in the State of California—including incumbent Governor Gavin Newsom and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, the quixotic captive of tech billionaires attacking Steyer for being a billionaire—Tom Steyer has given his full support to a wealth tax on billionaires and millionaires, winning him Progressive support from Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, Our Revolution, the California Teachers Association, the California Nurses Association, Smart Justice California, Courage California and State Assemblymembers who have supported prison reform legislation, including, Isaac Bryan, Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, and Mia Bonta—the partner of present California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Becerra’s successor in the AG’s Office, and himself, a prison reform champion.

In a story in the April 23, 2026, San Francisco Chronicle entitled “Bernie Sanders Group Makes Suprise Endorsement in Cal.Governor’s Race,” the Bay Area’s Our Revolution group—which vehemently opposes billionaires’ involvement in politics—defended its endorsement by saying Steyer is working “to challenge the very system that benefits people like him.”

Since leaving his private equity firm, some 14 years ago, Steyer has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of liberal/progressive candidates and causes across the country. In addition to supporting a wealth tax on California’s wealthy like himself, Steyer has pushed progressive ideas like breaking up the PG&E monopoly, and supporting a single-payer health care system—admitting that Bernie Sanders was right in 2020 on the single-payer issue and he was wrong.

Tom Steyer’s experience—and the crucial causes and progressive candidates to which he has devoted his personal fortune over the past decade—is extraordinarily different and far more enlightening and inspiring than anything that wealthy candidates like the GOP’s Lew Lehrman, 44 years ago in New York, or Meg Whitman, 16 years ago in California, brought to the public’s table on opposite coasts of the country.

Steyer is giving us the opportunity to give him the kind of chance we can all benefit from, and he’s got the tenacity, courage, fearlessness, flexibility, record, commitment, and yes, wealth, to fight with everything he’s got on our behalf.

In the final week of the Second Season of “The Pitt,” I ended up as a patient in two different emergency rooms in two separate states, and had two unique experiences.

Steve Villano

Apr 18, 2026

(Is a nose with deviation such a crime agains the nation? Me and my “Rhino Rocket,” and Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle).

I didn’t start out searching for Dr. Robby.

All I wanted was for my spontaneous nosebleeds to stop.

The first one hit me some 36 hours after I flew from the West Coast into Nashville, Tennessee. It could have been from the dry air on my flight, or the even drier air in the hotel, or my parched and aging blood vessels in my nose, or a sinus infection, or allergies, or a deviated septum, fixed once, but ever quirky, or the fact that my nose is like a large landing-field for anything airborne. Whatever it was, I couldn’t stop the bleeding.

I bled for a half-hour straight that morning, pinching my nose, plugging it up with anything I could get my hands on to try to stem the red tide. I filled two hotel towels and two washcloths with blood, until finally, just as suddenly and unpredictably as the bleeding started, it stopped. I must have exhausted my blood supply, I thought, knowing that probably could not be true. But, I hadn’t had a nosebleed in decades, so it spooked me.

I was comforted being only minutes from Vanderbilt Medical Center, just in case my blood felt like flowing again, like the long, serpentine Cumberland River that was close by. And, I thought, I had a former colleague who administered the COVID vaccine to Dolly Parton at Vanderbilt, so what could possibly go wrong. I’d be in great hands. Vaccine, vaccine, Vaccine! The thought of Dolly made me smile.

Two days later, after viewing the Dolly exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame, with my nose still dry & tender, we flew from Nashville to Baltimore/Washington Airport to visit friends we’ve known for nearly six decades, from our college days, when our noses—and other organs—were young, supple, and resilient.. Mine bore scars from being broken by a baseball bat when I was 10 years old, and playing the catchers position in sandlot baseball without a catcher’s mask. It was a schnozz with “character” I was told.

At dinner with our friends in suburban Washington, D.C. the night we arrived, the only character my nose knew to play was the role of a bloody mess, once again. Pinching, plugging and bathroom hugging didn’t help. Off we dashed to an urgent care clinic around the corner. Paging, Dr. Robby.

I arrived bleeding profusely through my proboscis, was immediately admitted, and laying my finger aside of my nose, an Emergency Medicine, MD, appeared—unusual for an Urgi-care center these days. And, as we’d later learn, a rarity for 1 in 13 Hospital Emergency Rooms around the country.

Unfortunately, the Urgi-care center was under-equipped—not unusual at a time of crippling health care cuts— and the specific device they needed to stop the bleeding—known as, yes, a “Rhino Rocket,”—was not available. They only had a child-sized gizmo, and in my cavernous size schnozzola, it could only hold back the Red Sea for so long, and could do nothing for the coagulating of blood in my throat, making it tough to breathe. I panicked that I would bleed to death, or, worse, choke on my own blood, in an understaffed, poorly equipped Urgi-care center, a continent away from home.

“I’ve never lost a patient to a nosebleed,” the Urgi-Care Doc said, who also told me he worked as an ER Doc at a major medical center for 20 years. Comforting.

When all you can taste is your own blood, and you’re gasping for air, none of that matters. In fact, nothing else matters. I didn’t want to make medical history and be the first patient to die such an ignominious death. The Urgi-Care MD called the large, local teaching hospital and told them to take me immediately. Paging, Dr. Robby, or Head Nurse Dana.

My nose was bleeding non-stop for nearly 90 minutes when I arrived at the Washington Metro Area Hospital’s ER, and was immediately ushered into the hospital’s Emergency Department. I was greeted by two nurses, and a Physician’s Assistant who were on duty. They were caring and concerned but could not stem the blood flow for several hours, despite rigging up a Y-shaped wooden splint to slow the flow.

“Am I hemorraging?”, I spit out to the Physician’s Assistant along with a mouthful of blood. He didn’t think so, and like the Urgi-Care Doc, he’d “never lost a patient to a nosebleed.” Hmmmmm. A mantra, that, somehow, did nothing to calm my anxiety, which was driving my blood pressure up.

I gasped for air, and everytime I cleared my throat to grab a breath, the PA scolded me to not do that because it would unclot any clots that were forming to block the bleeding. The PA kept going back and forth to consult with the Attending ER Physician, whom I had not yet seen, and came back with the recommendation of applying the Nasal “Nuclear Option”: the “RhinoRocket.”

“You’re going to hate me,” he said, “because it’s painful to insert, but it will stop the bleeding.” Paging, Dr. Robby, please.

At that point, gurgling for air, and convinced my obit would read “Died of a Never-ending Nosebleed”, I would have agreed to anything, including slicing off my nice big nose entirely, so I said yes to the “Rocket.”

Billed as a “Tampon” for the nose, which soaked up the blood, The “Rocket” made me feel like a Rhino (not the nasal kind) overcome with rage. As it was inserted deep into my left nostril, I followed its upward trajectory by climbing up off my chair, making the pain much worse. The PA screamed at me.

“You can’t fight me,” he shouted.

“I’m not fighting, “ I sputtered. “It’s instinct.”

Once back on earth, with the “rocket” jammed up my nose, and it’s anchoring string taped to the side of my face, the bleeding was held a bay, for a while. The PA assured me he was contacting the ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat Physician) on call and that he would come and remove the “RhinoRocket,” once the bleeding stopped.

Two hours into this nasal nightmare, and I still hadn’t seen Dr. Robby, or any ER attending physician, and the DC-area emergency room was no where near as crowded as Pittsburg Trauma Medical Center on “The Pitt.” Such gaps in care, according to the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM), are not unusual and raise serious concerns about corporate medicine’s ties to private equity firms.

The National President of the AAEM, Dr. Robert Frolich Stein calls it a “national trend,” which “unfortunately, are not rare. Across the country, independent physician groups are increasingly being replaced by large national staffing companies. These conflicts are becoming a defining issue in Emergency Medicine.”

And, according to AAEM, “about half of all Nurse Practitioners (NPs) and Physician’s Assistants (PAs) who work in Emergency Departments now work independently—without the supervison of a physician.”

Around midnight, or some three full hours after I’d continued to bleed in the hospital’s ER—despite the presence of a tampon up my nose and continual labored breathing—the PA announced to me triumphantly, that the ER’s Attending Physician, was about to see me. Sound the trumpets, but not too loudly because it might make me want to blow my nose.

The ER Doc came in, and quickly saw that the first-stage of the Rhino Rocket had misfired, was not doing its job, and that I was still gagging on my own blood. He carefully, and painfully, pulled the “rocket” out by it’s string, and told me I could blow my nose to get rid of all the clotting so he could have a look into the dark recesses of my Nose’s unknown. I was fearful of even clearing my throat, under the PA’s uncertain and anxiety producing demeanor.

Globs of clots came out enabling me to breathe again, and the ER Doc, calmly and competently painted the inside of my nostrils with Afrin to prepare my nose for a second, more skilled launch of the raging Rhino Rocket. He did the procedure in a matter of seconds, and I didn’t leap out of my chair as I did the first time.

I thought of what Dr. Jacob Lentz, a real ER Doc at UCLA Health and an advisor and instructor to the actors on “The Pitt,” said: “I think a lot of the success of the show is probably that people just like seeing people who are competent do nice things for other people and try to help them.” It was a relief but took much too long to get there.

Three days later an ENT specialist removed my now-saturated “Rhino tampon,” in preparation for my flight back to the San Francisco Bay Area from BWI. Things looked stable enough with my exhausted nasal septum, to risk a cross-country flight “rocket” free, but he loaded my partner and I up with cotton balls, and gauze pads—and a portable nose-tampon—just in case.

The flight home was blood free, and so were the next few days, but on the morning after the final Season 2 Episode of “The Pitt,” the nasal blood gates spontaneously opened again in my own bed at home. Fortunately, we live across the street from a terrific community hospital—Healdsburg Hospital—staffed 24/7 with an ER Physician on site. Just minutes after we walked into our community hospital’s ER, Dr. Robby appeared.

I didn’t have to wait hours to see him, nor endure a never-ending nosebleed; I wasn’t pre-screened by an NP, nor by a PA, to see if my condition was serious enough to bring it to the ER’s Attending Physician’s attention. My partner shepherded me into the ER with blood pouring out of my nose, and even out of my eyes in the form of tears. In the early morning hours, of a beautiful calm day at our small community hospital an hour north of San Francisco, the ER Doc saw me immediately—not because he knew me, which he did not, but because he knew exactly what to do for me.

Without hesitation or more bleeding on my part, he asked me to clear all of the clots of blood out of my nose, so he could see clearly what was going on. What he discovered was that I was a perfect candidate for nose cauterization, using the chemical silver nitrate to stop my recurring nosebleeds. “Chemical cautery” he called it.

Relieved to finally be in the care of a medical professional who knew what he was doing and remained unflappable throughout the process, I was finally able to joke:

“Good thing I have a Big New York Italian Jewish nose,” I said. “It gives you plenty of room to work.”

My own Dr. Robby laughed: “We are fortunate,” he said, making me laugh, and relax even more. I felt swaddled in his calmness and confidence.

Meticulously, he “painted” the inside of my nose and the bleeding areas with the silver nitrate. and carefully told me what I could and could not do over the next few days. With more than 20 years of intense ER experience in larger Emergency Medicine Departments in San Francisco, and Oakland, we were incredibly fortunate to have such a calm, competent, experienced ER physician in our corner.

The night before my lucky experience at our local community hospital, in our small, rural wine country community—the kind of places which around the country are starved for high quality Emergency medical care, since 92% of all Emergency Care occurs in urban areas—we watched the final episode of Season Two of “The Pitt.”

The incredibly written, acted and produced episode—some of the best, most effective storytelling and patient advocacy on TV since Dr. Neal Baer’s pioneering work on the orginal ‘“ER”—left our family in tears, especially during a few eloquent soliloquys by the main ER Docs. Dr. Robby’s monologue was superb:

“The most important things I’ve ever done in my life has been in this hospital. Nothing will ever matter more than what I’ve done in this hospital, but it is killing me. You know how they say that a part of you dies when you lose something you love? I’m not convinced that a part of you doesn’t die every time you see a fellow human being pass…”

Or, as his ER colleague, Dr. Jack Abbott summed up in an equally emotional comment, sharing with Dr. Robby the beauty and laughter and life that keeps him carrying on: “That’s what we’re here for.”

And, I’m glad they are.

The world’s first Nuclear weapon, dropped upon the civilian population of Hiroshima, Japan, by the US in 1945, erased humans from existence. American journalist, John Hersey, wrote an early report.

Steve Villano

Apr 07, 2026

(With the unhinged American President hallucinating about “sending Iran back to the Stone Age” or of wiping out Iranian civilians, and civilization, in “one night”, the terrifying possibility of the use of nuclear weapons against innocent human beings has become very real, for the first time in my 77 years of life. Having written and researched this subject extensively for over five decades, the prospect of the use of nuclear weapons against humans once again, must be exposed for the utter insanity—and international war crime that even the threat of committing such a genocide—constitutes.

It was 81 years ago this summer, when the United States dropped two nuclear weapons on the Japanese population centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, three days apart, wiping out nearly 200,000 humans going about their everyday lives. (The first bomb, dropped on Hiroshima had more power than “20,000 tons of TNT,” far and away the largest bomb ever used in the history of warfare,” up until that time.

American journalist & author John Hersey wrote one of the earliest accounts of the horrific effect on human life of the dropping of the first of the two ”Atomic” bombs upon ordinary, non-combatant Japanese citizens. Originally planned to be published as a series of articles in The New Yorker in 1946, the publication devoted its’ total issue of August 31, 1946, to publishing Hershey’s entire story of “Hiroshima.”

Later published in hardcover book format by Alfred A. Knopf publishers of New York, in 1946, Hiroshima, has gone on to sell more than three million copies. Owning one of those original copies, has given me a deep sense of duty to read and share Hersey’s words over and over again, so that no such intentional mass torture of fellow human beings is every contemplated again.

This week, in my most recent re-reading of Hiroshima, as the madness of American threats against Iran have escalated to genuine Genocidal proportions, the simplicity and clarity of Hersey’s writing struck me as pure as a poem, demanding that we pay attention to the kind of terror we are, once again, threatening to inflict upon the innocent. The vision and observations in this version I’ve entitled “Hiroshima, Revisited”, are all Hersey’s; the extraordinary words of John Hersey’s are bracketed by quotation marks; other transitional words or phrases are mine; the selection, editing and emphasis of them are mine. The responsibility to prevent this crime against humanity, and war crime, from happening again, is all of ours.)

HIROSHIMA, Revisited.

A normal workweek began with a noiseless flash;

Clerks at their desks, nurses with patients,

Clergy at their best, families paying rent.

The windows of their offices,

Hospitals, churches and homes

Welcoming the morning light, one last time.

“A tremendous light cut across the sky;

It seemed a sheet of sun.”

The Reverend reacted in terror,

His instinct was to run.

“He threw himself between two big rocks in the garden,

Bellying up very hard against one.”

“He pushed his face against the stone, eyes shut,

Feeling a sudden pressure, and then splinters

And fragments of tile fell on him.

When he dared, the Reverend raised his head,

And thought the bomb fell directly on his neighbor’s house,”

And left him dead.

“Under what seemed to be a local dust cloud,

The day grew darker and darker.” It was 8 am.

The mother, a soldier’s widow, watched

“Everything flashed whiter than any white she had ever seen.

Her mother’s reflex set her in motion toward her children;

She took a single step when something picked her up

And she seemed to fly into the next room over the raised sleeping platform,

Pursued by parts of her house.”

“Timbers fell around her as she landed

And a shower of tiles pommelled her.”

“Everything became dark, for she was buried.

She rose up and freed herself;

She heard a child cry, ‘Mother help me,’

And saw her youngest—the five year old—

Buried up to her breast, and unable to move…”

She “started frantically to claw her way toward the baby,

She could here nothing of her other children.”

The Medical Doctor saw the flash.

“Startled, he began to rise to his feet;

The hospital leaned behind his rising, and

With a terrible ripping noise

Toppled into the river.”

An entire hospital, with patients and nurses; gone.

“The Doctor was alive, squeezed tightly by two long timbers

In a V across his chest—like a morsel

Suspended between two huge chopsticks.”

“Wounded people were hurrying across the bridge

In an endless parade of misery;

Many of them exhibited terrible burns

On their faces and arms.”

The Doctor “saw a nurse hanging in the timbers

Of the hospital by her legs, and then, another

Painfully pinned across the breast.

He thought he heard the voice of his niece for a moment,

But he could not find her; he never saw her again.”

“Of 150 Doctors in the city, 65 were already dead, most of the rest, wounded;

Of 1,780 Nurses, 1,654 were dead, or too badly hurt to work.”

“Wounded people supported maimed people;

Disfigured families leaned together.

Many people were vomiting.

In a City of 245,000, nearly 100,000 had been killed…

Or doomed at one blow; 100,000 more were hurt.”

“The eyebrows of some were burned off, and

Skin hung from their faces and hands.

Others, because of pain, held their arms up,

As if carrying something in both hands.

Some were vomitting as they walked.

Many were naked, or in shreds of clothing..

Those who were burned moaned,

Mizu, Mizu! Water, Water!”

“No country except the United States,

With its industrial know-how,

It’s willingness to throw 2 billion gold dollars

Into an important wartime gamble,

Could possibly have developed”

The largest bomb—an Atomic bomb—used,

In the history of warfare.

The morning after the Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima,

The Reverend went to “fetch water for the wounded

In a bottle or teapot he had borrowed…

There were many dead in the garden.

At a beautiful moon bridge, he passed a naked, living women,

Who seemed to have been burned from head to toe…”

When the Reverend had given the wounded water,

“the woman by the bridge was dead.”

On his way back with the water,

As he looked for a way back through the woods,

“He heard a voice ask from the underbrush:

Have you anything to drink? He saw a uniform.

Thinking there was just one soldier, he approached with water.

When he penetrated the bushes,

He saw there were about 20 men, and they were all in the same

Nightmarish state: their faces were wholly burned;

Their eyesockets were hollow;

The fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks..”

Why would ANY God listen to prayers to kill some of God’s own children?

Steve Villano

Apr 04, 2026

(Photo by Steve Villano, taken in Assisi, Italy, birthplace of St. Francis (1181-1226) and a major Catholic pilgrimage site.)

100 years ago, when the KKK was at the peak of its power in the United States, when hooded-haters marched through the streets of Washington, DC, cloaked in their white sheets, 50,000 strong, and wrote the Xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Asian, anti-Italian Immigration Act of 1924, they despised Catholics as much as they hated all non-Christians and and non-Whites.

Messianic Nationalist & violent Christians who dominated the Klan, crusaded against the 1928 Presidential Candidacy of NYS Governor Al Smith, the first Catholic candidate to run for President. Their campaign against Smith was vile, and its very viscousness and vituperative attacks upon people of one specific faith, set the stage for Adolf Hitler’s genocidal attacks against the Jews just a few years laters. In fact, Hitler and Nazi lawyers in the 1930’s acknowledged that it was American Jim Crow laws in some 30 States—crafted by the KKK against Black people—which were their model for the discriminatory Nuremberg Laws against Jews.

Fast forward to today, when the KKK-hatched Immigration Act of 1924 is still the Bible for Stephen Miller and modern-day American Nazis, and when the first Secretary of Defense (or War) in 250 years of US History has held Messianic, Nationalist Christian prayer services on Federal, tax-payer paid for land, at the Department Defense (or War), and pointedly excluded Catholics–carrying forward the KKK’s continuing hatred of 1.3 billion fellow Christians.

At the same time, few Popes of the world’s 1.3 BILLION Cathollcs have been as Progressive and devout followers of the universal teachings of love–and the humanitarian actions–of Jesus Christ as the last two, Pope Francis, and Pope Leo–both of whom have been insanely vilified by Far Right Messianic Nationalist Christians, in the US and abroad.

Pope Leo has directly challenged the crimes vs. humanity committed by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza, and aimed at Christians & Muslims in Lebanon, and has strongly opposed the US/Israel War in Iran. He has directly chastised Trump, US Secretary of Defense (War)Pete Hegseth, and other Messianic, Nationalist, KKK-Christians for justifying the War as a Holy War of Christians & Jews vs. Muslims–and praying to their God to “kill” some of God’s own children. Whose God would sanction such slaughter?

What could possibly go wrong when Messianic, Nationalist and Violent Kahanist Jews, team up with Messianic, Nationalist, Violent KKK-loving Christians and go to war with Messianic, Nationalist, Violent Muslims?

Pope Leo has been fearless & relentless in exposing and criticizing this insanity and perversion of religion, and in making clear that the Christ he follows in his acts of humanity, kindness and compassion, must never be used as justification for War and/or Mass Murder.

It’s why Hegseth, and his fraudulent , Nationalist, Far Right KKK-Christians are waging their Jihad against anyone who actually follows the teachings–and actions–of Christ, and has intentionally excluded Catholics from prayer breakfasts–even on Good Friday.

Tomorrow, on Easter Sunday, the holiest day on the Christian Calendar, maybe the KKK-Christian Nationalists will see a glimmer of the Light. I doubt it, since their violent hatred–especially of Catholics going back more than acentury, or of humane members of any faith who disagree with them–thrives in darkness, feeding upon itself and the corpses of others.

Easter Sunday may be a celebration of rebirth and Resurrection for devout Catholics and other Christians, but for the ultra-nationalist, Messianic KKK-Christians, it’s simply another day in their continuing crusade to crucify anyone different, who honors love ahead of hate, or peace ahead of war.

For millions of us Jews around the world, this may be the most stressful Passover of our lives, since we are praying for the freedom & dignity of our fellow human beings Israel is oppressing.

Steve Villano

Apr 01, 2026

Each Passover, over the past dozen years or so, I’ve written an original Haggadah for my granddaughters, emphasizing freedom, equality and humanity above all.

Each year during their lifetimes, as the Extreme Right Wing Fanatical government of Benjamin Netanyahu has jettisoned the beauty and universality of Judaism in favor of a narrow-minded nationalism that demonizes and destroys non-Jews, the challenge to tell the story has become more acute.

The first Haggadah I wrote was when our oldest granddaughter, now nearly 17, was almost 4 years old, and her younger sister was 2. Their youngest sister would be born in 2015.

I decided to write my own Haggadahs for my granddaughters since I found all pre-published Passover stories for children to be harsh, foreboding and sadly lacking in even the barest attempt to capture the attention and imagination of young children, without talking down to them. I scoured Jewish bookstores, on-line offerings, and even Jewish museums. Bupkus. Everywhere I turned: Bupkus.

I tried adjusting the standard Passover story with a few flourishes, but it just didn’t work. I wanted my granddaughters to feel the same passion for the story of freedom against all odds that I felt, as a convert to Judaism, and to absorb such lessons of humanity and Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) into their lives.

I agreed with the social commentary of Jon Stewart at the time, himself a Jew, that we Jews were utter failures when it came to “marketing” our own holidays for our children and grandchildren. We had to be more creative to compete with a plethora of presents under a glittering Christmas tree, or oodles of colored eggs to emphasize Easter—a masterful sales pitch for Christians to sell death, rebirth and resurrection.

Everyone of our holidays, it seemed—Passover, Purim, Hanukkah—revolved around fighting for survival and killing others to gain our freedom from oppression, from Pharaohs, or Hamens or other demented dictators, who hated us simply because we were not like them. The story of Jewish history, was not only one of resilience in the face of such constant threats, but the constant challenge and struggle to continue to exist.

The challenge, and struggle, I did not see coming, was how to tell the story to my granddaughters now, when we Jews had become the oppressors of others, and the anti-democratic totalitarians advancing nationalism, militarism, authoritarianism, or ever worse, ethnic and religious Genocide. What if we became our own worst nightmares?

Each year, I paid close attention to what was of greatest interest to my granddaughters, and wrote and enacted a personalized Passover story true to Jewish history, yet tailored to their young interests to make it even more riveting for them: Faery princesses, or Shopkins, or She-roes (from a TV show), or Cats, or, Puppy Pals. More recently, with the active and delightful participation of our youngest granddaughter—who declared our Passover “puppet-shows” to be her favorite holiday—we’ve added such new favorite themes like “Axolotls” in 2024, and “Rainbows” in 2025.

Those newer themes were a relief for me— coming in the two years after the October 7, 2023, mass murder of 1200 Jews by Hamas, and Israel’s extremely disproportionate counter-attack upon Gaza, which has grown into the Genocide of tens of thousands of non-combatant Palestinians—including some 20,000 infants and children.

In addition to being of great interest to our youngest granddaughter, now 10, those themes carried the blessed benefit of being able to focus on the remarkable “regenerative” powers of the Axolotl to overcome certain death, and on the resilience, diversity and humanity, represented by Rainbows, and not on the monstrous morphing of the Israeli government and armed forces into becoming, themselves, the awful oppressors we have battled throughout our history. We had become our own Amalek, the essence of all evil. How would I explain that twist in the Passover story to a 10-year old who loves the holiday—and whose loved for it I helped nurture—and whom I adore?

What makes the struggle even more wrenching this year—5786 in the Judaic Calendar, or some 5709 years before the creation of the State of Israel—is that the governments of both Israel and the United States have gone stark-raving mad. They’ve abandoned democracy and any semblance of respect for international law or any law; justify the slaughter of innocent non-combatants, in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon as “pre-emptive self-defense;” violate state sovereignty by reducing to rubble every part of any country they want to conquer; and commit campaigns of political assassination and abduction of world leaders they consider to be in their way.

Such paranoia can be used to justify the slaughter of anyone perceived to be different—precisely the kind of paranoia present in every Passover story, and used, throughout history against us Jews and of civilization. Only now, the Pharoahs are Jewish and American, and the targets of their state-sponsored violence and aggression are everyone else who is not, or who does not bend to their will. The symbolic Red Sea has become the Mediterranean, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Litani River in Lebanon.

Our 17-year old granddaughter is fully aware of this enormous gash in the universe, which has tipped our earth out of orbit, creating a new axis of evil, and a new level of inhumanity toward others. Her questions are acute, and reflected by the Jewish Voice for Peace:

“Why is this Passover different from other Passovers?: Genocide. The unique scale, and devastating brutality is still being measured; the dead are still being counted, while the death toll continuously climbs. At this very moment. Israel is dropping bombs on Iran, on Tehran, on Lebanon, on Beirut; while Palestinians in Gaza try to retrace their spiraling Exodus back to what? As we, Jews of conscience, try to go retrace our spiralling back to ritual, back to Passover, back to what?

We ignore those questions of this new generation of Jews, of exquisitely sensitive human beings, at our own peril. War is peace; lies are truth; the inhumane is humane. Everything has been turned on its head, and they know it.

In the Introduction to an alternative Haggadah entitled “ Next Year in Safety & Liberation: Fighting Fascism & Genocide in the Jewish Tradition,” Liv Kunins-Berkowitz writes:

“As we gather for Passover, modern day Pharoahs are rising to power all over the world. In the United States, a fascist government is using the guise of fighting antisemitism to punish those who speak out for Palestinian freedom. This Passover gathering is an act of refusal. We will not allow our tradition, history, and identity, to be fuel for authoritarian crackdown”

Throughout all of this, our 10-year old granddaughter and I are undaunted, driven by our joy in creation, our love for others, and our endless reserves of hope and optimism, that things can be better.

Two years ago, when we wrote of Axolotls—the indefatigable amphibian found in a small lake in Mexico City—we wrote that:

“Little did the Mean King know,

That Axolotls can grow and grow.

Cut off a leg, they’ll grow it back!

Poke out their eyes, they’ll pop right back!

Even if the whole sky turns to black, you foolish Pharoah,

Axolotls NEVER lose hope—

They have that knack!

And so, we rallied again, inspired by the little creature that could.

Last year, in my despair over the utter destruction of Gaza and the mass murder and starvation of Palestinian children, our “Rainbow Passover,” lifted us out of darkness:

“The Rainbow People were free at last;

Their days as slaves, now long past.

Their differences, valued;

Their diversity, a blessing;

Each with a dignity that left no one guessing.

They had made it to the Promised Land,

With each giving the other a helping hand.”

No matter the destruction and devastation, we would continue our efforts, no matter how small, to repair the world. As Jews, we have an obligation to do so; as humans, there is no alternative.

So this year, this Passover, gives us another chance to imagine an alternative universe— beyond the bombed out schools and deaths of 175 children at their desks in Iran, or the intentional destruction of a civilian apartment building in Lebanon, crushing all inside; beyond the death by malnutrition and starvation of another 18,000 babies and children in Gaza, intentionally denied bread, water and medicine by the fanatical Pharoahs of our time.

This year we’ll include olives on our Seder Plate, to symbolize the rows and rows of Olive trees, sustainer of life, destroyed by fanatical Far Right West Bank settlers, on the small parcels of land farmed by Palestinian families for decades. To uproot such a farm, is to uproot a family’s history and it’s future.

For weeks, we’ve crafted a new story of Passover, this year influenced by the eternal optimism of Pokemon—and of my granddaughter, a glowing light in a dark valley.

This year, our Passover Haggadah is a work in progress and is as old as a humanitarian Judaism, Islam and Christianity—where all children are cherished and equal; and all, not just some, are “chosen” to be loved, protected, nourished, fed, and housed, raised far from bombs, and cradled in our arms of peace.

The 1st “NO KINGS” day was on the Porcine Emperor’s 79th Birthday, when five million of us marched for Democracy; than, 7 million more a few months later; now, no bullies nor bullets will stop us.

Steve Villano

Mar 28, 2026

(The Emperor has no clothes, no brain, no allegiance to the US Constitution, no respect for democracy, no heart, no conscience & no soul. But he has spawned the largest pro-democracy, pro-America demonstrations in the nation’s 250 year history.)

For Donald Trump’s 77^th birthday, almost 3 years ago—before he stole billions of our tax dollars for himself, his family and friends, the grotesque grifter was given the gift of a 37-count criminal indictment, with 31 of those charges pertaining to blatant violations of the Espionage Act, including spilling—or selling— Nuclear secrets.

His actions are similar to the 70+ year old case that resulted in execution by electrocution of Ethel & Julius Rosenberg for violating the Espionage Act, and allegedly passing national security secrets to the Russians. It’s so serendipitous, and certainly poetic, that, in the end, the lives of Trump and the Rosenbergs are intertwined, yet again, this time, without the repulsive Roy Cohn as the intermediary. Trump has transformed into his own stinking stain, exceeding the extraordinary evil of Roy Cohn.

A few years back, on the anniversary of the arrest of Ethel Rosenberg for allegedly providing valuable, top-secret information to the Russians about nuclear weapons designs, radar, sonar and jet propulsion engines, the WashingtonPost broke an explosive story headlined: “FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say.”

Now that we have physical evidence that boxes and boxes of highly classified US secrets—including Nuclear plans, and plans of how best to attack the US—were left in Trump’s bathroom, in a public ballroom and strewn about in closets and storage rooms, Trump’s illegal violations of the Espionage Acts are veering into Ethel and Julius territory. He’s already be behind bars if a Florida-based judge, jonesing for a future Judicial appointment, hadn’t improperly dismissed the airtight Espionage case against him.

As we’ve witnessed everyday in Trump’s incessant Smash, Destroy, Grab & Grift 2nd Administration’s frenzied fever to snort up every dollar and put everything in the U.S. up for sale—or put his own name on it—the prospect of Trump selling highly classified nuclear documents to Vladimir Putin or the Saudis for billions of dollars—or of his recklessness of his mishandling top secret documents he should never have had–has become increasingly plausible, thanks to documents accidently leaked this week to Congress by the Department of Justice, led by another Trump-kept Florida judicial officer, Pam Bondi.

This adds an entirely new, and dangerous, dimension to Trump’s reign of terror and massive error, including the possibility that Russian spies or foreign agents from anywhere, could have photographed these top secret military documents, while using the bathroom at Mar-A-Lago, or that Trump is still monetizing similar top secret, classified information—even while he is President.

Like Trump’s friend, mentor, role-model and lawyer Roy Cohn—lionized in the movie, “The Apprentice,” as Trump’s primary tutor—I grew up thinking that only alleged “communists” or “communist sympathizers,” spilled nuclear secrets to the Russians, and our enemies, not Presidents.

After all, it was Roy Cohn who sent the Rosenbergs to the electric chair for violating the Espionage Act. My devotion to the law, and faith in the US Justice system has been completely undermined over the past several years, but especially because Trump hasn’t been treated exactly the same way as Ethel & Julius, or as his best-friend Jeffrey Epstein, for abusing young girls. It is so unfair, as Trump himself would say.

And, since the geopolitical grifter Trump has not been treated the same way the Rosenbergs were, as a Jew, I believe the actions vs. the Rosenbergs were blatantly Anti-Semitic. It’s so on brand that Trump and his team of hatemongers —like Stephen Miller, Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth—have doubled-down on the phrase “Cultural Marxists,” a slur popularized by Adolf Hitler to demonize progressive Jews.

After I devoured the brilliantly researched and written 49-page criminal indictment of Trump which lays out not only his continuing theft of top secret classified documents over two years, but his willful obstruction of the Justice Department’s efforts to retrieve them, visions of Ethel Rosenberg, played by Meryl Streep in the HBO production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, began dancing on my brain. “Angels” is being produced again at a local theatre in my neighborhood later this Spring.

Quickly, I ran to get my printed and signed copy of Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize winning play.

I turned to the page where the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg shows up at Roy Cohn’s bedside, as he lay dying of AIDS. Cohn, who was Donald Trump’s personal role-model and fellow Studio 54 partier, as well as his attorney and the attorney for major organized crime families in New York to whom he introduced Trump, had hounded Ethel and her husband Julius into electric-chair executions three years after her arrest in 1950.

ETHEL: They won, Roy. You’re not a lawyer anymore.

ROY: But am I dead?

ETHEL: No. They beat you. You lost.

(Pause)

ETHEL:

I decided to come here so I could see if I could forgive you. You who I have hated so terribly. I have borne my hatred for you up into the heavens and made a needlesharp little star in the sky out of it. It’s the star of Ethel Rosenberg’s Hatred, and it burns every year for one night only, June 19. (June 19, 1953, was the day Ethel and her husband Julius were executed. Ethel had to be electrocuted three times before she finally died.) It burns acid green.

I came to forgive, but all I can do is take pleasure in your misery. Hoping I’d get to see you die more terrible than I did. And you are, ‘cause you’re dying in shit, Roy, defeated. And you could kill me, but you could never defeat me. You never won. And when you die all anyone will say is: better he had never lived at all.”

Will the same thing be said of Trump? Is Trump destined to become his own Roy Cohn? Will as Cohn did, die in his own shit, babbling baby-talk about ballrooms and ballpoint pens and stripped of everything he ever knew?

The only President in all of American history to be twice impeached (and working on a three-peat) twice indicted of crimes, and twice arrested (so far), Trump’s recklessness, carelessness and flagrant disregard for any and all laws—domestic or international—have surprised even those of us who have long pegged him as a criminal cipher, a con, a fraud, a liar, and a mob-boss wannabe.

Is he capable of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians or the Saudis, or the highest bidder? Is he capable of forgiving the Qataris of funding the single biggest act of violence and terror vs. the U.S.—committed 25 years ago this September 11— and accept gilded planes, gifts and billions of dollars in bribes from them and the Saudis?

Would Trump sell pardons to the highest bidders or the facilitators of such bribes, as he did with Michael Flynn, and then reward them with taxpayer-funded payouts for being prosecuted for crimes to which his handmaids pleaded guilty? Would Trump white wash the most heinous sex crimes committed against children in U.S. history, in which he participated, according to testimony given to the FBI? Would the porcine Pedofile protector profer a pardon for the female Sex Trafficker, Ghislaine Maxwell, who facilitated and participated in those crimes in exchange for her silence about his involvement?

Perhaps, the only appropriate eulogy that could be given for Trump’s lawless, truthless, soul-less half-century headlong flight from accountability of any kind for every crime he ever committed, and his unending drag show of distraction in public, is a variation on the theme expressed by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg—thrice electrocuted– over Roy Cohn’s deathbed:

“Better he never had never lived a public life at all.”