Matzo balls in transliteration
30 May—Thirteen years ago on this very day, 13-year-old Arvind Mahankali won the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee by “correctly” spelling “knaidel.” Not to deprive the kid of his well-deserved glory, to be sure, but since “knaidel” or “kneidel” or “kneydl” or anything like it is a transliteration of Yiddish “קניידל” (Yiddish is written with Hebrew characters, of course), he was lucky.
Or, more likely, Arvind was well-acquainted—not just familiar—with the Merriam Webster Third New International Dictionary, Scripps’s orthographic bible.
Evidently “knaidel” is the most popular—common, accepted, you name it—transliterated English spelling of “קניידל.” More important, it’s the spelling listed in the Merriam Webster Third New International Dictionary. But even with so-called phonetic mapping and allegedly strict phonological rules that appear to be anything but, transliteration is at best more a matter of opinion—call it judgement, to be charitable—than science; it’s an art with protocols, take ‘em or leave ‘em.
“קניידל” is a fine example. Don’t forget that Hebrew is read from right to left, making it ideal for southpaws to write with fountain pens without smudging a word. While there’s no question about the “קנ” (“kn”) being pronounced as in “knish,” meaning the “k” isn’t silent, the “דל” ending of the word (“dl”), is pronounced as a short consonantal “dl” rather than a vocalically lengthened “del.” So why should the “del” spelling be preferred?
Then, of course, should the “a” vowel, as in “face,” be transliterated as “ai” or “ei” or “ay” or “ey” or “eigh” or just plain “a”?
Moving on, then, the plural of “knaidel” or whatever, is “knaidlach” or whatever, the “-lach” being the Yiddish plural suffix in this instance. Knaidlach are known to the world at large as matzo balls (or matzoh balls or matza balls, etc.) and are very easy to make and customarily served in chicken soup. But since they’re essentially spherical matzo meal (etc.) pancakes, they’re just as good pan fried. Or straight out of the mixing bowl.
Arvind Mahankali, by the way, went on to Carnegie Mellon for a bachelor’s degree in computer science and is currently doing a doctorate in machine learning at Stanford . . .
Climbing good, smoking bad
29 May—Seventy-three years ago today Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest. Since 1953, so many people—close to 8,000 at this writing—have made so many summit ascents—close to 14,000—that the Nepal Department of Transportation (NepDOT) is going to install traffic lights.
Moving down, then, “Pressure” is a new flick about how meaty urologists (commonly called weathermen) saved D-Day. For the Allies, of course. Forget about the details. Just know that the dreaded Motion Picture Association (MPA), best known for administering a meddlesome voluntary system for film ratings that’s supposed to guide solicitous parents on arbitrary and rather ridiculous age-appropriateness of movies and suitability for children, has rated the film PG-13. Because it contains war violence, bloody images, some “strong” language, and—worst of all—smoking. For shame!
The U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Communications Commission have pretty consistently maintained that obscenity—which at best is a matter of opinion, even given Justice Potter Stewart’s famous assertion that he knew obscenity when it saw it—trumps the First Amendment. That’s why, for instance, even commonly used allegedly dirty words are bleeped and certain body parts obscured in over-the-air television broadcasts. That’s one of the things the nanny state is about, after all.
With MPA age-appropriateness ratings, even though little darlings witness (and may even experience) violence and hear (and even hurl) expletives from the crib, they’re not supposed to experience any of that nasty stuff on the screen. So in real terms the MPA ratings have been little more than a joke from the get-go.
But throwing smoking into the PG-13 dungeon? Well, the ludicrous rationale there is that the omniscient Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) considers tobacco use to be a major public health issue. Just like cancer, among other issues, which is also an excuse for some PG-13s.
The Classification and Rating Administration, by the way, despite being an administration isn’t a government agency, although you never know. It is in fact the very division of the omnipotent Motion Picture Association that issues the stupid ratings. And these are they, from good to better, with CARA’s rationale:
G—General Audience: All ages admitted. Contains no content that parents would find offensive for younger children.
PG—Parental Guidance Suggested: Some material may not be suitable for children. Parents are urged to exercise caution and investigate the film’s content before taking younger children.
PG-13—Parents Strongly Cautioned: Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. Parents are urged to be cautious, as the film may contain stronger content.
R—Restricted: Children under 17 require an accompanying parent or adult guardian. The film contains strong adult themes, language, violence, or sexual content.
NC-17—No One 17 and Under Admitted: Clearly adult in nature. The content is considered patently too mature for children 17 and under.
If you’re wondering about the beloved X rating, stop wondering. It was discontinued by the MPA in 1990 and replaced with NC-17. And that was because the MPA had failed to trademark the X. No that it would have been easy or indeed that it could have been done, as Elon Musk has been learning. So X is used by anyone at all to sell dirty movies and by Elon Musk to gratify himself . . .
Worst act of presidential corruption—so far
28 May—Fifty-four years ago today CREEPy operatives known as the Plumbers (i.e., loyal American patriots working for the Committee to Reelect the President, who at the time was creepy Richard Nixon) broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Office Building and planted wiretaps and other bugs. Political espionage isn’t uncommon, of course, but what the Plumbers did was extreme. Besides being illegal.
Although Nixon likely had no prior knowledge of the amateurish escapade, it brought him down. Only 10 months after Spiro Agnew had resigned the vice presidency to beat impeachment and certain conviction for bribery and tax evasion, Nixon resigned the presidency on 9 August 1974 to beat impeachment and certain conviction for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.
(It must be noted that new Trump BFF and fellow sleaze Texas attorney general and now GOP U.S. senatorial candidate Ken Paxton was actually impeached for essentially that same stuff by his pals in the Texas house but acquitted by his real pals in the Texas senate. It’s to be hoped, in all events, that his rap sheet helps Paxton lose the election.)
So bribery, tax evasion, obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress naturally and unavoidably bring to mind Donald Trump and his administration. Trump’s double-barreled self-deal with himself has been accurately and definitively called the worst act of presidential corruption in U.S. history.
We’ll leave it at that—for now—because the narcissist-in-chief’s flunkies have come up with yet another winner. And here it is:
That’s only a sketch. But it’s no joke. Deadly serious. Illegal under current law, which hasn’t been rescinded or superseded since it was enacted in 1866. Yet. Legislation to allow this particular Trump ego-gratification travesty was in fact introduced in Congress last year by Trumpass-kisser Joel Wilson from South Carolina with the cooperation of Trumpass-kissers Ralph Norman also from South Carolina, Diana Harshbarger from Tennessee, and (of course) Darrell Issa from California. But—surprisingly?—it hasn’t gone anywhere. Yet.
Here’s what the nitwit Wilson said about his act of rectal osculatory homage: “Bidenflation has destroyed the economy forcing American families to carry more cash. President Trump is working tirelessly to fight inflation and help American families. This achievement is deserving of currency recognition, which is why I am grateful to introduce this legislation. The most valuable bill for the most valuable President!”
Yep. Wilson seems to have a hard-on for Trump. But does he really believe it?
Meanwhile, Patricia Solimene, Director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing since Joe Biden appointed her in 2024, pointed out the irregularity, illegality, and folly of the Trump banknote. So of course she was as good as fired a month ago—reassigned (“not by my choice,” as she put it) to another job in the Treasury Department by Trump’s flunky United States Treasurer Brandon Beach, whose sole qualification for the job is that he tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia, which narrowly favored Biden.
“The buck stopped here,” Ms. Solimene wrote.
Apology, bad, worse, good, better
27 May—We must apologize for some misinformation in Saturday’s disquisition, “Hot time in Iran.” Trusting the diligence and reliability of our Mideast correspondent who moonlights as a rapporteur for the United Nations, the Monitor posted two recordings of what the correspondent (who in the circumstance will remain nameless) assured us were Iranian war dances.
So we casually (and irrelevantly) asked, “Can you tell which is which? Do you care? Does it matter?” And El Liberalissimo promptly and typically (and of course) snarked, “Do you plan to tell us the answer?” Well, El L obviously doesn’t know but does care. And that’s too bad. Because—and this is most important—it doesn’t in fact matter.
And that’s because, as a musically knowledgeable reader on the other side of the Pond emailed, “Sounds suspiciously Hibernian—Irish not Iranian. What have I missed?”
Well, that particularly perceptive in a far-away place reader missed nothing. Because painstaking investigation revealed that the two dances in question were in fact and indeed Irish and not Iranian. So we called our Mideast correspondent who moonlights as a rapporteur for the United Nations on the virtual carpet to defend and explain. But all they [sic] could say in defense and explanation was that Irish and Iranian both begin with Ir and they were in a hurry.
Suffice to say, our former Mideast correspondent now works full-time as a rapporteur for the United Nations.
Moving on, then, bad news first. Some time yesterday a lone paper wasp managed to insinuate itself between a sliding door and screen of the Monitor’s executive porch but evidently couldn’t immediately find its way out and appeared to be languishing there, absolutely still. Our maintenance editor saw the little creature at twilight and figured it would eventually go out the very way it went in (but in the other direction, of course) but couldn’t for the life of him figure out how the self-immured vespid was able to get in in the first place, as the screen and glass are intact and the bug-proof whateveryoucallit stripping is tight as well as intact. And where do socks disappear in washing machines?
Worse news is that Donald Trump crowed on his website yesterday: “Just finished my 6 month physical at Walter Reed Military Medical Center. Everything checked out PERFECTLY. Thank you to the great Doctors and Staff!”
And now the good news: We all know that Donald Trump is an incurable, inveterate, irredeemable, narcissistic, pathological, sociopathic liar. So there’s no reason to believe any information disgorged by him or any of his flunkies, even—or especially, in the circumstance—the medical ones. No reason at all.
So maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump will be doing the world a favor and shuffling off this mortal coil before too long. He appears to be well on the way out. And he won’t be missed by any good people, states, or institutions.
And now the better news: This morning the languid self-immured paper wasp didn’t appear to have moved, probably in contemplation of shuffling off its own mortal coil. So when the canine editor put Hope and Glory in their run he opened the screen door (the first time since the gods know when) and the stupid bug looked around and flew right off. Didn’t bother to say “thanks” . . .
What Emma didn’t know
26 May—The Hearst RepublicanAmerican’s opinion editor—or whoever is responsible for putting the ever-more-embarrassing editorial page together these days—evidently reckons that repetition is indeed the mother of learning and that not enough readers realize that “Climate change occurred well before the use of fossil fuels.” So he, she, it, or they today reran a letter to the editor with that title which had been published only a couple of days ago in the Sunday rag. Yes, it’s the very same letter, verbatim. And it’s absolutely true.
Another Hearst RepublicanAmerican editor (assuming there are other—or any—real editors at that rag) taught readers in today’s number in the “Today in history” column that “On this date [in] 1942 President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924, which barred immigration from Asia and restricted the total number of immigrants from other parts of the world to 165,000 annually.”
And that takes us to the topic of this disquisition, Emma Lazarus’s sonnet “The New Colossus.” (Not to be confused or conflated with Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.” Of course not.)
Emma Lazarus, who died at 38 in 1887, probably from Hodgkin’s lymphoma, wrote “The New Colossus” in 1883 to help raise funds for the construction of the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty on what was then known as Bedloe’s Island, which arrived in 1885 in 50 pieces. [It’s still Bedloe’s Island rather than Liberty Island. Ed.] The poem wasn’t intended to be posted on a pedestal wall and in fact it was only in 1903 that it was bronzed, so to speak, and mounted in the pedestal.
This is it:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Getting past Emma’s rather self-consciously stilted verbiage, not uncommon for poetry in those days, let’s look at what she says, from “Glows world-wide welcome” to “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.”
Put simply, Emma Lazarus didn’t know what she was rhapsodizing about. Because from the earliest days of the republic—the Naturalization Act of 1790 which restricted citizenship to “free white person[s]” of “good character”—through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (just the year before Emma’s paean to immigration) which banned all Chinese laborers—immigrants have been welcomed to our teeming shore only grudgingly. If at all.
Emma’s wretched refuse—largely Jews, Catholics, and Asians—had it especially tough until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (a.k.a. the Hart-Celler Act), signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, abolished quotas based on race and national origin.
Calvin Coolidge’s 1924 Immigration Act, then, was merely another instance of xenophobia. So Donald Trump’s abusive, inhumane immigration policies that do end-runs around Hart-Celler are nothing new. Just worse.
And the latest word from Mar-a-Lago is that Trump wants the National Park Service to remove the New Colossus plaque from the pedestal. But not because of the immigration allusions or the verbosity he can’t understand. Rather, he found an obvious mistake in it.
“The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame” obviously alludes to Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, Trump figures, so the plaque has no place in New York or New Jersey.
Funny that nobody else had noticed Emma’s error. Must be because she was actually alluding to Manhattan Island, regarded as New York City back then (and still, to many non-Manhattanites), and Brooklyn, which was a city unto itself until 1898, when it was consolidated into the City of New York as one of its five boroughs . . .
Decoration and Armistice Days
25 May—Some grown-ups (i.e., old farts) may remember that Memorial Day used to be called Decoration Day and was observed on 30 May. That’s how it started in 1868, as a day set aside to decorate the graves of fallen Union and Confederate soldiers with flowers, as a means of healing the wound, as it were. Well, not quite.
The first Decoration Day was observed at Arlington National Cemetery, which occupied part of the estate of Confederate General Robert E. Lee (a step-great-grandson-in-law of George Washington, by the way, whose machatunim owned Arlington Plantation), which had been confiscated by the federal government during the Civil War. The first interments at Arlington were in 1864 and by the end of the war in 1865 there were over 11,000 Union soldiers buried there, along with several hundred Confederates and a few thousand unidentified corpses; the Confederate graves were scattered among the Union graves.
For the first Decoration Day in 1868, when volunteers and families attempted to place flowers on all graves, Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, who managed the cemetery, strictly forbade honoring the Confederate dead. And in 1869, Union veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic stood guard over the Confederate graves to make sure that nobody decorated them.
So much for healing. It wasn’t until 1901, in fact, that the federal government officially permitted decoration of Confederate graves at Arlington, after which a dedicated Confederate section was established. And, yes, the cemetery was segregated by race— until 1948.
Back to the holiday, then, after World War II, Memorial Day became more commonly used than Decoration Day, and the observance was expanded to casualties of all American wars.
Memorial Day became the holiday’s official name as recently as 1971 with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which had been signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 and permanently set the observance of several federal holidays to Mondays, purportedly to reduce midweek work interruptions but in reality to give largely unionized government employees some extra paid days off.
Thus Memorial Day got to be the last Monday in May. That’s why we celebrate it today. And the holiday now commemorates not just American military personnel who died in direct combat, but those who died while serving in the armed forces regardless of the circumstances—declared war, police action, training accident, extrajudicial murder mission, nonmilitary accident or illness, you name it. It’s a matter of the decedent’s military status rather than the circumstances of death.
Veterans Day, on the other hand, called Armistice Day until 1954, honors all U.S. veterans living and dead and isn’t covered by the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. It’s always observed on 11 November because major hostilities of the Great War were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. But if 11 November should fall on a Saturday or Sunday, most federal agencies, inter alia, observe the holiday on the adjacent Friday or Monday. Of course.
And non-citizens as well as U.S. citizens who have served or are serving are honored on both Memorial Day and Veterans Day . . .
what hath trump wrought
24 May—Surprise! Donald Trump’s personal firm of taxpayer-retained unethical shysters formerly known as the United States Department of Justice has removed from its website all the news releases about 6 January 2021 criminal prosecutions, claiming the information was just “partisan propaganda.” The surprise is that it’s taken this long for the most corrupt DOJ in the history of the republic to do its part in rewriting history.
Late last month, it seems, the notoriously unweaponized DOJ had filed an unopposed motion in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals requesting that the seditious conspiracy and obstruction convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for the crimes they’d committed on 6 January be vacated. What the hell, Trump pardoned his fellow scumbags anyway. So it was done—with prejudice—early this month.
As Congressman Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee aptly put it last month, “These astounding motions are a humiliation for American democracy. They constitute an attempt to vaporize the verdicts rendered unanimously by American jurors who considered all the evidence, and to pretend that these seditious conspiracies against our government never happened. The same DOJ that prosecuted these men and secured their criminal convictions beyond any reasonable doubt is now asking a court to whitewash their crimes and pretend that they never led the insurrectionist mob that beat, crushed in doors, wounded, injured and hospitalized 140 of our law enforcement officers, disfiguring and disabling some of them for life.”
Repeat: What the hell, Trump pardoned his fellow scumbags anyway. So it was done—with prejudice—early this month.
When Trump and his embarrassingly obeisant, profoundly depraved, critically incompetent administration are mercifully—for the nation and world—removed, no doubt history will be made right again, as will all the other legislative, judicial, extrajudicial, architectural, and aesthetic evils and travesties Trump has perpetrated on a prostrate nation. And most Americans likely won’t be opposed to paying whatever it takes to make the corrections.
On the subject of Donald Trump, his father, Fred Christ (Trump), was able to avoid military service during World War II because as a real estate developer building housing (barracks and apartments as far afield as Virginia) for mostly navy families and shipyard workers he was deemed essential to the war effort. Fred was accused but never convicted of war profiteering, by the way.
Since Donald Trump wasn’t and never has been essential to a war effort or anything else, his draft dodge during the Vietnam nonwar, of course, was alleged bone spurs in his heels diagnosed by a podiatrist tenant of Fred’s. Like all of Donald’s actual medical records, x-rays of his feet—then or now—have never been released.
# # # # # # #
In other matters, it was in 1844 on this date that Samuel Finley Breese Morse (Andover and Yale), sitting in the U.S. Capitol, sent this very first message on his new telegraph device to the B&O Railroad Pratt Street Station in Baltimore, about 40 miles away on the I-95:
• — — •••• • — — •••• • — — •••• — — • — — — — • • • — — • — • — — — •• — — — • •••• —
It’s a quote from Numbers 23, “What hath god wrought?” But since Morse Code has only one letter case and Sam evidently didn’t include the dots and dashes for a question mark (••— —••) in his first message, it was really “what hath god wrought” or “WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT.” And you wonder if the guy in Baltimore could read Morse Code anyway . . .
Hot time in Iran
23 May—Readers probably won’t recall that El Conservatissimo saw the light a couple of months ago—or, as we noted on 25 March, he’d “joined the stampede of former Trump admirers, defenders, and apologists who have finally seen and smelled the shit in the cesspool that is Trump and his corrupt administration.” We welcomed El C “to the right side of the right” and assured him “that now he’s more likely to be admitted to heaven.”
Well, El C continues to hew to the Monitor’s cause, as it were, and agrees with yesterday’s disquisition on younger generations’ inability—or disinclination—to take the heat. “Old farts like us didnt need airconditioning so why do young shits,” he writes. “I dont have airconditioning in my house and I bet you dont either and we don’t need it. Im not surprised trumpers cant come up with good things about the prick. Keep up the bitchin! Nobody does it better!”
Many thanks to El C, who reads and writes on a cell phone, which must explain his lack of punctuation.
Truth be told, there are a couple of ancient window units hiding somewhere in the Hovel, but they haven’t been in the windows since the gods know when. Good old-fashioned fans do the job quite well, thank you. And heat is preferable to cold in all events.
Moving on, then, as the self-styled peace president and his dutiful war-mongering flunkies prepare to illegally (of course) inflict still more gratuitous devastation and death on Iran (just because it appears they can get away with it), the Iranian buggers, as we’ve seen, aren’t taking it lying down. In fact, they’re doing war dances in Tehran in the north and Bandar Abbas in the south to piss off the aggressors.
Sad to say, given the vicissitudes of war, the musical instruments available for the Iranian war dances have been limited to the traditional folk rial whistle (somewhat like a penny whistle) and bodhrán (exactly like a bodhrán). Our Mideast correspondent, who moonlights as a rapporteur for the United Nations, was able to record the northern and southern Iranian war dances—a reel and a jig—for your edification.
Can you tell which is which? Do you care? Does it matter?
Taking the heat—or not
22 May—Before diving into the daily disquisition, we must extend our profound sympathy to pupils and staff of Connecticut schools. Because, as today’s Hearst RepublicanAmerican tells readers in a front-page-over-the-fold sub-headline, “Many Connecticut schools still lack air conditioning to endure heat waves,” wherefore, according to the headline, quoting the president of the Connecticut Education Association, it’s “Hard for kids to learn.”
CEA president Kate Dias bitches in the story, “We shouldn’t have schools that are hard for kids to learn in physically. I mean, I taught in an un-air-conditioned room on the second floor of a high school built in the 1950s. It’s rough, man. … You hit this time of year, I would challenge anyone to go into that classroom and feel ready to learn math.”
We suspect that mid-fiftyish Kate’s solicitude for pupils pales next to her solicitude for the teachers whose dues pay her salary and that she really would challenge anyone to go into that classroom and feel ready to teach math. But irregardless of learning or teaching, we’ll limit our comment to Jesus Christ!and note that we old farts must have been made of much sterner stuff because not only did we learn and teach effectively despite suffering extreme heat in decrepit un-air-conditioned buildings but we didn’t get to stay home on snow days.
Incidentally, the CEA office in the Capitol Place building (21 Oak Street) in Hartford is centrally air conditioned.
Leaving Kate Dias to swelter vicariously, then, on this day in 1849 Congressman Abraham Lincoln was granted Patent No. 6,469 for a contraption (i.e., device) for “buoying vessels over shoals.” Lincoln submitted a model of an inflatable waterproof bladder or bellows to lift boats over obstructions, which is on display at the Smithsonian (if it hasn’t been removed by the Trump administration for no good reason). But it was never produced for practical use and probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.
Lincoln is probably the first sitting congressman to have received a patent. (We say “probably” because the Patent Office suffered catastrophic fires in 1836 and 1877.) He’s also the only president, sitting or otherwise, to hold a patent. And, just so you know, soon-to-be-former Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky (thanks to the revenger-in-chief), an MIT engineer, holds 20-some-odd patents related to computers; and they presumably work.
And on the subject of nasty, violent politics, it was on this very day in 1856 that South Carolina pro-slavery Democrat Congressman Preston Brooks galumphed over to the Senate chamber, after the Senate had adjourned of course, and beat Massachusetts anti-slavery Republican Senator Charles Sumner to a bloody pulp and almost to death with his heavy walking stick. It seems that Sumner had made remarks in a floor speech that offended Brooks.
The last physical fight on the U.S. Capitol floor was back in 1902, between the two Democrat senators from South Carolina, who engaged in a fistfight. But no blood was shed. Wouldn’t it be nice . . .
Brazil and New Glory
21 May—After Donald Trump defiled Connecticut yesterday when he came to the state to bloviate at the Coast Guard Academy graduation ceremony in New London, a hazardous-waste remediation team from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection was called out to disinfect and decontaminate wherever the self-dealing retribution crusader had trod.
Meanwhile, Trump’s flunkies have conspicuously deployed additional warships to international waters around Cuba in preparation for what the world is supposed to believe is the kidnapping—characterized by Trump’s degenerates as the lawful capture and extraction—of 94-year-old Raul Castro and a few others for defending Cuban airspace against American invaders three decades ago.
But that’s really a feint. For the benefit of Trump’s flunky warlord Pete Hegseth and others who may not know what a military feint is, it’s a deceptive tactic intended to mislead an enemy about the real time and/or place of an operation—i.e., a target or an attack. In this instance, the target is Brazil.
Brazil? Yes, Brazil. For two reasons. First, Trump wants to spring his fellow criminal dictator pal, former Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro, from overly lenient 27-year house arrest for plotting a coup d’état, attempting to overturn election results when he lost in 2022. Sound familiar? Brazil’s supreme court has been more reasonable than SCOTUS.
Second, Trump has decided that he now wants to annex Brazil as the 51st state, along with Canada, Cuba, Greenland, Mexico, and Venezuela. Don’t even think about his rationale. Because he’s irrational.
Harking back to last Friday’s disquisition, anyway, we reported that “an artificially intelligent flunky in a quiet recess of Mar-a-Lago is already working on a design for a 55-state flag and that instead of stars the canton (the blue part) will have 55 grimacing Trump heads to represent the states.”
But we were wrong. Because Trump’s hand-picked aesthetically deficient, naturally obeisant flunkies in the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts evidently got the word about Brazil and ran with it. In fact, they ran it up the flagpole—just before they approved the execrable Arc de Trump this morning.
Figuring that Trump actually wants to make all five of the sovereign nations and the one autonomous territory into states of the Union (for a total of six, if you lost count), the Commissioners of Fine Arts designed a flag incorporating classic elements of Old Glory but giving their narcissistic lord and master what they know he’ll absolutely love. And not only have they been able to use Trump’s grimacing heads, but they’ve kept the five-pointed stars.
As it happens, moreover, six new states are no problem to place in the canton (the blue part, a.k.a. the union). Truth be told, though, while three new states would have been easy, five new states would have been impossible to represent symmetrically. And don’t worry about the U.S. Flag Code—it’s non-binding and doesn’t prescribe any penalties. Not that it would bother Trump if it were otherwise . . .
Ethically challenged in spades
20 May—This is a “Quotable” selection that follows the unrelated editorial in today’s Hearst RepublicanAmerican. The quotation is taken from the 18 May New York Post: “Remember, please, that the perps themselves filmed and even livestreamed much of this savagery. They were gleefully proud of their atrocities; it was a major part of the mission, meant to crush . . . spirits and force submission to the terror masters’ will.”
That’s a spot-on description of the Trump-inspired 6 January 2021 Capitol insurrectionists and other thugs, who stand to get their “anti-weaponization” rewards tax-free. (Who said that crime doesn’t pay?) Problem is, the word replaced here by the ellipsis (three dots) is “Israeli” and the title of the NY Post editorial is “Don’t let the deniers ignore this record of Hamas’ Oct. 7 sexual atrocities.”
Even the title of the Post editorial could easily apply to Trump’s 6 January thugs with an ellipsis: “Don’t let the deniers ignore this record of . . . atrocities.” Make no mistake, Trump’s MAGA mob at the U.S. Capitol certainly did commit atrocities—heinous, horrible, savage, wicked deeds.
And it’s no surprise that Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour endorsement yesterday of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton rather than four-term incumbent U.S. Senator John Cornyn in the state’s GOP primary run-off next week wasn’t at all well received by Senate Republicans.
Maine Senator Susan Collins, for instance, was “disappointed” at the endorsement. “I don’t understand,” Senator Collins said. “He is an ethically challenged individual.” She was probably referring to Paxton, who, in his first year as attorney general, was charged in 2015 with defrauding Dallas investors and completed a pretrial diversion program to keep him out of the slammer only in 2024. And don’t forget that he was impeached by the GOP-majority Texas House of Representatives in 2023 for bribery, abuse of public trust, and obstruction of justice; but he was acquitted by his grifter pals in the Texas Senate.
Incredible what these bastards get away with!
Thus, “probably” is italicized because Senator Collins could just as well have been referring to Donald Trump as “an ethically challenged individual.” Even his supporters don’t deny it when they’re not being recorded or quoted. Yet they support him and what he does. It’s amazing that Trump, with abysmal popularity and hardly any respect nevertheless commands so much power among Republicans. And it certainly doesn’t speak at all highly of them. What happened to principle?
So Trump’s endorsement of Paxton will more than likely get the Texas grifter the Republican nomination. But it may also work to the advantage of Democrat State Representative James Talarico, who’s running for the U.S. Senate seat and is currently in a surprising dead heat with Cornyn and Paxton.
The nation and world can only hope . . .
