I awake this morning to the news that Dick Cheney has passed away.  Once one of the most powerful figures in the Republican Party and the nation, he was one of the last great servants of the people.  Never great with the media, he became the perpetual bridesmaid, serving in high government office with great performance and distinction, culminating in the Vice- Presidency during the Bush 43 administration.  By virtue of his great competence, he was constantly fodder for humorists and satirists, some who took their job far too seriously.  This made him an easy target for Donald Trump, with whom he had many disagreements.  And so

Spent a great deal of time yesterday on airplanes.  Watched movies.  One of them was entitled “Americana.”  The movie is described as a “neo-western” which is why I decided to watch it.  It was a critical and box office flop.  But I did watch it from beginning to end, which I cannot say about the newer Liam Neeson version of “The Naked Gun.”  I think the movie  very revelatory of how Hollywood views middle America.. . .

When the environmental “movement” began rivers literally burned, litter was far more than a nuisance, and many bodies of water coughed up scores of dead fish on a daily basis.  Those conditions are now rare, but true believers chase ephemeral “climate change,” or “pollutants” not yet proven harmful to levels that were below detection just a decade ago, as if the threats were as imminent and acute as when Lake Erie had more dead fish than live ones.  Sadly, increasingly, they do so at the expense of those environmental problems that are real and are acute.. . .

For decades now Democrats have operated with an air of moral superiority born largely of two things.  Firstly, they were the party of the little guy – helping the helpless, feeding the poor and freeing the oppressed.  Secondly they uncovered and investigated quite publicly “the greatest scandal in American political history” – Watergate.  These pillars are currently crumbling under their feet, leaving them teetering.. . .

Our Ambassador to the U.N. is getting interrupted like the Soviet Union still existed.  President Trump has announced a resumption of nuclear weapons testing.  The world is heating up.  It has been more than thirty years since the United States conducted nuclear weapons tests other than on a computer.  According to the President both Russia and China are conducting such tests despite agreements to cease doing so implemented when we ceased.  These tests are primarily an exercise in saber rattling, as opposed to weapons development.  The world is heating up in a big way.. . .

Right now, in California, they are worried about peanut oil in the fried chicken.  No, seriously, restaurants now, by law, have to have menus that read like ingredient lists lest a customer encounter some unwanted food to which they are allergic – and California is quite proud of how civilized they are.  Yet, in Sudan, real massacres, not pretend ones like everyone has been on a high horse about in Gaza, are happening.  In Sudan entire villages are being invaded and people are being openly massacred by the thousands.  So large and so brutal is the killing that the human remains and massive blood stains on the soil are

I am beginning to think that the Democratic Party, and the legacy media it has swallowed, are an organized form of personality disorder.  They cannot tell what is important from what is not and everything is viewed through a very personal lens.  In the past 36 hours (an amazing period of time when you consider 17% of it was consumed by a single World Series game) I have encountered two very serious stories about exploitation of people, while encountering dozens about things that just don’t matter that much save in the minds of that cohort. It is actually kind of frightening.. . .

So, NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani tried to play the victim over the weekend because his aunt (in a hajib) was viewed suspiciously in the aftermath of 9-11 in New York.  Was she arrested, tried, beaten or otherwise actually persecuted?  No, apparently people just looked at her suspiciously.  Now first of all, I have been to New York many times, never in a hajib, and someone always looks at me suspiciously – it’s New York for crying out loud.  Looking at people suspiciously is just being smart.  Yet when the Vice President pointed out what I just pointed out, perhaps even with less grace than I did, in