16 September—

Sorry for the late link. Altice’s unreliable internet server was down again. And while we’re on server problems, yet another reader with a gmail.com email address, whom I happened to meet the other day, reported not having received the daily links for some time, and assumed the Monitor had given up the ghost. I almost did, of course, but that was another story.

In all events, if the daily link shouldn’t arrive in your inbox on any given day, before assuming the demise of the Monitor, get in touch. If I’m alive, the Monitor should be, too. Remember, you don’t need the link to read the Monitor. Just go to LitchfieldMonitor.com. —PMR

Among the scummiest of the unqualified scumbags hired by Donald Trump to help him tyrannize America is the idiot FBI director Kash Patel. New Jersey U.S. Senator Cory Booker described the nut-job Patel in a nutshell during yesterday’s typically contentious (for anything involving Patel) Senate hearing: “He’s an incompetent lackey. He’s like an 18-year old-kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of, doing keg stands and chugging with friends. He’s an embarrassment to the agency and wouldn’t qualify even to be an FBI agent.”

Booker’s observations are spot on, of course, but that doesn’t matter in the circumstance because, first, he’s not really a member of the FBI fraternity; second, all of Trump’s personally sponsored appointees are without exception incompetent lackeys; and, third, the only qualification that matters to Trump is loyalty to his narcissistic imperial majesty.

For the record, in November 2020, when William Barr was Trump’s attorney general, he successfully opposed Patel’s appointment as deputy director of the FBI—even though it was backed by Trump himself. And Barr wasn’t alone. But since Trump got off on Patel’s sharp tongue up his ass, the incorrigible sociopath was appointed chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense instead. You wonder why Trump didn’t give him a job in the White House.

For the record, too, you’d expect an 18-year-old to behave more maturely and responsibly than Kash Patel. It’s highly likely that all of Trump’s elite chosen kakistocrats, like Trump himself, abuse their exalted, privileged government positions—if somewhat more discreetly than their lord and master. But it’s a safe bet that Patel leads the pack of abusers—and he doesn’t worry about being discreet . . .