11 II 2025: Very Catholic until …

The Pope lately wrote to the American bishops to denounce the War on Immigrants of the MAGA administration. And what happens ? J.D. Vance, a convert to Catholicism, has offered us a lesson in alternative theology, and Tom Homan, “speaking as a lifelong Catholic,” has declared that the Pope “… ought to focus on his work and leave enforcement to us. He’s got a wall around the Vatican, does he not?” Both of these cynics have found the Catholic label convenient, convenient until their fascist politics conflicts with Catholic social teaching. 

J.D. and Homan should leave the Catholic church and join up with the evangelicals and find comfort in their politicized religion.

2 II 2025: All big-time dictators do it

The giddy MAGAs are romping around D.C. like conquering barbarians celebrating their victory by mindlessly destroying everything and everyone they can, like, e.g., Russians in Berlin at the end of WWII. 

For his part, their Beloved Leader is eagerly playing “Imitate the Great Dictators of Old.” Stalin and Hitler were compulsive about “retribution,” demanding vengeance for any real or imagined slights. These tyrants took special pleasure in forced deportations of masses of people, especially when this involved concentration camps, and Trump wants to do the same. Trump has created his own version of the Nazi SA with his pardon of Thugs of Jan 6th and is turning I.C.E. into his own SS. Maybe, soon the military will have to swear allegiance to Trump. For Little Donald, its election to the Dictators’ Hall of Fame or bust.

25 I 2025: No one can be blackballed

Nominees whom Trump has gathered from the highways and byways are being approved routinely by the Rubber-stamp Congress. We knew the Republicans have no shame, but who knew it is so very bottomless.

I’ve been wondering what public outrage or what lack of knowledge and experience could have prevented a nominee’s selection and approval. “Loyalty” to Trump is the baptism of MAGA, that forgives all crimes and failures.

Indeed, far from being an impediment, a criminal conviction, an abject failure, or a history of invincible ignorance could only recommend a potential appointee to Trump and to the Republicans who are little better than the nominees they are approving.

4 I 2025: Hawley still chasing ambulances and fame

I see my senator Josh Hawley has been re-elected. I would apologize for my home state voting for Josh, but Missouri being what it is, his victory was inevitable. Josh has a love of disasters surpassed only by old men’s, so the recent public fits of insanity in New Orleans and Las Vegas are meat for his table. I read that he wants to subpoena the outgoing directors of national security and the FBI  to appear before a let’s-waste-some-time-and-maybe-be-photographed session in the Senate. Josh’s craving for attention is insatiable.

21 XII 2024: Prosecutorial indolence, irresponsible behavior, complicity in evildoing

There are manifold explanations for Trump’s success in the late election, lots of criticism of Biden for delaying his exit, criticism of the Harris campaign for lack of dynamism, criticism of the Democratic Party for misunderstanding the American people, and so on.

I’ve not seen anyone complain about Merrick Garland’s delays in prosecuting Trump for insurrection and about Fani Willis screwing up the Georgia case. Am I naive to think that if these two had done a better job Trump might really have been on his way to jail? 

Of course, there’s Judge Aileen Cannon’s contribution to Trump’s escape from prison. Am I the only one who thinks she is simply corrupt?

And the Supreme Court and their gift of immunity! If a sitting president murders his wife, is he immune from prosecution if he claims that the murder was required by his presidential office?

And I would complain also about the American judicial system. We have had a dramatic manifestation of what we’ve known all along, that if you have enough cash and connections you need never go to jail. 

And who would not call insurrection a grievous crime, one that can’t be blown off like more routine offenses like statutory rape, accepting bribes, or gross nepotism? But I guess so many well-placed people were complicit in the insurrection that the powers that be decided to obfuscate and downplay the greatest crime to occur in my lifetime.

12 XII 2024: Do we have enough cattle cars for mass deportations??

We are hearing more these days from Trump’s creatures and from the Archcriminal himself about the mass deportations they intend of illegal aliens. These sociopaths mean business. They can’t wait to start spending the $86 billion that is said to be “the minimum” required for their project, and they mean to employ police, ICEers, the U.S. Army, and, of course, a private army of “contractors” to carry it out.

They haven’t said much about their detailed plans for the mass deportation. Do they know if we have enough cattle cars, box cars, and livestock trailers to transport all these criminals back to …  Yes, back to where?? Anywhere over the border, to Canada or Mexico? To their countries of origin? Do we have concentration camps large enough to house this horde of aliens while they wait to be shipped out?

And do we have much practice in mass deportation? We surely do. We deported the Indians, murdering most of them in the process. We deported the blacks from Africa and made slaves of them. We rounded up the Japanese and “relocated” them to prison camps. Do we, in our time, have enough brutal and thoughtless men who can measure up to the brutality and mindlessness of mass deportations of the past? Just listen to Mr. Homan.

1 XII 2024: Terms for the Trump government

The second Trump regime is taking shape. The following are some first attempts at descriptive names for his cabinet-to-be.

Though some of them are wealthy, they are so garish and tasteless that they could be called:

         THE CHEAP STATE

They are none of them qualified, so maybe the Trump Cabinet is 

              A DE-MERITOCRACY

Trump and some of his appointees ought to have done jail-time. So they might rename the White house

           THE DISMAS HOUSE

Trump and his former cabinet used to be described with term that will suit Trump and the new cabinet equally well

              A KAKISTOCRACY

28 XI 2024: Musk, Citizen of the World, Trump’s hero

I read that Elon Musk was a citizen of South Africa until age 18 when he became a Canadian citizen until 2002 when he became a citizen of the United States. Therefore, he too is an immigrant. How do the Trumpites feel about that?

But Musk has a lot to recommend him. For Musk has something of Putin about him, and a little bit of Kim Jong Um, and a hint of Xi Jinping, and this makes him Trump’s kind of guy, that is, one of Trump’s aspirational models. Oh sure, Trump will again be the President of the United States. So what more does he want? He wants wholly unrestrained power, to be a latter day absolute monarch.

23 XI 2024: Euro-trash and Patriot Predators

I read that Trump wants to appoint Sebastian Gorka as czar of counter terrorism. Trump had hired Gorka, a protege of Steve Bannon, some sort advisory capacity at the beginning of his first term. Gorka did not last very long and disappeared into the creepy far right circles whence he came. This time maybe he will last longer. Gorka can make a real contribution to the Trump cabinet by balancing the home-grown incompetents and crack-pots with some Euro-trash.

The term “patriot” is everywhere I look. The accumulated low-lifes of our several “militias” all call themselves patriots. Trump calls the rioters of Jan 6 patriots. And a firm in Kirkwood MO calls itself Patriot Sunrooms and Windows. The old-time firearms company Mossberg had called their latest .22 rifle “Patriot.” But I see now that “Patriot” is now to be called “Patriot Predator,” with the intent, I suppose, of making it even more appealing to the bigoted boys in our militias.