Today's lesson is from the Gospel of St. Luke

It’s from Chapter 14, verses 13 and 14.  “But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind:

     And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee:  for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.”

I think about how it must be to live your life thinking everyone is trying to take advantage of you, that everything you do is a transaction, that you can only be happy when you are in control of others and they must do your bidding.

What a miserable existence you must have.  Never really relaxed.  Always calculating.  Always greedy.  Always selfish.  It must be an awful life.  You are already living in a form of hell.

Think about this.  You’ve seen George W. Bush laugh.  You’ve seen Obama  and Biden laugh.  Have you ever seen Trump laugh?  You’ve seen him look triumphant, and angry, and self-satisfied, but have you ever seen him happy?

Weisstock report

The small borough of Weissport held a festival last night and today in the town park.  The festival was called Weisstock, like Woodstock, although, believe me, that’s a stretch.  The Carbon County Democratic Party had a booth at the festival; we gave out pocket Constitutions and American flags and a chance at $25 gift certificates to two Weissport restaurants and an ice cream establishment.  

We also signed up four potential volunteers.  What amazed me was that in the two days we received no nastiness from festival goers.  Nobody made any sarcastic comments, nobody came over to complain about Democrats, no Trumpists came by to insult.  

On the other hand, people did come over to thank us for being there and to give us encouragement,  Keep in mind that we are in the midst of a very Trumpian area.  I found it very encouraging.

FDR in Rapid City, South Dakota

We were in the same hotel and our fourth-floor room looked right down upon the hotel entrance–a sort of grandstand seat for the President’s arrivals and departures.  It was Sunday and a large crowd of Rapid Citians cheered as the President drove off to church.  And after a while I was awakened from a nap by clapping in the street.  The President was returning from church.  The crowd was still there, and I watched from my grandstand window.

There had been, out of what I always felt to be a fine sense of consideration, few mentions in the press of the President’s partial paralysis.  But it seems to me there can be no violation of good taste in relating what happened at Rapid City that day.  The crowd stopped clapping and stood silently watching as the car stopped at the hotel.  It was a seven-passenger touring car with the top down.  Two of the President’s sons and a daughter-in-law got out ahead of him.  While everybody waited the President reached for the spare seat and pulled it down in front of him.  Then he reached to the robe rail, and with his powerful arms slid himself forward onto the spare seat.  He turned a little and put his legs out the door and over the running boards with his feet almost to the curb.  Gus Gennerich, his bodyguard, stood ready to help, but he was not needed.  You could almost have heard a pin drop.  The President put both hands on one leg and pushed downward, locking the jointed steel brace at his knee.  He slowly did the same thing with the other leg.  Then he put his hands on the side of the car and with his arms lifted his body out and up and onto his legs.  He straightened up.  I have never seen a man so straight.  And at that moment the tenseness broke, and the crowd applauded.  The President’s back was to the crowd, and he did not look around.  It was brief and restrained applause.

     I don’t know, but I doubt if that had ever happened to the President before.  It was the tenderest, most admiring tribute to courage I have ever seen.  It was such a poignant thing, so surprising, so spontaneous.  It was as though they were saying with their hands, “We know we shouldn’t, but we’ve got to.”  When I turned from the window there was a lump in my throat.

From a collection of newspaper columns from 1935-1940 by Ernie Pyle entitled Home Country (New York: William Sloane Associates, Inc., 1947).  I thought we all needed a break from our present condition.

Goodbye to "American Experience"

WBGH, Boston’s public station TV station, will no longer produce episodes of the award winning series “American Experience.”  The documentary series had planned such topics as the national highway system, Puerto Rican history as a U.S. territory, and birthright citizenship.

American Experience has produced nearly 400 documentaries, including “Freedom Riders,” “The Murder of Emmett Till,” and “Clearing the Air:  The War On Smog.”

The cancellation is a direct result of the cuts made to public broadcasting.

Trump, I’m sure, will be very happy to get this news.  We don’t like to discuss American history.  Too nasty.  Not great, like it is now.

I read this depressing news in “With Cuts to PBS, History Takes a Hit,” New York Times, (Aug. 28, 2025), p. C4.

Republicans embrace socialism

The United States now owns 10% of Intel, the chipmaking company.  This is what was once called “owning the means or production,” an old socialist goal.  By itself, one company wouldn’t be too big a deal, but there is evidently more to come.  This was the headline in today’s business section of the New York Times:  “Trump Seeks ‘Many More’ Intel Deals.”  He is looking at both industries and technologies.  

Think about that.  The United States government will own portions or even most of certain American companies.  This is sometimes called “state capitalism,” but the more usual term is socialism.  Interestingly, most European socialists no longer support state ownership of private industry.  It is considered both counterproductive to efficiency and unnecessary if certain regulations (worker safety, pollution control, consumer safety) are in place.  

It is a measure of the spinelessness of Congressional Republicans that they don’t seem to care about this development.  They are worried, however, that New York mayoral candidate Mamdani is supporting government-run day care centers. 

Gay pride in Orlando and petty bullshit in Washington

Nothing is too petty for the MAGA supporters.  Orlando was the site of the largest mass shooting up to that time.  A gay nightclub, Pulse, saw 49 people killed and 53 wounded in 2016.  In their honor a cross walk was painted with gay pride colors outside the Pulse nightclub.  

A state crew came in and painted out the colors set 11 p.m. on Wednesday last week.The mayor of Orlando issued a statement:

     “This callous action of hastily removing part of a memorial to what was at the time our nation’s largest mass shooting, without any supporting safety data or discussion, is a cruel political act.”

All of the states had previously received a memo from Department of Transportation Sean Duffy.  Duffy said in a social media post “Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks.  Political banners have no place on public roads.”

Since then, I understand that citizens of Orlando repainted the crosswalk using colored chalk.

I certainly hope my gay pride sticker on the back of my pickup doesn’t distract other drivers.  Let’s hope nobody reports it to Secretary of Transportation Duffy.  He might come and try to rip it off.

Information for this post was taken in part from Aishvarya Kavi, “State Paints Over Tribute To Club Massacre Victims,” New York Times, (Aug. 26, 2025), p. A14.  The opinion that Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy is a sniveling toady for Trump and a petty bigot is all mine. 

Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer (1952)

During the Korean War union workers struck a number of steel mills.  Steel is, of course, needed for all kinds of war materials.  Truman, Commander-in-Chief, worried that the troops would run out of those materials, and he ordered the strike to end and seized the steel mills.

Did he have that right?  The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that he did not.  Some justices recognized that the President had some emergency powers, but he did not have the power to seize private property.  Within hours of the Court’s decision, Truman told Sawyer, his Secretary of Commerce, to vacate the mills.

Now we are getting one “Executive Order” after another.  Phony emergencies.  Silly shit.  Today, for example, Trump issued an executive order that you can’t burn the flag.  Of course you can.  The Supreme Court already ruled that flag burning as a political protest was a protected act under the freedom of speech clause.  Evidently Trump set a penalty of one year.  

I heard this on the radio, so I don’t know the details, but you can’t punish someone without a trial.  It’s called a bill of attainder.  It’s forbidden in Article 1 of the Constitution.

Trump is not only the worst president in our history (he surpassed Buchanan in his first term), but he is the dumbest.  

Zohran Mamdani's campaign staff

Of course I’d vote for him.  Heck I’d vote for him just knowing his mom is Mira Nair.  His opponents are also unworthy.  There is Andrew Cuomo, a.k.a. “the Groper.”  There is Eric Adams, a.k.a., “the crooked Trump suck-up.”

But what a staff.  Mamdani’s top advisors, Elle Bisgaard-Church and Morris Katz, are 34 and 26.  His creative director (not sure what that even is) is Andrew Epstein, 38.  His speech writer, Julian Gerson, is 28.  His senior advisor Zara Rahim and his Field Director Tasha Van Auken, did not give their ages, but they certainly look young in their photos.  AOC endorsed him.  His supporters and advisors look like the Democratic Party should look.

I know some of his positions have been heavily criticized.  I would remind you of what Roosevelt said, and I am paraphrasing, but this is close–We’ll try something, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.  

I’m all in.

Words Democrats should not use

Third Way, a liberal “think tank” says that Democrats speak words that voters simply don’t use.  When is the last time you had a conversation at the supermarket or on the bus and you heard the word “patriarchy” or “incarcerated people” or “cisgender”?  According to the report by Third Way entitled “Was It Something I Said?” when these words do come up in focus groups, the context is to make fun of the way Democrats talk.

Nobody says “cisgender” in normal conversation.  Nobody says “Latinx.”  “Microaggression” is not a word used in normal conversation.  Real people take about the homeless, not the “unhoused.”  They say people are jailed, not “incarcerated.”  BIPOC?  What does that even mean?  And then there is LGBTZIA+.

It doesn’t mean we need to be cruel or insulting.  It doesn’t mean we have to sound stupid, like Trump.  It just means we need to remember we aren’t participating in a political science graduate seminar at Yale University.  We need to connect with real people with real language.  

P.S.  Say “kings,” not oligarchy.  Don’t even say Trump is a “fascist.”  Say he’s an asshole.  Everybody knows what that means.

Decline of the Democrats

In the past year Republicans have out-registered Democrats in every state in the country.  Every state.  Blue states.  Red states.  Didn’t matter.  More people are registering into the party of Donald Trump.

Why is this?  Certainly Biden was a major cause.  His failure to drop out when it was obvious to everyone but his wife and a few staffers that he was not capable of serving a second term created a distrust that is still with us.  

The bigger problem, however, was the Democrats’ inability to admit that the country had problems self-evident to anyone who was willing to be honest.  To say that the economy was healthy didn’t mean much when your items were added up at the grocery store and you couldn’t believe the total.  To say that the border wasn’t really a problem when you could see thousands of people coming across the Rio Grande made you question Democratic attitudes.  To see homeless people defecating in the streets in San Francisco and then told to say “unhoused” instead of homeless as though that would take care of the problem was beyond irritating.  To quote statistics about how the crime rate was dropping when you were afraid to go out at night made you question both the statistics and the people pushing them.  

Democrats also forget how nasty their fellow citizens can be.  Perhaps not all, but many MAGA people are delighted with the cruelty of ICE.  They are happy when foreign college students are deported.  They don’t mind that nonentities are getting awards at the Kennedy Center or that the Rose Garden is torn up or that Trump insults foreign dignitaries.  In fact, they love it.

It may be also that Democrats overestimate the wisdom, the understanding, the empathy, and, yes, the kindness of our fellow citizens.  At least I have.

Leader of the Free World

That is the label people once gave the President of the United States.  Really, they did.  

What should Trump be called?  Surrender Monkey?  Useful Idiot?  Putin’s Bitch?  I don’t think the rest of the world will ever see our President as they once saw Dwight Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama.

Trump has ruined it for all of us.  He makes our country look small and weak.

I will not be posting for the next two nights.  I am driving to northwest Massachusetts to see an outdoor sculpture exhibition.  If all goes well, I’ll be back on Thursday night.  Don’t worry–I have made arrangements for someone to feed the Rottweiler and the chickens and gather the eggs.

Not all that funny

An article about English-speaking comedians performing in Europe in the Times on Aug. 12 featured Joel Bryant from L.A.  Bryant was performing in Berlin and said he’d come to escape the U.S. for a time.  “It’s weird to run away from a fascist country and come to Germany for peace and solitude,” he said.  “Tables have turned.  You guys can hide me for the summer, right?  You’ve got an attic somewhere?”

In case you are wondering, you can go to jail for harboring a fugitive from ICE.  Remember–they have to catch you first.

The Democratic booth at the Ukrainian Festival

I have been a volunteer at the Carbon County Democratic booth for all kinds of events.  Fairs, festivals, musical events, some large, some tiny.  In all that time I have never worked one where at least one person didn’t come up and say something mean, stupid, or insulting.  Until today. 

Ukrainians, like Vietnamese or Cuban immigrants, had a low opinion of Democrats.  No more.  They have noted Trump’s behavior, read Vance’s insults, saw how Marjorie Taylor Greene backs Russia, saw Trump’s craven actions yesterday in Alaska.  

I have never felt such a warm embrace as today.  And I don’t know if I ever felt such sadness about my country’s policies.  We have become “surrender monkeys.”  We have become Munich Lite.  We have become a country with no principles whatsoever.  

Training for the Summit

Peggy, a friend of mine from Santa Cruz, explained why Trump would get rolled at a summit with Putin.  She said Putin learned his tactics and was extensively trained by the KGB.

Trump, on the other hand, spent his time at KFC.

Tomorrow:  Report on the Ukrainian Festival in Carbon County.

The Putin-Trump meeting and its predecessors

In 1884-85 European powers held a conference in Berlin to settle the issue of which country would get which part of Africa.  The conference was an attempt to avoid a war among the European countries over the colonial territories.  Many of the current boundaries of African countries were drawn at that meeting.  No Africans were invited to the Berlin Conference.  

In 1938 a number of European counties, including Germany, England, and France, met in Munich to discuss what to do about Czechoslovakia.  Hitler wanted a piece of that country called the Sudetenland.  The European powers agreed to carve off that portion of the country and give it to Germany.  The Prime Minister of England got off the plane waving a piece of paper and declared that he had brought “peace in our time.”  Czechoslovakia was not invited to the Munich Conference.

Now Trump is meeting with Putin in Alaska.  They will discuss Ukraine.  Ukraine was not invited to the Alaska Conference.

The Texas Hotline for Democratic Lawbreakers?

 Tonight I saw a meme that said you could report the location of Democratic members of the Texas legislature who have left the state.  The number is 1-866-786-5972.  Being the intrepid blog reporter that I am, I called the number.  A guy answered the phone immediately and said something about it being the number to report crimes or law-breaking, and that making false reports would be breaking the law.  

I asked him if you could report missing Democratic legislators on this line, and he repeated the same thing and said that if I did not have a crime to report, the call would be terminated.  He then repeated the first message.  I didn’t record the call.  

I then asked him if he (it?) were a robot.  He began to repeat the message about terminating the call, and I think there may have been a threat of prosecution involved.  At that point I hung up.  

If I do not post tomorrow night, you know the Texas Rangers traced the call and were here to take me away.  In the meantime, the Texas legislator I am  hiding in the attic is demanding a Dr. Pepper and a Frito pie.

Making a request of Pres. Trump

 12 August 2025

1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Washington, D.C.20500\

Dear President Trump:

Yesterday you activated a number of soldiers to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C.  You noted that crime there was rampant, necessitating your use of emergency powers.  You showed what a leader you are.

I would respectfully urge you to also send a battalion to a place called Mar-a-Lago in Florida.  I read on the internet that there is a whole nest of pedophiles there, and some people are saying that many were close friends of a convicted sex trafficker named Eppstone or Epstein or something like that.  

Please look into this.  It sounds like something that needs your attention.

Sincerely,

Roy Christman

------------------------

The letter goes in the mail tomorrow.

Obama and Bush portraits moved from public area

Earlier today the portraits of Presidents Obama and George W. Bush were moved from public areas and put in a section of the White House where no one but staff will see them.

The little insecure man now our President can’t stand the idea that people would see portraits of two real Presidents who, whatever their flaws, make him look like the petty ignorant pedophile he is.  Unfortunately for him, he can move their portraits, but people remember how much better they were than this asshole.

I love living in a country where you can still call your president an asshole.  In a blog.  Publicly.  At least for a time.

No tax on tea

 We import tea from India, Sri Lanka, China, and Japan.  I know that every one of those counties has had a tariff slapped on our imports.  Instead of paying the tariffs, why don’t we dress up like Indians and chuck the tea into the Boston Harbor.  

It could lead to something.

Monday is my favorite day of the week

I have an arrangement with Bob, the owner of our local gas station.  Every day his newspaper guy delivers the New York Times, and every day we drive out there to pick up our copy.  Except Mondays.  For some reason the distributor will not deliver the Times on Mondays.  That is the one day I am spared the news.  (I know I can read it online, but I don’t.)

Today, for example, one headline was “Civil Cases Against Major Polluters Plummet Under Trump’s E.P.A.”  That took up page A12.  On page A13 the headline read, “E.P.A. to Stop Updating Noted Climate Database After Creator’s Censure.”  The other headline on that page was “Wind and Solar Projects Slow to a Crawl Under Trump.”  

The paper also had articles about Trump putting pressure on colleges to change the admission rules, that Israel wants to take occupy all of Gaza, that Trump is asking U.C.L.A. for a billion dollars, that the Republicans in the Senate are changing the rules to make confirmations easier, and that Trump is going after Leticia James in N.Y.

There were more, but why go on?  My country is disappearing before my eyes, aided by sycophants in Congress, by state legislatures, by local party hacks, by tough guy bros, by creeps like Stephen Miller, by thugs in ICE, by craven cabinet appointees, by big oil, by billionaires, but why go on?  

Just when I think it can’t get worse, it gets worse.  You can see why I like Mondays.