Month: August 2023

We’re going into an election year and we’re about to be inundated by all manner of claims that the candidates are “patriots”, that they love their country and democracy, and that their opponents are socialists, communists, fascists, “un-American”, criminals, or just plain lazy bums collecting welfare checks.

Have you ever noticed the attire in D.C.? Just about every politician wears a blue suit (who does that in regular society?), white shirt and red tie (so that they look like the American flag) and finish off the look with the ubiquitous flag pin on their lapel.

That’s patriotism, in their minds, appearing to be serious about America, the Constitution, the rule of law, and the idea of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all.

But then, when they “go to work” with their colleagues in the Capitol, they spend 99 percent of their time being uncooperative with others, throwing mud at their fellow elected officials, undermining the Constitution and the laws of the land, and seeking to enrich themselves and their campaign sugar daddies at the expense of their fellow American citizens.

And lying a lot about everything.

I don’t think of these folks as patriots in any sense of the word. Instead of loving their country, they love the acquisition, use, and retention of power… the power to tell their fellow Americans when to jump and how high, and to make a lot of money while ostensibly solving society’s biggest problems.

To me, a patriot is a good citizen, someone who believes in democracy, obeys the law, pays his taxes, votes, contributes to the economy, and serves his country when needed. And has moral integrity.

(By the way, only about 20 percent of our Congressmen and Senators served in the military. Many of these flag pin-wearing “patriots”, like ex-Prez Donald Trump, found ways to dodge that obligation in time of war.)

A good citizen, a patriotic one, understands what makes America tick (the “melting pot” concept) and is supportive of all citizens who strive to achieve the American Dream regardless of their color, ethnicity, sexual preference, religion, or politics.

It “takes a village” to make a democracy work, to sustain a strong economy, and maintain a position of respect among the nations of the world. Hard-working patriots, whether they be ditch diggers, farmers, factory workers, teachers, law enforcement officers, diplomats, or Wall Street financiers, all play a part in making America what it is.

It’s a team effort.

Diversity of backgrounds, perspectives, and aptitudes help generate ideas, innovations, and solutions to vexing problems. For the past 250 years, America has welcomed immigrants from all nations… to come to our country and add their spice to the soup… creating the Greatest Nation on Earth.

California, the state with the most vibrant economy, by far, is also the most ethnically diverse of the 50 states. (Interestingly, and not coincidentally, the U.S. states with the least vibrant economies are the ones with the least ethnically diverse populations.) The next strongest economies among states are Texas, New York, New Jersey, and Florida, all of which enjoy high degrees of ethnic and racial diversity.

There will be a lot of rhetoric in the upcoming political campaign year by supposed patriots on the subject of saving America from itself, restoring its “whiteness”, getting back to the Old Time Religion, and so forth.

In essence, Making America Great Again, the Donald Trump slogan.

All of those ideas were in force during the Trump Administration and, most assuredly, they did not make America any better than it was prior to Donald Trump. In fact, those four years proved to be very divisive, increased partisanship, generated increased racial discord, and, in many ways, subverted our democracy, and diminished our respect of government and the rule of law.

Patriotism (team work?) went out the window, replaced by a dis-United States of America, with well-meaning citizens at each other’s necks.

Too many people in this country rally around an “idea” of America that doesn’t comport with the facts. The vibrant pre-Civil War economy of the South was only possible with free, forced labor (something the other civilized nations of the world outlawed long before the United States did it). The agricultural prowess of America would be laid low without the participation of farm workers from Latin America. The transcontinental railroads would never have been built without the hard labor of Chinese immigrants. Probably half of the doctors, scientists, Silicon Valley techno wizards, and financial whiz kids on Wall Street are the children of immigrants from China, India, Pakistan, and the Middle East.

No, these patriots are not “White” and many are not “Christian” or even religious. But they are productive American citizens, helping to push the progress needle forward by contributing their talents, idea, and sweat.

When they came to our shores, they became players in the Great Experiment called “America” and, trust me, they are very happy that they’ve found a home where they can thrive, where there is a path toward upward mobility… if one has aspirations and works hard.

The current political war against “wokeness” is an attempt to whitewash the history of the United States, to pretend that things that happened never happened, to hide blemishes, to give more credit to the contributions of our W.A.S.P. ancestors, and to throw shade on those whose goal is to improve the wonderful opportunity that has been given them. The anti-Woke crowd seemingly prefers to re-engineer America back to the 1900’s, when religion was more dominant, racial injustice was the norm, and industrial and financial tycoons ran roughshod over the working masses.

Turn back the clock, they say.

That kind of talk is not patriotism… it is isolationism, it is the absence of progress, it is anti-American, it is partisanship/nationalism in its worst form. It is backward thinking.

We can only hope that enough true patriots are paying attention this election year when the candidates start up the lying, mud throwing, dirty tricks, talk of stolen elections, and how wonderful it was in the “good old days”.

We returned to At River’s Edge RV Resort in Brookings this year for a month’s stay.

This nice place is situated on the Chetco River, about two miles upstream of the Brookings Boat Basin. It’s just far enough inland to avoid most of the morning fog that blankets the coast until late morning. Lots of big trees everywhere one looks, a healthy river right in front of our windshield, paved sites, and good staff. High temps have ranged from 70 to 84 with cool nights.

The RV park is close enough to the ocean that the tidal changes affect the level of the Chetco River. The high-to-low tide swing is about five feet. Some people like to kayak or paddleboard in the river. Vinnie likes to walk along the river in the water a couple of inches deep. Baby and BonBon don’t seem as interested.

The RV park property has about half of the river bottom land left to develop. Right now, there is a big pasture with volleyball, horseshoes, and room to play ball with the dogs. The gal in the office told me that the owner is considering putting pickleball courts in that area, among other things. I’m sure they will do a good job, as the rest of the park is an A+.

Brookings is the very southernmost city on the Oregon coast (only five miles to California) and is a great jumping-off point for exploration of many wonderful oceanside scenes.

Samuel Boardman Scenic Corridor is just a few miles north on Hwy 101 with spectacular views of the steep cliffs festooned with pine trees, beautiful beaches tucked into the coast, rock islands just offshore, and lots of marine flora and fauna.

The beach just south of the Brookings harbor jetty might be the “Driftwood Capital” of America. The mile-long strand is littered with driftwood logs of all sizes. Some amateur architects regularly pile up larger driftwood logs into makeshift shelters, probably where they go in the evening to drink, smoke weed, and do other juvenile things.

One BAD thing about Oregon is that hard liquor is only sold at State-licensed stores. There is only one of them in Brookings and it is currently closed for some reason. I ran out of Tequila about two weeks into our stay and had to drive about 35 miles north to Gold Beach to re-stock. To my surprise, three large bottles of cheap Tequila cost me $57.

I am a nice guy, I think, but I’d sure like to punch some old lady in the face.

I was walking through a supermarket here in Brookings when I rounded a corner and met up with an old bitty who immediately coughed right in my face without so much as an “excuse me”. Thanks a lot, M’aam! Two days later I had a head cold and, two days after that, Charlie had it. Lots of nasal congestion, runny noses, coughing, sneezing, and just feeling pooped.

Charlie has had several rough weeks health-wise. First was chronic heartburn. Then, constipation. This was followed by a nasty urinary tract infection. When those last two problems finally abated, I gave her the Old Lady’s Sinus Cold.

Next up: AIDS, leprosy, or maybe Lou Gehrig’s Disease. We never got Covid-19, so maybe it’s now our time for that.

We have been thinking about next year’s RV road trip… assuming, of course, that we survive this one.

We’d like to retrace this year’s trip because Charlie really enjoyed seeing her kin up in Idaho. We will re-book Florence for a month, but we will not return to Sun Resorts-Coos Bay because they’ve decided to increase rates by about 50 percent. We would like to return here to At River’s Edge in Brookings. So, that leaves about a month that we need to arrange between Florence and Brookings. At this point, I’m thinking that we will spend that time in Gold Beach (Turtle Rock) and maybe the Oceanfront RV Park here in Brookings.

We’ll see.

The dogs are doing well. Vinnie is showing more maturity with each passing day. We got him a new “no pull” harness for his walks out in public and he seems to understand the concept. He’s also doing less lunging at other dogs that happen by. He turned 3 years old the other day, just about the age that JayJay was when we adopted him. It took JayJay about a year on the leash before he settled down, so I think Vinnie is right on schedule. He is a GOOD DOG and he loves me a lot.

I have been trying to be nice to Charlie during her illnesses by recording a lot of Hallmark movies. Yeah, they’re stupid, sappy, and predictable, but they put a smile on her face, which is always welcome. We supplement those rom-coms with the usual murder docudramas, home remodeling shows, movies, and news specials.

Speaking of news, the downtown area of Lahaina on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands burned to the ground while we were in Brookings. It was a wonderful place before the fire. Charlie and I (along with six other couples) stayed in Lahaina for a week years ago at country/western singer Randy Travis’ spiffy mansion/compound just a short walk from the downtown area. We golfed every day, cooked up BBQ next to the pool, drank a lot, and frequented the tourist traps (like Bubba Gump’s, the giant Banyan tree, Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville joint, etc.) as well.

We had a lot of fun that week. We played a golf tournament every day at a different course. I played crappy but had a GREAT time. One day when we went into downtown Lahaina, I went into a novelty gift joint and bought a large, authentic-looking penis squirt gun. That pecker looked real. When I got back to the property, I sat on a deck chair playing cards with the guys, all the while displaying my large Johnson sticking out of my board shorts. When the wives returned from whatever they had been doing, I noticed some of them noticing my protruding junk, blushing, but not saying anything. At about that time, I pulled out the squirt gun and sprayed them. Lots of laughs.

I will miss the good times in Lahaina.

(Which reminds me of another place that no longer exists: the Palapa Bar in Ambergris Caye, Belize. It was a renowned watering hole/floating bar joint that everyone frequented when vacationing in that island paradise. Unfortunately, just after we visited the place (while on a cruise with son Jeff and wife Carol), a Category Five hurricane devastated Ambergris Caye and wiped the Palapa Bar from the map.

Mother Nature can be a bitch.

Our home back in Mesquite has been weathering some nasty heat lately. It’s been so hot that many properties, including ours, have experienced leaking drip irrigation pipes in their landscaped yards. The problem is two-fold: Relentless heat penetrating the ground; and, the cheap quality of the irrigation lines that were installed by the builder, Pulte Homes. We’ve had two leaks this Summer that were caught by observant neighbors.

Our landscape guy, Kenedy, fixed the lines, but not until the water bill jumped by $30.

Tropical storm “Hilary” came up from Mexican waters this week to wreak some havoc in the Southwest. Our town of Mesquite, Nevada was spared. However, San Diego got drenched and Death Valley got a year’s worth of rain in one day. Mount San Jacinto, which is about sixty miles east of our old house in Southern California, got 10 inches of rain in a 24-hour period causing a lot of flooding down in the Palm Springs area.

Could have been a lot worse, though.

More and more unusual weather events are happening worldwide, undoubtedly caused by the fact that the earth’s atmosphere is warming. More temperatures over 100 degrees, more glaciers disappearing, more violent weather episodes, more wildland fires, and more incidence of storm damage along the coasts as sea levels rise.

We’ve been coming to Oregon in the Summer for the past eight years and it seems that there are always forest fires in Oregon an northern California when we are here. This year is no exception, as there are several fires ongoing that we will have to deal with when we head east and south. We are going to have to make a 100-mile detour when we head over to Grants Pass. It’s a beautiful drive, along the coast, but it will add a couple of hours to our travel day.

Bummer.

We have a few more days left in Brookings before we head out. We “go out” to dinner once a week (we call it Date Night), and this week we’re going to enjoy a nice meal at a place called “Superfly”. It’s one of our go-to joints in Brookings, along with “Catalyst” (a seafood restaurant), “Fat Irish”, and a couple of Mexican joints (“La Flor de Mexico” and “Rancho Viejo”). There are many more, but we don’t go out that much.

Charlie’s medical condition (hiatal hernia, GIRD) needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Our itinerary Brookings would have included three nights in Grants Pass, a night in Weed, a night in Susanville, three nights in Reno, two nights in Twin Lakes, two nights in June Lake, two nights at Mono Lake, and one night in Tonopah. The initial reason for that swing south was that our son Tim and wife Shanon were going to meet us in Reno and accompany us home to Mesquite, giving Tim a chance to familiarize himself with the RV. However, Tim and Shanon had to cancel their plans due to illness/loss of vacation days.

As it turned out, a swarm of forest fires in Oregon and northern California made traveling over to Grants Pass and then south problematic. With Charlie’s medical problem still outstanding, we decided to head home immediately, taking the same northerly route that we used to get to Oregon in May.

We should be home on September 1st, assuming that we don’t encounter any major problems.

This year’s RV road trip was very relaxing, the weather was outstanding, there were no major equipment issues, and the five of us got to spend many hours of intimate togetherness.

Exactly what the doctor ordered.

It’s been an interesting week.

Vinnie wandered off (out the unclosed door of the RV!) and we would have never known except that I just happened to be looking out a window while blogging and saw a lady petting a dog down the street. I thought, “That guy looks a lot like MY dog!” Then, I thought, “I should introduce Vinnie to that dog.” When I got up to do that, I noticed that Vinnie was gone. (Then, I realized that BonBon had loudly alerted us about ten minutes earlier… and we ignored her!) Anyway, Vinnie was retrieved. My bad.

(BTW, we have gotten used to BonBon keeping a watch on things from her window perch on the sofa. She reminds me of “Mrs. Kravitz” on the old “I Dream of Jeanie” TV series, always keeping an eye open for scandals in the neighborhood. BonBon has the most acute senses of any Boston Terrier that we’ve ever owned. She can see, hear, and smell better than the others… it’s a GIFT, I suppose. Anyway, there is no way in the world that any burglar could ever surprise us at home or in the RV… BonBon is like a Chihuahua on steroids; her “alert” bark/shriek could wake the dead.)

Charlie has been feeling crummy lately. She had a lingering urinary tract infection and constipation, as well, for a couple of weeks. In the midst of that, I gave her the Old Lady Virus (a head cold that lasted 5 days). Then, her chronic “heartburn” got so bad that we headed over to the local emergency hospital to learn that she has a hiatal hernia and GIRD (gastrointestinal reflux disease), something that she will have to live with until we get home from vacation. Poor girl.

The weather in Oregon has been very nice for the past few months while it has been sizzling back in Mesquite, Nevada. It’s been so hot there that my drip irrigation system (underground water lines) has sprung leaks due to the heat cracking the cheap water lines. It’s the first time that we’ve experienced that in five years.

Speaking of water, our Mesquite home may be hit by some heavy rain this weekend. Hurricane Hilary is proceeding up the Baja California coast and threatens to bring tropical storm impacts to the Southwest. Some forecasts predict that a year’s worth of rain could fall in Las Vegas by Monday. Monsoonal rain events occur periodically in the Southwest during the Summer, but the forecasted tropical storm could be much larger. A tropical storm has not touched California in the past 100 years, so lots of rain falling very fast could really mess things up there. We shall see.

The unsettled weather in the Northwest has resulted in the usual lightning strike-caused forest fires that plague Oregon and northern California each Summer. Right now, there is a fire between Crescent Bay (California) and inland Oregon which has closed Highway 199, the very route that we use to escape the Oregon coast on the way home to Nevada. Hopefully, the highway will reopen in the next ten days, otherwise we may have to take a major detour (north through Idaho or south through northern California). That would suck.

Our good friend Lloyd appears to be enjoying his relocation to South Africa. He and his live-in squeeze Juanita recently went on a mini-safari at a game park in the area, getting up-close-and-personal with all manner of wild beasts. It appears that he and she are doing fine. We’re so happy for them, although we miss them a lot. Hopefully, they can stay clear of the lions!

It is becoming difficult to find any “news” lately that isn’t Donald Trump-related. The attention-seeking ex-President has his mug all over the news sites, with stories about his four indictments covering 91 potential felonies, his insulting/threatening/bombastic comments about judges, prosecutors, grand jury members, witnesses, etc., his incitement of followers to do whatever it takes to derail his prosecutions, and his 2024 campaign for the G.O.P. nomination.

In the past week, Trump promised a “major press conference” to unveil all the “proof” that he has been squirreling away regarding the “stolen election of 2020”. This would presumably be the factual information that he failed to produce in the 30 court cases adjudicated after the election… where judge after judge continuously and unsuccessfully challenged him to produce any evidence of a fraudulent election. Anyway, for some reason, Trump today canceled the big news conference on advice from his lawyers, which is odd, as the ex-President regularly disregards advice of counsel and/or fires them for not telling him what he wants to hear.

BTW, many of Trump’s ex-lawyers are now in the crosshairs of special prosecutors, facing various charges and possible disbarment. Ex-Trump inner circle consigliere Rudy Giuliani appears to be in great jeopardy, as his counsel was central to many of the nefarious schemes that evolved to affect a coup d’etat after Trump’s 2020 electoral loss. Mr. Giuliani is reportedly seeking money from the ex-Prez to help with his legal costs. (What does M.A.G.A. stand for? “Making Attorneys Get Attorneys”)

What is really odd about the latest Trump news is that the guy, who stands no chance of being elected President in 2024, continues to be the presumptive G.O.P. nominee in 2024. It is as if the Republican Party has a death wish, dutifully following the Pied Piper’s death march to the sea. The G.O.P., in its present state, seems unable to grasp reality and pivot to a platform and candidate who doesn’t repulse most Americans.

The fault lies with the Trump faithful who have their feet immobilized in concrete, i.e. the belief that he was The One, God’s anointed, the Commander in Chief who was going to kick Mexico’s and China’s ass, the guy who was going to put Black and LGBQ citizens back in their place, and so forth. Admitting that his cult following was wrong about Trump is about as likely as the ex-Prez admitting that he lost the 2020 election.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been making a fool of himself for the past several months, trying to out-Trump the ex-President by making all manner of outlandish statements, promises, and doing stupid things just to get attention. His unprovoked attack on Walt Disney Corp. (because of its embrace of diversity) has turned into a self-inflicted wound. The only way he gets the G.O.P. nomination is if Trump drops out, Trump gets thrown in prison, or Trump chokes to death while eating a cheeseburger.

The only person that I know who’s had a worse month than Donald Trump is my Mesquite neighbor and hiking buddy, Mac. The poor guy has been suffering from chronic vertigo, keeping him from doing the things that he likes to do (biking, hiking, music). He’s miserable and depressed right now and his doctors don’t seem to know how to resolve the problem. I’ve had vertigo and it is SCARY. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

For Mac’s sake, I hope that his docs find the magic bullet… soon.

Bradley Cooper, the actor, is in the news this week. His new film, about famous composer Leonard Bernstein, has been getting flack because Cooper had the effrontery to wear a prosthetic nose in his role (to emulate Bernstein, who had a good-sized proboscis). Some Jews are outraged about the “Jewface” look, as if Cooper’s intent was antisemitic.

C’mon, folks, if the producers were antisemitic, why would they make a film honoring a famous Jewish composer? Cooper’s makeup (the latex nose) is no more offensive than Rami Malek’s prosthetic teeth when he portrayed Freddy Mercury or John Wayne’s oriental eye makeup when he starred as Genghis Khan back in the 1950’s.

Get serious, people! Should John Hurt have worn no makeup when he portrayed the disfigured “Elephant Man”… so that no one suffering from proteus syndrome might be offended? How about Mel Brooks playing an Indian chief in “Blazing Saddles”, shouting to his on-the-warpath braves in Yiddish? Where were the offended Jews when that movie came out? (Or the outraged Native Americans?)

Jewish people, like many ethnic groups from the Middle East, tend to have larger noses than others, just like lots of northern European folks have red hair and freckles and many South African women suffer from steatopygia (large fat accumulations in thighs and buttocks). So what? The variety of bodily features is part of what makes the world interesting; if we all looked alike… oooh, what a boring place it would be!

The so-called ”Jewface” issue seems to be a big thing in the Jewish community. In West Los Angeles/Hollywood/Beverly Hills, an area heavily populated by affluent Jews, the number one cosmetic surgery is the “nose job” (i.e. reducing the size and shape), which tends to make the patient look less Jewish. Evidently, Jews don’t like looking Jewish.

I think the biggest thing about the Bradley Cooper “Maestro” portrayal is that the producers chose to use an Irish-Italian heritage actor to portray a famous Jewish man. Certainly, there are plenty of Jewish actors in Hollywood who could have done this work without a nose prosthesis. However, none of them is currently as popular as Bradley Cooper. And, in Hollywood, money (as in ticket sales) is what “makes the world go round”.

(It also doesn’t hurt that Cooper is also the Director of the film and he is a Co-Producer along with Martin Scorcese and Stephen Spielberg, probably the most famous Jew in Hollywood. He, also, has a big nose.)

MONEY was probably the number one factor in 1956 when some genius moviemakers cast John Wayne in his colossal flop, “The Conqueror”.

I’m not Mongolian but I find THAT pseudo-Oriental mug offensive!

“Ah, so, Pilgrim!”

A couple of years ago, when American were glued to the TV set watching video of a police officer choke a Black man to death (while his three fellow officers watched the spectacle unfolding and didn’t do a damn thing), another senseless murder took place in Georgia.

A 25-year-old Black man was jogging through his community when two White men in a pickup truck (and another White guy in a chase car with camera to proudly document the hate crime) cornered the jogger and one of the men jumped out and shot the Black man to death with a shotgun. The leader of the assault team, Greg McMichael, was a retired, 30-year veteran of local law enforcement. His son, who aspired to be a cop, did the shooting.

One wonders what kind of “culture” exists in the law enforcement agencies that that produced these vigilantes?

Yesterday, I read about a group of Mississippi gentlemen, all sworn peace officers, who decided to rough up two Black men who were houseguests of a White woman. The police officers (who called themselves “The Goon Squad”), having no evidence of a crime being committed and possessing no warrant, broke into the woman’s home and proceeded to torture the two Black men for six hours. The horrendous treatment included, repeated tasering, physical beating, waterboarding, sexual humiliation, and assault via racist taunts. One officer put his pistol barrel into one captive’s mouth and fired, causing the innocent victim permanent disability and disfigurement. The “lawmen” then concocted a cover-up to justify their heinous crimes.

Mississippi, where this most recent travesty of “justice” occurred, was the last State to remove the Confederate flag image from its official banner, only a mere 150 years after the abolition of slavery. Cops in Mississippi have a sad history of perpetuating racial injustice, working hand-in-hand with the KluKluxKlan during Jim Crow. Sworn peace officers by day were often KKK vigilantes by night. Recall the three civil rights workers that were killed in 1964? The ring leader of the KKK assassination squad was a local deputy sheriff named Cecil Price.

Whatever happened to “Southern hospitality”? You know, the stereotype of the South where people are “welcoming, warm, and friendly”. Is that just for White people?

What about the supposed “Southern charm”? As in “kind, witty, and considerate of others, having grace under pressure and making others feel welcome and comfortable”? Again, is this just how White people treat other White people?

At the same time as the Mississippi law enforcement Goon Squad was tuning up the two innocent Black men for amusement, a country/western song by good ‘ol boy Jason Aldean glorifying vigilante justice was the No. 1 Country hit out in the Bible Belt.

How charming!

It has been abysmally hot this year in the Southwest and Gulf Coast regions of the Nation.

Phoenix endured 30 straight days of 110-plus degree temperatures (the “dry” heat) and Florida has experienced numerous miserable 110 degree “heat index” days, which are those days where the high temp plus high humidity makes outdoor activities “a living Hell”.

I’ve never understood the fascination with Florida. It is, essentially, a reclaimed swamp (with no land in the State exceeding 100’ above sea level), the heat and humidity absolutely brutalize the human body, there are lots of nasty things in the environment (alligators, poisonous snakes, mosquitoes, ticks, chiggers, etc,), and the State is annually besieged by tropical storms and hurricanes. Home insurance, if you can get any, is EXHORBITANTLY expensive.

The Winter temperatures are mild in Florida, probably the State’s saving grace along with the miles and miles of white sand beaches. We have a similar situation in our home State (Nevada) minus the beachfront property, where “snowbirds” come to avoid crappy weather in the North. We, too, have some miserable months in the Summer (July and August are the worst), but, as the saying goes, “it’s a dry heat”. On the positive side, our city of Mesquite has no tropical weather dangers, no gators, no insects to speak of, and no annoying New York/New Jersey tourists with nasally voices.

No Governor (“I want to be President!) Tom DeSantis, either, for God’s sake. What an imbecile!

Speaking of imbeciles and heat, ex-Prez Donald Trump (yeah, the “Stolen Election” Guy) is going through the criminal justice system meatgrinder lately for his role in a number of tawdry escapades like publicly defaming individuals (which he continues to do each day), the unauthorized possession of Top Secret documents, his role in inciting the January 6^th Capitol Riot, trying to reverse the results of the 2020 Presidential election, and attempting to extort the Governor of Georgia to miraculously “find” enough new votes for Trump to reverse Joe Biden’s election victory in that State.

All of this is inconvenient for Trump, who is simultaneously trying to run for President again, even though he doesn’t believe in elections (he thinks they are all “rigged”).

The ex-President has suggested publicly that all of his problems with the justice system are “witch hunts” incited by Democrats who just want to hobble his 2024 Presidential campaign. (Truth be told, Democratic Party officials are probably praying that Trump wins the G.O.P. nomination, as he has lost the past two Presidential popular votes by 3 million and 7 million votes, respectively.)

Trump also claims that all of the grand juries, prosecutors, judges, and witnesses involved in his cases (many are Republicans who once worked with him) are “stupid”, “corrupt”, and are “out to get him”. He claims that he is being prosecuted/unfairly persecuted for being Donald J. Trump.

And he is absolutely correct on that score, because all of his legal problems are self-induced.

Donald Trump has considered himself “above the law” for most of his life, has gotten progressively bolder with his disdain for laws that attempt to regulate his criminal behavior, and has used an army of attorneys to delay trials for months and years. He is now hoping/expecting his current Presidential campaign will inoculate him against his prior criminal behavior. His political base is, of course, enraged that the justice system is targeting its hero.

Which is, of course, exactly what the ex-Prez wants. It’s like one of his famous “rallies”, where rabid fans fawn over him and demonize his opponents for not understanding the wonderfulness of the man. He is the “elect of God” according to many of his Bible-thumping supporters, and his opponents (prosecutors, judges, juries) are Satan’s Disciples.

Anyway, Donald J. Trump is feeling the HEAT, moving from one courtroom to another, proclaiming his innocence, and rapidly running out of attorneys that are willing to jeopardize their bar credentials by lying to protect him.

It may well come to pass that come November, 2024, America will be presented with a choice between two old fogies for President, including one who was previously impeached twice when he was President and is, by then, a convicted felon and social leper.

The Founding Fathers would not be amused that their noble experiment has come to this.