OSPREYS, KNOW-NOTHIN'S, GERRYMANDERING,THE STATE OF THE UNION, & THE PRICE OF TURNIPS!

 By the time you read this the Ospreys should have returned to my little patch of the Long Island Sound. However, it’s been a strange year for birds. They practically disappeared over the frigid winter months.

Normally, the red berries on the local holly trees would have been devoured by late January, yet they were still glistening during St. Patrick’s week.

 

Still, the Clapper Rails, in their long-beaked glory, have been click-clacking away in the nearby marshlands for weeks, and gloriously colored American Finches are cavorting amid the new leaves on the maple trees.

 

But no sign of the imperious Ospreys. Have they grown tired of us and our political shenanigans?

 

I still enjoy living in the North-East’s four seasons. But I’m less patient with the long winters. I try to take a vacation now in mid-March, something I could never do in my Black 47 years.

 

Last year I made it to Morocco and this year to Egypt, both countries where the sun can braise you and the dollar goes a long way.

 

The friends I made in both countries were reluctant to speak about the US. But when tongues loosened they were puzzled by our erratic foreign policy, the casual rejection of long-time allies, and the fear they might get denied entry when seeking to visit family members living Stateside.

 

It got me thinking of the times we live in and a country that was once considered a beacon of hope. What happened?

 

There’s no point in blaming politicians. We vote them into power. That’s what a democratic republic is all about.

 

I’ve always found the two-party system limiting, even restrictive; although I tend to vote Democrat, I don’t totally identify with either party. It’s a common immigrant complaint. Jan, my Czech landlord in the East Village, was the exception. A confirmed Republican, he used to proclaim, “Why should I vote poor people party, I come here be rich man!”  

 

However, the current Republican Party brings to mind the 19^th Century Know-Nothings. While the Democratic Party is still coming to terms with its failure to deal with Joe Biden’s geriatric ego. 

 

I consider myself a small “d” democrat and a small “r” republican. I believe in democracy and the principles of a republic.

 

With regard to the first, why do we allow self-serving Republicans and Democrats to gerrymander our states and districts as though they own them? Talk about appointing the fox to police the hen-house!

 

It’s not that long ago Catholics and Republicans in Northern Ireland refused to accept the rampant gerrymandering of their sectarian state. And yet here in the US of A, states are casually gerrymandered by both parties, often with the assent of a partisan Supreme Court.

 

As regards, small “r” republican issues: Why do we allow Democratic and Republican politicians to serially increase the National Debt without the least murmur of dissent?

 

Yes, I did indeed bring up this issue only months back in this column, but since then our current US Federal Debt has zoomed past 100% of our Gross Domestic Product, and shows not the least sign of slowing down.

 

Have you ever heard President Trump even mention the word “deficit?” 

 

Hardly, for if the word was part of his vocabulary, he would have thought twice about blowing the hell out of Iran in a war of choice whose massive bill has not even begun to become due. 

 

Yet, in all these macho Republican war games, how often have you heard a Democratic politician rail against the annual one trillion bucks cost of interest or the ever-growing size of the debt.

 

Nah, that can wait until the next Democratic Administration is forced to cut social security benefits in 2032, while our retired King of Debt looks on benignly from Mar-a-Lago.

 

When did we as a country decide to use the national credit card rather than pay as we go like other generations?

 

Back in January 1835 President Andrew Jackson totally paid off his national debt, while after 8 years of the Clinton presidency, we owed less than $6 trillion. The good old days!

 

Ah well, if I’m lucky enough to be still pontificating in 2032, I promise I won’t criticize our Republican and Democratic rulers when the fiscal chickens finally come home to roost. 

 

No way, I’ll be too busy scouring the skies above the Long Island Sound for sight of some common sense and the long-missing Ospreys.

PETE HAMILL - FAREWELL TO ALEXANDRIA

I had been meaning to visit Egypt for the last 40 years or more, so last month I bit the bullet and went.

 

No big deal, except shortly beforehand Messrs. Netanyahu & Trump decided to blow the hell out of Iran. Everybody thought I was around the bend, but I had a feeling if I didn’t go then, I might never. Besides, my travel agent said I’d have the place to myself, and how bad could that be?

 

I needn’t have worried. You’re never alone in Cairo, a city of 22 million people with traffic so dense it makes Manhattan seem like a stroll in the park. I might add there are no pedestrian walk signs, hence crossing streets is up to you, your sense of adventure, and fancy footwork.

 

But it has the nearby Pyramids and the Sphinx, though every Tik-Toker in the universe seemed to be using them as backdrop for their narcissistic posturing. Not to worry, close by is the recently opened Great Egyptian Museum, designed by Mayo’s Róisín Heneghan.

 

You could spend a week there basking in the shadows of the various Pharaohs’ statues while weeping over the remains of Tutankhamun, the boy king, and what might have been.

 

Then down to Luxor where the Valley of the Kings can overawe you, or the Valley of the Queens and their sometimes still-born children show the more achingly human side of ancient Egypt.

 

But I had an ulterior motive – I wanted to walk the streets of Alexandria, and catch any remaining echoes of a series of books set there by Lawrence Durrell, the Anglo-Irish writer. (Durrell always referred to himself as an “Irishman” and considered England “the grey death.)

 

The Quartet books, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea are set circa World War Two. They explore a romance influenced by a brooding portrait of the atmospheric city founded by Alexander The Great.

 

Justine gives a thrilling account of the love the narrator Darley has for Justine, the wife of his aristocratic Coptic friend, Nessim. As satisfying as the book is, it leaves you wanting more, and most people turn to its immediate sequel, Balthazar.

 

That’s where the real thrill is, and it becomes apparent that truth is relative as it unfolds in fits and starts over the course of the remaining books.

 

Pete Hamill and I shared an admiration for the Alexandria Quartet. We had both been introduced to it by women no longer alive, perhaps part of the fascination.

 

If Joyce masterfully captured the essence of Dublin in 1904 with Ulysses, Durrell did no less with Alexandria though in a more mysterious and hallucinogenic manner. But each writer’s city is more a character than just a backdrop.

 

Joyce’s Dublin is still glaringly there courtesy of the Irish people. You have to dig deeper in Alexandria as the Greeks, Jews, and British departed around President Nasser’s regime in the 1950’s and are barely an echo now in this bustling Muslim city leavened only by Coptic Christians.

 

But the Cecil Hotel still looms large. Darley, a penniless English schoolteacher, and the glamorous Justine met there, and its storied Monty Bar (Field-Marshal Montgomery) still reeks of a decadent colonialism.

 

One of the great bonuses of immersing yourself in the Quartet is that you become familiar with the poetry of C.V. Cavafy, “the poet of the city,”  a master at transmuting love, loss and life.

 

“One afternoon at four o’clock we separated

for a week only... And then,

that week became forever.”

 

Within strolling distance of The Cecil, Cavafy’s apartment has been turned into a miniature museum replete with photos, furniture and intimate artifacts of this Greek-Alexandrian’s life. He was Jacqueline Kennedy’s favorite poet, and fittingly the museum was founded and is supported by the Onassis Foundation.

 

Across the street from The Cecil is the Corniche, a long walkway by the Mediterranean where Darley, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Cavafy and the hapless Clea gazed out across the sparkling waves, wondering if they’d ever escape the magnetic attraction of Alexander’s city, before they too would be swept away as his legendary library was.

 

It's strange how a book can have such an effect on you after so many years. But that’s the power and majesty of literature, isn’t it, and why writers sacrifice everything to capture one glimpse of its magic.

 

DO IT NOW!

 I was recently asked, “What was the best piece of advice you ever received.”

Though it was given to me way back in the last century, the simple words still resonate, as does the time bomb those words set ticking.

 

I’m usually loath to give advice myself, though in the fields I labor, it’s tossed about like confetti. Far better to develop your own sense of discretion, then judge any advice you’re receiving through that prism.

 

I received my life-defining advice back in my first year at Wexford Christian Brothers Secondary School - the equivalent of American high school.

 

We were a mixed bunch, wild rural lads who rode into town on heavy black bicycles, sons of factory workers confident they would soon join their fathers as apprentices, and the rest of us vaguely middle-class, though no one had a tosser, and everyone had emigrant relatives in London, Dagenham, or Birmingham.

 

In those tween-age years we were rowdy, but still constrained by the ever-present fear of corporal punishment. Still, the Christian Brother warned us to be on our best behavior, as our religion class would be pre-empted that noon by the visit of an important personage.

 

We all hoped it would be some hurling star, like Hopper McGrath or one of the legendary Rackard brothers.

 

To our surprise, in strode Brendan Corish, our local TD, and leader of the Labor Party. He came from storied stock, his father Richard had helped lead the foundry workers in the Wexford Lockout of 1911, and was a confidant of James Connolly.

 

Brendan would go on to become Tánaiste (Deputy Leader) and Minister for Health and Social Welfare in the Irish Coalition government of 1973.

 

A consummate constituency politician, he surveyed us keenly; however, he seemed troubled. Perhaps, he could already foresee our emigrant fates.

 

Nonetheless, he shook off his initial concern and breezily informed us that it had not been long since he sat in the same desks. He was then in his early 40’s, and by his own admission a socialist, though a Christian one, he added to the relief of our attentive Brother, who added, “Mr. Corish, like all Irish politicians, hews closely to our Holy Father’s religious and ethical edicts.”

 

Brendan took no notice of this well-intended compliment, and soon had us chuckling, having  quickly divined our sporting interests and favorites in the pop music of the day. 

 

And so things continued on an even keel, until the Brother intervened in a rare silence, “Mr. Corish, if you had one piece of advice for my students what would it be?”

 

This question summonsed the clouds back into Brendan’s face and he sighed. His shoulders sank for a moment and concerns of state seemed to swirl around the room. Then he gathered himself and smiled, “It’s very simple: three words, seven letters.”

 

He turned to the blackboard, picked up a piece of white chalk and wrote very deliberately, DO IT NOW!

 

The silence gathered and enveloped the sun-dappled classroom as we wrestled with this no-nonsense command. The Brother and Brendan, however, shared a glance of empathetic understanding.

 

“As good as this advice is, it will haunt you,” Brendan warned, “for in the end, the things you didn’t do will weigh far heavier than those you did. So keep it close to mind and, for God’s sake, act on it as often as you humanly can.”

 

The bell for lunch rang, but instead of jumping up in our usual jumble of delight and relief, we sat there as if nailed to our rough-hewn seats.

 

“Get on with you now,” the Brother hissed and we trooped out of the classroom into the noisy corridor, some of us still wrestling with both the advice and the conundrum it would apparently present.

 

I glanced behind and saw the Brother and Brendan sharing a long handshake, their political persuasions laid aside on a hallstand of human understanding.

 

They’re both dead a long time, Brendan after a distinguished career in public service – a Christian Socialist to the end; I can’t even remember the brother’s name, let alone how he fared in life.

 

But the advice still rings true, serviceable as ever, if troubling and occasionally haunting.

DO IT NOW! It may soon be too late.

TRUMP, YEATS & THE SECOND COMING

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold...

 

Those lines were written by William Butler Yeats in 1919, shortly after World War 1. Often called the “the war to end all wars,” it may well have been the stupidest of conflicts.

 

Roughly 20 million people died, and god knows how many wounded, over a royal squabble between Queen Victoria’s grandchildren.

 

Wars solve little, but a new order inevitably comes to pass.

 

What troubles me about President Trump’s current “excursion,” is that it eerily echoes the 2003 US invasion of Iraq with its “weapons of mass destruction” that did not exist.

 

Who cares anymore that this overwhelming blunder cost a half-million Iraqi lives and upended the region, or that 4500 Americans died - not a Clinton or Bush among them; just as there won’t be a Trump casualty among the US forces destroying Iran.

 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

By the time The Second Coming was published in 1920, Ireland was a battlefield with IRA flying columns harassing vastly superior British forces. 

 

I’m sure Mr. Trump has never heard of Terence MacSwiney, the hunger-striking Lord Mayor of Cork, who declared, “It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can endure the most who will conquer.” 

 

Nor, apparently, has he been informed that modern-day Iran is descended from the Persian Empire that took a beating from Alexander The Great, but outlasted his technologically superior Greek army.

 

Don’t underestimate Iran. Empires don’t like being invaded, and even regime opponents are not keen on their cities being “bombed back to the stone age”.

 

It’s always important to remember that in 1953 US and British Intelligence services engineered the overthrow of the constitutionally elected Iranian government, leading to the reign of the Shah and his murderous Savak secret police, and eventually to the current theological regime in Tehran.

 

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight...

 

What a second coming indeed: a Trump alliance with Mr. Netanyahu as he seeks to do another Gaza on Southern Lebanon before annexing it. Meanwhile, it’s arguable that both gentlemen would be behind bars if they weren’t leading their countries.

 

But it’s hard to beat Mr. Trump when it comes to turn of phrase. “We’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out...” until “these deranged scumbags”... 

 

I had to wonder what the parents of the 150 elementary schoolgirls slaughtered by a US Tomahawk missile called Mr. Trump when they got the news?

 

Somewhere in the sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

 

Elections have consequences, and we failed miserably back in 2024 when we put our faith in an addled, egotistical Joe Biden, before settling on his not-ready-for-primetime Vice President Harris.

 

Still, how could we have elected a spoiled man-child from Queens who caught a lucky break in Venezuela, and now uses US Armed Forces like they were action figures in a video game.

He will not make America great again; but he will certainly change the world order.

 

Perhaps the rising price of gas will cause some sanity to prevail. Hey, maybe the Iranians will allow our imperial president to declare victory and scurry on out of the Strait of Hormuz trap he so eagerly waltzed into.

 

Perhaps, it’s time to talk like a statesman, instead of hollering insulting rhetoric about nuclear weapons; 9 countries already possess them, including such pacifist nations as N. Korea, Pakistan, Israel, and India. 

 

The Obama 2015 treaty with Iran doesn’t seem so bad in retrospect – instead of ripping it up like a self-centered kindergartner, it could have provided a basis for renegotiation.

 

But then I read the final lines of Yeats’ masterpiece and hasten to pour myself a stiff drink.

 

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stoney sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

DAVID JOHANSEN - STATEN ISLAND IRISHMAN & LORD OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE

 It was the best of times and the worst of times – the best because we were young, the worst because we didn’t know any better.

That’s how we all ended up in the East Village. By today’s standards it was dangerous, but you developed street smarts quickly. With apartment rents costing less than $200 a month, it basically meant you didn’t need a steady job.

 

Patti Smith lived around the corner, as did Allen Ginsberg who winked salaciously as one strolled by, Jean-Michel Basquiat hung out on St. Marks, and Debbie Harry always mistook me for someone else. Everyone was a little famous because everyone read the Village Voice, and you had to be pretty lame not to get some kind of mention.

 

Turner & Kirwan of Wexford was the first band to play CBGB; we were friends of Hilly Kristal and as a favor played his opening night party at 315 Bowery.

 

David Johansen was the most famous person on the scene. His band, The New York Dolls had made it to the New York Times, their first single, Personality Crisis, was played often on WNEW-FM; besides, The Dolls dressed in a stagey transvestite manner, a somewhat suicidal move on the rambunctious streets of the Lower East Side.

 

With a name like Johansen, I had no idea David was half-Irish. I didn’t even know he was from Staten Island. But right from the start he knew how to dominate a stage.

 

In those days he threw classic Mick Jagger shapes – who didn’t? David even had his own Keith Richard, the inimitable Johnny Thunders, the equal of Keef any old day of the week, until junk got the better of him.

 

Everyone was cool on St. Marks. I never saw The Ramones tip their cap to anyone, they just swaggered by, looking neither left nor right. Their penniless jeans were always ripped. After their first photo session they realized they’d coined a style, now losers worldwide pay up to a grand for identical fashionista-ripped tight blues.

 

David Jo was different -  way beyond pseudo-cool. He winked and smiled and had a word for everyone who looked him in the eye. 

 

The Dolls might have been kings of downtown New York but they never gained national acceptance. They were too outrageous for middle-America  - sneeringly explosive and shambolic at the same time.

 

They single-handedly ignited the whole punk scene when they toured the UK. The Brits always knew how to copy a good thing and, before you knew it, Malcolm McLaren had manufactured The Sex Pistols, led by another unruly Irish roots messiah, Johnny “Rotten” Lydon.

 

Mercury Records soon dropped The Dolls and the band broke up in late 1976, just as CBGB was taking off. Everyone showed up at CBs when The Ramones were being checked out by music mogul, Seymour Stein, head of Sire Records. 

 

That’s when David Jo really made his mark on me. He led the applause for the stone-faced Ramones. I thought he would have been envious: after all, the dropped Dolls were going nowhere, they’d blown their chance and the Ramones were taking over. 

 

David’s example saved me a lot of heart-scald down the years – don’t measure yourself against the achievements of your peers. 

 

Oddly enough, Seymour Stein fell asleep in Paddy Reilly’s when he was scouting Black 47. True, he was jet-lagged but he must have had ears of concrete, such was our volume.

 

I didn’t discover David’s Irish roots until he recorded Staten Island Baby with Black 47. He told us great stories about his mother, Helen Cullen and her nourishing Irish clan. 

 

The Cullens had lace-curtain aspirations, and when one of his aunts fell in love with a shanty Irish guy, her mother forbade the union. His attractive aunt ended up a spinster.

 

He floored us with his knowledge of Swing, Jazz, Juke-Joint, and New York Irish music. Take a listen to Staten Island Baby. His rhythm and comedic vocal flair are beyond comparison.

 

David Jo was the man – a happy warrior! He passed away last year.

 

All the Dolls and Ramones are dead now, and CBGB is an expensive men’s boutique. But I still hear echoes of their rattle-the-walls music whenever I pass by.

 

Those, indeed, were stirring days in Hilly Kristal’s punk emporium on The Bowery!

WEXFORD PARTIES AND PRESIDENTS

 

It was a town of poets and photographers, patriots and piss-heads, sailors and emigrants, croppy boys and teddy boys, they all got along exceedingly well when the pints were flowing, somewhat less so during hangovers.

 

They shared the same accent, jaunty and distinct - hard to describe for it had so many roots: Viking, Norman, Celt, Cromwellian, with stray influences from the vast British Empire, for Wexford was a garrison town whose mariners had sailed everywhere.

 

Each street and lane had its own speech patterns, and every syllable suggested that you were from Maudlintown or Croke Avenue, Corish Park or Dukes Lane.

 

You can get a strong whiff of the accent by listening to Wexford native, Michael Londra on his national PBS show, Ireland with Michael, as he travels the country, introducing musicians and crafts people to American viewers, always with Ireland’s soft beauty glowing in the background.

 

But the myriad shades of Wexford accents all melded together on Wexford’s Quays that  stretch from the North End Railway Station to the Deep South Talbot Hotel and beyond.

 

Pierce Turner grew up in a quayside house opposite Wexford Bridge. The house seems lonely, now that the Turners no longer live or conduct business therein. It used to throb with activity, and the parties in the second floor sitting room were legendary.

 

Everyone had to either sing, dance, recite, or do some kind of turn; it didn’t matter if you were shy or tongue-tied, you had to contribute, and everyone from professional to amateur received the same resounding applause.

 

Pierce and I became friendly through our mania for songwriting, and manys the hoped-for classic we knocked together in that sitting room with the upright piano, overlooking the Slaney’s surging flow.

 

Wexford’s emigrants did well overseas – down the Quay on the Crescent stands an inspiring bronze statue of Commodore John Barry, founder of the American navy. And one glorious day in 1962 former President Eisenhower laid a wreath at that statue, while Wexford men and women who had served in WW2 saluted “General Ike”, their Allied Commander.

 

But it was an even bigger day 10 months later, when President Kennedy, whose grandfather emigrated from Dunganstown, County Wexford, drove along the Quay  to Redmond Place where he delivered his homecoming speech.

 

That’s when Pierce’s older sister, Bernie Lloyd, caught him. Bernie was always very bright, curious and involved. Instead of running around the town trying to catch a glimpse of the young bronzed-faced president, she opened the sitting room window and trained her Brownie camera on him as he drove by.

 

I don’t know how many pictures she took, but one survived from that unforgettable day on the Quay. It was of a different time, when presidents could motor by unencumbered by security.

 

That all changed five months later in Dallas when Jack Kennedy was assassinated while motoring along in a similar big American car.

 

 I often think that President Kennedy’s visit, commemorated by Bernie’s quayside picture, was what sent Pierce and me to the US as Turner & Kirwan of Wexford. We never thought of going to England in 1972. There was a war going on and Paddies were suspect over there. So, instead we hopped a plane to New York.

 

Over 50 years later, Wexford is a different town. Many of the old pubs have closed, and on Saturday nights when the Main Street used to be chock-a-block, people are scarce, or in a hurry, little time for exchanging greetings, let alone gossip.

 

They’re rushing home to surf the internet, stream movies, or bemoan the fact that the price of a pint is so expensive nowadays. That’s the price of progress and modernity, I suppose, but Wexford is still a great place to live, still has that distinctive lilting accent, where everyone knows you and you know them.

 

Pierce’s house on the Quay may be silent but he’ll transfer the party to Joe’s Pub on his annual gig there on Saturday March 14^th. You’ll hear the townie accent ring loud and clear as he belts out his Wexford anthems, “Musha God Help Her”, “Groovy Hearts” and “The Sky and The Ground.”  The latter, one of Wexford’s remaining great pubs, is named after Pierce’s song – now there’s an honor Bono or Bob Dylan never received.

 

Meanwhile Bernie’s snap of a beloved emigrant president takes us back to a different time, when guns were less prevalent and community more common.

 

Pierce Turner at Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette St. NYC, March 14, 6:30pm Tickets https://publictheater.org

TRUMP, GREENLAND & MINNESOTA MADNESS

“You’ve made a holy show of yourself, boy!”

 

That was a saying back in the Wexford of my youth. It meant you’d done something to be thoroughly ashamed of and, if you knew what was good for you, you’d better change your ways.

 

The phrase came to mind during the Donald Trump Greenland debacle. Seems like a long time ago, but that’s the “flood the zone” world our president has mired us in.

 

It’s hard to credit that a grown man would admit he was miffed because he wasn’t awarded last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, and that someone would have to pay. 

 

Oh yes, there were the lies about myriad Russian and Chinese ships threatening, and in the interests of US security Denmark had better hand over Greenland post-haste.

 

The crazy thing is that Denmark and our other NATO allies are in agreement that the US should have all the access it needs to Greenland; in fact, Greenlanders themselves would be thrilled if the US was to fix up its many abandoned rusted bases and help locate the frigid island’s abundant rare earths.

 

But no, that wasn’t good enough for the poor little rich boy from Queens. Rich or poor, he would have been shunned and ridiculed in the pubs of Wexford. How does he get away with such conduct in America?

 

Fibber’s fatigue, perhaps? Remember when Mr. Trump first ran for president, reporters used to note the number of lies per speech. Ancient history! Nowadays “it’s just Donald being Donald.”

As one follower winked, “You don’t expect him to be George Washington, do you?”

 

Well, one could dream. But a Greenland expert, Martin Breum, put it very well recently. “There is extreme consternation that your president appears completely immune to data, facts, arguments and common knowledge. He continues to state what is obviously factually wrong. This seems unbelievable to many people in this country (Denmark). We cannot understand what is happening. We wonder what is next.”

 

I’m with you there, Marty. There was a time we used to hold our presidents accountable. I guess fibber’s fatigue has done a number on us all.

 

Things got even worse at the Davos Billionaire Boys Convention when our noble warrior insulted the NATO troops who sacrificed their lives while aiding the US in the post-9/11invasion of Afghanistan. This coming from a man who got five deferments that saved him from serving in Vietnam.

 

This also from a man who never lifted a finger to prevent his followers from attacking outnumbered police officers while they stormed the Capitol Building on shameful January 6^th – a man who later pardoned the vast majority of said “patriots.”

 

The people of Minneapolis/St. Paul, however, have shaken off their fibber’s fatigue. 

 

It’s always been a pleasure to play the Twin Cities and look out across a well-integrated audience of Americans and recent immigrants. 

 

And yes, I have heard the accusations against the Somalis who ran a scheme to defraud the welfare system. Those crooks should be prosecuted to the fullest – but their crime should not be used as a blanket denunciation of the gracious Somali people who have added so much to the culture and commerce of Minneapolis/St. Paul.

 

I’m sure there are many good people among ICE and Border Patrol agents too, but this armed militia do themselves no favors by wearing masks and assaulting American citizens and others who are exercising their First Amendment rights.

 

This is not Italy in the 1930’s, but sometimes it seems like Donald Trump is trying hard to be another Mussolini looking for his balcony. 

 

After initially holding Democrats rather than federal agents responsible for pumping 10 bullets into Alex Pretti, he’s been busy determining how much damage the execution of two American citizens will affect the House and Senate elections in November. 

 

There’s already been a change in his attitude: 700 agents will be withdrawn from Minnesota, and a couple of brassy sycophants will likely take the fall, for without Republican congressional majorities Mr. Trump will become just another lame-duck president. But hey, George Washington was once one too.

 

Despite the inevitable lies that came spouting out of the White House, we have seen the videos, we believe our own eyes, and we stand with the people of Minneapolis/St. Paul’s in their grief, loss, and defiance.

 

Your fibber’s fatigue is wearing thin, Mr. President. You’ve made a holy show of yourself, boy!