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Welcome back to the ongoing saga of "The Arsonist Fireman." In this week's episode, our protagonist lights a fire which could burn down the entire Western world -- starting with its military alliance -- before grabbing a fire extinguisher and singlehandedly snuffing it out. As usual, he then wonders why everyone doesn't congratulate him on having bravely averted such a disaster.
Our president's crazy
Did you hear what he said?-- The Talking Heads
"Making Flippy Floppy"
It seems like the time has now come to at least begin the discussions about invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to remove a president who has, quite obviously, lost all touch with reality.
Some people, when they reach an advanced age, enter into a period some mental health experts call a "second childhood." This is where they lose all adult sense of what is right, wrong, and allowable, and start behaving like a cranky toddler once again. However, it's not accurate to say that Donald Trump is entering into a period of second childhood himself -- but only for the reason that he never seems to have left this cranky toddler phase behind at any point during his entire life. With him, there's nothing "second" about it, in other words.
It has been a week of stunning events and dangerous rhetorical excesses. Currently the political debate is divided over the question of when government officials can use deadly force against people who are protesting or ignoring orders from those officials. This question is steeped in politics, as it so often is. Whether a person deserves death at the hands of the state almost always has a political element to it, which is not exactly a new thing.
Today is the fifth anniversary of the attempted violent insurrection at the United States Capitol. We all watched it play out on live television, as a riotous mob attacked police officers who were doing their duty defending the building and the members of Congress inside it. We saw it all with our own eyes, both on that sad day and afterwards, as more video footage was released. It is obvious what the video footage shows. All you have to do is watch it to understand exactly what happened that day.
Welcome back to the second of our year-end awards columns! And if you missed it last Friday, go check out [Part 1] as well.
This article is mind-bendingly long enough, so we're not going to bother with any other introductory words at all. Instead, let's just get right to the awards, shall we?
Welcome to our annual year-end awards! As always, we honor the memory of The McLaughlin show with our categories, and we want to thank the readers who responded to our calls for nominees for them all.
Also as always, it is long. Really, really, insanely long. You have been warned!
And also as always, we'll be back again next Friday for [Part 2].
If there's one thing I will be thankful for this year, it is the fact that Republicans are increasingly "in disarray." More and more, the various factions within the party are at each other's throats, which should just prove to make it that much easier for Democrats to wrest back control in next year's midterm elections. For which I am thankful.
Donald Trump has never cared all that much what the U.S. Constitution actually says. He certainly has never read the whole thing -- he makes this painfully obvious whenever he attempts to talk about it in any detail. And he has been actively trying to dismantle parts of it already. So it's no real surprise that he has trolled everyone again by flirting with the notion of possibly running (or otherwise somehow becoming) president for a third time, using the 2028 election to achieve this goal.
So, let's review, shall we? Last weekend, seven million Americans took to the streets to protest Donald Trump, in the biggest political protest this country has ever seen. The theme of the protest was: "No Kings!" So this week, Trump responded by acting in what can only be described as kingly fashion, in as many ways as he could dream up -- including a rushed demolition of one-third of the White House, without consulting anyone or even attempting to get anyone's permission. He sent the demolition crews in, and within a few days the entire East Wing was nothing more than a pile of rubble. All because a royal decree had been issued.
Normally, on a Friday following the end of a month, we would all be talking about the new jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics right about now. We can't do that today, because the report didn't appear on schedule. This was due to the government being shut down, of course.