Senators Shaheen and Hassan Go Full DINO

 

You may not have been watching, but Mad Dog's son, in California was watching, and he phoned to ask: What's with your New Hampshire Senators? They both voted to confirm eight of Trump's cabinet appointees, and nine if you count Marco Rubio.

Actually, my son turns out to be right.

Our Senators, who New Hampshire voters thought were Democrats voted to seat:

1/ Kristi Noem: Homeland Security, who as Governor of South Dakota sent her National Guard to the Mexican border, wants a national abortion ban, shot her own dog and a goat, thus cementing her cred as a strong advocate for gun rights and the Second Amendment, and demonstrating she is willing to pull the trigger, which is essential to homeland security, and in Congress she sponsored a bill to forbid the EPA  from clean air efforts, and voted to cancel Obamacare. 

2/ Chris Wright: Energy, a climate change denier who nevertheless thinks global warming would be a good thing because it would save millions of lives which would otherwise be lost from freezing to death. He said that climate change protest movement is collapsing under its own weight.

The last Trump appointee who was supposed to kill the Department of Energy was Rick Perry, who had vowed to kill the DOE (once he finally recalled its name) only to arrive and discover it's the DOE that maintains the missile silos, cleans up nuclear waste in contaminated soil like Hanford, Washington, and chases down the occasional nuclear bomb when it inadvertently falls out of an Air Force plane. He also discovered it was DOE research that created fracking. Perry was a big enough man to reverse himself, and say if he had known all the great stuff DOE did, he'd have advocated for strengthening it, not destroying it. Wright has not yet shown any signs of a moment of Paul on the road to Damascus, so to speak. 

2/John Lee Ratcliffe: CIA director whose claim to fame is he berated FBI Director Comey for not investigating and charging Hillary Clinton over her emails.

3/ Sean Duffy: Dept Transportation, who said that China, Europe, Canada and China had committed "economic terrorism, in a way," by reacting to Trump tariffs with retaliatory tariffs.

4/ Scott Bessent: Treasury.  He immediately handed over all of Treasury's encrypted data with all those individual bank account numbers and tax information to Elon Musk.

5/ Doug Collins: Who served two years in the Navy as a chaplain, as his military service (making him a bone fide vet)  and who wrote of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, upon her death, "RIP to the more than 30 million innocent babies that have been murdered during the decades that Ruth Bader Ginsburg defend pro-abortion laws." He opposed Obamacare and supports capital punishment, denounces climate change as a hoax, and thinks tax cuts for billionaires stimulates the economy and, well, you get the picture.

6/ Brooke Rollins: Agriculture-- who suggested the solution to rising egg prices would be for Americans to keep chickens of their own in their backyards.

7/ Douglas Burgum: Not to be outdone by Kristi Noem in South Dakota, Governor Burgum sent North Dakota National Guard troops to guard the Southern border, although it would likely have been a lot cheaper to send them to guard the northern border with Canada, which currently looks like a more likely site of international conflict, don't chaknow? Youbetcha. 

So this is the rogue's gallery our DEMOCRATIC U.S. Senators have voted FOR.

Elizabeth Warren voted against every one of them. 

So, if the explanation from our Senators is that there is nothing disqualifying about any of these folks, then you would have to ask what Senator Warren found disqualifying, and you would have to ask what would be disqualifying? 

The Constitution says simply these appointments are to be made with the advice and consent of the Senate.  So that sort of leaves it up to the individual Senator's conscience, and I would say, Naw, I'm voting against each of these mopes, because they are just too MAGA weird, and leave it at that. 

O'Rourke

Mad Dog suggests we start making plans now to find candidates to run in primaries against Senator Shaheen in 2026,  and another for Senator Hassan's seat in 2029.

We can do better. 

We've got good Democrats who have sought office in New Hampshire, but who were shunted out of the way by Ray Buckley and the establishment, who controlled the purse strings and the voter lists, people like Terence O'Rourke, of Rochester, New Hampshire, who came to notice  when he was running for the open U.S. Congressional seat, after the Charlottesville, VA killings, at a white nationalist rally. 

O'Rourke was speaking at a meeting of Rockingham County Democrats, one of nearly a dozen candidates, and when he got up to the podium, most people were too busy gossiping and chatting, but he caught everyone's attention, and caught many off guard, when he stated simply, "I know there are so many things which divide us starkly right now, but I would have thought the one thing we could all agree in, in America, even now, is that there is no such thing as a very fine  Nazi."

This was after President Trump had said there were very fine people on both sides of that bloody rally in Charlottesville.

O'Rourke

It stopped everyone dead in their tracks that night.

Ultimately, my Democratic friends and compatriots in Hampton did not vote for Mr. O'Rourke, because they thought he was too strident, too angry for New Hampshire. These were mostly women talking. And it's true, O'Rourke is an attorney, and not adverse to conflict, and he had been an Army officer and had fought in the Middle East, and although he never mentioned it, a little Googling revealed he had won a Bronze Star. 

So, yes, maybe he was just a little too manly for our New Hampshire Democrats. 

But what do you think those same folks would say now?

Of Transgender Mice and Men

 

Oh! Those transgender mice.

President Trump lambasted our woke National Institutes of Health and the rest of the woke government for spending $8 million on "TRANSGENDER MICE!"

Can you imagine!?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FspfF1N0LJQ

And behind him on the stage, were J.D. Vance (over his right shoulder) and Speaker Johnson (left shoulder), tut-tutting and smirking and shaking their heads in wonder at just how clueless and radical those Democratic medical researchers must be.  Let's get DOGE all over that transgender mice program!

Democrats are not content with grabbing your little Jimmy when he goes to school a happy beautiful little boy and doing a sex change operation on him so he comes home a girl--now they are after the mice! And they are spending millions on these mice.

And the transgender mouse program has exploded because those illegal Haitian immigrants have eaten all the cats!

Oh, wait!  

Actually, those were "transGENIC" mice not "transgender" mice. And memo to the President: those are two very different things, not at all the same, mice of a different stripe, you might say.

Transgenic mice, which are mice bred in the laboratory with specific genes are useful in cancer research--in a lot of different types of research--especially if you want to know whether a particular tumor which harbors a particular type of genetic mutation driving its growth might be susceptible to a particular drug. These are not mice with gender dysphoria, who have complained about feeling like a Minnie Mouse when, in fact, they were born as Mickey Mice.

So, $8 million spent on cancer research for a group of diseases which cost America billions and untold suffering may not be such a bad idea.

What Me Worry?

Does the White House not have any employees who check out these stories before they get stuffed into President Trump's speeches? Wait, no. They've fired the "fact checkers" in the government. Who  needs to check facts in Trump World?

The fact is, someone very well may have seen that line in the President's speech and tried to warn him not to say that, but the President does not care about details...like whether something is actually true. What he cares about is whether it can get a laugh. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I don't care whether there is a transgender mouse; I care whether we can talk about transgender mice. 

And, of speaking of bad ideas, when RFK JR shrugs off the deadly measles outbreak which started in Texas and has spread as far east as Florida, and when he says, "Oh, well, we get those measles outbreaks, you know, now and then."

Under Secretary for Vaccines, Dept HHS

Well, actually not. 

There have been measles outbreaks in cult communities, like the outbreak among unvaccinated Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn in 2018, but the only outbreaks we have seen in the US have been among the unvaccinated cults. Vaccines virtually eliminated measles outbreaks in this country, well, Until Now. 

So Bobby Brainworm has struck again. 

Yo! Where's Your Suit?

 

Stephen Colbert suggested that Volodymyr Zelensky might have replied to Brian Glenn's taunt, "Don't you own a suit?"  by saying "Oh, like your suit? Where did you buy it? Do they have a Men's Department in that store?"

Actually, Mr. Zelensky's riposte was not at all bad: "Maybe, when the war is over I will buy a suit like yours. Maybe a better suit."

Ralph Lauren:  Eat Your Heart Out!

This has become something of an on line sport: What would you have tossed back at Mr. Glenn?

Adrienne! Where's My Suit?

To People appearing in court in orange jump suits: Where is your suit?

To Supreme Court Justices in black robes: Where's your suit?

To Rocky Balboa, outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, dancing around in his sweat pants: Where's your suit?

Puffy Pink Guy: Wimp Pride

You could not come to dinner at Downton Abbey in a tuxedo with a black tie--so de`classe`! You need white tie for dinner.

The Phantom has decried, on his blog, "The Phantom Speaks," the dressing down of American society, where people line up to board an airplane in what looks like pajamas for a sleep over party, but the idea of a war time leader having to "show respect" by dressing up in a suit was simply so frat boy it was hard to process.

Wimps Gang Up On a Real Tough Guy

President Zelensky has been living with the threat of imminent death for 3 years now,  and Mr. Glenn is currently whining about getting death threats because of his remark.

Ukrainian Formal Wear

 Well, welcome to Mr. Zelensky's world, Mr. Glenn.

Is Shame Stupid?

 

The MAGA respondent on this blog, Anonymous, has raised one point which has gnawed at me for some time now: Is my urgency to send arms and money to Ukraine every bit as foolish and ill considered as the impulse which drove America to intervene and send troops to Vietnam?

It's the old question of intervention, of the "foreign entanglements" which George Washington warned against. Of course, Washington was a slave holder who wanted nothing more than to retreat to Mount Vernon, where he had dominion over his world, and he wanted to be left alone so he could abuse his slaves in peace.

Reading, re-reading, "The Best And The Brightest," about how the bright boys, products of elite institutions, guided Lyndon Johnson toward war in Vietnam; it is clear that these self assured, arrogant, conceited men played on Johnson's insecurities that he was just an under-educated hick from Texas, vulgar, but most of all, they played on his insecurities about manhood and machismo. Was he brave enough to make the tough choices? Was he man enough to send American boys to die in the rice paddies?

Johnson did it because he was afraid. He was afraid of being accused of being afraid to take bold action, afraid of being accused of being afraid to do the manly thing.

As George Carlin said: "Pull out? You want me to pull out? That doesn't sound very manly to me!"

And what was the bold thing to do? To stop Communism in its tracks, to keep godless Commies from knocking down one domino after another, until all of Asia and South America were communist, and we'd have Commies knocking on our door? 

That bright and shining lie.

We know now that half baked ideas, that appeals to emotionalism can be filled with explosive land mines.

On the other hand, when something, even from a distance, is manifestly, undeniably evil, do we not ask ourselves how we could have sat on our hands because we had no skin in the game? Watching a playground bully beat up a defenseless kid because it's not me getting pounded--what does that make me feel like?

The last scene of the Godfather II movie shows the sons of the Godfather in their dining room, awaiting the Godfather's arrival and Michael announces he has enlisted in the Marines to go fight World War II. Sonny, his older brother, erupts in rage, storms across the table to pummel his younger brother: "You would fight for...STRANGERS?" he shouts. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=435mkg6_eGQ

For Sonny, all those who enlisted to fight are "saps" fighting for people not in their family. In that is Trump's echo of John McCain and all those who went off to fight in uniform were "suckers."

And that is the essence of the problem: For Michael, being an American means something, not to mention being his own man. For Sonny, there is no obligation to anyone but members of his own family, his own blood, as he puts it.

Sonny, like Trump lives in a feudal world where the strong take what they want, when they want it--a man can grab a woman by the pussy, to use Mr. Trump's language, if he is big enough and strong enough. He doesn't have to worry about a delicate concept like rape, if he's big enough. The powerful take what they want. The lions take what they want. The rest of the animals on the Serengeti plain are just prey.

But for many Americans the idea of being a superhero, of standing up for what is right, and coming to the rescue does not seem a fool's game. The calvary riding in are not "suckers."

The last scene ("Take Off") of the "Band of Brothers" first episode, shows Richard Winters, reaching out his hand and hauling each of his platoon members up to his feet, and watching them load into the airplane which will take them over Europe to fight on D-Day. It is simple and breath-taking. 

As Paul Krugman has said, that was what America once was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOZUB0EHadw&t=177s

Another episode is called, "Why We Fight" about Easy Company stumbling into a concentration camp and liberating it. This has been set up by a scene of a veteran soldier, Frank Perconte, cynically berating a fresh replacement who is all eager to find some Germans to fight. For Perconte, who has fought from D-Day across Europe and into Germany, the best thing that can happen to him, what he's fighting for, is to sleep on a real bed with real sheets, under a roof, and to have real toilet paper. That is the height of glory for him. 

But it is Perconte who is staggered to  see what his patrol has uncovered--the concentration camp, with its skeletal survivors. 

So the episode was misnamed: none of the American soldiers had any idea how evil the forces they defeated were, until they defeated them. They had clues, but there was much cynicism, as one of the soldiers reads a passage from "Stars and Stripes" saying, "It seems the Germans are...BAD." And everyone laughs. Well, they weren't laughing after they found that concentration camp.

They may have been fighting for many reasons--to protect their comrades in arms, to sleep under a roof, but until they found the concentration camp, they could not have known what other good their fight could achieve. 

Many of my friends have struggled to express how it made them feel to watch Trump snigger at  Zelensky in the Oval Office.  On PBS Newshour, February 28, 2025, a day which will live in infamy,  we watched Trump carry out his own Pearl Harbor attack,  berating the valiant President Zelensky, "You don't have any cards, without us!"  

We all felt it. We all were a little surprised to feel an emotion we had rejected as quaint: Whatever else that scene made us feel--anger, disgust, nausea--and we may have felt all those things--but overwhelmingly, what we felt was shame.

David Brooks said the same thing, on the Newshour: He stumbled through a gamut of emotions, but he wound up on "shame."

Ashamed to be an American. Ashamed that we were now with the bad guys. Ashamed to be on the Sonny Corleone side of the street, looking at those who enlisted, mostly driven by blind faith that America will take the good side of any fight, and Sonny calling all those men who signed up to fight, "Saps."

Not since Vietnam, when it finally became apparent we weren't saving the world, but immolating it, had I felt ashamed to be an American. 

Lee Greenwood can sing all he wants, but it will take a long time to wash that shame away.

BETRAYAL

 

Now the MAGA voters will see what they have wrought.

And, for most of them, they will not mind. They may not love it, but they won't mind, because what's the death of a distant democracy against the price of eggs?

And now Trump is stopping whatever arms and money the US was going to send to Ukraine, because, you know, President Zelensky did not wear a suit. 

HEY, BUDDY! WHERE'S YOUR SUIT?

It is difficult to know what pressures Mr. Zelensky may face at home, what the calculus for his military logistics is. 

Perhaps, without U.S. money, his cause is hopeless.

But maybe, the Europeans can fill in the gaps.

Although, looking at the Finish minister talk about how Zelensky can always go back and make up with Trump, the Europeans may be in deep denial, at least if one Finn is any indication.

Was North Vietnam dependent on Russian aid to defeat the United States? Or can a people dedicated to self determination and determined to not be enslaved simply soldier on, for as long as it takes?

What Mad Dog would dearly love to see is Zelensky giving Trump the middle finger, moving on and slogging through and eventually wearing down Putin in Ukraine as the Soviets were worn down and eventually left Afghanistan.

And, with the war won, President Zelensky can keep his rare earths and mineral rights and charge America ten times what they charge the Europeans, and they can reap the profits of their own extraction, rather than having to pay reparations to the United States for all that aid which President Biden provided.

Freedom Fighter

The problem is, Ukraine is just next door to Russia,  and Ukraine has towns and cities and a people who have lived in the 21st century, unlike the Afghans, who had less to lose, and who were living in more remote circumstances. That country, unlike Ukraine, was not "target rich."

Mad Dog can fantasize that Europe will congeal and step up, but the EU has never shown much capacity for resolve and concerted action.

Canada may do better. If the premier of Ontario is to be believed, he can make Trump suffer for those tariffs kicking in tomorrow.

Trump is all about deal making and eschewing moral stances for simple bottom line thinking. If Ukraine shows too little return on investment, maybe Canada can show how the wrong choices can backfire.

You Don't Hold the Cards

 

So Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to the Oval Office on a mission to pay the extortion, the protection fee, from the gangsta on his gold chair, and he got rebuffed.

He hadn't bent the knee quite humbly enough.

He didn't say "Thank you," nice enough.

So he got turned out, sent back to Europe to bleed there.

Not the first time, actually, America has acted so nobly.

In 1939, a German ship called the "St. Louis," carrying hundreds of Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany, arrived at American shores and were sent back because their papers weren't in order. They needed notes from the Gestapo back in their home towns, certifying they were solid citizens, and the Gestapo was not inclined to provide them.

The Ship St. Louis, 1939

So, the ship was turned away, sailed back to Europe, where just short of 300 of the passengers wound up with a one way ticket to the concentration camps and all perished there.

Hitler, when questioned later about why he did not simply expel the Jews from Germany, alluded to that incident saying, "America did not want them. Nobody wants them."

Which is not to say that the United States should open its borders right now, but when Donald Trump plays that card about shit-hole countries, and shit-hole people, we all ought to know to what tradition he cleaves.

FRAT BOY TAUNT: DON'T YOU EVEN OWN A SUIT?

 

When Brian Glenn, who's main claim to fame is he is now Marjorie Taylor Greene's new squeeze, cat-called out to Volodymyr Zelensky at Friday's Oval Office frat boy party, "Don't you even own a suit?" Trump World came into bold focus.

   

DON'T YOU OWN A SUIT?

How do you even unpack this one?

Trump and Vance orchestrated a virtual smirking Greek Chorus of their frat bro's, and the whole mob sneered as the attempted slap down of Zelensky went down--for...not wearing a suit and tie?

Redolent of those British officers who sneered at the Minutemen because those embattled farmers did not wear spiffy uniforms.

Mr. Glenn ought to come to our town meetings in New Hampshire, if he wants to see some serious people who don't wear suits.

One thinks of that quaint idea we want to be judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin, or judged by the cut of our clothes. But that's just so yesterday in Trump World.

Here you have the guy who famously said, "I don't need a ride. I need ammunition," when the Russian hordes in their tanks were headed toward Kiev, and various powers offered him prompt escape out of harm's way.  Here is Zelensky, who has evaded Putin's assassination squads, who has literally been under fire for 3 years, facing a pink puffy American, who tries to engage him in a frat taunt.

MTG in her Gandhi Outfit

Most American boys knew this scene from growing up--getting taunted by some dweeb who's rich daddy gave him status and protection, a guy solid with the in-crowd, trying to put you down.

Respect for the Institution

But the fun irony:  here is the guy who's buying celeb status from his girlfriend--and look at what she wears on solemn occasions. And look how she acts.

Georgia Formal Prom

And Glenn is trying to invoke respect  for protocol?

Here we have the essence of Trump populism.

Not a suit among them

Of course, Zelensky's answer was completely lost on Glenn: "Maybe, when the war is over, I'll buy a suit like yours." You see, Mr. Glenn, let me speak really slowly, so maybe you can get it: The fashion statement you are making with your suit is you are in the fraternity, in the in-crowd, that you are in power. That's a "power suit," as if dressing up can actually make you a bigger, more important man. But I am dressed like this because I have work to do. I am in my battle fatigues. I have a war to win and a battle to brave.

But we all understand if Mr. Glenn cannot grasp that subtlety.

Mad Dog Is Not Alone On Saturday Night

 

Did you ever have that moment of self doubt, when you wondered, "Is it me? Maybe I'm just not seeing reality. Maybe I'm missing something here."

And then, you see someone else say just what you were thinking? It may be that "consensual validation" thing.

So, for a little over 24 hours after Friday's ambush at the Oval Office, Mad Dog wondered what he saw was real, or some Saturday Night Live skit foisted on him along with an unwitting public.

But no, the real Saturday Night Live skit came the next night, and it confirmed to Mad Dog, he is not living in an alternate universe. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUpOMSJ1MdU

Oh, what a relief it is.

And, oh, by the way, Mad Dog just caught a glimpse of some Puffy White Guy (PWG) asking President Zelensky why he doesn't wear a suit and then asks if President Zelensky even owns a suit. To which Zelensky has the presence of mind to reply calmly, "Maybe after the war is over, I will wear a suit. Maybe better than yours. Maybe cheaper."

Which is to say, yes, my clothes are a statement about my own perception of where I am right now: in a battle for my life, in a battle for my country's life. Superman, Batman and Spiderman do not where suits when battling evil; they wear their battle fatigues, their olive drabs. The PWG cannot understand that, never having been on the front lines. In fact, as far as Mad Dog can tell, this particular PWG (Brian Glenn) has never even owned a uniform, combat or otherwise, never fought a war, never had a bullet fired at him in anger, not even from an assassin. His patriotism is the cheap type, trying to take cheap shots from the safety of the Oval Office, behind the couch. A frat boy with small balls.

Expediency and the Greater Evil

 

Looking at the photo of FDR, Churchill and Stalin as he was constructing his last blog post, Mad Dog was struck by a discomforting thought: Here were the warriors for the great and good cause--the defeat of the monstrous Hitler--sitting amiably next to another monster, Stalin.

Here we  had the leaders of two democracies sitting next to a dictator,  who imposed famine on Ukraine and whose crimes are now well enough known to send angels shrieking from the room.

But that monster was helping the democracies defeat the more immediate threat: Hitler and fascism. 

Expediency, incarnate.

Without Stalin, the enemy of our enemy, Hitler would certainly have won the war against England and America.

So FDR sat next to Stalin and used him as the situation required.

Eric Arthur Blair (aka George Orwell) tried to get his book, "Animal Farm" published in 1943, in the middle of the fight against Hitler, but no English or American publisher would touch this polemic against Stalin and the Russian revolution. They knew Britain and the US needed Stalin. They were not going to spit in the eye of an essential ally.

Now we have the revolting spectacle of Trump shouting in the face of a truly brave and righteous man, "You don't have any cards without us!" For Trump, it's all a game, a protection racket, a gottcha moment.

President Zelensky knows he is in the position of Poland circa 1939--He's got Russia attacking on one border and from the other side he's got Trump, like Hitler and Stalin, two tyrants salivating to carve up his country.

Be practical, Trump says. You're dead meat without me. Putin is now an essential ally as Trump sees it. We can be indifferent to Europe, but Trump wants to play along with Putin, maybe to profit from that relationship.

Zelensky now knows it's the frying pan or the fire.

The Strange and Instructive Case of Carole Hooven of Harvard

 

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) said at the hearing, "Carole Hooven an evolutionary biologist, was forced to resign, because she stated that a person's sex is  biological and binary...and so, President Gay, in what world is a call for violence against Jews protected speech, but a belief that sex is biological and binary isn't?"

--Congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus. Question to President of Harvard, Claudine Gay, who could not answer it, and resigned shortly thereafter. 

Carol Hooven is not a name I knew before the February 23rd issue of the Boston Globe, which carried in its "Ideas" section an article by her called "Don't Let Anyone confuse You: There Really Are Only Two Sexes."

Professor Hooven, Formerly of Harvard

I began reading with the usual bias I carry to all newspaper articles about this topic I know from my own longstanding academic involvement, expecting to get more and more annoyed as I usually do, but as I progressed through the paragraphs, I became more and more excited: Here, finally, is an article by someone who has thought this stuff through.

Imagine that: an article in the newspaper by someone who actually knows what she is talking about!

Professor Hooven explored the different meanings of the words "sex" and "gender" and their uses, and explored how whether a person harbored sperm or eggs had been used to assign sex or gender, and the role of the Y chromosome and the cases where the sex chromosomes are present in unusual combinations or numbers.

She also alluded to Clownfish who can change sex and make sperm from testes and later eggs from ovaries. But she notes, among mammals there are no examples of sexual plasticity like this. 

So, by the end of the article, she had me. 

Until I read her little identifier at the bottom: She is fellow at the American Enterprise Institute! How did a mind so supple and open wind up at a place like the AEI?

Well, Professor Google to the rescue: In her article "Why I Left Harvard," Professor Hooven walks you through her experience on campus with chairmen of various departments and committees running for cover, trying not to get dragged down with her, defending her remarks that sex, as we define it for medical purposes, really is binary.

Did you know there are committees at Harvard there are central DEI offices, complete with staff, headed by the Chief Diversity and inclusion Officer (CDIO) whose mission is to create a "campus climate that is welcoming, inclusive, respectful, and free from bias and harassment?" And each department has DEI committees staffed by faculty, staff and grad students? Diversity: a goal for the department of engineering? 

But how "welcoming" is Harvard to a professor who questions whether biologic sex really is as plastic and fluid as current Transgender Clinics would insist?

To question has been raised whether transgender patients, suffering from "gender dysphoria" (the feeling you have been born in the wrong body if you are a woman but feel like a man) are more like homosexuals or more like patients with anorexia nervosa. The man who raised this was Dr. Paul McHugh at Johns Hopkins, when he suggested perhaps Transgender Clinics were taking the wrong approach by simply agreeing with patients that they ought to be castrated and have mastectomies and given mega doses of testosterone. For his troubles, Dr. McHugh was ostracized and medical students (MEDICAL STUDENTS at Johns Hopkins!) refused to speak to him.

A similar fate awaited Professor Hooven at Harvard. Like McHugh, she found that free expression of opinion, questioning the prevailing orthodoxy was fatal to career longevity at an academic institution. The very place where ideas are meant to be examined and questioned, turned out to be no better, and perhaps worse, than a religious order.

Life at Harvard, at least as Professor Hooven depicts it, makes the Inquisition look like a pub crawl.

I still do know know enough about Professor Hooven--I'll have to watch her interviews on FOX NEWS and listen to her on Joe Rogan. There may be more to her story. But at least at first blush, she seems to be just one more nail in the coffin of the notion that Harvard is a place of superior intellect. 

Mad Dog's Grand Scheme for Europe and Ukraine

 Something's changed, it's not that I fear, but

Maybe it's that I took care of you too many times

And you grew weaker for a kindness

And sometimes kindness from a friend can break a man

--Rickie Lee Jones

Mad Dog has a plan which ought to make everyone (except maybe Putin) happy.

#1 NATO votes the USA out of NATO.

#2 NATO makes Ukraine a member of NATO

#3 The European Union forges a deal with Canada and Mexico to include them in a sort of EULite organization, allowing these countries to send their oil and lumber and avocados to European.

#4 The EU imposes 50% tariffs on US goods and services.

#5 The EU pursues cooperative ventures with China, including joint electric vehicle manufacturing.

President Trump ought to  be pleased because now the Europeans are finally paying for their own defense. All those US military bases in Germany, England, Belgium and where ever can be closed and that overhead written off the books.

Europe can stop freeloading on America, and that is good for both countries, as Rickie Lee Jones noted, sometimes kindness from a friend can break a man, or a country. 

How does the war game play out on this one?

Well, NATO forces from Finland to Poland to Ukraine move their troops to the Russian borders and they ready their nuclear arms. 

Russia can then either withdraw from Ukraine or fire off some nuclear missiles: most likely target Ukraine.

NATO forces sweep across all the borders and warn Putin if he fires another nuke, they will fire their missiles.

Then either Putin backs down or we have nuclear Armageddon. 

But, as Clemenza told Michael in "The Godfather," --this sort of thing happens every so often. Sort of clears out the bad blood. But you know, they shoulda stopped Hitler at Munich.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_bnxuxtYQI

Picture Worth A Thousand Words

 With Donald Trump, who lives, like Max Headroom on TV, whose world is pictures and TV, perhaps the most appropriate response is pictorial.

It has been said that the undoing of Senator Joseph McCarthy was television, that once the American public got a load of what the guy looked like, on TV and this was juxtaposed with the images of people he attacked, McCarthy's downhill slide began.

So, here in the interest of making an argument with images rather than words, is a gallery.

Here is the man with whom Trump is enthralled:

Look Ma! I'm important now!

A little man with little man syndrome, determined to restore the greatness of the Russian empire.

And here is the woman he would ravage:

And here is the guy who wants to make a deal, who tells President Zelensky either his brains or his signature will be on that paper.

My Fans Love My Big Red Tie!

One of Putin's toadies,  Dimitry Medvevev, who called Zelensky an "insolent pig [who] finally got a proper slap."

Somehow, looking at Zelensky, that horse doesn't trot.

On the other hand, if we are comparing people to animals...

And Zelensky, himself, who had the temerity to show up at the Oval Office without a tie, the Churchill of his time, sitting in the Oval Office where Trump placed a bust of Churchill, Zelensky made Trump and Vance look very small, a giant among pigmies, when you compare souls.

And where are the ties on these guys?

What I want to know is where Trump and Vance got all the courage to confront President Zelensky without Musk at their side, or, as it usually is, with Musk dancing around like Gollum behind them.

Although some have said Gollum is not Musk, but his master.

But sometimes, an image tells more than we hear from the man himself.