12 August—It’s clear that the dreaded, irresponsible Democrat trifecta has been driving Connecticut to fiscal ruin while stripping towns of traditional, effective home rule for the better part of a generation. The state’s latest descent into the cesspool of fiscal ineptitude and inapt progressivism started with the election of Gov. Dannel Malloy in 2010 and has gained fetid momentum with his successor, despite Gov. Ned Lamont’s token gestures of fiscal and social moderation—if not needed restraint.

So what can be done to save the state and its towns from further ruination and hopefully bring it back to fiscal health and social common sense? The obvious solution is to get rid of the complacent Democrats who have caused the damage.

Problem is, Connecticut Republicans just aren’t up to the task. Like any powerless party, Connecticut’s embarrassingly ineffective minority Republicans are eager to criticize the embarrassingly ineffective but nevertheless powerful majority Democrats. Bitching is easy, after all. And the Republicans naturally have their own brilliant but invariably vague correctives and promising agenda. That’s also easy. And the Connecticut Republican agenda—as far as anyone can tell and for all its’ worth—does in fact look pretty promising.

But the problem here—the immediate problem, as it were—is that Republicans won’t be able to claim the governor’s office or majorities in either house of the General Assembly as long as they put up inferior candidates and as long as even their superior candidates for any statewide office hew to the party line. Connecticut Republicans tend to do that more than Connecticut Democrats.

For 15 years, that Republican strategy has been a total flop. And now, to make matters even worse, a good part of the Republican party line—and not just in Connecticut—revolves around Donald Trump. Of course. Republicans simply are not allowed to disavow Trump or criticize him in any way. Period.

While Trump may—or should—usually be irrelevant to state and local politics, if Republican candidates for state and local office can’t avoid talking about him, you’ll never hear them say a bad word. At least in public. To be sure, many benighted Republicans really do think that Trump is a businessman, the greatest president ever, and a demigod. But even those who see him for the con man, the worst and most corrupt president ever, and the dictator that he is keep it to themselves.

In the circumstance, why Republican candidates don’t diss Trump doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Trump isn’t likely to help Republican candidates get elected in strongly Democrat Connecticut. We saw that when Trump endorsed Bob Stefanowski for governor in 2018 and 2022 and he lost to Ned Lamont—by 13 points in 2022.

Stefanowski is a successful businessman as opposed to a con man and he campaigned enthusiastically both times. And in 2010 and 2014, Tom Foley, like Stefanowski a successful businessman as well as Ambassador to Ireland, also also campaigned enthusiastically both times before losing to Dannel Malloy.

But you’ve got to wonder . . .

11 August—The Israeli Defense Forces confirmed that it [sic—IDF is construed as singular] had essentially ordered the hit on an Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza City yesterday, claiming that the prominent and respected journalist who had been covering the carnage from inside the war zone was in fact a top Hamas operative. Four other Al Jazeera newsmen also were killed in the airstrike near the al-Shifa Hospital. Collateral damage, of course.

The IDF insisted—make that alleged without any evidence produced as yet—that the correspondent, Anas Al-Sharif, had been the “head of a terrorist cell in Hamas.” Frankly, that’s rather doubtful. Not impossible, mind you, but doubtful. The Committee to Protect Journalists called the hit a “targeted assassination” and “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom.” (Press freedom exists in Israel, but is subject to censorship for security reasons.)

Lest you think the CPJ is an antisemitic Muslim-Arab media support group, Walter Cronkite was the first honorary chairman of the New York-based 501(c)(3) when it was founded in 1981.

Certainly Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Gaza war hasn’t been particularly kind to Israel. Nor indeed has most media coverage of late. On the other hand, after Hamas’s 7 October attack, while questioning some Israeli claims, Al Jazeera didn’t hesitate to acknowledge Hamas abuses.

And Anas Al-Sharif’s reporting tended to focus on the human aspect—i.e., suffering (which is a concomitant of any war)—which Israel’s Netanyahu administration tried to negate by a smear campaign.

Premeditated attacks on press freedom and smear campaigns naturally bring to mind Donald Trump’s notoriously vindictive nature and complaisantly corrupt administration. But we’ll let that pass. For now.

Back in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu talks about ending the Gaza war and achieving peace in the Holy Land. But it’s common knowledge that he needs a protracted war to keep from going to trial on a number of criminal charges. Not that he’d ever serve time after (as opposed to if) he’s convicted, to be sure, nor probably have to pay any meaningful fines. But unlike the U.S. Supreme Court to Donald Trump, the Supreme Court of Israel isn’t at all accommodating to Benjamin Netanyahu.

And there’ll never be peace in the Holy Land anyway—as long as there’s a State of Israel.

As for Al Jazeera, it’s a pretty good news source. It’s largely funded by the government of Qatar, the selfsame people who recently gave the 747 to Trump. But its coverage of that bribe was more objective than most American media offered . . .

10 August—Today is the feast day of Saint Lawrence. Because on 10 August 258 (AD, of course) the relatively liberal Lawrence was martyred at the behest of conservative anti-Christian Roman emperor Valerian. (Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, a convert to the religion, didn’t come for another half century.)

While the customary method of execution in the day was good old-fashioned decapitation, legend has it that Lawrence was grilled to death on a gridiron. Thus he’s the patron saint of gridirons and cooks. He was instrumental in hiding church records, including all-important membership rosters, from Valerian’s weaponized department of justice, so Lawrence also is patron saint of librarians and archivists.

It’s also said that as Lawrence was being roasted, he quipped, “I’m done on this side, you can flip me over.” So he’s also the patron saint of comedians. No kidding. But there are no witnesses to any of it. Still, that’s the traditional story.

To celebrate whatever it may be, then, here’s a delightful concerto for three keyboards by J.S. Bach. It’s BWV 1063:

9 August—Nobody seems too concerned that Donald Trump wants to add a formal ballroom to the White House and that work will start next month. Trump promises that he and his pals will be footing the bill, after all. And Trump never lies. Evidently nobody cares that the pretty classy executive mansion has done without an extravagant ballroom for over two centuries. The East Room has served the purpose when called upon, so why bother?

Even a number of Trump’s severest critics tend to dismiss a dedicated ballroom attached to the hitherto tasteful White House as no more than another manifestation of Trump’s well-known tackiness—and that’s not taking into account the details of the project, which have not been revealed but which likely will include gold and tasteless glitz coming out the ying-yang and a disco ball.

But it’s self-serving, self-dealing Donald Trump, so you just know the White House ballroom is intended to benefit him rather than the country. Question is, how? Easy. And pretty obvious when you think about it. Right after the East Wing is demolished and the Glitz Tacky Ballroom dropped in its place in record time, while he’s still embarrassing the country as president, using one of his notoriously self-serving executive orders Trump will declare the White House and the 18 acres of the most prime D.C. real estate it sits on superfluous, surplus, unneeded, a waste of taxpayer money to maintain.

So Trump’s executive order will go on to claim that he’ll be doing the nation a great favor by taking the White House off the taxpayers’ hands. Shades of DOGE. He may even offer to pay a token price for it just to show how mighty white he is. But of course he won’t follow through with the scratch.

You can bet that the wrong-headed majority of the Supreme Court—including the two clearly corrupt justices—that’s made Trump into an actual (as opposed to virtual) tyrant above the law, will back Trump’s White House acquisition on the ground that he’d be doing his duty as president.

We shouldn’t want to speculate on what Trump would do with the White House once it fell under his private control. But judging by what he’s done to insult and subvert other properties he’s been able to get his hands on, it’s nothing to look forward to. Don’t be surprised if the White House were to become a casino. The ballroom could easily be filled with card and roulette tables, for instance, and the potential for all the other rooms is mind-blowing. The Trump White House Casino would likely go belly up, but then Trump would simply declare bankruptcy and screw even more people . . .

8 August—Facing impeachment and certain removal from office, President Richard Nixon had Raymond Price, his chief speech writer, draft this frankly brilliant resignation speech, which Tricky Dick delivered very effectively to an eagerly receptive nation in the twilight hours of 8 August1974. The whole speech is worth reading.

Compared to Donald Trump, Richard Nixon was a saint. (Who wouldn’t be?) And it would be good for the nation and the world if Trump resigned from the presidency, better if he had never been elected, even given the alternatives. Perhaps putting J.D. Vance in his place wouldn’t be much of an improvement. But you never know.

In all events, try to hold back your tears as you read:

Good evening. This is the 37th time I have spoken to you from this office, where so many decisions have been made that shaped the history of this Nation. Each time I have done so to discuss with you some matter that I believe affected the national interest.

In all the decisions I have made in my public life, I have always tried to do what was best for the Nation. Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate, I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me.

In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort. As long as there was such a base, I felt strongly that it was necessary to see the constitutional process through to its conclusion, that to do otherwise would be unfaithful to the spirit of that deliberately difficult process and a dangerously destabilizing precedent for the future.

But with the disappearance of that base, I now believe that the constitutional purpose has been served, and there is no longer a need for the process to be prolonged.

I would have preferred to carry through to the finish whatever the personal agony it would have involved, and my family unanimously urged me to do so. But the interest of the Nation must always come before any personal considerations.

From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leaders, I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of the Nation would require.

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first.

America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.

To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home.

Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office.

As I recall the high hopes for America with which we began this second term, I feel a great sadness that I will not be here in this office working on your behalf to achieve those hopes in the next 2 1/2 years. But in turning over direction of the Government to Vice President Ford, I know, as I told the Nation when I nominated him for that office 10 months ago, that the leadership of America will be in good hands.

In passing this office to the Vice President, I also do so with the profound sense of the weight of responsibility that will fall on his shoulders tomorrow and, therefore, of the understanding, the patience, the cooperation he will need from all Americans.

As he assumes that responsibility, he will deserve the help and the support of all of us. As we look to the future, the first essential is to begin healing the wounds of this Nation, to put the bitterness and divisions of the recent past behind us, and to rediscover those shared ideals that lie at the heart of our strength and unity as a great and as a free people.

By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.

I regret deeply any injuries that may have been done in the course of the events that led to this decision. I would say only that if some of my judgments were wrong, and some were wrong, they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interest of the Nation.

To those who have stood with me during these past difficult months, to my family, my friends, to many others who joined in supporting my cause because they believed it was right, I will be eternally grateful for your support.

And to those who have not felt able to give me your support, let me say I leave with no bitterness toward those who have opposed me, because all of us, in the final analysis, have been concerned with the good of the country, however our judgments might differ.

So, let us all now join together in affirming that common commitment and in helping our new President succeed for the benefit of all Americans.

I shall leave this office with regret at not completing my term, but with gratitude for the privilege of serving as your President for the past 5 1/2 years. These years have been a momentous time in the history of our Nation and the world. They have been a time of achievement in which we can all be proud, achievements that represent the shared efforts of the Administration, the Congress, and the people.

But the challenges ahead are equally great, and they, too, will require the support and the efforts of the Congress and the people working in cooperation with the new Administration.

We have ended America’s longest war, but in the work of securing a lasting peace in the world, the goals ahead are even more far-reaching and more difficult. We must complete a structure of peace so that it will be said of this generation, our generation of Americans, by the people of all nations, not only that we ended one war but that we prevented future wars.

We have unlocked the doors that for a quarter of a century stood between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

We must now ensure that the one quarter of the world’s people who live in the People’s Republic of China will be and remain not our enemies but our friends.

In the Middle East, 100 million people in the Arab countries, many of whom have considered us their enemy for nearly 20 years, now look on us as their friends. We must continue to build on that friendship so that peace can settle at last over the Middle East and so that the cradle of civilization will not become its grave.

Together with the Soviet Union we have made the crucial breakthroughs that have begun the process of limiting nuclear arms. But we must set as our goal not just limiting but reducing and finally destroying these terrible weapons so that they cannot destroy civilization and so that the threat of nuclear war will no longer hang over the world and the people.

We have opened the new relation with the Soviet Union. We must continue to develop and expand that new relationship so that the two strongest nations of the world will live together in cooperation rather than confrontation.

Around the world, in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, in the Middle East, there are millions of people who live in terrible poverty, even starvation. We must keep as our goal turning away from production for war and expanding production for peace so that people everywhere on this earth can at last look forward in their children’s time, if not in our own time, to having the necessities for a decent life.

Here in America, we are fortunate that most of our people have not only the blessings of liberty but also the means to live full and good and, by the world’s standards, even abundant lives. We must press on, however, toward a goal of not only more and better jobs but of full opportunity for every American and of what we are striving so hard right now to achieve, prosperity without inflation.

For more than a quarter of a century in public life I have shared in the turbulent history of this era. I have fought for what I believed in. I have tried to the best of my ability to discharge those duties and meet those responsibilities that were entrusted to me.

Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena, “whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is not effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deed, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievements and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

I pledge to you tonight that as long as I have a breath of life in my body, I shall continue in that spirit. I shall continue to work for the great causes to which I have been dedicated throughout my years as a Congressman, a Senator, a Vice President, and President, the cause of peace not just for America but among all nations, prosperity, justice, and opportunity for all of our people.

There is one cause above all to which I have been devoted and to which I shall always be devoted for as long as I live.

When I first took the oath of office as President 5 1/2 years ago, I made this sacred commitment, to “consecrate my office, my energies, and all the wisdom I can summon to the cause of peace among nations.”

I have done my very best in all the days since to be true to that pledge. As a result of these efforts, I am confident that the world is a safer place today, not only for the people of America but for the people of all nations, and that all of our children have a better chance than before of living in peace rather than dying in war.

This, more than anything, is what I hoped to achieve when I sought the Presidency. This, more than anything, is what I hope will be my legacy to you, to our country, as I leave the Presidency.

To have served in this office is to have felt a very personal sense of kinship with each and every American. In leaving it, I do so with this prayer: May God’s grace be with you in all the days ahead.

7 August—Whew! Close call. But don’t worry, I’m still disquisiting for The Monitor.

Without going into why (but it’s pretty damn obvious), just yesterday, Donald Trump’s canicidal homeland security secretary announced that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is in dire need of agents, so there’s no longer an upper age limit of 40 to join the blackshirts. In fact, there’s no upper age limit at all.

At least if you can believe anything out of the current administration. And of course I believe my government.

I’m 82 but could easily pass for non-orange 79 (well, maybe 80) and could still tie up my own shoes if I had any footwear with laces, which however are totally unnecessary. Moreover, I can shoot lethal and non-lethal sidearms and easily hit targets at the close range favored by ICE operatives. And wielding a truncheon (euphemistically called a baton) is second nature, since I often carry a walking stick—as a fashion statement, to be sure, rather than a support device.

And who doesn’t respect and admire federal government employees? Especially when they carry badges and guns that allow them to do anything they bloody well please. And in addition to great benefits, there’s always the U.S. government’s legendary job security.

It was a no-brainer, then. So I went to the ice.gov website and admired the rogues gallery of criminal aliens in and out of custody before adjourning to the dhs.gov website and then to usajobs.gov.

Wow! After reading all that wonderful stuff, some of which is pictured here, I couldn’t wait to submit my application to ICE.

But then I got to the oath of office:

“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend Donald J. Trump against anyone he deems unfriendly or uncooperative, foreign, domestic, and extraterrestrial, during his term or terms in office and forever after; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the great, gracious, beneficent, and perfect leader; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God and Donald.”

That’s why I’m still here . . .

6 August—So Donald Trump wants to put a nuclear reactor on the moon. The reason stated by Trump’s interim NASA flunky administrator, transportation secretary Sean Duffy, is that a reactor on the lunar surface is needed ASAP to beat Russia and China to the punch. It appears that Trump’s former best-buddy dictators have been promising or threatening to do it as a joint effort by 2030, and could thus thwart whatever the U.S. wanted to do on the moon.

As Duffy put it, “We’re in a race to the moon, in a race with China to the moon. And to have a base on the moon, we need energy.” Why did he leave out Russia? And suffice to say that solar and wind power generation won’t work on the moon. But don’t worry about the details.

Because the real reason Trump wants a nuclear reactor on the moon should be obvious to anyone who has been observing his modus operandi—including but not limited to extortion and other forms of intimidation—for any amount of time: He wants a nuclear reactor on the moon first and foremost in order to bully the world into submission to his tyranny.

But this is only a nuclear reactor, you’re thinking, not a bomb. And you’re right. But although the process isn’t all that simple, a nuclear reactor could in fact be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. And once Trump’s henchmen on the moon have the lunar atom bomb ready to detonate, consider what that would mean to the earth.

In simple terms, if the moon were to explode, the consequences for the earth would be dire, disastrous. In addition to localized and possible worldwide destruction caused by debris from the explosion, much of which would be hurtled earthward, think catastrophic, irreversible changes to the planet’s axial tilt and rotation, tides, and weather patterns for starters. Shades of Ian Fleming villains.

But is Donald Trump really that diabolical? And is it just a coincidence that his NASA flunky announced the reactor on the moon on the anniversary of the atom-bombing of Hiroshima?

5 August—On the subject of slow news season/silly season, this morning’s Hearst Republican-American actually has a by-lined story on page 5—surprisingly not on the front page over the fold—headlined “$25,000 a year for life CT lottery prize won this weekend remains unclaimed.” The story makes it clear that the prize in the Lucky for Life lottery “as of Monday morning remains unclaimed.”

Given Hearst Connecticut Media’s inconveniently early deadline (thanks to the necessity of shlepping actual hard-copy newspapers to their respective distribution points from a printing facility in far afield Albany), it was entirely possible that the prize had been claimed later on Monday. But according to unimpeachable non-Hearst internet sources the prize hasn’t in fact been claimed as of 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, The Monitor’s post time today.

The winning ticket was sold at a place delightfully called “Dont Quit Smoke Waterbury Corp” in—you guessed it—Waterbury. Well, not quite and almost. Diligent investigation reveals that while Don’t Quit Smoke Waterbury Corp (with the apostrophe, notwithstanding its absence in the HRA story, which is likely based on a Connecticut Lottery Corporation release) is indeed registered with the Secretary of the State at the address on Lakewood Road (Waterbury’s Rodeo Drive), the actual establishment is identified in Google Earth pictures by two signs as “VAPE & SMOKE VAPORIZERS—E-LIQUIDS & MORE.”

The HRA story laments that the person who won $25,000 a year for life, alas and alack, didn’t have the Lucky Ball number but doesn’t tell us what he, she, it, or they would have won with a cooperative Lucky Ball. So more diligent investigation reveals that the $25,000 annuity is only the second prize, the first prize being $1,000 a day for life (i.e., $365,000 a year)—to the ultra lucky person who matches the numbers on the Lucky Ball in addition to five white balls. Alas and alack indeed. And it’s good to know.

The lump-sum payments also are good to know: $390,000 without the Lucky Ball, $5,750,000 with the Lucky Ball. Before taxes, of course.

Is not claiming a lottery prize without delay really news? What’s the rush? It’s only been a few days, after all. Give the poor winner a break. Even in slow news season—which this season certainly is not. But it’s the Hearst Republican-American.

Apropos nothing, by the way, remember when vaporizers were those ghastly machines that generated malodorous steam intended to clear our little stuffed noses but only while we hovered over them under towels?

4 August—The price of all-purpose paper, commonly called copy paper, is ridiculously high these days. Like everything else. Remember, not too long ago, when you could buy a ream of 20-pound bond for not much over a dollar? Now you’re talking at least five bucks. And the 10-ream cartons have shrunk to five reams to lessen the sticker shock. Like everything else. And that has nothing to do with Donald Trump.

What has everything to do with Donald Trump, however, is the Trumpublican Congress’s defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We won’t comment on that disgraceful, indefensible travesty committed by self-serving gutless scum at the behest of self-dealing vindictive super-scum.

But Mark Contreras, the CEO of the Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network—the parent of Connecticut Public Radio and Connecticut Public Television—who had been on the air regularly begging for contributions even before the Trumpublicans’ shameful assault on the almost six-decade-old national Corporation for Public Broadcasting, has taken the opportunity to amplify his plea: “You’ve probably heard that Congress has voted to take away funding. . . .”

Connecticut Public, as it’s known, has lost about 2.1 million dollars of federal funding. It’s not all that much, when you get right down to it, only about a tenth of its annual revenue, most of it raised from particularly annoying pledge drives (compared to those of other public broadcasting stations). What Contreras doesn’t tell the public is that between his salary of $700,000 and his CFO’s salary of $300,000 and associated fringes, they consume fully half of what Connecticut Public will no longer be getting from the fed.

But, you’re thinking, they’re entitled to be paid for their work. And they certainly are. Problem is, consider that for running a corporation of about 150 employees Contreras may be just a little overcompensated. (Just like his predecessors, but that’s irrelevant.) In the private—for profit—sector, for instance, a CEO of a company that size would be getting perhaps $300,000 to $400,000.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, parent of Connecticut Public, having lost its $1.1 billion annual stipend, will be going out of business by next January. But according to the latest figures available on CPB’s 990 tax return, its CEO received total compensation of only $524,000 in 2022.

It’s certain that public media will soldier on, one way or another. But we don’t know the just how. For instance, will on-air celebrities with half-million-dollar salaries take pay cuts to keep less celebrated colleagues employed? Or will they migrate to for-profit? Most people on and off air in public media are the best at what they do and could be earning much more in the private sector.

There’s absolutely no excuse for what Trump and his flunkies have done to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (and to virtually all other noncorrupt institutions and individuals). And one hopes and expects that when the current dictatorship is thrown out by whatever means it takes, all its wrongs will be righted.

At the same time, one wonders whether Mark Contreras will do the right thing and take a pay cut . . .

3 August—On 4 June 1940, when things weren’t looking too good (to say the least) for Britain and the other good guys at the hands of the Nazis, Winston Churchill, who had taken over as prime minister less than a month earlier, assured Parliament:

“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

(Note how Churchill is not so subtly asking the United States—the new world, with all its power and might—to join the fray. And he puts it in the declarative rather than the subjunctive, implying that he expects it to happen.)

Tom Canfield, the Litchfield Republican Town Committee chairman who in 1973 convinced (co-opted?) this thitherto unaffiliated (fiscally conservative but socially ultra-liberal) newcomer with a big mouth and irrepressible typewriter to join his party and committee, loved to quote the fight part of what’s probably Churchill’s most famous peroration, omitting the landing grounds.

And just the other day, directly referring to the blatantly corrupt Texas Republican trifecta’s strategy to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts in order to give Trumpublicans even more flunky seats in the U.S. House of Representatives to rubber stamp the crimes of their lord and master, Hakeem Jeffries, Minority (i.e., Democrat) Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, harked back to Churchill’s fighting words:

“We will fight them politically. We will fight them governmentally. We will fight them in court. We will fight them in terms of winning the hearts and minds of the people of Texas and beyond.”

Not quite Churchill, to be sure. And Jeffries couldn’t remember the rest of the speech to paraphrase. But he got the point across. Problem is, nothing his Democrats have been doing in “Texas and beyond” has been “winning the hearts and minds” of anyone at all. And unless they get their act together, the country and world are sure to be screwed even more than they are now.

Mind you, in purely political terms, don’t for one minute think that Democrats in Texas and beyond wouldn’t do precisely with the Republicans are doing—and won’t do it as soon as they get the chance. Isn’t that what politics is all about?

Now for an apology. Yesterday, we neglected to mention that immediately upon the death of German president Paul von Hindenburg at 86 on 2 August 1934, chancellor Adolf Hitler took the opportunity to declare himself supreme leader—autocrat, dictator, tyrant, Führer.

We wonder when Donald Trump will do it . . .

2 August—Brilliant mathematician and equally brilliant musical satirist Tom Lehrer died a week ago. He was only 97. In 2020, he put the music and lyrics for all the songs he’d written into the public domain: “I no longer retain the rights to any of my songs. So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money.”

In 2022, Tom Lehrer formally relinquished the copyright and performing/recording rights for his songs, making all music and lyrics composed by him free for anyone to use, and established a website from which all of his recordings and printable copies of all of his songs can be downloaded: “This website will be shut down at some date in the not too distant future, so if you want to download anything, don’t wait too long.”

As of today, the website is alive and well—and a phenomenal source of phenomenal comment and entertainment.

Here are five Tom Lehrer gems. But don’t fail to get them all from the website, tomlehrersongs.com: