13 September—Cesar is an expensive brand of dog food that comes in cat-food-size cans with a picture of a white Westie on the label, rather than a black Scottie, the Westie’s smarter cousin. Cesar is one of many pet-food and other brands manufactured and/or owned by the massive Mars, Inc. conglomerate, the fourth largest closely held company in the United States and the largest pet food business in the world. It has brands all over the place, from Altoids to Iams to Kellogg’s to M&M’s to Pringles to Wrigley’s to Banfield Animal Hospitals.
We mustn’t forget a brand of originally German soft dog treats called Thomas that Mars rebranded Schmackos when it moved production to Australia. If you’re wondering, German schmack and schmeck have to do with taste. And schmuck has to do with jewelry. And putz has to do with cleaning.
Back to rebranding, then, Cesar started life as Mr. Dog and when Mars changed it to Cesar it’s unlikely the Mars family or its consultants were thinking of César Franck. With or without the acute accent. But it’s César Franck whose delightful music you’ll be treated to in today’s disquisition.
César Franck was a Belgian-born French composer, pianist, organist, and teacher who lived from 1822 to 1890. He’s best known for his Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra and his ethereal setting of the Panis angelicus.
Less known is Franck’s Opus 1 Number 1, a piano trio in F-sharp minor, which he composed while a student at the Paris Conservatory in 1839. First performed in 1840, it was published in 1843 and wasn’t received too enthusiastically by critics: derivative, repetitive, jarring. Come on, the kid was only 16 or 17 when he wrote it, after all.
But, franckly, he did Mickey Mouse the trio, especially the last movement. And here it is, the allegro maestoso finale, brilliant, exciting, and thoroughly delightful:
12 September—Even as Iran, pollsters, and he himself continue to embarrass America’s con man-in-chief, you’ve got to hand it to Donald Trump, however reluctantly, because he certainly knows how to work a crowd. But isn’t that what con men and demagogues do?
Take the brilliant way Trump capped off the asinine Trumpublican convention in Dallas’s half-empty American Airlines Center a couple of days ago. (Trump ascribed all the empty seats to hordes waiting to relieve themselves, by the way.) It was a typically long-winded and incoherent but none the less virtuosic performance incorporating flattery, hyperbole, incitement, outright lies, self-glorification, and self-gratification.
You can read the full transcript (with audience reaction) at this link: https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-remarks-closing-remarks-rnc-convention-dallas-september-10-2026/
Here are some choice li(n)es, presented without comment:
“But less than two years ago, the American people gave us a mandate to save America. And in 19 months, I’ve delivered on every single promise I made and I think I delivered on far more.”
“They turned our cities into scenes of death and misery, murder, poverty, and destruction and made America a laughingstock. We were a laughingstock all over the world. But we took that dark age of America and turned it into the golden age of America. We delivered the largest tax cuts in American history, the largest regulation cuts in American history, the largest investment in our military, in the history of our country, and made America the energy and military superpower of the world.”
“I built almost 2,000 miles of wall and created the strongest, most secure border that America has ever seen. And it was just announced, you saw that, that we achieved the lowest level of violent crime in 125 years since the year 1900.”
“We will not have men playing in women’s sports. And if the radical left Democrats and communists win this election, they’re promising to confiscate your wealth, tax your social security, abolish no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. They’re going to defund the police, giving voting rights and welfare to 25 million illegal aliens, destroy Texas Oil & Gas, thereby doubling and tripling your taxes, have men playing in women’s sports, transgender for everybody, the mutilization of your children, and set loose criminals to rob, rape, and kill like we had just two years ago.”
“What we went through, we went through hell. If we win the midterms, we will, on the other hand, provide a, let’s call it Trump dividend, $5,000 for every adult citizen in our country. And we can do that because our country has never done better. We’re taking in trillions, trillions of dollars. There’s never been any country, not even close, that’s come anywhere near.”
“And we will make our very incredible, they tried getting it, some presidents. Most presidents didn’t try because they never had a shot. Most Favored Nation prescription drug discounts, we’re going to make it permanent in law. We will pass the No Invasion of Our Country Act. We don’t want any more invasions of our country.”
“And with JD and everybody else, we will win the war on fraud. You know, we’ve got billions and billions of dollars already in our coffers of money that we caught on fraud. It’s going to be, I would bet it will be over a trillion dollars by the time we’re finished, over a trillion dollars. And we will end, and it started with this and we’re gonna end it, no cash bail.”
“Get it done. So when I’m on the ticket, everybody comes to vote. We have, you know, we won Texas three times, the highest vote in the history of Texas for any race. And by the way, you’ve got to elect Ken Paxton. . . . He was the greatest attorney general in the history of Texas. He was the greatest attorney general in the history of our country . . . and he deserves to go to the United States Senate.”
“I’m not on the ticket. You gotta pretend. I’m not on the ticket. You gotta do me a big, the biggest favor you’ve ever done me. You’ve gotta do this for me. You’ve gotta pretend I’m on the ticket. I’m on the ticket. I’m on the ticket. He’s on the ticket. Pretend I’m on the ticket. Because this is going to turn out to be one of the most important elections.”
The incredible pledge:
“I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends. I’ll do it anyway. I don’t care if I’m registered or not. I’m gonna try and cheat like hell like they do. They never, there’s never been bigger cheaters. They don’t care. I am gonna go out and I’m gonna get my friends, my family, and we are going to vote on November 3rd or we are going to vote before that.”
“Whoa. Now I know. Now, I’d say just about everybody would scream. You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell. You know that. Okay? You go to hell. And I don’t want that to happen to you, so please go and vote because together we will defeat the communists. We will reject, and that’s what they are. They’re not socialists. They’re not Democrats. They’re communists. We will reject these radical left lunatics. We will demolish the extremist, fanatics, lunatics and criminals who want to destroy our country. They want to destroy the country.”
“I, I came up with this little few words, Make America Great Again. That’s what I want. That’s all I want. And we are making America far greater than anybody in this room thought would be po-. Think of it. $22 trillion coming into this country when a record was three trillion many years ago by a totally different country, 22 trillion.”
Trump also claimed in Dallas, as elsewhere, that Luciano Pavarotti, who died in 2007, had been a “great friend.” The truth, however, may be summed up by Pavarotti’s widow and daughter demanding that Trump stop using a recording of “Nessun Dorma” at rallies, insisting that the late tenor’s lifelong values of brotherhood and human rights were “entirely incompatible” with Trump’s . . .
11 September—Just like Japan’s airborne 7 December 1941 Pearl Harbor blitz, Al-Qaeda’s airborne 9 September 2001 multi-front terrorist blitz didn’t come without at least some forewarning. But of course, as often happens, the intelligence gatherers and interpreters in 1941 and 2001 were caught with their pants down.
That said, on the 25th anniversary of the atrocity you’ve still got to wonder how the 19 9/11 suicidal terrorist hijackers—and other Islamic kamikazes, for that matter—could actually have believed they’d be going to Jannah, the Islamic heaven or paradise, each to marry 72 houris—heavenly companions, often translated as dark-eyed virgins—as one of the several privileges granted to believers.
To be sure, battlefield martyrs like the Al-Qaeda terrorists also get other heavenly goodies and privileges reserved for first-class, premium-level passengers, as it were. You don’t care about those, but you can rest assured that Muslim kamikazes have what amounts to an express elevator that takes them directly to the hundredth—and top—level of Jannah.
In the interest of accuracy, though, while the Quran definitely speaks of houris among the heavenly rewards for deserving—i.e., pious—Muslim men, it doesn’t actually mention a specific number. But why quibble? More to the point for Muslim men (among others), the Quran does in fact describe the virgin houris as having full, swelling, pear-shaped breasts.
If you’re wondering why the Jewish and Christian holy books are silent on heavenly rewards like that, wonder no more. In fact, forget it. The Song of Solomon and Proverbs may have some raunchy stuff, but not in the afterlife. And while you’re forgetting heavenly rewards, keep in mind that pious and otherwise martyred Muslim women aren’t totally ignored in the Quran—they’re merely underprivileged and belittled, just like they are in much of Islamic law and society when they’re alive. There are no male houris, for instance.
And if you’re still wondering if the Al-Qaeda kamikazes actually fell for the Jannah and houri stuff, recovered documents left behind by them would tend to confirm it. Mohamed Atta, for instance, the 33-year-old Egyptian civil engineer who served as operational commander on 9/11 and piloted the 767 into the World Trade Center’s North Tower, encouraged his troops, so to speak, not to fear death and in fact reassured them that the virgins were calling. That’s leadership above and beyond.
Answers to other questions that come to mind, then: Muslim martyrs are expected to actually marry all 72 houris, but whether all at once is a pilpul for rabbis to fight over. On the other hand, 72 wives is martyrdom in itself.
Forget about non-conventionally-heterosexual Muslim martyrs, who likely have been and are martyred precisely because they’re not conventionally heterosexual.
If the 9/11 demonstrably gullible kamikazes were U.S. citizens, it’s certain they’d be avid supporters of Donald Trump . . .
10 September—Some people may celebrate—rather than observe—today as the first anniversary (or one-year anniversary, as grammatically deficient pleonasts would put it) of the death of Charlie Kirk, the reprehensible founder and noisome mouthpiece of the United States Bund of Neue Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth Redivivus), more commonly known as Turning Point USA. Good people—even those who decry violence against beast, man, life and nature in general, and property—don’t miss the irredeemable insult to humanity.
The only downsides to Charlie Kirk’s death, it may be argued, are that it was indeed violent and that it made a martyr of the young scumbag. And we’ll leave it there as we move on to electoral desperation and pandering.
Politicians are justifiably reviled for buying votes by promising to do all manner of things—favors for gullible constituents—if they’re elected and/or re-elected. That’s the name of the game. Connecticut’s Democrat give-away Governor Ned Lamont, for instance, isn’t alone in taking incessant pounding—only from the right, to be sure—for his incessant unjustifiably inflated wages, salaries, concessions, and other gratuities to (mostly unionized and otherwise privileged) state employees and allegedly underprivileged voters.
Reprehensible as pandering may be, often as not it works, so don’t knock it. It’s a political reality and a way of life. You can be sure it’ll work this year. And not just in Connecticut. Just ask Lamont and his fellow Democrats. Okay, they won’t admit it, so just look at the record.
So yesterday Donald Trump made no bones about buying votes for his loyal Trumpublican U.S. senators and representatives directly and immediately and for himself indirectly for the moment—by promising to give every American adult five thousand dollars if and only if Trumpublicans maintain majorities in both houses of Congress.
Was that trillion-dollar pander an example of Trump’s undeniable histrionic demagogical brilliance and insouciant malfeasance or—more likely—a confirmation of his desperation, since he’s seen the writing on the wall?
In all events, unless he has a different definition of adults in mind, presumably Trump means all citizens of voting age, even those who don’t vote for his flunkies, given allegedly secret ballots. But with Trump you never know. Anything.
Certainly the five-thou-a-head promise is nothing but typical Trumpish hot-air headline grandstanding that, given Trump’s long and consistent record of broken promises and other lies, nobody with even a modicum of intelligence should believe. And it’s illegal in all events, as if that would stop Trump. But an adamantly gullible third of American voters are bound to fall for it.
So what else is new?
9 September—SCOOP! A special meeting of the Borough of Litchfield’s Legislative Body convened yesterday at 5:51 p.m. in the borough’s office and de facto meeting venue on the premises of the classically elegant First Congregational Church of Litchfield.
The Borough of Litchfield’s Legislative Body (BOLLB), which consists of the Borough of Litchfield Board of Warden and Burgesses (BOLBOWAB) magnanimously allowing the mere voters and taxpayers to participate in the democratic process and therefore isn’t convened too often, yesterday comprised the BOLBOWAB and one—only one—non-BOLBOWABer. Guess who. Modesty and journalistic anonymity forbid.
So the special meeting was convened to vote on accepting a $23,154 grant from the Litchfield Green Conservancy to plant trees. The motion passed alacitously and unanimously and the special meeting was adjourned.
One of these days, people who run meetings around here are going to learn how to use unanimous consent, express adjournment, and other parliamentary shortcuts (as opposed to parliamentary tricks, of course) to get things done really alacritously.
Anyway, the BOLBOWAB’s regular meeting followed the BOLLB special meeting and it was mostly occupied with a presentation and discussion about how to screw up the Green, mostly by raising grades, installing berms, and planting only appropriate trees and shrubs on the underappreciated but most abused East Green.
Suffice to say, all the East Green needs is for its drainage to be improved and its grade to be leveled; anything else, as eloquently and forcefully expressed by Burgess Bill Buckley, would detract from the East Green’s function and attraction as a green. There was a public hearing about fiddling with the Green a few years ago and there must be another one before the BOLBOWAB is allowed to “improve” it.
It’s worth noting that Litchfield’s First Congregational parish is probably the only Christian congregation—perhaps in the world, certainly in Connecticut—run by a rabbi. Since it’s customary for rabbis to be Jewish, First Congo’s rabbi-pastor is indeed a Jew—a Messianic Jew, to be exact.
Simply put, Messianic Jews identify culturally and ethnically as Jewish and make it a point to observe lots of distinctly Jewish rituals, but believe that Jesus is The Messiah who has actually come to do whatever messiahs are supposed to do. (Never forget, by the way, that rituals hold religions together, along with fear and maybe a little optimism—or at least hope.)
Just as simply put, then, since they believe The Messiah—Jesus—has already come, Messianic Jews are really Christians. In fact, they’re commonly regarded by the mainstream religious establishment as syncretic Christians, although there’s no logical reason not to consider them syncretic Jews.
What’s in a name, after all? More to the point, does it really matter what Messianic Jews or any other professed faiths choose to call themselves or what they believe or how they practice their religions? That should be a rhetorical question, but unfortunately it’s anything but. Because the bottom line, the purpose of religion is control.
Control takes us back to the Borough of Litchfield Board of Warden and Burgesses. But we’ll leave it there . . .
8 September—Yes, those are my feet. Don’t fret the backstories about the 50-year-old Church shoes and 38-year-old Gieves socks in the picture. And, anyway, where is it written that shoes and socks and any other commonly paired haberdashery items must match? Or even both legs of a pair of pants or both sleeves of a jacket? I’m not talking about intentionally unsymmetrical or inharmonious schmattes, of course, like jester, clown, or other specialized costumes or uniforms.
Just accept that it may be a fashion statement. Or not. Or just a matter of wasting not, wanting not. Or something else. And nobody appears to have noticed my unmatched but none the less elegant (if unpolished) shoes. Who really looks at shoes anyway? Or maybe it’s just that people are afraid to offend an old fart who’s color blind or can’t dress himself properly . . .
7 September—I officially became what insensitive people like me call a cripple last Tuesday when I received what insensitive people like me call a cripple sticker and Connecticut’s sensitive and politically correct Department of Motor Vehicles calls a disability parking placard and euphemizes as an accessibility parking permit. For the record, I’m so disabled that my new cripple sticker is a freebie renewable permanent one rather than a five-dollar six-month temporary baby.
Also for the record, while age itself must never be considered a disability, drivers over a certain age—let’s arbitrarily make it 75, just for convenience—should be able to get accessibility parking permits simply by virtue of longevity, without having to be certified by a medical practitioner as suffering some sort of qualifying disability or impairment.
That seems entirely reasonable and fair, doesn’t it? But before you wonder why the former misnamed American Association of Retired Persons, now simply the AARP, has never lobbied for old-fart parking stickers, consider that while it does indeed do some valuable lobbying on behalf of both retired and vocationally active old farts, it’s largely—very, very largely—a very, very profitable periodical publisher.
In fact, all of the AARP’s roughly 38 million dues-paying members, a few million of whom also serve as enthusiastic volunteers, receive the group’s magazine and then some. And the AARP, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, is exempt from paying federal income tax and most other taxes on the massive advertising revenue derived from the world’s largest-circulation periodical, as well as humongous royalties and related revenue.
Keeping up circulation figures is why the AARP incessantly nags over-50s who haven’t joined and subscribed as well as former member-subscribers and offers all sorts of junk to tempt them to join or return to the fold.
Suffice to say, the AARP could offer dues-free membership to everyone and still show a very, very attractive bottom line.
Back to my new cripple sticker, then, the first time I wanted to use it, it proved useless. Last Thursday, all the reserved-for-cripples parking spots convenient to the St. Vincent’s Medical Center entrance were occupied by other cripples. Of course, you’re thinking, it’s a bloody hospital.
So what about cripple-sticker triage? That’s for another time.
Before letting cripples untie, then, this is a photo of the St. Vincent’s radiology department’s waiting room can—i.e., handicap-accessible sanitary facility. It’s clearly wounded, having suffered some sort of traumatic injury (or old age), and is dependent on a prosthetic leg for support. But, like most of us cripples, it still works . . .
6 September—The Old Farmer’s Almanac (TOFA) website, almanac.com, tells us that on this day in 1941 Nazi Germany issued a decree requiring all Jews over the age of six to wear a yellow Star of David. Good to know. And nice try. But, like half of TOFA’s long-range weather forecasts, not quite the case.
First, the TOFA website’s delightful, quasi-informative “Daily Calendar” must be produced by ASS—Analytically Synthetic Stupidity. Because it’s rife with misrepresentations like the one about the yellow stars and appears never but never to be edited nor proofread. Sort of reminds us of . . . We won’t go there. Today.
Next, one of TOFA’s notorious misrepresentations is that its secret proprietary formula for long-range weather prediction, allegedly created along with the publication itself in 1792, has an accuracy rate of 80 percent. It’s documented, however, that 50 percent is closer to the truth. And that’s really no better than random guessing or flipping a coin. Not to make TOFA feel better, but even NOAA’s long-range forecasting is only about 50 percent accurate.
So that takes us to the mandated yellow Stars of David that had to be sewn on the left chest area of Jews’ outer clothing so as to be clearly visible. It was actually on 1 September 1941 that SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most sinister of the most sinister Nazis and a notorious mastermind of the Holocaust, signed the order requiring all Jews over six years old in Germany and occupied territories to wear the patches. To add insult to injury, moreover, the victims had to pay for their own stars.
Suffice to say, Heydrich was assassinated by a British-trained Czech team the following May, which led Hitler to order the total destruction of the Czech village of Lidice.
Heydrich cleverly chose six as the age threshold because that was the starting age for compulsory schooling in Germany and its occupied territories, thus ensuring that Jewish children were marked for humiliation, isolation, and persecution from the get-go, as well as to prepare them for deportation to concentration and death camps.
Something else for Donald Trump to think about and America to look forward to . . .
5 September—World Beard Day is celebrated on the first Saturday of September, which this year is the fifth. Today. As it happens, on 5 September back in 1698, Tsar Peter I of Russia, commonly known as Peter the Great, put an annual tax on beards. He did it by issuing a ukase—what Tsar Donald I, commonly known as Donald the Scummy, calls an executive order.
In the interest of accuracy, it must be noted that in 1698 Russia was still using the Julian calendar, so 5 September 1698 corresponds to 15 September on the Gregorian calendar. In the interest of thoroughness, moreover, Russia didn’t adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1918, under the evil Soviet communist Bolshevik regime of Vladimir Ulyanov, commonly known as Vladimir Lenin.
Apropos nothing, in 1699 Peter also executively ordered that the Russian calendar replace the old Byzantine (Eastern Church) year of creation—7208 (thought to be 5,509 years before Christ, some 1,748 years before the Jewish year of creation)—with the more practical one used in Western Europe, so the day after 31 December 7208 became 1 January 1700 in Russia.
Back to beards, then, and sidestepping gratuitous comment on Peter the Great’s tyrannical reign, mandating shaving was among his efforts to modernize and westernize Russia—because, beardless but discreetly moustached himself, he considered traditional long Russian beards as signs of backwardness and ignorance, and clean-shaven faces as a symbol of European modernity. And another tax never hurts the government that collects it—and this one was projected to bring in mucho rubles.
Peter’s police and other officials were authorized to publicly and forcibly shave any man who refused to comply with the tonsorial mandate or pay the tax, which was essentially a graduated, means-tested penalty (i.e., nobles, oligarchs, plutocrats, and other government officials paid more than peasants for facial hair) and would thus have met famously bearded Karl Marx’s desideratum “from each according to his ability.” Of course, even without a First Amendment to protect their church-mandated beards, orthodox priests were exempt from the gender-specific tax.
Upon payment of the beard tax/penalty, men were given a copper or silver proof-of-payment token (presumably based on the level of payment), which they were required to carry at all times lest they be arrested or otherwise hassled by Peter’s ICE goons.
It’s no surprise that Tsar Peter’s ludicrous beard tax wasn’t well received by his adoring subjects. Brings to mind Trumpflation. Like many taxes rationalized as being for purposes other than revenue enhancement, the beard tax underperformed significantly because of low compliance and difficult administration and even provoked a military rebellion in 1705, which, however, Peter brutally put down.
But Peter the Great didn’t relent and the beard tax stayed on Mother Russia’s books until his Prussian-born granddaughter-in-law Catherine the Great (who overthrew her husband, Peter III, to become Empress of Russia in 1762) finally repealed it in 1772.
You wonder why it took so long to repeal the distinctly and demonstrably unpopular Russian beard tax. And why don’t most taxes get repealed? But can’t you see Ned Lamont and his cronies coming up with a beard tax as yet another sneaky way to raise revenue to buy votes? They’d likely call it something like a passport to pogonotomy freedom or a hypertrichological benefits charge . . .
4 September—This startling headline from breakingnews@nytimes.com: “N.Y.P.D. Fatally Shoots Man With Knife on Brooklyn Bridge.” Wow! Evidently New York’s celebrated/notorious fuzz have a new gun that can shoot knives.
On the subject of Wow!, then, you’re probably surprised—make that amazed—that Christian Castro, the ICE goon who shot but didn’t manage to kill a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis back in January and has since been defended and protected by Donald Trump’s complaisant, corrupt flunkies and cronies, was just allowed by Trump’s taxpayer-financed personal shyster firm—a.k.a. the Department of Justice—to be indicted on six lesser counts by a federal grand jury.
Well, don’t be. Surprised or amazed. Because for starters the allegedly unexpected indictment—which at this writing is still sealed per normal practice—is allegedly only for making false statements, rather than for the more serious crimes that Castro allegedly committed, like violating victims’ rights under color of law.
To be sure, making false statements to the feds—commonly known as lying—is a federal felony, in theory punishable by substantial fines and time up the river. But we’ve seen that it’s not prosecuted nor even taken seriously by governments of all complexions at all levels, including but not limited to Trump’s blatantly corrupt one. And if Castro doesn’t make or hasn’t made a prearranged plea deal that effectively lets him off the hook for everything, you can be sure the criminal case won’t be prosecuted competently or seriously. And don’t forget Trump’s corrupt pardons.
Nor should you forget that Matthew Evans, the Assistant U.S. Attorney who had been investigating Castro, was fired yesterday, the same day the ICE goon’s bullshit indictment was announced. Evans was allegedly canned for obstruction of a grand jury probe because he strenuously had objected to Castro’s reduced charges as pressed by Trump’s ass-kissing xenophobic shysters. It’s only to be expected that Evans is now under investigation by the scumbags for doing the right thing.
It’s common knowledge that Trump, Trumpublicans, MAGA morons, and other undesirables are running scared—with more than a little justification—about the upcoming congressional election, although Democrats aren’t doing much to help themselves regain majorities. So it’s not unlikely that the Castro indictment is in reality nothing but a feint, a deceptive ploy to draw attention from all the real crap Trump and his corrupt confederates are committing in his second reign of terror while deluding the gullible unwashed into believing they’re finally doing the right thing . . .
3 September—Donald Trump on a fucking coin? Fucking Donald Trump on a coin is more like it. Even Trump’s idol Adolf Hitler didn’t do it; and Trump’s BFFs Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, as well as his young lover Kim Jong Un haven’t done it. But absolutely nothing is beyond the pale for Trump and his ignominious cadre of dutiful, unprincipled flunkies.
The only question, then, is how much are Trump and his evil spawn going to profit from this hustle?
And the juxtaposition of the American ayatollah’s sanitized image with the nation’s motto is a sacrilege . . .
