Profiles in Courage

 

 

Profiles in Courage is a 1956 volume of short biographies describing acts of bravery and integrity by eight United States senators. The book, authored by 

John F. Kennedy with Ted Sorensen as a ghostwriter, profiles senators who defied the opinions of their party and constituents to do what they felt was right and suffered severe criticism and losses in popularity as a result.

 It begins with a quotation from Edmund Burke on the courage of the English statesman Charles James Fox, in his 1783 "attack upon the tyranny of the East India Company" in the House of Commons, and focuses on mid-19th-century antebellum America and the efforts of senators to delay the American Civil War. Profiles in Courage was widely celebrated and became a bestseller. It includes a foreword by Allan Nevins.

John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, won the Pulitzer Prize for the work. However, in his 2008 autobiography, Kennedy's speechwriter Ted Sorensen, who was presumed as early as 1957 to be the book's ghostwriter, acknowledged that he "did a first draft of most chapters" and "helped choose the words of many of its sentences". Jules Davids, who was a history professor for Kennedy's wife Jacqueline when she was a student at Georgetown University, is also acknowledged to have made key contributions to the historical research and organizational planning for the book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiles_in_Courage

 In 1990, Kennedy's family created the Profile in Courage Award to honor individuals who have acted with courage in the same vein as those profiled in the book. The book also served as the basis for an American historical anthology series of the same name that was telecast weekly on NBC from November 8, 1964, to May 9, 1965.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profile_in_Courage_Award

The Profile in Courage Award was first awarded in 1990. The majority of the recipients are elected officials.

         

Although the Profile in Courage Award is a private award created by the Kennedy family, the federal government also has awards for people who displayed acts of courage.

Yesterday, President Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Award to 20 people, including Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, both of whom served on the January 6 committee. The Presidential Citizens Award is the second highest award given by the government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Citizens_Medal

If you click on the link above, you can view all of the recipients of the award, and some of them were awarded after their death. Some of the people on the list are still alive, but have received death threats. Liz Cheney and Rusty Bowers are two examples.

The Presidential Citizens Medal is an award bestowed by the president of the United States. It is the second-highest civilian award in the United States and is second only to the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Established by executive order on November 13, 1969, by President Richard Nixon, it recognizes an individual "who has performed exemplary deeds or services for his or her country or fellow citizens." Only United States citizens are eligible for the medal, which may be awarded posthumously.

The medal is a disc of gilt and enamel, based on the seal of the president of the United States, with the eagle surrounded by a wreath of leaves. The medal is suspended on a ribbon, dark blue with a light blue central stripe and white edge stripes. Despite being a civilian award, it may be worn on some military uniforms.

In 1973, Roberto Clemente was the first person to receive the award due to his charity work. He died in a plane crash in 1972 while he was attempting to deliver aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Medal_of_Freedom

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award of the United States, alongside the Congressional Gold Medal. It is an award bestowed by decision of the president of the United States to "any person recommended to the President for award of the Medal or any person selected by the President upon his own initiative, and was created to recognize people who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to (1) the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

The award is not limited to U.S. citizens, and, while it is a civilian award, it can also be awarded to military personnel and worn on the uniform. It was established in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy, superseding the Medal of Freedom that was initially established by President Harry S. Truman in 1945 to honor civilian service.

President Barack Obama awarded 118 medals, the most of any president, followed by President Bill Clinton with 89 medal recipients. Two people, Ellsworth Bunker and Colin Powell, are two-time recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Colin Powell received his second award with Distinction, while Ellsworth Bunker was given both of his awards with Distinction

Since its creation in 1963, the award has gone to 652 people, and eight of them were U.S. Presidents.

2 of the people who were nominated by Donald Trump have declined the award:

Bill Belichick. coach of the New England Patriots, was offered the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Donald Trump, and initially accepted it, but changed his mind and turned down the medal after the January 6 United States Capitol attack.

Country musician Dolly Parton turned down the medal twice from Donald Trump. Parton said she turned it down the first time because her husband was ill, and the second time because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For a lot of reasons, these are trying times for our country, and not everyone has the courage to do what is right for our country.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/us/politics/fear-trump.html

No president since has deployed fear quite like Donald J. Trump. Whether it is the prospect of a crime wave at the border with Mexico or nuclear war with North Korea, President Trump has persuaded his supporters that there is plenty to fear beyond fear itself.

In an interview as a presidential candidate in 2016 with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post, Mr. Trump said, “Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear.”

As president, he initially tried to intimidate some of the nation’s strongest allies, including Canada, Mexico, Britain, France and Germany, in trade talks. He demanded political loyalty from Republicans in Congress and drove several who bucked him from office, notably Senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake. But as his presidency enters its third year, a less convenient truth is emerging: Few outside the Republican Party are afraid of him, and they may be less intimidated after the disastrous government shutdown.

The New York times article poster above was released in 2019, but it is still true today.

There are still plenty of people in Congress who are afraid of Trump, but the recent negotiations about a potential government shutdown have shown that there ARE people in congress who are still brave enough to protect us from Donald Trump, even if they never receive any awards for doing so.

That should be a source of comfort for all of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Predictions for 2025

 

It is notoriously difficult to predict the future, as evidenced by the fact that predictions of election results should not be taken as Gospel, even though people like Nate Silver often do better than other pollsters.

The best known “‘future predictor” during my lifetime was Jeanne Dixon. Among other things, she predicted the assassination of JFK. Like Nostradamus, she also had a lot of misses, including the fact that she predicted that Nixon would win in 1960.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeane_Dixon

In the years since the publication of his Les Prophéties, Nostradamus has attracted many supporters, who, along with some of the popular press, credit him with having accurately predicted many major world events. 

Academic sources reject the notion that Nostradamus had any genuine supernatural prophetic abilities and maintain that the associations made between world events and Nostradamus's quatrains are the result of (sometimes deliberate) misinterpretations or mistranslations.

These academics also argue that Nostradamus's predictions are characteristically vague, meaning they could be applied to virtually anything, and are useless for determining whether their author had any real prophetic powers.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostradamus

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One of the newsletters I get occasionally is VOX, which just published its hit and misses about 2024.

The folks at Vox made 24 predictions about 2024, and they got it right 14 out of 24 times, for a winning percentage of .583.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/391440/2024-predictions-revisited-trump-politics-tech

I’m not smarter than anyone else but I will make a few predictions about what is likely to happen in 2025 and beyond:

1)    Donald Trump will not finish his first term in office. Either he’ll die in office, be removed by Congress, or thrown out by our military leaders, so we won’t have to tolerate him for 4 more years.

2)   Inflation and unemployment will rise

3)   The Kansas City Chiefs will win the Superbowl again, and possibly more than once

4)   The Democrats will regain both the House and the Senate

5)   Sales of electric vehicles will be 15% of all vehicle sales (up from 8.9% in 2024

6)   A new pope will be elected. (Pope Francis turned 88 years old in December. Since 2021, he has experienced a series of health issues.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Francis#Health

7)   Iran will experience a change in leadership

8)   Pierre Trudeau will no longer be the Prime Minister after November

9)   The U.S. government will nearly get shut down (again) but will be saved by a bipartisan agreement of Democrats and non-MAGA Republicans

10Cars made in China and sold in America will exceed 200,000

(Volvo, Buick, Lincoln, Polestar and Cadillac currently sell cars in America that are made in China)

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/americans-have-been-driving-these-chinese-built-cars-for-years-and-biden-s-tariffs-likely-won-t-impact-them/ss-BB1msjBS

Now that I have made MY predictions, what do YOU think will happen in 2005?

'Tis the season for giving

 

Jesus is not the only person who was born on December 25.

 

My uncle George was also born on Christmas day, but I did not realize until later in life how religious he was. As a result, both of his sons went to a Catholic high school, and for many years, he went to mass almost every day.

Another person who was born on December 25 (1970) was a Lutheran pastor named Daniel Ruen, who was the pastor of Grace Lutheran church in Evanston, Illinois when I lived in Evanston. After serving as the pastor there for 14 years, he moved to St. Anthony Park Lutheran church in St. Paul, Minnesota. By a strange coincidence, the church is located at 2323 Como Avenue, less than 2 miles from our first house at 1367 Asbury.

https://www.saplc.org/staff

 

After I moved to Evanston in 2005, I discovered that there were roughly 100 churches in town, and the thought occurred to me that it would be interesting to visit as many of them as I could. Since I always worked on Friday evenings, I never got to the synagogues or mosques in town, but I DID get to more than 60 other churches before I ran out of energy. Generally speaking, I normally did not return for a second visit for most of them, but the one exception was Grace Lutheran, partially because it was a short bike ride away, and partially because I liked the paster.

https://www.churchfinder.com/churches/il/evanston

 One of his innovations was “beer and Bible" night. I never attended, but we DID have a couple of beers together at one of the local pubs once on a Saturday afternoon.

What also attracted me to the church is that it was definitely a “liberal” church. In addition to the fact that social justice was a concern, it was also a welcoming community to the LGBT+ community.

One example of the social justice aspect was the fact that a number of people from the church (including me) traveled to Springfield on at least one occasion to highlight the challenges facing family members of people who were incarcerated. The trip is detailed in my story titled “Monopoly and Lincoln Logs”.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2011/05/monopoly-and-lincoln-logs.html

(If you look closely at the picture, you can see me in the background)

Another example of social justice is listed below:

One of the members of Grace Lutheran church was a man named Danny Brown. Shortly after I started going to Grace on a regular basis, Mr. Brown discovered that he needed a kidney transplant, so he appealed to the church to help him find a donor, and they did.

The search was successful. As it turns out, the person who was the best fit was the pastor, Daniel Ruen. He bravely went through the surgery, and both he and Danny Brown are still very much alive today.

Many of us (including me) would be reluctant to donate one of our organs. The truth is, though, organ donors actually benefit physically for doing to. However, if you read that link below, there are MANY benefits for both the donor and the recipient.

https://www.americantransplantfoundation.org/about-transplant/living-donation/about-living-donation/#:~:text=Often%2C%20transplanted%20organs%20from%20living%20donors%20have%20greater,and%20candidates%20may%20lessen%20the%20risk%20of%20rejection.

Both Sharon and I are listed as organ donors on our drivers’ licenses.

After Sharon’s sister died in 2020, many of her organs lived on in other people – and the hospital provided a list of which ones how that were going to be used.

Donating part of you body is certainly on the strong end of the act of giving, but we don’t have to go that far.

Be as generous as you can to the various charities that are always asking for money, but above all do this:

 

Be kind.

 

 

 

 

 

George Winston

 

 

Tomorrow is the winter solstice, the time of the year when we once again encounter the shortest day of the year.

The Northern Hemisphere winter solstice will occur Saturday, December 21st at 4:20 AM EST. The winter solstice occurs at the moment the earth's tilt away/toward the sun is at a maximum, with December 21st marking the shortest day and longest night of the year for locations in the northern half of the globe, given the Northern Hemisphere being tilted away from the sun. On the day of the winter solstice, the sun appears at its lowest elevation with a noontime position that changes very little for several days before and after the solstice. The Northern Hemisphere winter solstice occurs when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, which is located at 23.5° south of the equator and runs through Australia, Chile, southern Brazil, and northern South Africa.

 

 

 

It’s a time of joy for many people, but it also is a time of stress. By the time that Christmas finally arrives, Sharon will have worn herself out baking Christmas cookies, and she’ll have made enough to last us until St. Patrick’s Day. For many of us, it is a time when our expenses go up, but our income does not. Due to the 2 weeks off from school for the holidays, my first school check in January will be exactly zero, so we’ll have to watch our pennies for a month of two. 

Apart from my daily intake of a glass of wine (or two), I have found that the best way to reduce stress is to listen to music, and one of the best artists I can think of for that is George Winston, who we saw live in concert many years ago in Minneapolis. He performed in stocking feet.

When we still had a record collection, it included a couple of his albums.

One of the albums that he released long ago is titled “Winter”. One of the songs on that album is titled “snow”, which you can listen to by clicking on the link below:

(64)George Winston / Snow - YouTube

 

If you listen to the song until its conclusion, you’ll discover that you can listen to the entire album, since it automatically goes to the next song.

 

George Otis Winston III (February 11, 1949 – June 4, 2023) was an American pianist performing contemporary instrumental music.  Best known for his solo piano recordings, Winston released his first album in 1972, and came to prominence with his 1980 album Autumn, which was followed in 1982 by Winter into Spring and December.

All three became platinum-selling albums, with December becoming a triple-platinum album. A total of 16 solo albums were released, accumulating over 15 million records sold, with the 1994 album Forest earning Winston a Grammy award for Best New Age Album. Winston received four other Grammy nominations, including one for Best Children's Music Album, performed with actress Meryl Streep, and another for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album for his interpretation of works by the rock band the Doors.

Winston played in three styles: the melodic approach that he developed and called "rural folk piano"; stride piano, primarily inspired by Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson; and his primary interest, New Orleans rhythm and blues (R&B) piano, influenced by James Booker, Professor Longhair and Henry Butler. While the majority of his recordings were in the folk piano style, Winston mostly enjoyed playing R&B piano.  His musical style has been classified as new age and sometimes classical, but he rejected both labels.

Winston also played the guitar and harmonica. His interest in the Hawaiian slack-key guitar led him to start his own record label, Dancing Cat Records.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Winston

No one knows if the government will shut down at midnight tonight, but there is nothing that any of us can do about it. With luck, president Musk and congress will reach some type of agreement to avert disaster.

For now, though, don’t spend any time worrying about it.

Just listen to George.

 

 

 

tail gunner Joe

 

Most of us were born either right before, or during, what is now known as the McCarthy era, which lasted from 1950 to the early part of 1954,

Even though that is more than 70 years ago, the story of the junior senator from Wisconsin is VERY relevant to our society today.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

A Democrat until 1944, McCarthy successfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1946 as a Republican, narrowly defeating incumbent Robert M. La Follette Jr. in the Wisconsin Republican primary, then Democratic challenger Howard McMurray by a 61% – 37% margin.

After three largely undistinguished years in the Senate McCarthy rose suddenly to national fame in February 1950 when he asserted in a speech that he had a list of "members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring" who were employed in the State Department. In succeeding years after his 1950 speech, McCarthy made additional accusations of Communist infiltration into the State Department, the administration of President Harry S. Truman, the Voice of America, and the U.S. Army. He also used various charges of communism, communist sympathies, disloyalty, or sex crimes to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government. This included a concurrent "Lavender Scare" against suspected homosexuals, whose illicit sexual activity was presumed to make them vulnerable to blackmail by communists and others.

Ultimately he was censured by the Senate in 1954 for refusing to cooperate with and abusing members of, the committee established to investigate whether or not he should be censured. The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.

McCarthy   served as an intelligence briefing officer for a dive bomber squadron VMSB-235 in the Solomon Islands and Bougainville for 30 months (August 1942 – February 1945), and held the rank of captain at the time he resigned his commission in April 1945. He volunteered to fly twelve combat missions as a gunner-observer. These missions were generally safe, and after one where he was allowed to shoot as much ammunition as he wanted, mainly at coconut trees, he acquired the nickname "Tail-Gunner Joe". McCarthy remained in the Marine Corps Reserve after the war, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel.

He later falsely claimed participation in 32 aerial missions so as to qualify for a Distinguished Flying Cross and multiple awards of the Air Medal, which the Marine Corps decided to approve in 1952 under his political influence. McCarthy also publicly claimed a letter of commendation from his commanding officer and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Chief of Naval Operations. However, his commander revealed that McCarthy had written this letter himself, probably while preparing award citations and commendation letters for his men, and that he had signed his commander's name, after which Nimitz signed it routinely. A "war wound"—a badly broken leg—that McCarthy attributed to varying adventures involving airplane crashes or anti-aircraft fire, had in fact happened aboard ship during a raucous celebration for sailors crossing the equator for the first time. Because of McCarthy's various lies about his military heroism, his "Tail-Gunner Joe" nickname was used in mockery by his critics.

McCarthy was far from the first person to make accusations about his fellow citizens, since the predecessor of the House and un-American committee actually had its roots as early as 1919, when the Overman committee was formed to investigate Bolshevik elements in the United States.

In 1930, the Fish committee was formed to investigate communist activities.

From 1934 to 1937, the focus of the subsequent committee (called the MCormack-Dickstein committee) shifted to investigate Nazi propaganda)

On May 26, 1938, the House Committee on Un-American Activities was established as a special investigating committee, reorganized from its previous incarnations as the Fish Committee and the McCormack–Dickstein Committee, to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist or fascist ties; however, it concentrated its efforts on communists.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities became a standing (permanent) committee on January 3, 1945.

Under the mandate of Public Law 601, passed by the 79th Congress, the committee of nine representatives investigated suspected threats of subversion or propaganda that attacked "the form of government as guaranteed by our Constitution"

Under this mandate, the committee focused its investigations on real and suspected communists in positions of actual or supposed influence in the United States society. A significant step for HUAC was its investigation of the charges of espionage brought against Alger Hiss in 1948. This investigation ultimately resulted in Hiss's trial and conviction for perjury, and convinced many of the usefulness of congressional committees for uncovering communist subversion

(Even to this day, there is still no agreement on whether Hiss was guilty of innocent).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss

In 1947, the committee held nine days of hearings into alleged communist propaganda and influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry. After conviction on contempt of Congress charges for refusal to answer some questions posed by committee members, "The Hollywood Ten" were blacklisted by the industry. Eventually, more than 300 artists – including directors, radio commentators, actors, and particularly screenwriters – were boycotted by the studios. Some, like Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Alan Lomax, Paul Robeson, and Yip Harburg, left the U.S or went underground to find work. Others like Dalton Trumbo wrote under pseudonyms or the names of colleagues. Only about ten percent succeeded in rebuilding careers within the entertainment industry

 

In 1947, studio executives told the committee that wartime films—such as Mission to Moscow, The North Star, and Song of Russia—could be considered pro-Soviet propaganda, but claimed that the films were valuable in the context of the Allied war effort, and that they were made (in the case of Mission to Moscow) at the request of White House officials. In response to the House investigations, most studios produced a number of anti-communist and anti-Soviet propaganda films such as The Red Menace (August 1949), The Red Danube (October 1949), The Woman on Pier 13 (October 1949), Guilty of Treason (May 1950, about the ordeal and trial of Cardinal József Mindszenty), I Was a Communist for the FBI (May 1951, Academy Award nominated for best documentary 1951, also serialized for radio), Red Planet Mars (May 1952), and John Wayne's Big Jim McLain (August 1952).

 Universal-International Pictures was the only major studio that did not purposefully produce such a film

 

In 1947, the committee held nine days of hearings into alleged communist propaganda and influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry. After conviction on contempt of Congress charges for refusal to answer some questions posed by committee members, "The Hollywood Ten" were blacklisted by the industry. Eventually, more than 300 artists – including directors, radio commentators, actors, and particularly screenwriters – were boycotted by the studios. Some, like Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Alan Lomax, Paul Robeson, and Yip Harburg, left the U.S or went underground to find work. Others like Dalton Trumbo wrote under pseudonyms or the names of colleagues. Only about ten percent succeeded in rebuilding careers within the entertainment industry.^{[citation needed]}

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Trumbo

Dalton Trumbo was finally given screen credit for his films in 1960 for Exodus and Spartacus, but it was not until 2011 that he was finally given credit for Roman Holiday, which was produced in 1953

The 2007 documentary about his life is worth watching.

Trumbo Official Trailer #1 (2015) - Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren Biopic HD       

The House Committee on Internal Security was formally terminated on January 14, 1975, the day of the opening of the 94th Congress. The committee's files and staff were transferred on that day to the House Judiciary Committee.

How does all this related to today?

For one thing, Joe McCarthy’s lawyer was a man named Roy Cohn. Many years later, he became the mentor to a young real estate developer named Donald J. Trump.

Since loyalty for Trump is a one-way street, he did not attend Cohn’s funeral. Oddly enough, both Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn were homosexuals. Although McCarthy died from alcoholism, Cohn died from AIDS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn

Apart from the fact that Donald Trump and Joe McCarthy were not truthful about their military service (or lack thereof), unfounded accusations about our fellow citizens are about to unfold.

After January 20, incoming FBI director Kash Patel has plans to investigate at least 60 people that he considers to me “enemies” – and he names them in his book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth and the Battle for Our Democracy”.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/12/03/nation/kash-patel-fbi-trump-plans/

As "The Nation mentioned on December 3, Kash Patel is a very poor choice to tun the F.B.I. 

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/kash-patel-trump-cabinet/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%2012.3.2024&utm_term=daily

Among those whose names have been floated are former Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who was vice chair of the bipartisan committee that investigated Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the former top infectious disease expert for the government whose advice on Covid-19 made him a target of far-right attacks; Jack Smith, the outgoing special counsel who prosecuted Mr. Trump; and Senator-elect Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, who was a lead House prosecutor at Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial.

 Like Hunter Biden, none of them are not going to be treated fairly or honestly by the incoming administration, so the proper thing to do is to issue a blanket pardon for ALL of them before January 20.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/us/politics/biden-trump-pardons.html

 

The choices of Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and Trump surrogate, to run the Justice Department and Kash Patel, a former Trump aide and far-right provocateur, to be director of the F.B.I. have put the issue front and center.

Mr. Patel has vowed to “come after” Mr. Trump’s critics and even published a list of about 60 people he considered “members of the executive branch deep state” as the appendix to a 2023 book.

Democrats on Capitol Hill have been pressing Mr. Biden to do what he can to protect targets of Mr. Trump. Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, one of the president’s closest allies, urged the White House to consider pre-emptive pardons shortly after Mr. Trump’s election last month, and likewise recommended that the president pardon his son.

Mr. Trump, who has argued that the many criminal and civil cases against him are part of a sweeping “witch hunt” that has “weaponized” the justice system, has done little to disguise his desire to use the law enforcement system to get back at his foes. He has threatened to prosecute Democrats, election workers, law enforcement officials, intelligence officials, reporters, former members of his own staff and Republicans who do not support him.

He has said on social media that Ms. Cheney “should be prosecuted for what she has done to our country” and that the whole Jan. 6 committee “should be prosecuted for their lies and, quite frankly, TREASON!” He said that Vice President Kamala Harris “should be impeached and prosecuted.” He has promised to “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after” Mr. Biden and his family. He has suggested that Gen. Mark A. Milley, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved execution.

 

I’m not smart enough to predict how the next 4 years are going to unfold. The good news, though, is that our democracy will somehow manage to survive, even though there is little doubt that we will some difficult times after January 20. For the sake of my sanity, though, I am not going to watch the inauguration or ANY of his appearance on television.