16 October—After celebrating West Hartford-born Noah Webster’s 268th birthday and the 110th anniversary of the opening of the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn (the real Brooklyn, in New York), let’s turn our thoughts to all the unfortunate bloodthirsty MAGA morons and other sickos who will be deprived of the ecstatic thrill and unspeakable pleasure of witnessing in real time—as the rifles are being fired—the execution of Nidal Hasan on 3 December.
Of course, they have every right to put the blame for the spectacle’s cancellation on Donald Trump, because despite his own fondness for public executions and other outrages he succumbed to squeamish pressure and countermanded his warlord-executioner’s best-laid plan.
One would have expected Trump to use his SCOTUS-given, constantly abused authority to put the execution on his despicable streaming channel as a pay-per-view special. It was bound to be a winner, but that’s another story.
What Trump should have done to accommodate the squeamish and at the same time keep his flock of fools happy is to volunteer himself to be executed. Honestly and realistically, a plurality, a vast majority of Americans and good people of the world—even the most squeamish—would pay to see Donald Trump executed rather than some Muslim murderer.
Problem is, Donald Trump habitually thinks only of himself, so he couldn’t care less about doing the right and honorable thing for any reason. (He could have offed himself any time in his 80 rotten years, for instance, but didn’t. Sadly.)
So in that case there would have to be a justiciable reason to execute him. And of course there is. Beyond any doubt. Not a reason, but reasons, in fact. Because in federal law execution is authorized for serious capital offenses including but not limited to first-degree murder, espionage, and treason.
First degree murder? Trump may not have pulled the trigger, but he authorized and continues to authorize not only the extrajudicial murder of what his enablers and defenders call drug traffickers, but also all the victims of his undeclared war on—as opposed to with—Iran, including school children.
Espionage? We don’t know precisely what top secrets Trump has confided in his fellow dictators, including Vladimir Putrid, but it’s a safe bet he’s spilled the secrets—if only to impress them, as he did with secrets in his Mar-a-Lago bathroom.
Treason? The Constitution defines that in Article III: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them [the United States, construed at the time as a plural noun], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Trump has blatantly weaponized his whole administration against the United States, adhered to—sided with and certainly given aid and comfort to—foreign nations, including but not limited to Russia—that are at war with the United States.
Yes indeed, Trump should be executed for murder, espionage, and treason. But only after a fair trial . . .
Retiring horses and pricks
15 October—The good domestic news today is that New York City is going to ban horse-drawn carriages. And it’s about time. It’s not yet a fait accompli, mind you, but the mayor (serving his first and—judging by the ridiculous things he’s pushing but not by his inexplicable popularity—possibly only term) and the City Council speaker (chairwoman) have reached an agreement to support the legislation, which is expected to gallop through the 51-member council next week despite unbridled opposition of the equine exploitation industry and affected trade unions.
It’s no longer news, but none the less gratifying to report that legal equine exploitation and abuse in the Rotten Apple—in this case, horse racing—ceased in June with the closing of the racing aspect of Aqueduct Racetrack, the city’s last surviving venue for the sport of bettors.
Good riddance.
The good non-domestic news is that Volodymyr Zelenskyy effectively told Donald Trump to go to hell when Ukraine resumed bombing of Russian oil refineries today despite Trump’s warning not to, after the American cesspool-in-chief had agreed with his fecal friend Vladimir Putrid to put all the blame for everything and then some on Zelenskyy. And everybody but themselves.
The disappointing news—for typical Trump admirers, anyway—is that their hero and messiah has canceled—however reluctantly—plans to livestream (broadcast live on the internet) crazy Dr. Nidal Hasan’s 3 December execution by firing squad. Trump’s steroid-crazed and blood-thirsty warlord Pete Hegseth must still be crying in his Old Glory hankie.
If the Democrats should manage to win a majority in the U.S. Senate next month, don’t be surprised if Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito decide to retire forthwith, thus giving Trump and the lame-duck Trumpublican Senate majority the opportunity to replace them with equally obnoxious and objectionable pricks.
And it would be surprising—and just plain stupid—if Trump, Trumpublicans, and even old-fashioned Republicans haven’t been making contingency plans for some time. Same for the Democrats . . .
14 October—Ever deteriorating and more execrable by the week, Altice Optimum Cablevision once again screwed up the Monitor’s email server; and the surprise update Mozilla inflicted on our Firefox browser despite unrequested updates having been disabled didn’t help matters. Such is life in the digital age.
Moving on to today’s disquisition, then, according to the King James Version of Matthew’s Gospel, in his Sermon on the Mount Jesus suggested that his followers, rather than seeking revenge—“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”—should resist the temptation and turn the other cheek—“whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Presumably Jesus is referring to cheeks above the waist.
In all events, Jesus repudiated the Roman enforcer Lex Talionis. (Okay, lex talionis is merely Latin for the law of retribution.) And Matthew drives home how big Jesus was on forgiveness when he relates that Jesus tells his pal Peter to forgive a brother (as in bro rather than sibling) who sinned against him “until seventy times seven” rather than the piddling seven times Peter had suggested. Jesus wasn’t quantifying forgiveness, mind you, just saying that you’ve got to forgive.
Jesus isn’t known to have advised his followers to forgive but not forget. At least it hasn’t been recorded in any form. But that adage is widely cited today in one form or another. JFK, for instance, is famously alleged to have said, “Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names,” although that, too, was never actually recorded.
Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, however, in his 1973 book The Second Sin, actually wrote “The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naïve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” Cynical, sarcastic, misanthropic, call it what you will, Dr. Szasz was right on the mark on all three counts.
The first count—“the stupid neither forgive nor forget”—finally takes us to today’s subject, Donald Trump. The stupid prick-in-chief’s favorite law is lex talionis, the law of retribution, retaliation, revenge, getting back. It’s the only law Trump obeys, the only law Trump respects. It’s likely the only law Trump knows, although the law of diminishing returns is right up there with it.
That’s precisely why it’s no surprise that the contemptible American dictator Donald Trump has conspired with his despicable Russian despot pal Vladimir Putrid to screw Ukraine. Trump doesn’t really give a damn about Ukraine (or diesel oil or anything or anyone other than himself, of course). But he detests Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a vengeance (literally), because Zelenskyy refused to succumb to Trump’s bullying about Hunter Biden in 2019 and, according to never-guilty narcissist Trump, brought on the 2019 waste-of-time impeachment.
And count on Trump not giving up until he has the sick, stupid satisfaction of getting even with Zelenskyy. Because the stupid neither forgive nor forget . . .
13 October—This image of Donald Trump posing in front of the most shameless of all the brazen monuments to his notorious narcissism is presented with apologies to Adolf Hitler—because even Hitler didn’t go this far . . .
12 October—In observance of Cristóbal Colón’s landing in the Bahamas in 1492, most post offices are closed today. But the new post office the thoughtful folks who run the United States Postal Service were good enough to give the people of Morris CT 06763 last week is open for business. This is a picture of it:
Back to Cris Colón, then, without GPS or even a chronometer to help him get to where he wanted to go and in fact thought he had got to, he called the indigenous people he encountered and allegedly abused on San Salvador Indians. San Salvador Indians. They cold have been a baseball team. Cris also considered them savages, even though they were arguably less savage than the people Cris was working for.
So that’s why the politically correct crowd calls the holiday Indigenous Peoples Day rather than Columbus Day. The politically correct State of Connecticut still calls it Columbus Day, to be sure, thanks to the state’s powerful ethnic Italian lobby, but several towns and cities celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day. God forbid it should be called Colón Day anywhere.
That’s because Cristóbal Colón, better known as Christopher Columbus in the English-speaking gentile world, was recently (in 2024) confirmed by DNA evidence—announced conveniently for Columbus Day, one might think—as Jewish and Hispanic. Well, a Spanish Jew, anyway, because in the United States Hispanic is taken to mean Latin American. So let’s call Cris Sephardic, Sepharad being the Hebrew word for Spain.
In all events, whether Colón and his few known Jewish crew members actually practiced their religion openly is doubtful, given the notorious Spanish Inquisition. And the very fact that Colón’s forename of record was Cristóbal, which like Christopher means Christ bearer, may well indicate that Cris was a Marrano or Converso, outwardly professing Christianity while secretly practicing Judaism.
That Colón-Columbus was a Sephardic Jew has been mooted for over a century. But now it’s pretty certain, although the DNA evidence hasn’t been peer-reviewed. (Frankly, there’s no excuse for that and it raises some serious doubt.) Still, assuming the DNA evidence eventually passes muster, we can safely expect even the politically incorrect crowd to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day rather than Colón Day—because there’s simply no excuse for a federal holiday to celebrate a Jew.
And you can forget about Colon Day without the acute accent to celebrate the large intestine—despite all it does for us . . .
11 October—A couple of decades ago, Richard C. Stanton, a media and communications professor down in Oz, wrote a book called “All News Is Local.” The rest of the title is “The Failure of the Media to Reflect World Events in a Globalized Age” and the book is an incisive—if debatable—critique of global journalism. So, yes, the short title is ironic.
But the bean-counting pseudo-quasi-journalists who oversee the invidiously lucrative (but not so much from newspapers these days) family-owned Hearst publishing empire—including but not limited to a piddling 32 daily and weekly rags in Connecticut—appear not to have read beyond the book’s short title. Because Hearst boasts that one-third—21—of its moribund Connecticut rags are not just local, but hyperlocal, focusing on very small geographical areas—towns, villages, neighborhoods, and the like—they’re supposed to cover diligently and in some depth. Or so you’d think.
The typical rag that Hearst calls hyperlocal does in fact contain some—but only some— genuinely local news, but it’s almost always sandwiched around the pages (usually no more than four pages—just one measly folio) containing state, national, and world news. The stories may at times be well-written, but they’re never edited or otherwise checked for accuracy or anything else; and the illustrations—photographs—often are pulled from photo archives and have only tangential relevance to any given story.
(Photos, illustrations, and graphs originally in color that are printed in basic black to save Hearst a few bucks are difficult to figure out at best and thus nothing but wasted space.)
Surprisingly, Hearst Connecticut Media doesn’t claim that its Waterbury rag, the poor old ever-shrinking RepublicanAmerican sandwich, is hyperlocal, just that it’s plain ordinary local. But that’s also a misrepresentation. Because while the Hearst RepublicanAmerican contains some usually headline news from a few (lucky?) local municipalities, it covers Connecticut as a whole and localities far from its traditional coverage area, stretching to neighboring states, and gives short shrift to truly local news—including the few local items on the page that’s actually labeled “Local News” . . .
10 October—Surprise! The Terribly Rude Unhinged Megalomaniacal Prick who conned his way to tyrannizing the United States and is doing his best to tyrannize the world is a sore loser. Last night, after his first stump performance in Syracuse, New York, in a decade (for which only four of 16 local Republican candidates were foolhardy enough to show up and protesters dominated the scene), the narcissist-in-chief let loose on his digital ego trip:
Repeating his typically hyperbolic boast that he’d “settled eight Wars” and was “about to win two more” in Iran and between Russia and Ukraine, Donald Trump whined on his big-time-money-losing website, “The United States of America, represented by me, as your President, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t. This is an indelible stain on Norway, one that will never be forgotten.
“The Nobel ‘Peace’ Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of Radical Ideologues who are Anti-Democracy, and Enemies of Civilization! The Nobel Prize was given today to a liberal person who works at the United Nations, who nobody has ever heard of. In all of the Wars that I have settled, I never spoke to the United Nations—they were of no help.”
Gracious in defeat. Is that Donald Trump or is that Donald Trump?
In reluctant explanatory defense of Trump, then, as a classic textbook narcissist, he simply can’t help being a sore loser. The big brash bully really has a fragile ego and equates losing with being flawed or inferior. (Yes, we know he is, but he doesn’t.) So rather than accept responsibility for whatever doesn’t go his way, he blames everyone else, circumstances beyond his control, or unfair rules.
Moreover, as we’ve seen through the decades, even before he contaminated politics, when Donald Trump loses or fails in any way, true to narcissistic type he lashes out with fits of temper and bends rules and humiliates others in an effort to regain control. Textbook all the way.
So it’s really no surprise at all that after the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, which as everybody knows was rightly his, was instead awarded to totally unworthy Navi Pillay, a universally respected former judge of the International Criminal Court, only because the Nobel Committee was biased, liberal, and stupid, Trump should choose that time—that very day—to impose illegal coercive sanctions on the ICC. Whatever excuses Trump’s stooges may give, the world knows they’re nothing but sore loser’s sour grapes. And who knows what sanctions other entities despicable Navi Pillay has been connected with will suffer?
It’s not yet known whether Trump’s pals at FIFA and the PGA will be giving him 2026 peace prizes. But if they don’t come through, Navi Pillay has magnanimously declared in an online video that she “may share this prize with Trump.” “May” is the operative word, to be sure, no guarantees. Will Navi make it two Nobels for Trump? What does the prediction market say?
9 October—The Monitor’s editorial pile bleeds for Donald Trump after his intensive, incessant, shameless lobbying for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize predictably came to absolute bupkes. Again. But all is not lost for America’s golden groper.
First, however, this cyclonomenclatural digression: Unless named storms do catatastrophic damage, in which case the names are retired (like star athletes’ numbers), the World Meteorological Organization recycles English, French, and Spanish names of Atlantic hurricanes on a fixed six-year rotation.
Evidently 2020’s Hurricane Isaias, a relatively mild category 1 storm (with sustained winds of only 74 to 95 mph) who did a mere 5 billion in damage, wasn’t considered catastrophic. Because Isaias is back (Isaias Jr. or Isaias II?) in 2026, category 3 at this writing (111 to 129 mph) and gathering strength as he dashes through the Gulf of Mexico—sorry, Donald, the Gulf of America—and is expected to hit the Gulf Coast tonight or early tomorrow.
A notable feature of storms called Isaias is the pronunciation of the very name. And this is a brief commentary on the subject that appeared in the late lamented Pape RepublicanAmerican on 19 August 2020 and is every bit as relevant now as it was then:
POLITICALLY CORRECT PRONUNCIATION?
Among the dreadful aspects of Tropical Storm Isaias is the pronunciation of “Isaias.” “Ees-ah-EE-ahs” is the Spanish pronunciation, which radio and television news and weather personnel have been tripping over one another to articulate precisely—and often with difficulty.
When Isaias hit the United States, where English still is the predominant language and the lingua franca of the world, wouldn’t it make more sense to simply pronounce the name “Eye-ZAY-us”? Or would that be politically incorrect?
Paul Mordecai Rosenberg
So now to console poor, unappreciated Donald Trump. Sure, the self-proclaimed President of Peace has been snubbed yet again by those left-wing communist Nobel Committee bastards. But last December, you may recall, the fine people who mismanage and abuse world soccer awarded Trump the very first FIFA Peace Prize.
Apropos nothing, FIFA capo dei capi Gianni Infantino presented the coveted FIFA Peace Prize to the big beaming bully at the final draw for the 2026 FIFA World Cup at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in early December just a couple of weeks before Trump unlawfully stuck his own name on it.
We were assured at the time that the 2025 FIFA Peace Prize was the inaugural one and that—despite embarrassment and push-back from less corrupt FIFA quarters—other annual awards would follow. Don Gianni hasn’t been big on details, to be sure (sort of like the Trump maladministration), but it’s not unlikely that Don Donald is leading the pack for the 2026 FIFA Peace Prize—and may well be the only scumbag in consideration.
And that’s not all. If FIFA can give an award to Trump, whose interest in soccer goes as far as he can profit from it, why shouldn’t the PGA come up with a peace prize for the world’s most notorious golf cheat?
8 October—Count on Kosta Diamantis not to disappoint his adoring public. Convicted on all 21counts of bribery, extortion, conspiracy, and false statements, yet sentenced to a mere seven years up the easy river in absentia because he handily outfoxed the incredibly lenient judge and sleeping federal fuzz and skipped to Mother Greece, his lawyer has just filed a notice of appeal to the Second Circuit.
Why not? For starters, it’s not costing Kosta anything. Because taxpayers have been footing the $177-per-hour bill for the deadbeat kakopoios’s defense since he stiffed criminal defense lawyer Norm Pattis out of $65,000 but Norm, having been cajoled by the court, has been charitable enough to represent the unrepentant malakas for that piddling federal standard fee anyway.
And even though it doesn’t do a criminal defendant any good in the eyes of most [sic] appellate judges to have skipped the country (before or after sentencing, for all it matters), a defendant-appellant’s physical presence isn’t generally required for filing an appeal, just so long as it’s done within two weeks of the judgement. (Yes, Kosta was pronounced guilty as hell last October, but it’s the formal sentencing date that counts; and that was only last Friday, as specified on Norm’s notice of appeal.)
On the other hand, an appellate court can invoke the seldom-used fugitive disentitlement doctrine to dismiss an appeal while a defendant-appellant remains on the lam, refusing to hear it until he, she, it, or they return to the purview and authority of the court.
In all events, an appeal isn’t a new trial, an opportunity to present new evidence, but rather a review to determine whether the proceeding in the lower court had been a hundred percent kosher, as they say in Greece.
Realistically, can anybody imagine the Second Circuit—or any principled court—ruling for Kosta Diamantis? And that’s if—and only if—it doesn’t invoke fugitive entitlement from the get-go.
On the third hand, there’s always the very real possibility of yet another Trump pardon for yet another convicted criminal to consider. On the fourth hand, though, if Kosta and Norm could count on buying a Trump pardon, why would they waste any effort on a guaranteed unsuccessful appeal? Then again, Kosta is flat broke . . .
7 October—So was Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu actually warned by the president of the United Arab Emirates over a week before the 7 October 2023 blitz that Hamas was going to mount a “terrifying operation” against the little quasi-secular Jewish state, as alleged by reporters for the notably liberal, anti-Netanyahu Haaretz newspaper?
Given that Bibi has had to resort to all manner of desperate stratagems to stay in office—in order to stave off a trial and pretty certain conviction for corruption—it’s not out of the question. And since, in the style of his bosom buddy Donald Trump, Bibi has filed a SLAPP (strategic litigation against press participation) suit that his lawyers insist is for libel against the bastards, it’s even less out of the question.
Of course, Bibi denies anything of the sort. And, on the other hand, why would the Hamas boss—who, however, was conveniently killed by Israel in the 7 October aftermath—have telegraphed the beans to even his closest friends in the circumstance?
Closer to home, then, here’s a recent picture of the New American Reich’s minister of war:
6 October—On Friday 9 October Donald Trump will learn that he’s been passed over yet again for the Nobel Peace Prize. How can that be, you wonder, when the saintly, infallible, self-anointed “peace president” vigorously and mendaciously (and/or delusionally) boasts he’s ended any number of wars (or whatever you want to call them) and has achieved beautiful global stability in the bargain? And let’s not forget Trump’s ludicrous Board of Peace con game that’s housed at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace (formerly the United States Institute of Peace).
Trump is a past master—he’s a very persistent and successful practitioner, to lamentably say the least—at getting his feculent name out there, usually along with his loathsome image. Because as a natural-born con man he knows that hearing a lie often enough increases the chance people believe and accept it as true, that what psychologists call the “illusion of truth effect” causes the great unwashed to mistake what has become familiar to them for factual accuracy and truth.
But the Nobel Committee aren’t the MAGA moronic great unwashed.
The Nobel Committee keeps the nominations and nominators for all the prizes secret for 50 years, so any juicy stuff—like nominees and their proposers—is based on rumor, speculation, and leaks by nominators. The non-juicy announcement by the committee this year is that a total of 287 nominations for the Peace Prize were made, 208 individuals and 79 organizations.
Nominators for all the Nobels except the Peace Prize are specifically invited to propose their heroes. But Peace Prize nominations are accepted from a wider—if not terribly diverse nor random—pool of statesmen, politicians, and academics.
Among the individual 2026 Nobel Peace Prize nominees, as leaked by the nominators, is Saint Donald Trump. Of course. One of Saint Donald’s sponsors is Israel’s politically moribund head of state. Of course. And among Saint Donald’s other sponsors are the heads of state of Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Gabon, and Rwanda. If you haven’t guessed, all those heads of state are charitably considered autocrats and their states are thus dictatorships.
You may recall that last January, two weeks after U.S. forces illegally kidnapped Venezuela’s corrupt left-wing dictator and his wife, right-wing opposition leader María Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, ceremoniously embarrassed herself by giving her 6.3 troy ounce solid 18K gold Nobel medal to obsessive chrysophilist Trump in a gesture of hopeful ass kissing.
And don’t forget that Trump showed his profound appreciation and thanks to Sra. Machado by installing Venezuela’s corrupt left-wing vice president as the captive nation’s interim president. Sra. Machado is still enjoying exile in Panama, by the way. Perhaps if she’d given Trump the $1.17-million cash stipend besides the less-than-$20,000 medal she’d be Venezuela’s interim president rather than Delcy Rodriguez.
Nah. He is Trump, after all . . .