17 October—If you’re keeping count of the murders in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela being committed by the United States Navy on orders of Donald Trump and his equally villainous warlord-flunky Pete Hegseth, it’s now five boats allegedly transporting narcotics that have been blown to kingdom come (destroying evidence) along with at least 27 people Trump and his mob insist without proof are narcoterrorists.
The naval engagements (maneuvers?) in the Caribbean in typically Trumpish defiance of international and domestic law are being executed (so to speak) by forces of the navy’s Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), whose boss is Admiral Alvin Holsey (not to be confused with Admiral Bull Halsey, who died 66 years ago). One wonders how Admiral Holsey and USSOUTHCOM personnel feel about following the scumbag-in-chief’s illegal orders.
It’s possible, perhaps even probable, that Admiral Holsey has had enough. Because just this morning Hegseth announced on social media (of course) that the four-star admiral would be retiring by the end of the year. After only about a year on the job. It’s also possible, perhaps even probable, that Hegseth fired Admiral Holsey for not kissing his and Trump’s despicable asses, as is required under the current dictatorship’s rules of engagement. Admiral Holsey was promoted during Joe Biden’s administration, after all.
* * * * * * *
On the subject of Trump’s dictatorship, he threw a dinner party on Wednesday for the 130 schmucks who’ll be helping to pay for the inappropriate and lavishly tasteless gilded ballroom the scumbag-in-thief [sic] intends to desecrate the White House with. He’s already had most of the Rose Garden paved over.
Given Trump’s blatant monarchical pretensions and tendencies as well as his conspicuous lack of taste, one wonders why he hasn’t suggested dressing up White House guards like European palace guards.
Grown-ups may remember that Tricky Dick Nixon did just that during his reign. Here are pictures of the Nixon’s White House anything-but-Secret Service guards in 1970. The Ruritanian uniforms, designed by D.C. tailor Jimmie Muscatello, became a laughingstock, so they didn’t last long; the caps disappeared within weeks and the entire uniforms were abandoned by mid-year. The government surplus shmattes were eventually put out to bid in 1980 and Iowa’s Meriden-Cleghorn Community High School marching band’s bid of ten dollars per uniform beat out Alice Cooper’s bid.
Couldn’t the holsters have been a little less conspicuous?
16 October—Noah Webster was born 267 years ago today in the Western Division of Hartford, known today as . . . guess what. After Yale, he briefly studied law in Litchfield, but not at Tapping Reeve’s Law School (probably because he couldn’t afford it), and—after continuing his law studies in Hartford—eventually passed the bar exam. Did you know they actually gave bar exams back then? But law wasn’t his thing. So he went big-time into teaching, writing, editing, and publishing.
Noah Webster is best known (most well-known, as semi-literates would have it) as a lexicographer and compiler-author of the momentous and monumental “An American Dictionary of the English Language.” It followed Samuel Johnson’s momentous and monumental “A Dictionary of the English Language” by 73 years and isn’t as much fun to read.
While Johnson’s and Webster’s dictionaries were descriptive in presenting examples of historical usage, both were prescriptive in instructing people on proper spelling, pronunciation, and usage. Johnson sought to preserve the purity of English wherever she was spoke and to fix the language by ridding it of irregularities. Similarly, Webster sought to establish standards for the language on this side of the Atlantic.
These days, for better or worse, most dictionaries (of all languages) tend to be purely descriptive, showing examples of how words and phrases have been used while not attempting to tell readers how words should be used; they thus record the evolution of language. The “Oxford English Dictionary,” for instance, was originally called “A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.”
So a nice volunteer who’s begging Connecticut Public Broadcasting listeners for money says “irregardless” in some context. At the very least, it grates on a grammarian’s sensibilities. We don’t want to think how Johnson and Webster would react to “irregardless” if they were alive. But you’d of thunk that someone at Connecticut Public would of caught it. Irregardless of them, Rosenberg ain’t happy with it. (And ain’t is a disquisition unto itself.)
For the fun of it, then, here are Johnson, Webster, and OED on “regardless” and OED on “regardless” and “irregardless.” “Irregardless” hadn’t even occurred to Johnson and Webster—or anybody else before 1912, according to OED. And even the descriptive dictionaries that dutifully record that abominable word call it nonstandard (American spelling) or non-standard (British spelling).
15 October—We’re delighted to report that the audience in attendance at last night’s Litchfield first selectperson [sic] debate behaved itself admirably—doubtless because the League of Women Voters of Litchfield County used the magic word and asked it to please be kind and polite—and the town’s constables didn’t have to be called in to restore or even maintain order. That’s good because Litchfield doesn’t have constables. And we’ve learned not to count on state police.
It’s reported (but not confirmed), moreover, that masked and armed ICE thugs were observed lurking in the shadows of the Litchfield Intermediate School before the debate, presumably with the hope of making a few busts to justify their deplorable existence. But evidently they were unable to make any arrests because the undocumented immigrants in Litchfield look just like their neighbors and don’t bother to vote in local elections—just like their neighbors.
* * * * * * *
The Hamas media mavens tell us that the Islamic Resistance Movement, as the genocidal terrorist organization is officially known, is maintaining its conspicuous presence in Gaza only to provide security for the once and future war zone’s surviving Sunni Muslim residents (the only ones Hamas cares about), maintain order, and target lawlessness. If that sounds familiar, it’s the same pretense Donald Trump is using to send soldiers and armed non-military operatives to Washington D.C., Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Dictators depend on military and police presence and support and love to show off their military strength. Just saying.
In its alleged crusade to bring law and order and security to Gaza since the alleged ceasefire, Hamas has been carrying out summary executions (i.e., mass murders) in public of rivals and critics. If that sounds familiar, it’s merely the logical extension of the politically and personally motivated retributive injustice being inflicted on people and institutions that Donald Trump doesn’t like.
Trump’s Supreme Court fan club lets him get away with all manner of questionable crap to sustain his tyrannical rule, but even his adoring justices probably (hopefully, anyway) wouldn’t condone murder. At least murder of people on United States soil. That’s why Trump and his pet war monger Pete Hegseth play it safe by murdering what they claim without proof are Venezuelan drug runners in international waters.
Yesterday Hegseth’s marauders blew up their fourth victim boat and murdered another six people. Sure, the latest attack, like the other three, was illegal by international and American law, but the evidence has been obliterated and the victims were just a bunch of foreigners anyway. So why should anybody give a damn?
And now that the Supreme Court has rejected Alex Jones’s appeal, expect Donald Trump to award his fellow scumbag the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Why not? Trump has made a mockery of that once esteemed award. Also . . .
14 October—Big Litchfield scoop you won’t find in the Hearst RepublicanAmerican or Litchfield.bz: Taxpayers, residents, and other people who may or may not feel like voting in Litchfield and don’t feel like shlepping to the Litchfield Intermediate School at 6:00 (an hour earlier than we’ve become accustomed to) tonight to watch the debate between incumbent first selectman Denise Raap and challenger Bill Zampaglione can still enjoy the show on YouTube by copying and pasting this link: https://youtube.com/live/1m3NTzprKWc?feature=share.
Should any taxpayers, residents, and other people who may or may not feel like voting in Litchfield feel like submitting questions to the candidates, this is the link for them: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfzrSKoYvNH7dcXMZ3OgqcNxth1nVPyBFcrMID0a0HylpMulA/viewform.
The great debate is being hosted and controlled—and the questions vetted and culled—by the venerable League of Women Voters of Litchfield County, which calls the contested position “Litchfield First Selectperson.” It’s actually on the books as “Litchfield First Selectman” and the incumbent prefers to be called that. But why quibble?
The LWV of LC asks the audience to “please kind and polite,” and “remain quiet and respectful.” It’s Litchfield, so that’s a given. Well, maybe not quite. (Ahh, the good old days . . . )
On the other hand, the LWV of LC asks the audience not to wear “political clothing or signs”: “Please do not wear or bring political messages/signs related to a party or candidate to our debates or forums.” That’s ridiculous and unrealistic, to say the least.
While political messaging in and near polling places during elections is accepted in most places (however grudgingly—and it’s of questionable legality in all events), to proscribe it from public forums simply cannot be taken seriously. The First Amendment applies in the circumstance, a public forum in public building. But even if it didn’t, the LWV of LC should know better than even to suggest limiting political expression.
And if the audience is watching the show remotely, what does it matter anyway?
13 October—The big news today is that The Litchfield Monitor has dropped the pretentious capitalized definite article from its name and now is just plain old Litchfield Monitor or the Litchfield Monitor. Readers who don’t receive the Monitor’s daily link and have chosen to navigate through the home page of LitchfieldMonitor.com to reach the daily disquisition will have noticed the new logo reflecting the historic alteration. And readers who do get the daily link might want to navigate to the home page anyway, just to marvel at the magnificent new logo, which adds still more gratuitous brilliance to the Monitor and superfluous depth to itself.
In all events, readers can rest assured that the new look and added dimension are only in the logo; and as with everything else that touts a new look the content remains the same old same old. Like it or not.
In other news, the cornerstone of the White House was laid 233 years ago today and Margaret Thatcher was born 100 years ago.
And in Gary Varvel’s editorial cartoon the other day that pictured two Hamas terrorists, one is telling the other: “In phase 1 of the peace deal, we exchange hostages for prisoners. In phase 2, we RELOAD.” Right on the mark, Varvel! Does anyone really think Hamas and its evil genocidal allies have any intention of letting Israel continue to exist? And it will ever be thus.
* * * * * * *
On to the other topic of the day, then, in the Monitor’s annual observation of the event, yesterday was the 533rd anniversary of Cristóbal Colón’s landing in the Bahamas and allegedly discovering the New World for the mercantile benefit of the Old World. Since the 12th was on a weekend again this year, it’s celebrated today to give government employees an extra day off with pay. At least the ones who haven’t been furloughed.
Not having GPS or even a chronometer to help him get where he wanted to go, the brilliant navigator Colón had no idea where he was actually headed or where he landed, so he called the indigenous people he encountered and allegedly abused on San Salvador Indians. That’s why the politically correct crowd calls the holiday Indigenous Peoples Day rather than Columbus Day. God forbid it should be called Colón Day.
Because Cristóbal Colón, better known as Christopher Columbus in the English-speaking world, has just been confirmed by DNA evidence—announced coincidentally 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. Whether Colón and his few known Jewish crew members actually practiced their religion openly is doubtful, given the notorious Spanish Inquisition.
That Colón-Columbus was Jewish has been mooted for over a century. But now that it’s pretty certain, can we 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? Forget about Colon Day without the acute accent to celebrate the large intestine, by the way, although there is Dress in Blue Day in March to promote National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month rather than police or the navy . . .
12 October—A double whammy today about Litchfield politics from Richard Morin, posted as received:
LITCHFIELD SELECTMAN ELECTION APPROACHING
With the upcoming Selectman election. Voters should pay attention to the candidate’s perspective point of views, favorably or unfavorably. They may be satisfied with the current government, but sometimes the only constant is change. Change is an unavoidable and permanent part of life, especially in government.
Present situations may be satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Effort to achieve or complete unsuccessful situations could be made successful with an honorable elected administration who’s commitment is doing what is right.
Two circumstances are occurrences which voters should expect the elected administration to decide with a course of action in a short period of time.
Bantam Annex has been on the agenda for several years regarding how to use it. The town has spent over and above for someone’s conception of devising a plan or idea. This situation is unsatisfactory and should be finalized by the next administration. Restoring constables should be a brief discussion, since it was decided not to replace them as a cost savings measure. To reinstate constables, wouldn’t be cost- effective unless previous cost savings measure wasn’t rightly justified. The town is fortunate to have resident state troopers perform duties which most residents feel is adequate for public safety. There is no such entity as perfect police coverage. Selectman Raap has said, she believes the town is being served well with the present arrangement.
For the candidates, voters must decide on a three -term incumbent or challenger William Zampaglione. “ Let’s get back on track” and “I’m running to deliver real results for the people of Litchfield.” Is this his indication the present government is not sustainable or satisfactory. Explanations during his campaign regarding his statements may help convince voters of this, if there is merit behind them.
With our present three – term incumbent, Denise Raap. Is the voter satisfied with “Don’t change a good thing” and “Leave well enough along.” She doesn’t believe so by saying, “I’m proud of what we’ve achieved together, but there’s more to do.”
Her goals and intentions have shown within her three- terms making town government responsive, efficient and focused on the people she serves.
Every voter needs to realize that elections are determined by the people who show up! Complaints are not in order if you don’t vote on November 4, 2025.
Richard Morin
Litchfield
LITCHFIELD DEMOCRATS HAVE THEIR OWN JIMMY KIMMEL
This past week, democrats gathered behind the Litchfield Democratic candidates. With around one hundred in attendants, which included Audrey Blondin and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz. The emcee was Nerice Gerena with her monologue being that of a late night show. She said Republican’s are running a “straight male” for first selectman and introduced First Selectman as someone who is not a lesbian. Since Miss Gerena is running for a seat on the PZC, she should explain exactly what she meant by what she said. If she feels her statements were appropriate without explaining, then she has no place in public office.
Town Democratic Town Committee should be concerned with her comments and feel her intention to be funny, wasn’t. To sum this up with Republican reaction.
“Tasteless and appalling, not overly surprising considering the source,” by Bill Zampaglione
“It was offensive and they meant it” by John Bongiorno
Richard Morin
Litchfield
11 October—Had she not died in 1962, today would be Eleanor Roosevelt’s 141st birthday. Although Mrs. Roosevelt was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize and clearly deserved it, it was never awarded to her. While Nobel Peace Prize laureates generally do deserve the signal honor and prestige, some, who will go nameless (like Albert Gore Jr. and Barack Obama), clearly do not.
Among others who do not deserve to be Nobel Peace Prize laureates are Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. Happily, they aren’t; they weren’t awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But, believe it or not, all four dictators were actually nominated.
Donald Trump also was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. His nominators include the usual lackeys, admirers, and hangers-on in the United States and the usual dictators, admirers, and hangers-on outside the United States. To no one’s surprise, Trump himself had campaigned shamelessly and shamefully for what’s regarded as the biggest prize in diplomacy. And he’ll continue campaigning: “I know this, that nobody in history has solved eight wars in a period of nine months. And I’ve stopped eight wars. So that’s never happened before.”
Is that Trump or is that Trump? Truth be told, although as usual he gives himself far too much credit, his boast isn’t totally idle. He has in fact helped out with a few peace deals. Naturally he’s done it through his notorious schoolyard bullying, but he’s done it. And when you get down to it, peace wouldn’t exist were it not for the alternative—the threat—of war.
Anyway, to Donald Trump’s chagrin, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate is María Corina Machado, a right-wing, liberal [sic] anti-authoritarian Venezuelan democracy activist currently in hiding from her country’s dictator. But she dedicated her prize not only to “the suffering people of Venezuela,” but also “to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause.” Among her nominators for the prize last year, by the way, were U.S. lawmakers, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was a senator at the time. Have they any regrets?
Trump boasted to the press that Sra. Machado had told him she was accepting the Nobel “in honor of you because you really deserved it.” Who knows? Who cares? In all events, his communications flunky Steven Cheung predictably protested “the Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.” And Trump’s envoy-flunky for Venezuela (and interim Kennedy Center flunky-president) Richard Grenell insisted the “Nobel Prize died years ago.”
Wait till next year?
10 October—Unashamedly obese junk-food glutton Donald Trump, who admittedly suffers from chronic venous insufficiency and who knows what else we don’t know about, nevertheless will have passed his semiannual physical exam with flying colors by the time most Monitor readers get around to digesting this disquisition. One wonders whether his physicians will have bothered to test him for prostate cancer.
Trump is over 70, so routine prostate cancer screening isn’t “recommended” because “experts” insist that potential “harms” of diagnosing so-called indolent cancers—slow-growing ones that men aren’t supposed to worry about—outweigh potential “benefits.”
Alleged potential harms may include “overdiagnosis,” which might cause anxiety and lead to what the medical and statistical experts like to tell us are unnecessary biopsies and treatments. Tell that to Joe Biden, whose quacks—for whatever inexcusable reason—neglected to diagnose his aggressive prostate cancer before it metastasized to his bones.
It must be admitted, on the other hand, that the only potential benefit of finding any kind of cancer in an old fart is hardly worth mentioning: It’s just that timely (i.e., early) diagnosis could save the guy’s life or at the very least obviate additional, unnecessary discomfort and/or pain—as well as the possible added discomfort and/or pain, inconvenience, and expense of aggressive treatment.
But they’re over 70, over 80, so who cares?
Joe Biden’s prostate cancer evidently wasn’t diagnosed until it had reached stage four, the highest numerical stage, which means it had spread to other parts of his body. Had his PSA—prostate-specific antigen—been tested using blood or urine samples as part of his regular physical exams (by presumably the finest quacks in the country), the cancer likely would have been caught early enough to do something about it. But, according to his spokesperson, Joe Biden’s PSA hadn’t been tested since 2014—when he was the 71- or 72-year-old vice president, when the “experts” not only say the test is unnecessary but affirmatively advise against it. And as the president at Trump’s age? He was even older, so forget about it.
Getting back to Donald Trump’s prostate, then, a concomitant of the PSA test is the DRE, the dreaded or exciting digital rectal exam or prostate poke. (You wonder why the rapper Dr. Dre would choose that name for himself even when you know his Christian name in Andre.) While, given Joe Biden’s prostate story, Trump likely will have some kind of prostate test (PSA or MRI scan), it’s inconceivable that he’d ever have a DRE. That’s because there are so many Republican pols waiting in line to put their tongues up his ass that the prostate poker couldn’t get his finger in . . .
9 October—Hamas has won.
Donald Trump the draft dodging convicted criminal who lies everywhere and every time he opens his mouth and should have been imprisoned long ago rails that Senator Richard Blumenthal who served honorably in the Marine Corps but misstated some facts about his deployment “should be imprisoned for lying on the campaign trail.”
A majority of Republicans—56 percent—are ignorant and just plain stupid enough to believe that Trump’s fallacious claims about Tylenol are true. And Trump’s approval rating is laughably and shamefully abysmal. As if any tyrant gives a damn about approval ratings.
This is “The New Colossus,” the poem by Emma Lazarus that’s inscribed on a plaque on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal, with editorial emphasis:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
This is how Donald Trump greets the huddled masses yearning to breathe free:
In his inaugural address on 4 March 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt announced a “Good Neighbor Policy” intended to improve relations with Latin American countries. This is how Donald Trump shows he’s a good neighbor:
8 October—A reader who insists she is not a Trumpublican, claims to be a proud life-long liberal and registered Democrat, swears she did not vote for Trump, and agrees with “everything [I’ve] ever written” about the “psychopath” she calls “a blight on humankind” nevertheless asks why I never refer to Donald Trump as “President Trump” or “the president.” (Everything she’s ever read, anyway. And I really appreciate the decade-long devotion.)
She asks a fair question. For all it’s worth, then, I accept, however grudgingly, that the blight on humankind (an undeserved euphemism for Donald Trump) was elected through a constitutionally mandated, pseudo-democratic, presumably free and fair electoral process in which he received only 1.5 percent more popular votes than his inept opponent and came up just short of 50 percent of the 152,320,193 votes cast, but won 312 electoral votes in 31 states to Whatshername’s 226 electoral votes in 19 states.
Trump shouldn’t have been reelected, but he was. That’s the process. And we have to live with it. And we have to hope the Trump pestilence passes by peaceful means before it does permanent damage to the republic and everything it’s stood for and valued for 250 years. Or is it too late?
In all events, writer’s block and self-discipline prevent me from juxtaposing the esteemed and honorable position and the contemptible and dishonorable person currently contaminating it. To syntactically associate that position with that person’s name is the obscenity of obscenities. And Trump isn’t only an irredeemable scumbag (with apologies to scumbags), he’s shown himself to be an inept executive, an incompetent leader, and an ignorant commander-in-chief—and nothing a president should be.
Then again, Trump isn’t a president at all. He’s an incorrigible con man and tyrant pure and simple.
And count on Trump pardoning Sean Combs who was just convicted of prostitution-related charges, and Kosta Diamantas who will be convicted of bribery, extortion, conspiracy, and other corruption. And he owes a pardon to Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been protecting him. But he’ll make her sweat . . .
7 October—On the second (i.e., two-year) anniversary of Hamas incredibly catching Israel with her pants down and slaughtering 1,200 innocents, the Mallard Filmore comic strip tells us: “Attorney General Pam Bondi recently said that the DOJ would absolutely target people for so-called ‘hate speech.’ She then added that the First Amendment was still sitting on her desk awaiting review.”
The First Amendment brings to mind the Constitution and that brings to mind the Declaration of Independence, the eloquent explanation of why the colonies needed to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them” with a tyrant who had forbidden, dissolved, obstructed, suspended, abolished, constrained, abdicated, plundered, deprived, endeavoured to prevent, refused to assent to what was good, right, lawful, and just; while making “Judges dependent on his Will alone,” erecting “a multitude of New Offices, and [sending] hither swarms of Officers to harrass [sic] our people, and eat out their substance,” and keeping “among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” And that’s only for starters.
In yesterday’s Hearst RepublicanAmerican was an eloquent letter from Frederick W. Krug Sr. of Watertown which brought to mind the Declaration of Independence. We take the liberty of posting it here in its entirety:
“We are witnessing the erosion of what has made America a free society and the envy of the world. Our president issues executive orders as casually as he once threw rolls of paper towels to Puerto Rican hurricane survivors. He appoints incompetents to government positions based on their loyalty to him. He falsely claims that people who oppose him are criminals. He disregards Constitutional due process protections. By his words and manner of speech he advocates violence and then laments the conduct his outlandish behavior has induced. He strong-arms universities, law firms and corporations using Mafia-like threats if they fail to comply with his demands. He insults our longtime allies and praises dictators. He has undermined our country’s role as leader of the free world and opened the door for China to become the world’s foremost economic powerhouse.
“The Republican-controlled Congress stands idly by without protest and instead passes a budget that strips millions of Americans of health insurance coverage and bestows generous tax breaks upon billionaires. It doesn’t care that the president has undercut a wide range of programs that Congress approved, including those providing food and medicine to starving people in the third world.
“The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has distorted the Constitution by ruling that corporations may spend unlimited funds for political purposes, by gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act and by deciding that the president is immune from accountability, even for crimes he commits while in office.
“What can we do about this? We must resist whenever we can. We must expose the lies and distortions that contaminate today’s discourse. We must hold accountable those who undermine our Constitution’s system of checks and balances and who betray the voters’ trust. We must elect representatives with the courage to stand against tyranny.”
(To be fair to Trump, he defended throwing paper towels into a crowd of hurricane-ravaged Puerto Ricans on 3 October 2017 thus: “They had these beautiful, soft towels. Very good towels. And I came in and there was a crowd of a lot of people. And they were screaming and they were loving everything. I was having fun, they were having fun. They said, ‘Throw ‘em to me! Throw ‘em to me, Mr. President!” What a guy!)