The Fortnightly Rant

Let’s see now…which of this fortnight’s top news stories shall we rant about in this issue… …the alleged President saying that “We are going to win four more years. And then after that we’ll go for another four years, because they spied on my campaign.”? …the House candidate who accused the Obama administration of using the MS-13 gang to commit murders—without losing her backing from the GOP? …the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee report detailing the Paul Manafort’s business relationship with a Russian intelligence agent? …the investigation by a Congressional committee into efforts by top appointees to destroy the Postal Service? …the alleged President saying “we …

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If a kid takes a swing at your mailbox with his Louisville Slugger, 18 U.S. Code § 1705 says he could get three years in the hoosegow and a quarter-million dollar fine. Louis DeJoy, on the other hand—our new Postmaster General—is sabotaging the whole dang U.S. Postal Service. If he succeeds he’ll get a lifetime pass at a string of tacky golf courses, and God only knows what other rewards and emoluments. DeJoy’s petty grifts are the least of our problems, though. Let him have that solid gold toilet Maurizio Cattelan made for Trump, for all we care. What’s worrying us are the consequences of what …

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Tuesday’s Herald carried a piece by Paul Briand—one of the Hedge-Fund-Owned Local Daily’s few writers still based in this area—headlined, “Purple Principle podcast seeks political middle ground in U.S.” A five-person team is exploring “whether political factions—with blue liberals on the left and red conservatives on the right—can somehow find some common ground in the purple middle.” In the marketplace of mainstream journalism, editors know readers are eager to start their day by snapping open a fresh paper and finding a story that gives them some slight thread of hope—a story that nurtures, however briefly or improbably, the comforting illusion that there may in fact …

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A week ago today the Department of Health and Human Services posted a revised document online. In a certain narrow sense this was perfectly normal—even traditional. Friday has always been considered the optimal day for a beleaguered criminal Administration to conduct any low act of skulduggery. Considered in terms of its content, however, this act was a bold bureaucratic boarding house reach.* Hospitals had been sending all their Covid-19 stats to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]. The logic of this arrangement would seem to be clear, even to a person of limited intellect—an increasingly important consideration these days. Under the order which …

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Well, let’s see here…2020, subtract 1776…yup, looks like tomorrow, the Fourth of July, will mark this country’s 244th birthday. How shall we celebrate? We understand that El Presidente will be visiting South Dakota. Flying in on Air Force One is his subtle way of letting us know that he thinks his face belongs on Mount Rushmore. After all, what has Lincoln done for anyone lately? It pains us to say this, but in a way he’s right. After all, the so-called “Shrine of Democracy” is a grandiose monument created by a monomaniacal racist on land stolen by the government from the Sioux. Some Sioux have …

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Twelve score and four years ago, smugglers, land grabbers, farmers, and shoe makers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in a curiously narrow vision of Liberty, and dedicated—nominally—to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great difference of opinion, testing whether that nation can endure much longer while ten Army posts continue to honor the names of men who fought against it in a great Civil War. It would be altogether fitting and proper for us the living to re-dedicate those places. We could give them new names, in honor of others—men, or women, who …

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