20 April—There’s a big celebration in the White House’s West Wing Cabinet Room today that the press is barred from—all the press, even the Trump ass-lickers. In fact, no one outside of Donald Trump’s inner circle of unquestionably loyal, trustworthy, corrupt, tight-lipped sycophants is allowed to attend the celebration or even know the details, although a select few menacingly militant MAGA morons and other criminals have in fact been invited.
The top-level secrecy is thought necessary for obvious public relations reasons as well as political expediency because Trump is throwing a 137th birthday bash for his idol and exemplar Adolf Hitler, who was born on this day in 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, which is plain old Austria today.
Although the White House hasn’t said and won’t say as much, while Hitler clearly can’t attend what’s essentially a celebration of his life and legacy, he has nevertheless been in the White House in spirit—and lots more—ever since Donald Trump moved in. Some would say Hitler has left his mark, but he had better taste than Trump.
The off-the-record (to say the least) Hitlers Geburtstagsfeier im Weißen Haus (Hitler birthday bash in the White House) has been organized by Trump’s Wilhelm Keitel, neo-Nazi warlord Pete Hegseth, with the enthusiastic encouragement and assistance—and some say impatient prodding—of Trump’s Joseph Goebbels, Jewish Nazi White House pain-in-the-ass Stephen Miller.
Trump’s Heinrich Himmler, Hindu Nazi FBI director Kash Patel, had been expected to be master of ceremonies and roast-master at today’s White House Hitler birthday bash, but the latest (as yet unconfirmed) reports are that he won’t be able to make it. It’s not clear whether he’s recovering from another hangover, out looking for a defamation-chasing shyster, or just missing in action—as he has a habit of being.
As things stand now, then, Trump’s Leni Riefenstahl, Karoline Leavitt, will be holding the podium for the event. It’s a pity that even Trump’s most trusted flunkies will be patted down for recording devices lest they produce compromising footage of the big bash.
Remember the Epstein!
19 April—A few days ago, His Scumminess Pope Donald the Narcissist, whose approval rating is deservedly as low as its ever been, bullshat in Las Vegas that the American economy is the best it’s ever been, despite what he—to no one’s surprise, of course—called “fake inflation,” brought about by his monumentally illegal, ill-advised, inept non-war with Iran as well as his monumentally illegal, ill-advised, inept tariffs. Of course, he also threw in three of his favorite lies, that gasoline prices at the pump aren’t very high, that overall inflation is low, and that he had inherited the worst inflation in American history from Joe Biden.
Never forget that Pope Donald the Narcissist is infallible.
But Trump’s treasury flunky, Scott Bessent, did even better, insisting to the press that while American consumers may tell “the survey people” that they’re dissatisfied and distressed by and disapprove of Trump’s unquestionably incompetent mishandling of the economy, “in their hearts they feel good.” And Bessent really thinks even the clueless unwashed buy that? A case, perhaps, of “In their hearts they know he’s right, in their guts they know he’s nuts”?
Mind you, Donald Trump has been able to con the great unwashed—as well as the great washed, whose greed, rather than intelligence or principle, invariably gets the better of them—for half a century.
And that takes us to the maritime turnstile Strait of Hormuz. First, it must be noted that even though the narrow passage—the choke point, as it’s called—is theoretically split between the overlapping territorial waters of Iran and Oman and is under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) an “international strait” open unconditionally to all commercial vessels, Iran essentially controls it by dint of its superior military power. (Not that minuscule, filthy rich Oman, an absolute monarchy that bans political parties and severely restricts expression, among other things, would be any better.)
So Hormuz’s status—whether it’s open or closed to commercial shipping—appears to change at any given moment, evidently depending upon what Pope Donald and the Iranian mullahs have had for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snacks. Last we knew, Trump insisted the strait was open even as the U.S. Navy was blockading Iranian ports and Iran insisted it was closed for that very reason. All things considered, the mullahs have it.
At least Trump appears (for the moment) to have given up begging/threatening U.S. allies, “I broke it, you fix it.”
In all events, Megyn Kelly put it very nicely: “Yay. We’re ending the war by getting them to open the strait that was open before we started the war. Great.”
18 April—A Pew poll just revealed that some 70 percent of Americans who bothered to respond believe that Donald Trump is “not too” or “not at all” religious, only an eight-percent increase since his 2024 reelection. Five percent of respondents amazingly think he’s “very” religious and 24 percent almost as amazingly consider him “somewhat” religious.
What difference does it make, anyway? Most Americans are ignorant and/or hypocritical about religion, truth be told, including whatever religions they may claim to follow, adhere to, or practice. Even more people are ignorant and/or misinformed about theology—the intellectual, theoretical part of religion that deals with deities and other myths and is supposed to inspire faith and thus plays a very small part in religious practice. As opposed to political control, of course, the real purpose of religion, which is achieved and instilled by fear and ritual.
But despite declines through the years, over 70 percent of Americans nevertheless still consider religion at least “fairly” important in their lives, with almost 50 percent describing it as “very” important.
While fewer than a third of Americans regularly attend religious services, a surprising considerable majority—approaching 90 percent—still claim to believe in God or some higher power or spiritual force, although fewer are “absolutely certain” one way or the other. God bless agnostics? Right?
Between 12 and 18 percent of Pew respondents, including a number of scientists, define the higher power as a universal spirit, nature, or laws of physics rather than a personal deity—like the Abrahamic God worshiped by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. And just over half of responding scientists consider nature and the laws of physics as evidence of a profound, designed order—sort of Intelligent Design without God who or that must be worshiped.
That naturally segues to the rise of the nones, but not the ninth day before the ancient Roman Ides or the Christian daily office (prayer) at the ninth hour (3 pm by old—Jewish and Roman—reckoning). These days, nones are people—largely younger ones—who identify as religiously unaffiliated and may be atheists, agnostics, nothing-in-particulars, or I-don’t-cares.
The discrepant statistics can be confusing, so just accept that almost 30 percent of Americans claim to be among the nones. And only a piddling five percent of them admit to being atheists. In public, anyway. And no politicians, of course.
That takes us back to Donald Trump. The portrait below is said to have been created by artificial intelligence. It could in fact have been created with good old-fashioned cut-and-paste. But can’t you just see Trump not only dressing up in papal garb but lying and bullying his way into the papacy? And can’t you see Pope Donald turning the Vatican into the Holy Trump Resort? And don’t forget, his first wife was a Catholic and his third wife is a Catholic. And his father’s middle name was Christ . . .
17 April—Among the non-news today is that yesterday the United States Commission of Fine Arts, comprising toadies hand-picked or not fired by Donald Trump, gave preliminary design approval to the “concept” of the monstrous and monstrously inappropriate Arc de Trump, thus allowing that monument to Trump’s unbridled narcissism to slither forward.
Meanwhile, back in Connecticut, legislation to drop the requirement that municipalities post legal notices in print newspapers instead of or in addition to municipal websites and other places has once again made it part of the way to enactment. Contrary to what 66th District Rep. Karen Reddington-Hughes, who opposes the legislation, has written in letters to print and digital news media, the Connecticut General Assembly has in fact not yet voted in favor of the measure. But she’s partly right. At the end of her cautionary letter, Karen wonders what will happen “[i]f this bill passes the Senate.” Doesn’t she realize that the state senate is half of the General Assembly?
Anyway, it’s no surprise that editorials in the Hearst RepublicanAmerican among other rags also are inveighing against legislation that will deprive them of what in reality amounts to minimal revenue. And nobody takes newspaper editorials seriously anyway.
So House Bill 5289 made it out of committee unanimously and out of the House of Representatives two-to-one, 96 to 48. The Senate, as Karen implied, hasn’t yet voted on it and may never get around to it. Similar legislation has almost made it through in the past, only to die or be aborted one way or another.
Karen and self-serving editorial writers maintain that besides decreasing transparency—and conversely increasing dreaded opacity—of local governments, not requiring posting of legal ads in actual printed newspapers will result in a “decline in citizen engagement.” And most writers cite appropriately selective research to prove their points. (Who doesn’t do that?)
Put simply, though, that’s a totally specious argument, since truly engaged citizens won’t allow themselves to be disengaged simply because they have to visit a municipal website to see what’s cooking. Given the disgracefully inadequate local coverage of most self-professed local newspapers like the Hearst RepublicanAmerican, they can’t be depended on for local and timely news coverage anyway. So they’re quite deservedly losing readers.
But all the print rags also have digital presence. And that’s where it’s at now and will be even more so in the future. Unfortunately. So the municipal legals would still be fully accessible through online newspapers, which would still pocket the revenue. And that’s what they’re after, after all—after they cease hard-copy publication completely.
More and more readers are reading online—only because there are fewer and fewer real paper newspapers and fewer and fewer people who don’t or won’t or can’t access the internet.
In that case, since you’d have to go online and to a website to get legals anyway, why not just go directly to the municipal website, thus essentially cutting out an unnecessary middleman and saving a little taxpayer money—and depriving wicked bean-counting newspaper publishers of revenue they don’t deserve in the first place?
16 April—Before defending Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV, we must note—albeit without comment—the extraordinary service provided by an unnamed ambulance company after a vehicular mishap in New Hartford a couple of days ago. According to a shorty in yesterday’s Hearst RepublicanAmerican, “Police said the motorcycle plowed into the passenger side of the SUV and was transported to the hospital.”
Now to defend Trump. Why does the picture of him evidently healing a sick man rub so many people the wrong way? He has said, “I make people a lot better,” after all. And we know he’d never lie. And he works miracles. Just ask him. And given his physique, the loose-fitting attire really suits him. And the woman who appears to be praying to him is really signaling that she’ll see him in court.
Now to defend Pope Leo. Actually, he needs no defense . . .
15 April—Yesterday’s disquisition concluded with this observation, which had nothing to do with the Titanic: “And all the sanctimonious politicians and others who have essentially forced Eric Swalwell’s downfall—deserved or otherwise—are nothing but goddamned hypocrites.”
Well, that brought to the mind of a sharp reader vacationing in Colorado this injunction, as chronicled in John 8:7, of Jesus to a lynch mob of Pharisees who wanted to execute an adulteress: “So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (There’s the conflict of Jewish law versus Roman law to consider, but that’s irrelevant in the circumstance.)
To refresh your memory, the Pharisees were a pious, self-righteous, sanctimonious, Jewish sect who claimed to strictly observe written and traditional religious law but in reality were a bunch of hypocrites—probably devout, but at the same time prideful, greedy, lustful, corrupt, and everything they publicly and prominently inveighed against.
That sounds a lot like Litchfield’s experience with Chabad Lubavitch, to be sure. But when you think about it, they’re not alone. In fact, Pharisaism—garden-variety hypocrisy—is more the rule than the exception among religions, sects, cults, and you name it.
So that takes us right back to Congressman Eric Swalwell. And Congressman Tony Gonzalez. And politicians and others who are accused and maybe even guilty of sexual misbehavior and other naughtiness and criminality. Suffice to say, Donald Trump and Willy Clinton have been silent on Swalwell’s and Gonzalez’s sexual antics.
And, frankly, the fact that Swalwell’s accusers have waited till now to come forward, let alone press criminal charges, is at the very least disturbing—regardless of their reasons, excuses, or defenses—and casts doubt on the accusations.
While on the subject, why couldn’t Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, have come forward right after, as she later claimed, he had sexually assaulted her when they were prep school pupils? And why did she wait until he had been nominated for the Supreme Court when she could have accused him when he was nominated for the federal appellate bench—or any time before that?
And to bring it home to Litchfield, Dave Driscoll’s accusers, who wouldn’t for whatever reasons testify against him in criminal trials right after the alleged abuse, have waited over three decades—right after his death—to sue the town—an alleged negligent third party—for money damages in civil court. That, when all is said and done, is what it’s all about . . .
14 April—It was on this day in 1865 that President Abraham Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded as he watched a performance at Ford’s Theatre. Not to put ideas into anyone’s head, but the Kennedy Center won’t be closing for Donald Trump’s disastrous, mostly unneeded, typically tasteless modifications; and he and his wife may be attending a performance of something or other before then. And it won’t matter if Trump stays awake.
Moving on to another disaster, deep in the night of 14 April 1912–early morning of 15 April in the United Kingdom—the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank in just over two and a half hours. Because of imprecise—okay, sloppy—passenger and crew lists and general record-keeping, as was not uncommon back then, it’s not known exactly how many passengers and crew out of the approximately 2,200 on board went down with the unsinkable ship or died from drowning or freezing in the 28-degree Fahrenheit saltwater, but the best estimates put it between 1,490 and 1,635; and there were only 700 to 710 survivors recorded.
Naturally, the Titanic’s owner, the White Star Line, was sued in both the United Kingdom and the United States—for over $16 million for loss of life and property, as well as injuries. Personal injury law—ambulance chasing—was in its infancy back then. And naturally, most of the claims were settled out of court for a total of a piddling $664,000. Most of the litigation was shunted to the U.S. because, as is not commonly known, the British White Star Line was actually owned by an American trust, International Mercantile Marine Co., and under American law IMM’s liability was conveniently limited rather more than under British law.
IMM had been created just over a decade before the Titanic incident by Hartford’s own J.P Morgan, who bankrolled the deal, and conspired with American shipping tycoons Bernard Baker and Clement Griscom, and British shipping magnates Sir John Ellerman and Bruce Ismay. The idea, of course, was for IMM to monopolize the shipping trade through interlocking directorates and other dirty tricks beloved and perfected by robber barons.
White Star Line chairman Ismay, whose family had owned the line since 1868, was the only IMM principal who was on the Titanic’s maiden (and final) voyage. Because he survived, he was naturally branded a coward—which he may well have been—and resigned the chair in 1913, becoming a depressive recluse and dedicating his remaining 25 years to maritime safety. Survivor’s guilt? His widow, American-born Julia Ismay, lived to 96, crossing the bar in London in 1963.
Incidentally, the RMS Titanic was officially a Royal Mail Steamer rather than a Royal Mail Ship and ships’ names are by convention italicized mostly to be a pain in the neck. And all the sanctimonious politicians and others who have essentially forced Eric Swalwell’s downfall—deserved or otherwise—are nothing but goddamned hypocrites . . .
13 April—When Viktor Orbán was reelected prime minister of Hungary in 2018 and his party held its two-thirds legislative majority allowing it to continue to do everything Trump does by illegal executive order and his self-serving, cowardly, sycophantic Trumpublican bare legislative majority acquiesces to, Donald Trump couldn’t wait to congratulate the formerly liberal dictator whose power went to his head and his family’s bank accounts. (It must be only coincidence that that sounds like the Trumps.)
When Péter Magyar was elected prime minister of Hungary yesterday and his party gained the two-thirds legislative majority that decisively ousted Orbán and his henchmen and will allow the good guys to undo all the damage the Orbán crowd had been able to wreak on the poor, economically stagnating (thanks to Orbán and his pals) little country, Donald Trump hasn’t had the graciousness—let alone the common courtesy expected of heads of state—to congratulate him.
No surprise there, of course, because it’s Donald Trump, after all, a humanoid creature who conspicuously and proudly wallows in his lack graciousness, common courtesy, and all other qualities expected of heads of state and just plain ordinary civilized people. Moreover, Orbán is a BFF of Trump’s—or, more likely in the circumstance, Orbán was a Trump BFF, since he’s no longer a fellow autocratic head of state with any authority to speak of.
Moreover, Trump embarrassed himself when he tried to influence the Hungarian election, promising to support Hungary’s stagnant economy if and presumably only if BFF Orbán was reelected and sending over his slimy vice president to sweet-talk, butter up, and bullshit the country’s voters into continuing to enjoy living under an autocratic regime. That must have embarrassed Trump only because it didn’t work. And that’s because evidently Hungarian voters—who turned out in record numbers yesterday, about 80 percent of those eligible—are smarter and not anywhere near as gullible as American voters.
Viktor Orbán was Russian dictator Vladimir Putrid’s best friend in the European Union and NATO—and came through for him. And Putrid must be just as embarrassed as Trump because his interference in Hungary’s election yesterday was, like Trump’s, a wasted effort.
Now, if only American voters in November give House Democrats and non-Trumpublicans a majority of any size and Senate Democrats and non-Trumpublicans gain a two-thirds majority, Trump, Vance, and the others in the order of succession can be impeached until one is reached who is willing to do the right thing. Before it’s too late.
The stuff as dreams are made of . . .
12 April—The Civil War, a national calamity that divided the country but doesn’t equal the catastrophe brought about by Donald Trump’s incompetent, insane, malevolent presidency, began 165 years ago today as Confederate forces under Brigadier General Pierre Beauregard bombarded Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, commanded by Major Robert Anderson.
Beauregard used some clever ordnance, including “hot shot”—red-hot cannonballs that set fire to Sumter’s wooden buildings. Miraculously, however, no one on either side was killed during the 34-hour bombardment. But during the 14 April ceremony in which Anderson surrendered to Beauregard a pile of cartridges exploded, killing a Union soldier instantly and mortally wounding another one, who died a few days later.
We won’t even speculate on the vast number of people—mostly innocent civilians—Trump’s narcissistic megalomania has killed.
Anyway, the Union officer who was second in command of Fort Sumter was Captain Abner Doubleday, the selfsame West Point grad who much later was credited with or accused of inventing baseball when he was 20 and living in Cooperstown, New York, but didn’t ever and at the time wasn’t. In fact, there’s no evidence that Doubleday ever played or had any interest in the American sport that’s actually British rounders on steroids.
And although Doubleday didn’t invent the San Francisco cable railway that still runs up and down the city’s notorious hills, he helped its inventor, Andrew Smith Hallidie, patent it and get the charter. And he retired as a major general in 1873 and published, among other things, two important works on the Civil War. As it happens, Abner Doubleday was a great-great-granduncle of Nelson Doubleday Jr, of the publishing house, who once owned the New York Mets.
* * * * * * *
In non-news, Donald Trump’s terrific trio of skilled peacemakers on a weekend boys’ vacation in Islamabad, Pakistan—JD Vance, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff—hasn’t made peace with Iran. Another day, another several million dollars of taxpayer money wasted. Of course, that’s only because, according to Vance, Iran refused to accept the “final and best offer” thrown in its face by the United States. The terrific trio isn’t calling it unconditional surrender, but that’s precisely what a take-it-or-leave-it treaty is.
The people of Iran clearly need and deserve to get rid of the corrupt incumbent theocratic totalitarian regime, but America’s corrupt incumbent quasi-theocratic totalitarian regime doesn’t have the smarts or finesse to get the job done . . .
11 April—The good news is that Orion has landed safely, having survived a plumbing catastrophe. And an unverified but unquestionably reliable source has informed us (on the condition of anonymity) that the White House had a special courier with top-level security clearance waiting on board the USS John P. Murtha, which picked up the Orion, to seize the capsule’s compacted solid waste and deliver it to an unspecified—i.e., top-secret—facility.
At the unspecified—i.e., top-secret—facility, according to the unquestionably reliable anonymous source, the historic and well-traveled solid waste will be mixed with sawdust and compacted even further to maximize volume, divided into one-ounce bars and rounds (avoirdupois rather than Troy, to maximize volume), embossed with Donald Trump’s imperial image and signature and who knows what else, plated with nine-karat (or baser) gold, and delivered to one of Trump’s evil spawn for marketing to Trump’s MAGA multitude, who have shown that they’ll buy any shit.
The other news, then, is that the latest renderings of the latest Trump vanity project, officially called the Independence Arch to fool the aforementioned MAGA multitude but commonly known as the Arc de Trump, have been released. It must be noted that it’s Trump himself who put his miserable moniker on the typically tasteless and inappropriate monument to himself last October, when he characteristically answered a reporter’s question about whom the gilded monstrosity rendered at that time but not much different from the current embarrassment to taste was for, with “Me. Going to be beautiful.” Of course.
In case you miss it on the architect’s rendering, it must also be noted that Harrison Design calls the monstrosity “triumphal arch.” And if you go to Harrison Design’s website, you can see why Trump chose that firm to design his eponymous arch.
Trump claims that the cynosure to himself is actually intended to mark the semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Well, truth be told, Trump probably doesn’t know what a semiquincentennial is. As a practical matter, though, do Trump and his flunkies and other supporters really expect it to or believe it can be ready for the 250th Independence Day festivities on 4 July, not even three months away?
Everybody knows that Donald Trump performs miracles with the selfsame Ex-Lax regularity he flouts laws, but even God himself, whose name is to be gilded at the top of the Arc de Trump where it’s not likely to be seen, couldn’t be expected to get it done . . .
10 April—Donald Trump’s dynamic duo of skilled diplomats has just been dispatched to Pakistan to undo the damage they’d wreaked in negotiations with Iran before Trump and Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to launch their ill-considered, ill-conceived, blatantly illegal non-war bombing of Iran and Lebanon to kill Persian civilization, never to have it brought back again if the crazy bastards didn’t open the fuckin’ Strait of Hormuz, in Trump’s tactful and elegant words, after the initial bomb runs.
(One wonders if there any formal, executed instruments detailing the terms of the alleged U.S.-Iran-Israel ceasefire or if it’s just a matter of he-said-she-said. Or, these days, he-said-he-said; she-said-she-said; they-said-they-said; and combinations thereof ad nauseam.)
Trump’s dynamic diplomatic duo, if you didn’t know, comprises his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff. Jared’s and Steve’s credentials for negotiating with the decidedly antisemitic—not just anti-Zionist—Iranian regime include that both pretend-diplomats are strongly Zionist Jews and property developers. And by virtue of being Trump’s son-in-law, Jared is also a senior advisor to the president.
To add some (additional) diplomatic competence to the dynamic duo, Trump has installed his vice president JD Vance to head the delegation, thus making it a terrific trio. Although JD supports his master’s support of Israel, he has the advantage of not being, nor ever having been Jewish. In fact, it was from abhorrent atheism that he converted to Roman Catholicism in 2019.
You may recall that at the time of his conversion JD Vance was an allegedly honest bestselling author but not yet an elected official. And, lest you forget, he was a staunch critic of Donald Trump, a “never Trump guy,” calling the orange buffoon—but not all at once—“just another opioid for Middle America, reprehensible, a moral disaster, a cynical asshole like Nixon, unfit for our nation’s highest office” and, of course “America’s Hitler.”
In addition to adopting a popular mainstream way to worship an imaginary deity, JD Vance changed his name a few times. And as his “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” clearly shows, he’s also an exceptionally gifted writer of fiction. So when you consider that JD is a skilled and successful chameleon and wordsmith, you can well imagine him as an effective diplomat.
The question, then, is, can the talented JD Vance undo all the damage Kushner, Witkoff, Trump, Hegseth, and Netanyahu have done? And the answer is, does it really matter? Haven’t Trump and Hegseth already declared “a capital V military victory by any measure” even though Iran appears to have the upper hand?
In the meantime, the White House damage-control team has dispatched Melania Trump to distract attention from the latest mayhem and corruption her husband is responsible for. And that’s all that matters . . .