6 July—So Donald Trump spent America’s non-250th big birthday bash weekend doing what he does best. Continuously. Without surcease. All the time. He misrepresented, misstated, exaggerated, just plain lied; criticized, insulted, vilified, just plain bitched; boasted, bragged, flaunted, just plain grandstanded; congratulated himself, indulged himself, served himself, just plain gratified himself. In public.
And he put his formerly and conveniently bone-spurred foot in his fat mouth when he proclaimed, “Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty . . . the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11.” Boy, did he get that wrong.
Because without hesitation or doubt, the real mortal threat to American liberty, “the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11,” is Donald J. Trump.
Public masturbation is a trait not uncommon among narcissists and megalomaniacs. It’s a product and concomitant of exhibitionism, of course, and reflects sociopathic problems with impulse control and an overweening sense of entitlement.
It’s common practice for dictators to plaster images of and monuments to themselves throughout their dictatorships as means not only of self-gratification but also of fostering quasi-religious devotion among both their enthusiastic followers and oppressed masses. Think of Caligula, Nero, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong Un, and of course Donald Trump.
If you didn’t know, Trump has them all beat with his noisome image defacing public places and official federal items like passports and national park passes, on which latter his disgraceful mug replaces images of nature. And of course Trump and his evil spawn have monetized his image and everything else even tangentially connected with him, too numerous to detail here.
And now we learn that Donald Trump has decided to put himself on Mount Rushmore alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. And he’s assuring everybody that it won’t cost the taxpayers one red cent because his oligarch flunkies will foot the whole billion-dollar bill. But his administration flunkies are nevertheless fiddling with ways to sneak several to many billions of bucks for the grandest monument to himself.
But, you’re thinking, Trump’s repellent puss can’t be carved on Mount Rushmore for geological as well as legal reasons. The National Park Service, for instance, has noted that the remaining granite is too unstable to carve and any dynamiting or drilling might even destroy the existing worthy presidential faces.
In that case, all Trump has to do is fire and hire until he gets what he wants. The Supreme Court told him he can do it, after all.
And in 1994 Congress passed an act banning any further carvings of Mount Rushmore. But if the increasingly uncooperative Trumpublican majorities don’t heed their master’s order to rescind it because it was obviously passed without any consideration of Trump, he’ll just tell them where to go an issue an executive order to give him his way.
In all events, here’s a sketch of what is henceforth to be known as Mount Trumpmore that was filched from the West Wing:
5 July—Shortly after the Monitor went to press (so to speak) yesterday, we received this link from a particularly attentive reader in the UK to an excellent, delightfully concise piece in The Times, known in the U.S. as The Times of London.
https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?artguid=f4f9418f-7e77-4345-8ab6-3dc4f6208c55
Here’s the subject of the story, the rare printed copy of the Declaration of Independence recently discovered by chance at the UK’s National Archives. It’s one of the 11 known surviving Exeter Declarations printed in New Hampshire, also known as Exeter Broadsides because of the size of paper they’re printed on, just over 15 x 19 inches. The one in the UK National Archives is the only Exeter Declaration not (currently) in the United States.
The so-called Exeter Declarations were printed in Exeter (where the prep was to open six years later) between 16 and 19 July 1776 by Robert Luist Fowle for his newspaper.
For the record, there are three other copies of the Declaration of Independence at the Kew National Archives in London. They’re the somewhat less rare so-called Dunlap Broadsides, a skosh bigger than the Exeter ones. About 200 of them were printed the night on 4 July 1776 right in Philadelphia by newspaper publisher John Dunlap. Only 26 are known to survive . . .
4 July—When does life begin? We’re celebrating America’s 250th Independence Day, so why should that theoretical question that unfortunately has become a religious and political bugbear be of interest today? Well, it’s precisely because America’s 250th birthday is being celebrated today that it should be of interest.
Because, first, today—4 July—shouldn’t be celebrated as Independence Day; and, second, America’s 250th birthday doesn’t really occur in 2026.
Independence Day is supposed to celebrate—wait for it—the birth of the independent American republic. (You’d be astounded how many native-born, allegedly educated Americans don’t know that.) It’s supposed to commemorate the day in 1776 when the Second Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence, thus severing the 13 revolting American colonies’ political ties to Great Britain.
Problem is, after Richard Henry Lee on 7 June 1776 introduced the resolution “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved,” and Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston were tasked with drafting an instrument formalizing the resolution, only 12 of the 13 colonies voted in favor on 2 July because New York abstained pending instruction from Albany. That instruction wasn’t given until 9 July and received in Philadelphia until 15 July. (Given the abysmal condition of the King’s Highway at the time—reminiscent of Connecticut roads now—the courier or couriers made pretty damn good time.)
Yet the impetuous but strategically and diplomatically astute Continental Congress went on record as officially approving the Declaration on 4 July and claiming it had passed unanimously in order to project a united front to Great Britain and foreign powers. But the fact remains that New York didn’t cast its vote in Philly until 11 days after 4 July.
And that’s not all. Despite the insistence of Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin (and, given the political sheep-flock instinct, probably others) from the get-go that a copy of the Declaration had in fact been signed on 4 July, in 1796 Thomas McKean, a delegate from Delaware, pointed out that some signers weren’t present at that time, including several who weren’t even elected to Congress until after that date. And his assertion has pretty well been confirmed by subsequent research.
Moreover, while the seditious text had without doubt been approved in July, the formal engrossed (artistically lettered) vellum copy of “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America”—the one now in the National Archives Museum (unless Donald Trump has surreptitiously sold it to one of his Arab pals and replaced it with a fake)—wasn’t signed until 2 August, and then by only 50 of the 56 delegates at an official signing ceremony. Five of the remaining delegates made it back to Philadelphia later in 1776 to do the dirty, but the aforementioned Thomas McKean didn’t get there to add his signature until late January 1777.
So much for Independence Day the Fourth of July. Now to give shorter shrift to 1776 as the year of the nation’s birth. Although the Second Continental Congress had declared independence on 4 July 1776 or thereabouts, the United States of America wasn’t recognized as a free, sovereign, independent state under international law and by the Kingdom of Great Britain until the Treaty of Paris was signed on 3 September 1783 by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay for the Yanks and David Hartley (inventor, close friend of Franklin, MP, opponent of American war) for the Brits, officially ending the American Revolutionary War. (As a point of interest, the Kingdom of Great Britain wouldn’t become the United Kingdom until 1801, when it merged with the Kingdom of Ireland.)
So there goes 1776 and today as the one big beautiful semiquincentennial. So what about celebrating the sestercentenbnial in 2033? Maybe, maybe not. Because the United States didn’t officially become the republic we know today—or something like it, anyway—until the Constitution that’s being abused today took effect on 4 March 1789, superseding the highly imperfect Articles of Confederation, which had been adopted in 1777 and ratified in 1781 largely as a defensive measure.
So the bisesquicentennial, America’s 250th birthday, should actually be celebrated on 4 March 2039. Because, despite a few false pregnancies, as it were, America’s life clearly began on 4 March 1789 . . .
3 July—There can be no question that Donald Trump is by far the most autocratic and corrupt president the republic has ever suffered. He clearly abuses the office, which he unashamedly regards as a vehicle for immunity and profit. And the SCOTUS-enabled grifter-in-chief’s loyal weaponized taxpayer-funded flunkies unlawfully continue to lay the trumped-up groundwork for nullifying election results (among other things) that don’t suit their narcissistic master’s tyrannical agenda.
Isn’t it all about him, after all?
But like any animal Donald Trump has visceral urges and needs that must be dealt with and assuaged. When ya gotta go, ya gotta go, as they say. Especially when you’re Donald Trump and so full of it. “And,” as the notorious embarrassment to America has famously boasted, “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab the pussy and use her litter box.”
All well and good, you say, but doesn’t Trump realize that he hasn’t taken down his pants? Give him a break, we say, he’s 80 years old . . .
2 July—Imelda Marcos turned 97 today. Remember her? She was glamorous First Lady of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986, while her husband Ferdinand was president. He died in 1989, and now her only son, Bongbong, is president.
Ferdinand Marcos was initially elected democratically albeit corruptly (of course), and he stayed in power undemocratically and corruptly (of course). In other words, he was a dictator. In what he called “constitutional authoritarianism,” Marcos consolidated and fortified his power by bypassing—and even in one instance shutting down—the legislature and ruling by decree. True to form, he censored the media and had political rivals and uncooperative journalists jailed.
Donald Trump has expressed admiration—and likely envy—for Ferdinand Marcos as “a strong leader.” Of course.
Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos stole billions of dollars from the Filipino people, amassing a personal fortune estimated by some to have been as much as ten billion U.S. dollars by the time they were deposed in 1986. Trump, on the other hand . . .
Donald Trump has known Imelda Marcos since her appearance on the New York jet-set scene during her trial (and surprise acquittal) on federal racketeering charges. He must revere her for what’s known as her “edifice complex,” wherein as Philippine First Lady she ordered construction of many ostentatious (if not necessarily superfluous) architectural projects in short order and—of course—at public expense.
When Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown by the nonviolent People Power Revolution that brought Corazon Aquino to office in 1986, he, Imelda, and Bongbong and his sisters (great title for a movie) were flown by U.S. military transport at President Ronald Reagan’s behest to their abjectly luxurious exile in Hawaii. Imelda and the kids were allowed to return to the Philippines when Ferdinand died in 1991.
What, you must be wondering, about Imelda’s shoes? Well, Imelda Marcos is of course remembered mostly for her massive shoe collection, said, depending on the source, to have comprised between a paltry 1,000 and an impressive 3,000 pairs of the likes of high-heeled and overpriced (and typically undersized) Guccis, Chanels, Ferragamos, and Diors. In 1987, Imelda herself modestly claimed only 1,060 pairs. No surprise, by the way, that she also had some 400 Dr. Scholl’s inserts and foot powder. And even simple sneakers and flats. Really.
Through the decades, hundreds of Imelda’s shoes have been destroyed while in storage by flooding, mold, and bugs. There are only about 800 surviving pairs, many of them in a shoe museum in the Philippines.
And Imelda is said to be keeping her shoe collection current . . .
1 July—(Parenthetically, to start, today is Canada Day, commemorating the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867 by the British North America Act. So when is the Dominion of Canada going to become Donald Trump’s promised or threatened 51st State of Canada?)
On to the daily disquisition, then, a big oops. Nostra culpa. Wicked Justice Samuel Alito isn’t retiring. Just now, anyway. And probably for the better. Contrary to what the Monitor reported yesterday, the momzer didn’t announce his retirement or—as far as we can determine—anything else at yesterday’s Supreme Court season finale.
Didn’t any Monitor readers notice the erratum?
Explanation: After yesterday’s disquisition was posted, Nina Totenberg, NPR’s SCOTUS and legal affairs correspondent, who had covered the court’s last session before the summer break (as she’s been doing for almost six decades), apologized profusely for what the grifter-in-chief would call the fake news. It seems Nina misheard an announcement by Chief Justice John Roberts about SCOTUS retirements and assumed she’d finally be able to use her prepared Alito retirement story. (Everybody has retirement stories and obits ready to go.)
And I naturally assumed Alito had made the announcement himself. My bad. So much for putting the ass before u and me.
But it appears in all events that Donald Trump and Federalist Society boss Leonard Leo will have to wait a little longer to replace Alito with an even more disgraceful sociopath. Truth be told, Alito, to his credit, isn’t a Trump flunky, though as we’ve seen that hardly matters. And we can hope that Alito and Clarence Thomas are able—and motivated—to hold out until a worthy president retakes the White House and a less unworthy majority reclaims the Senate, at which time they’d hopefully both be unable, for whatever reasons, to continue as Supremes. Hope springs.
So the Democrats have a good chance of reclaiming a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and even a chance in the Senate. Except, just as Connecticut Republicans have for far too long demonstrated a penchant for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, recent Democrat primary elections indicate that the Dems are not only shooting themselves in their collective foot but committing bloody suicide.
Blame it not so much on Trump’s reign of terror as on the Democratic Socialists of America and other so-called progressives within the party who have cleverly, effectively, insidiously demagogued mostly younger, impressionable, obviously naïve voters into supporting their impracticable, unworkable, ludicrous, frankly vile agenda at the primary polls. It’s one thing in safe Democrat strongholds, quite another where seats can be flipped in the general election.
Given the choice, would you vote for a candidate who wants to, among other travesties, tax non-fungible assets and unrealized capital gains, defund police, and free even more incarcerated criminals than Donald Trump? Those insults are on the absurd agenda of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Sad to say, the way things look now, come November, Trumpublicans may keep their majorities in both houses and further the evil regime of their corrupt lord and master. And they’ll have the Democrats to thank for it . . .
30 June—So this morning the United States Supreme Court, quite as expected, affirmed the legality and constitutionality of birthright citizenship, in an opinion on Trump v. Barbara delivered by Chief Justice John Roberts, concurring opinion by Justice Ketanji Jackson, concurring and dissenting opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Also as expected, however, malevolent justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, Thomas in 91 pages and Alito in 39 pages, unsurprisingly joined by insidiously wicked but succinct (this time) Neil Gorsuch in three pages.
Alito, who never should have been nominated by Bush 43 to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the big bench but was confirmed by a largely party-line 58 to 42 vote in 2005 (with four Democrats voting to confirm and one Republican and one Independent voting not to), announced his (reluctant) intention to retire, likely as a favor as well as his sick way of apologizing to maleficent and corrupt Donald Trump for the few SCOTUS decisions that went against the scumbag-in-chief.
Trump is likely to announce his new flunky justice nominee without delay, as there doubtless have been a few unqualified but unquestionably loyal shysters, all vetted and recommended by virtual monarchist Leonard Leo of the arrogant Federalist Society that probably has Alexander Hamilton spinning in his grave, waiting in the wings for some time. Consider even the mere possibility of Associate Justice Todd Blanche and try not to throw up.
Trump will nominate a Federalist friendly replacement likely even more despicable than Alito without delay so that he (male gender of the new flunky being a virtual certainty) can get confirmed by the Senate while it’s still controlled by a gutless and still compliant Trumpublican majority and start screwing with the Constitution this summer. And the Supreme Court—and the nation—will be stuck with yet another disgraceful justice at least through the middle of the century.
It doesn’t bode well for the future of the republic . . .
29 June—Update on municipal taxes first. If the USPS Informed Delivery daily email can be believed, paper Litchfield borough tax bills have been and are being delivered today. At least they’ve made it to Springfield, where they go from Litchfield—and where most mail destined for Litchfield takes a detour to be digitally coded and photographed—only to come back here (if we’re lucky and it’s not miscoded and sent off to the hinterland).
And the Litchfield town tax collector’s office says the paper tax bills will be in the mail on 1 July. We didn’t go into why the tell they haven’t been sent out earlier. But it appears the contractor who’s responsible for getting the bills printed, posted, and mailed should not have posted the motor vehicle tax bills on the town website. Why not?
While we’re in Litchfield, town officials appear finally to be approaching—but haven’t yet reached—the realization that the Bantam School, now functioning as the Town Hall Annex and home to the Bantam post office, is like the immense boulder Sisyphus was condemned to push up the hill in Tartarus (the destination of the damned, super-hell) only to have it roll back every time it neared the summit. In other words, preserving, upgrading, renovating, repurposing Breuer’s Bantam abomination would be a futile and never-ending burden to taxpayers. Like maintaining it is.
Thanks to an intransigently arrogant and just plain stupid Bantam planning and zoning commission tyrannized by a chairman who did the borough and town a favor when he moved away, the town wasn’t able to sell the decrepit Breuer Bantam burden and its land to an enthusiastic developer a couple of decades ago for really big bucks.
Bantam School was closed in the 70s, reopened and augmented with modular units (what we called trailers back then) for a short-lived pupil bump a few years thereafter, and repurposed as town offices and leased space for a state court and U.S. post office when the bump in enrollment passed.
The three poorly conceived and built Breuer-architected schools in Litchfield have been money pits for most of their 70-odd-year existence. Taxpayers were fortunate that the Montessori people who had been leasing Breuer’s little Northfield school bought it almost four decades ago even for the pittance they paid and even though nonprofit Montessori pays no taxes. But we’re still stuck with the former Litchfield High School and of course the Bantam Annex.
Marcel Breuer adulators come up with all manner of desperations to preserve his Bauhaus cheesebox legacy in Litchfield. But there are four unattractive and unlivable private homes in town for that.
Weren’t the Breuerites talking a few years ago about spending something like $10 million to bring the Bantam Annex up to spec and repurpose it? Well, that’s metastasized to over $30 million.
The highest and best thing to do with the Bantam Annex, then, as selectman Dan Morosani has mooted, is to demolish it. Demolishing the high school, as it happens, had been the best option many years ago, to replace it with a proper school building—so it was naturally discounted by the screw-up school building committee at the time. That’s how it’s always been in Litchfield.
Demolishing the Bantam white elephant would cost under a million. If the Bantam planning and zoning and historic district commissions have problems with it, the town will beat them in court—unless the selectmen roll over and play dead, as has been their wont of late.
And maybe the demolition people would give the town a break if they could also raze the high school while the wrecking balls are in town . . .
28 June—The great news is that today is Mel Brooks’s 100th birthday. Mazel tov and best wishes to the renaissance man of comedy, who, as he’s admitted, was born to make people laugh. And may he have many, many happy returns.
(Two weeks ago, on Donald Trump’s 80th birthday, you may recall the Monitor’s very special birthday greeting for the unstable deranged sociopath who was born to make people miserable: “No happy returns, you miserable unprincipled, irredeemable scumbag. In fact, do the nation and the world a favor, and no returns at all.”
Moving on, then, it must be half a century ago during lunch with a local media mogul and a former Torrington mayor (and Connecticut lieutenant governor) at Torrington’s late Yankee Pedlar (which in those days was where the elite met to eat—and imbibe) that the mogul playfully (?) suggested making Torrington into a theme park to be called Six Flags Over Nowhere.
Nice old former mayor Bill Carroll’s gasp morphed into a hearty laugh. And he went a step further, suggesting Thomaston too, calling Torrington Six Flags Over Nowhere North and Thomaston Six Flags Over Nowhere South. I suggested Six Flag Over Utopia North and South, but that went nowhere. (There was a pun in “Utopia” from the time Thomas More created it when he was on good terms with Henry VIII all the way to this disquisition. But I’ll leave it there.)
So now, half a century later, from 12 July through 23 August, there’s going to be a train called the Litchfield County Clipper making three leisurely diesel-pulled round trips only on Sundays the 12 miles along the scenic (?) Naugatuck River between Six Flags Over Nowhere North and Six Flags Over Nowhere South. A day pass will cost 25 dollars.
The Litchfield County Clipper is a joint venture of the Thomaston-based nonprofit Railroad Museum of New England and its subsidiary Naugatuck Railroad, a short line that runs all the way down to Six Flags Over Nowhere on Steroids, a.k.a. Waterbury, and when it’s not running tourist excursions actually carries freight between the north and south termini a couple of times a week. Rail freight between Waterbury and Torrington? Really?
In all events, the Litchfield County Clipper really is a cute idea, but it’s unlikely to have much of the desired effect on commerce in or between either utopia. But it would be worth taking the trip if the Naugatuck Railroad ever got one of its steam locomotives working. Remember the good old days of whoosh-whoosh and soot-soot?
27 June—Among the cornucopia of stupid legislation on the books of Connecticut (and presumably similarly taxpayer-unfriendly states) is a law that the owner of taxable real and/or personal property (including motor vehicles in Connecticut) is required to pay the tax due to whatever municipality even if the property owner hasn’t received a physical tax bill, with unpaid taxes accruing interest from the due date.
The stupid law, which predates the internet, presumes that failure to receive a physical tax bill is not a valid defense for nonpayment because property owners must know that tax is owed. But, you wonder, how is a property owner to know how much tax is owed? On the other hand, the taxpayer can always get all the information directly from the town tax collector. And thanks to the internet all the information is readily available on municipal websites anyway.
Except it’s not. In Litchfield, anyway, the town and borough. And Bantam. State statute makes municipal taxes or installments therefor due and payable on 1 July and charitably gives taxpayers a month’s grace before usurious 18 percent annual interest accrues. Even though statute implies that paper tax bills aren’t required, it used to be customary and expected for tax collectors to send out bills well before the due date so that even with the U.S. Post Office’s legendary unreliability property owners could make appropriate arrangements with their brokers, bankers, or shylocks.
To get to the point, then (because I have to change the blades on the zero-turn, no mean feat), with just two business days to go till the due date, I haven’t received a tax bill from either the town or the borough. The borough tax collector, who also does Bantam, used to be right on top of it, so the bill used to arrive in plenty of time. But this year? The borough warden says the bills were given to whoever is supposed to mail them a few weeks ago (shortly after the borough budget passed, presumably). And of course the borough website provides no information at all on the current tax due, let alone downloadable PDFs of the tax bills.
The Bantam website is equally uninformative about current taxes, more so about past taxes.
As for the town tax bill, which of late has been arriving later and later, the tax collector’s web page provides information and downloadable PDFs of current motor vehicle tax bills but not current real property tax bills. Why the hell would that be? Calls to the tax collector’s office during business hours yesterday were answered by a recording.
Knowing last year’s taxes and the increase or, in the case of the borough the decrease, in the mill rate, this year’s taxes can always be extrapolated. But should that be necessary? If the tax collectors are doing their jobs? And damn the stupid state law . . .
26 June—The beautiful Tatarian honeysuckle, considered a highly invasive species around here, have blossomed, releasing their magnificent heady fragrance. Shame on undocumented alien Lonicera tatarica for delighting people’s noses and other animals’ eyes and palates. Both birds and mammals eat the bush’s orange-red sugary berries and propagate the species adventitiously by excreting the seeds wherever the spirit moves their bowels.
Of course, propagation is also accomplished less intestinally by hummingbirds and insects that are attracted by the Tatarian honeysuckle’s fragrant nectar and cooperatively broadcast the sexy pollen that sticks to their bodies.
Tatarian honeysuckle berries are mildly toxic to people because of the concentration of saponins they contain in relatively small quantities. The word “saponin” comes from the Latin word “sapon” meaning soap. Remember how unpalatable and foamy the soap your mother washed your mouth with was when you uttered naughty words? That’s why we don’t have Tatarian honeysuckle ice cream. Fels-Naptha was especially unpalatable and Ivory was exceptionally foamy.
In defense of saponins, the less concentrated ones we get in fairly minute quantities from foods like beans and oats offer health benefits like lowering cholesterol and supporting immunity. From disease, not the crimes the Supreme Court has saponized presidents from.
While not toxic to creatures of the wild, Tatarian honeysuckle is nevertheless considered by presumed experts to be junk food for them because the berries provide virtually no essential proteins, fats, or nutrients. But the creatures savor the berries because of the sugar content. What else is new? You can’t beat Mother Nature’s marketing strategy, even for invasive species. Evidently, though, native plant species provide better nutrition for the animals. In all events, we’ll avoid comparisons with or comment on the SCOTUS-saponized glutton-in-chief who gorges on junk food yet is still alive.
The State of Connecticut considers Tatarian honeysuckle—among scores of plants specified in the statute, including ones you wouldn’t believe, like white poplar and other honeysuckle species—so invasive that state law—CGS § 22a-381d—strictly prohibits importing, moving, selling, purchasing, transplanting, cultivating, or distributing any reproductive portions of the plant, including seeds. “Any person who violates the provisions of this section shall be fined not more than one hundred dollars per plant,” the statute concludes . . .