Monthly Archives: September 2025

crime news, political news

If only he would say this

Here is a draft of what I would hope comes from the mouth of Donald J. Trump in the wake of the shooting death of Trumpster and MAGA spokesman Charlie Kirk, who was gunned down today at a rally at Utah Valley University.

Bear in mind that there is no way Trump would say these things, but I want to get it off my chest. You also might recognize a Trumpian statement in this hypothetical speech text.

***

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

Melania I are shocked and dismayed at the senseless shooting of Charlie Kirk, a young man who was a staunch supporter of mine and a leader of what is the world’s premier political movement … MAGA.

I want to take a moment to take my measure of blame for the violence that took Kirk’s life. Yes, I am going to do something I don’t normally do. Take blame for a profoundly sad event. I realize that the rhetoric I have stated and that which has come from my supporters have contributed to the intense mistrust among Americans. I have wrongly labeled political foes as “enemies.” I regret using that kind of language.

My expressions of regret won’t solve this difficulty by itself. We need to understand that the nation was founded by a group of dissenters, men who fled Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries to escape repression and create a government founded on the principles of individual liberty.

Let’s dial back the overheated rhetoric as we seek to make our points. Perhaps then we can understand each other, listen to others’ points of view and engage in vigorous — but civil — political discourse.

***

Will the president of the United States ever say such a thing out loud in a public venue? Never in a million years.

crime news

‘A political assassination …’

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, obviously shaken by what had just happened at Utah Valley University, called the event what it is: “This clearly was a political assassination.”

The victim is Charlie Kirk, a dedicated supporter of Donald J. Trump and a leader of the MAGA movement that gives Trump its unquesitioned support. Kirk was conducting an old-school style pep rally at UVU when a shot rang out. A bullet struck Kirk in the neck, killing him virtually instantly.

The nation is shocked. We are stunned. Every former president, Democrats and the lone Republican, have condemned the murder. They and the nation are extending their prayers and support to Kirk’s family, including his wife and two young children.

Kirk was just 31 years of age.

It is not too early to ask this question out loud: Have we become a nation where one’s disagreement with a leading political figure results in this kind of senseless violence?

Is Kirk’s death a symptom of a greater disease infecting the body politic across the land? It’s one thing for members of Congress to argue incessantly with each other, hurling personal insults across the aisle. This event today at Utah Valley University takes this kind of reaction to a whole different and despicable level.

The FBI had arrested a person of interest. Agents interviewed this person and then released him or her.

Others have said as much, but I want to echo what they are saying. It is that we cannot normalize acts of terrorism as political speech. What happened today was a despicable crime targeted at someone who had a clear political agenda. The individual who committed this heinous act needs to be brought to the fullest extent of punishment that justice allows.

Gov. Cox made this point, too, in making his statement about the tragedy: “Utah still has the death penalty.”

media news

Why Epstein matters

I have sought to come to grips with why the media continue to report on Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged relationship with Donald J. Trump. I have figured out why this story matters.

It matters because it could tell us about the relationships that the president of the United States kept not many years before he won election to the White House.

Epstein, of course, is dead, having hanged himself in a jail cell in New York City. His former girlfriend/accomplice is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex traffricking of underage girls.

The story revolves around the “Epstein files” and what they contain pertaning to Trump’s friendship with the hideous sex trafficker and child molester.

Do I think Trump took part in these hideous activities? No, I do not. Whether he did or didn’t, though, is not the point of finding out what’s in those files. What the public ought to know is this: Did the man who would run for POTUS hang around the seediest man alive and was he actually friends with an individual who he might have known to be the animal we know him to be?

Therein lies the media interest in this matter. It also cuts to the heart of why Democrats and some right-wing MAGA Republicans want this information released to the public. Trump calls it all a “hoax,” meaning he believes all those known victims of Epstein are liars. How does this individual look in the mirror after denigrating victims of sex crimes?

Don’t answer that. I know. He does it because he has zero conscience.

The conscience-free president of the United States finds himself in a tightening circle of evidence that he knew Epstein far more intimately than he’s letting on.

Do you remember when Sen. Barack Obama got pilloried because his preacher once cursed the United States over its slavery policy? Obama, who was running for president in 2008, issued a public statement rebuking the preacher — a longtime friend of his — and then quit attending the man’s church.

I can find no sign of such contrition coming from Trump. He blames the victims for fomenting a “Democrat hoax.” Meanwhile, the questions keep mounting and the public is beginning to ask: Did we really elect to the presidency an individual who would cozy up to scum such as this?

That’s why this story matters.

military news

‘Common defence,’ not war

The preamble to the U.S. Constitution lays out the framework for the nation’s governing document in words that most fifth-graders can understand with absolute clarity.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence … “

I’ll stop there. The “common defence” is the operative phrase for this brief blog post.

The common defense is administered by the most lethal fighting force human history ever has seen. And yet, Donald J. Trump wants to rename our Department of Defense into the Department of War.

What is wrong with (a) that statement and (b) the nimrod who wants to refocus the Pentagon’s fundamental mission?

It was known as the War Department until after World War II, which established the United States as the world’s preeminent military power. Bar fu**ing none! Along comes Donald Trump, who wants to return to the War Department moniker that to my eyes and ears seems absurdly provocative and counterintuitive to the mission of the Department of Defense, which is to defend Americans against foreign adversaries.

None of this should surprise anyone. I’m not surprised that Trump would seek to re-brand the Pentagon, even though when he was of the age when the nation could have summoned him to go to war, he chose instead to rely on some doctor’s view that he was afflicted by those infamous bone spurs.

Those of us who did answer the call of our government should be appalled that this idiot now wants to rattle our sabers with a return to something called the Department of War. What a miserable shame.

crime news

Epstein getting last laugh

Wherever he is roasting in hell where he belongs, Jeffrey Epstein must be laughing his sorry ass off at the tribulation that continues to dog his former pal Donald J. Trump.

I have to admit to enjoying the squirm and the wiggle Trump is employing to wriggle free of the connection he had with the serial child molester, sex trafficker and all-round despicable piece of dog dookey that was Epstein.

This scandal won’t go away for as long as Republicans maintain control of Congress and for as long as Trump hangs his hat in the Oval Office.

Trump won’t win any court battles. Congressional Democrats and a growing number of MAGA Republicans will keep the heat turned up demanding full release of those Epstein files that could reveal the extent of the friendship between the sex trafficker and the future president of the United States of America.

Am I worried that it will inhibit Trump’s ability to do his job? Not one damn bit. He isn’t doing a damn thing as it stands!

local news

‘Shock’ doesn’t even describe it

A proverbial show of hands will suffice, so here goes: How many of you have received news that was so shocking, so unexpecrted and so full of dread that you could feel the blood drain from your body as you sought to process the news you have just received?

It happened to me. Forty-five years ago — and it was on a Monday morning, in fact — when I got a call at my desk phone at the Oregon City Enterprise-Courier newspaper. On the other end of the call was my father’s boss. He called to tell me that Dad had died the previous evening in a boating accident north of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Dad was 59 years old. He had taken a couple of his customers to Canada on a thank-you fishing trip, thanking them for the business they did with Dad in his role of sales rep for a major appliance disributor in Portland. Four men were in the boat: Dad, the driver/owner of the boat and the two fellows he took with him for some fishing and fellowship.

Dad and the driver didn’t survive the crash. The two guests made it.

In that moment, I recalled only the last words I had said to Dad before he left on that ill-fated trip: “I’ll see you Wednesday.” I was 30 years old. Dad was the first of my parents to go. Mom would pass four years later.

I mention this because even though it’s been 45 years since Dad perishedi in that boat wreck, I still think of him — and of Mom — every day. My sentimental shelf is getting a bit crowded, though, as I also think each day of my bride, Kathy Anne, and the elder of my two younger sisters, both of whom have passed away recently.

One never stops thinking of loved ones who have left this Earth. You learn to manage the pain that occasionally strikes without warning.

You also learn to appreciate and accept that time is relentless. It’s been 45 years since I felt the blood drain from my body, but I am able to recall every moment of that day as if just happened. I recall telling one of my sisters that Dad was gone and listening to her hysteria over the phone. I remember the drive to Mom’s house with my bride and the paralysis I felt as we sat in the driveway while trying to summon the courage to give her the horrible news … and feeling God’s hand on my shoulder as He told me, “I am here for you,” a moment that filled me with the fortitude to break the news to Mom.

These are the moments one never forgets as we make our own journey through this world.

environmental news

Weather cools, climate still scorches

Well, gang … summer is about to give way to autumn in less than three weeks, bringing with it some relief from the summer heat that has many of gasping for air, swilling tons of water and the weather guys telling us what we already know — that it’s hot, damn hot, out there!

Except that the summer of 2025 has bordered on pleasant this summer. Don’t get me wrong. I am not going to say I want the weather to stay like this year-round. Weather forecasters tell us we had fewer 100-plus-degree days this summer than in the recent past. We’ve had a good bit of rain on occasion … with more expected this weekend. The playas look pretty full. So do the reservoirs, such as Lake Lavon near my home in Princeton.

I want to caution everyone against accepting the view from climate-change deniers who are bound to view this improved weather as a sure sign that the climate change crisis is a “hoax,” that it’s part of the deep state fake news machine.

Climate change is real. Earth’s climate is producing stronger than normal wind, heavier than normal ocean storms, ice caps melting at a faster rate, diminution of mountain glaciers that provide water for many communities (such as my hometown of Portland, Ore., which relies on Cascade Range snowpack runoff to fill reservoirs).

We measure weather changes that occur day to day, or week to week. Climate change is measured in much larger and longer time increments. A blip in the weather has little tangible impact on a region’s climate, according to scientists who know a lot more about this than your chump blogger.

I welcome the relief we seem to be getting from Mother Nature during the summer of 2025. The heat hasn’t been unbearable. However, all of us must remain vigilant and do what we can to prevent further damage done to our good planet Earth by our changing climate.

economic news

What now, Mr. POTUS, with latest job figures?

Donald J. Trump went utterly ape-dookey over Bureau of Labor Stats figures a month ago that showed the U.S. added 77,000 jobs in July. What did he do? He fired the head of the BLS.

He said the former bean counter couldn’t be trusted to produce good numbers. So he brought in his own guy. What happened in August? The non-farm job payrolls added just 22,000 jobs during the month.

The mercurial charlatan who sits in the Oval Office might offer an excuse for the paltry numbers. Maybe he’ll let this latest guy go and blame him for turning on the guy who gave him a cushy job in DC.

Whatever, the drama just won’t end. It is boring me to tears.

medical news

RFK Jr: wrong man for wrong job

As I watch Robert F. Kennedy Jr. get pilloried by Democrats and Republicans in Congress, I am filled with a baffling mix of confused feelings.

Kennedy, the scion of the nation’s premier Democratic family, serves as health and human services secretary in a Republican administration known for its ignorance on health matters. That makes RFK Jr. the enemy of the right and the left.

The right detests him because he is a natural political lefty, the son and namesake of the martyred former attorney general and U.S. senator who was gunned down in 1968 as he was surging toward the Democratic presidential nomination. The left detests RFK Jr. because he has adopted the policies espoused by Donald Trump.

The man is firing health officials left and right. He is endangering the lives of Americans. He is hiring vaccine deniers who buck the views of millions of doctors and other health professionals who proclaim that vaccines save lives.

RFK Jr. cannot give a straight answer to direct questions, such as: “Do you believe vaccines save lives?“

He is becoming a prevaricator to a degree shared only by the nimrod who hired him … Trump.

The guy has to go. How do we get him out of there? Beats the stuffing out of me. The guy who hired him continues to stand behind him.

It pains me greatly to say this about him. I happen to admire his father very much. I miss Bobby Kennedy to this very day and wish he could have finished his race for the presidency, won the office and changed the course of history.

His son, meanwhile, is putting lives at risk. The HHS secretary has to go. Somewhere … just nowhere near public health policy.

legal news

It’s not written, but still …

Critics of federal court rulings mandating that burning Old Glory is a form of protected political speech occasionally lapse into a tired argument to make their case.

It is that the Constitution doesn’t spell out that burning the Stars and Stripes falls into that category of protected civil liberty. They’re right. The Constitution doesn’t say any particular form of protest is protected by the First Amendment.

The argument reminds me of a constant argument I had with a colleague in Amarillo, who argued that the Constitution doesn’t say a word about the “separation of church and state,” so therefore, there is no separation. I told my colleague that the separation clearly is implied in the first clause of the First Amendment when it declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion … “

The Constitution doesn’t single out flag burning. Or draft-card burning. Or marching in the streets carrying signs that refer to police officers as ugly farm animals.

The founders, all those wise men, knew enough to grant interpretive power in our court system. They decided the courts should be the final arbiter on what’s constitutional and what isn’t.

The Supreme Court has ruled already that flag burning is protected speech. It has issued rulings repeatedly since the founding of our republic. Donald Trump says flag burning should result in a year in jail for the numbskull who does it. No, Donald. You can’t go there.

The nation’s founders had this one right. The current president of the United States has it wrong.