20 November—Happy Birthday to Joe Biden on his 83^rd. We wish him many more, as well as full recovery from the prostate cancer that evidently surprised the shiftless quacks at Walter Reed who should have caught it well before it had metastasized. No excuse for them or the screwed-up system that effectively allows older men to fall through the cracks simply because of their age.

So metastatic cancer naturally brings to mind Donald Trump and the criminals and other incompetent, unqualified-should-be-disqualified misfits he has appointed to mismanage his unprincipled, unstable, ineluctably corrupt administration that’s an embarrassment to America and an insult to Americans.

If you’re wondering, there actually are orange-colored metastatic cancers. But we won’t go into clinical details.

It’s common knowledge that the primary—it wouldn’t be far from the truth to say the only—qualification for a Trump appointee is blind, unwavering loyalty to the big thin-skinned tyrannical bully. But Trump’s female hires must also meet another criterion, one that’s not typically found on résumés: Trump has to find the women attractive. He doesn’t seem to care what his loyal male flunkies look like, mind you. (But that’s purely an editorial judgement.)

No problem with aesthetic discrimination (in the positive sense of appreciation, of course), to be sure. But when an individual’s personal taste in whatever it may be negatively affects the functioning of government (or any entity, for that matter), it should never be a consideration.

Tell it to Donald Trump. And consider his front-line females. In addition to all his other disgraceful quirks. The narcissistic nabob’s personal taste, personal needs, personal peeves, personal agenda—like those of any dictator—are precisely what motivate and empower his chaotic administration—to the clear detriment of the nation and the world. Personal and above the law.

Tangential to Donald Trump’s taste, then, here’s what he told New York Magazine in back 2002 about Jeffrey Epstein, with whom he was still (obviously) quite friendly: “Terrific guy . . . He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”