Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Trump calls New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani 'a communist'
Having watched the below clip a few times and thought about it rather a lot, I still can’t decide whether Trump doesn’t realize Mandani has won a primary, not a mayoral general election, whether he no longer understands the difference between a primary and a general, or what!
One thing is painfully clear. No one in the White House so much as tries to keep Trump from making a fool of himself, which he does every time he opens his mouth or takes to Truth Social. Rather, every administration official, starting with the press secretary, repeats, amplifies and normalizes his lies, rantings and ignorant statements. The same can be said for most of the Republicans on the Hill.
It is never clear to me which of Trump’s statements display his mental illness and cognitive decline, and which his stupidity. In a way, it doesn’t matter. The man is unfit for the office he holds. He always was. In his first administration, though, some around him retained respect for the dignity of the office and concern for decorum. They managed (with difficulty) to reign in some of his excesses. This time, he has taken care to surround himself only with those as stupid, mendacious, corrupt and craven as he is.
They all also hold loyalty only to Trump, not to the Constitution or the country. As commentators such as Glenn Kirschner and Rick Wilson have pointed out, one way or another Trump won’t be president forever. While he is president, though, America is at the mercy of a stupid madman, who never ceases to embarrass himself and us.
And while he is president, we all must point out that he is a stupid madman. We must counter his lies with facts; challenge his gibberish with commonsense. Hillary Clinton said it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes a country to defeat a would be dictator.
Tuesday, July 01, 2025
Monday, June 30, 2025
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Chinese Cities on Fire — 220,000 Injured | BBC News
This report is from several days ago. One can only imagine conditions have grown worse.
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Thursday, May 29, 2025
New Quiz: Nineteenth Century Children's Literature
Here's my latest quiz, one for Children's Literature buffs. Can you sort these books into publication order?
Nineteenth Century British Children's Literature (Link opens in a new window.)
Monday, April 14, 2025
New Quiz: Can A Man
Here's the latest of my word play quizzes.
Can A Man (Link opens in a new window.)Tuesday, February 04, 2025
Musk shutters USAID leaving the world's poor in crisis.
Sunday, January 26, 2025
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Monday, January 20, 2025
Constitutionally Disqualified
In less than twelve hours a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist and, pertinently, adjudicated insurrectionist will take the oath of office to become the forty-seventh president of the United States, despite being barred from doing so by the Constitution.
By training, I am an English teacher and by vocation, a writer, not a lawyer or Constitutional scholar. Yet, the legal as well as moral and practical reasons the soon-to-be Felon in Chief ought not to take office are obvious to me. To name just a few non legal disqualifications: He does not have the intelligence, mental competence, attention span, education, breadth of knowledge, public spirit or integrity to serve as dogcatcher, much less President of the United States. For decades he has been well known to welch on his debts, stiff his contractors, mistreat his employees, lie in his business dealings, drive enterprise after enterprise into bankruptcy and cheat on and abuse his wives. Rumors of incest with his elder daughter have swirled around him, even after her marriage, rumors that seem totally believable given his character (or lack thereof). Even absent his many civil and criminal legal, er, problems, DJT is by no stretch of the imagination presidential material.
Add in those legal entanglements, most notably his Constitutional disability, and we are left with someone who is not only odious, but will become an illegitimate president the moment he takes the oath of office. And, I’ve barely scratched the surface of his villainy and depravity!
Endless hours of commentary and magnums of ink have already been spent on how and why he won the Electoral College vote and eked out the barest of pluralities in the popular vote. Everyone has a different idea and Democrats remain, as always, un-wrangleable cats. Being a Democrat is worse than being a Red Sox fan. The Sox eventually got their shit together. But, you get two Dems together, and you end up with three opinions. It’s aggravating! Besides, all this blothiating is worse than useless, since it distracts from the point at hand: As of 12:01 Monday, January 20 2025, the United States of America will have an illegitimate president, whose government is committed to destroying this country in the interests of making obscenely rich individuals and corporations even richer, while the MAGA controlled Congress bows and scrapes, and rushes to do his bidding. It’s a horror I never expected to experience in my beloved America. I don’t know how – or if – we are going to survive it.