My current News & Advance column --S/f, EFP

I'm walking down Memory Lane this week. --S/f, EFP

 

My thought for today

 If ICE agents believe in, and are proud of what they are doing, why do they wear masks and otherwise conceal their identity? Secret police are unAmerican and evoke a disturbing historical parallel. —S/f, EFP

My thought for today

 I can't help but feel a Rubicon has been crossed with Trump's decision to deploy troops to Los Angeles. This is the same president who once suggested shooting protesters in the leg. Are we headed toward martial law? --S/f, EFP

My current News & Advance column

 Just think of me as Palm the Apostate. (This column also appears in the Kitsap Sun in Bremerton, Washington.) --S/f, EFP

My thought for today

 Who wishes people a "happy" Memorial Day? Donald Trump does. Think about that one. --S/f, EFP

My thought for today

 Just today, I saw some news footage of the utter destruction in Gaza--bombed out buildings and rubble as far as the eye could see--and I thought of something a Scottish warrior is reported to have said way back when about the Roman way of war: "They made a desert and called it peace." --S/f, EFP

My current News & Advance column

 The man asks for so little. Shouldn't we just let him have his big, beautiful wall? [Grin!]--S/f, EFP

P.S. The wall is likely to be covered with graffiti, and in a language Trump can't read--Spanish.

An ominous development

 You may have heard Trump successfully sued ABC News and host George Stephanopoulos for erroneously stating that Trump had been found “liable for rape.” (Honest mistake, if you ask me.) Now Trump is threatening to sue ABC News again for criticizing his acceptance of that $400 million jet from Qatar. And just last week, ABC, without explanation, did not run its longstanding Sunday morning news program “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” That’s an ominous development, don’t you think?

An unexpected guest

 This attractive young girl invited herself to lunch today. "Can we keep her?" I asked Andrea. But you know what she has always been like. --S/f, EFP (Scroll down to see all five images.) 

My current News & Advance column

 This column also appears in today's Kitsap Sun in Bremerton, Washington. --S/f, EFP

My thought for today

Palestinian lives matter! It needs to be said, and it is neither an anti-Semitic nor a pro-Hamas statement. --S/f, EFP

My current News & Advance column --S/f, EFP

 File this one under the heading "True Confessions" or "Guilty Pleasures." You decide. --S/f, EFP

My thought for today --S/f, EFP

 Trump recently said Saudi Arabia has a "beautiful culture." I wonder how many Saudi women would agree with that. More to the point, I wonder why Trump is enamored of their culture.

Saudi Arabia: 10 Reasons Why Women Flee | Human Rights Watch

My thought for today

Regarding the multi-million-dollar palatial airplane Qatar intends to give to Trump, he says it would be "stupid" not to accept it. If there really was an ancient Trojan War, and if Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid truly recount how that war ended, the leaders of Troy probably said it would be stupid not to accept a large wooden horse from the Greeks. I wonder if Trump and Company are familiar with this old saw: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." It might be wise to beware of Qataris bearing gifts.

My current News & Advance and Kitsap Sun columns

 

My thought for today

 So Donald Trump doesn't know if he is bound by the Constitution. He must not remember the following oath, which he took twice: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

My thought for today

 My thought for today: Did you happen to catch Trump's austerity pitch aimed at little girls--that they may have to settle for two dolls instead of 30 and that the dolls may cost a few dollars more? That reminds me somehow of Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake." --S/f, EFP

My current News & Advance column

 I'm sure this one will not be well-received in some quarters, but I have to call them like I see them. --S/f, EFP

My current News & Advance and Kitsap Sun column. --S/f, EFP

 

An afterword. In the words of the poet, "What oft [is being] thought, but ne’er so well expressed," regarding the plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia: "This is about much more than immigration or deportation policy. This is about whether we live in a free country, where our rights are protected, or a police state, where none of us are safe." Said by John Favreau, host of CNN’s Pod Save America on April 16.

My current News & Advance column --S/f, EFP

 

My current News & Advance and Kitsap Sun column --S/f, EFP

 

My Current News & Advance column--S/f, EFP

 

My thought for today —S/f, EFP

 T. S. Eliot didn’t know the half of it. April is indeed the cruelest month, breeding divisive tariffs out of a deranged mind. —S/f, EFP

My current News & Advance and Kitsap Sun columns --S/f, EFP

 

        [I was able to add this afterword to the Kitsap Sun version of the column.}

An Afterword. Last week, on one of the Sunday morning talk shows, I heard Border Czar Tom Homan grilled about whether those recently sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador received any due process. He dismissed the concern by resorting to inflammatory whataboutism. “All those young women who were raped and murdered by TDA,” he asked, “where was their due process?” The thing is, two wrongs don’t make a right. Granted, a few undocumented immigrants have committed heinous crimes. But presuming all undocumented aliens to be capable of such crimes, and preemptively deporting them, does not balance the scales of justice.

            Also, on that same Sunday talk show, I heard Bernie Sanders remind viewers of the fly in Trump’s mass-deportation operation: “I’ve got news for you. Trump’s billionaire friends are not going to pick the crops in California or work in the meat-packing plants.”

            A friend said he would “pay good money to see that.” So would I.

My thought for today

 You may have heard that London's Heathrow Airport has no electricity. That means no air traffic control and no runway lights. So I suppose pilots wanting to take off from or land at Heathrow have to ask themselves, "Do I feel lucky?" --S/f, EFP

My current News & Advance column

 

My current Kitsap Sun and News & Advance column

 I'm returning to those not-so-thrilling days of yesteryear. Truth be told, I'm not held in such high esteem at the Naval Academy. I wonder why. It may have had something to do with the article I mention below as well as one I published in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 1996--"Putting the Naval Academy on Course," 27 May 1996. (I'm using the same topic this week for the News & Advance.) --S/f, EFP

P.S. My apologies for the typo in the 7th paragraph. It was a Freudian slip. I always thought the faculty at the Naval Academy is faulty. --S/f, EFP

Enough said! --S/f, EFP

 

Last night's lunar eclipse --S/f, EFP

 

My current News & Advance column --S/f, EFP

 

International Women's Day Demonstration, Lynchburg, Virginia --S/f, EFP