The Wall

To borrow corruptly from the Bard, “A wall by any other name would still be a wall.”  Whether a barrier, a fence (barbed wired or not), circles of razor wire, steel slats, stone, hog panels, rock, solid cement, a line (as in the Maginot Line), with or without turrets and machine gun emplacements… it’s still a wall. I know, you’re as sick as of hearing about “the wall” as I am, and probably you’re as confused as I am about whether and how much wall we have, whether and how much wall is currently under construction, whether and how effective it is, whether there is a need for more wall, how much it would cost, and...

If Everyone Had a Gun

I recently had the good fortune to be out of town when some 80,000 worthies joined one another in Dallas in singing a paean to the gun, the pistol, the long rifle, the six shooter, the single-shot-pump-action-semi-automatic-automatic-shotgun with a few Bowie knives thrown in. Yes, the NRA had their annual convention in Dallas. Politicians were falling all over themselves to pay homage to that never-runs-dry fountain of political power…filthy lucre. They were all there. The Governor, both Texas Senators, assorted Congressmen, county and city officials, and wannabes too numerous to count. And yes, the Veep and The Trumpster his-own-self were there. Now,...

NPD to a T

For those of you who have allowed your subscription to the American Journal of Psychiatry to lapse or, like me, who engaged in some light napping during Psych 101, let me remind you.  NPD is the working abbreviation for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  The “to a T” part you will have to figure out on your own. NPD has been getting some play on the net lately, in fact, a friend of a friend just sent me an interesting piece applying NPD to a current political celebrity.  I, of course, would never do that.  Consider this, then, just an intellectual inquiry to an interesting, long ignored subject. First let me deal with the etymology of the term...

Why I Would Never Vote for Trump.

I’m sure that the last thing any of you, discerning readers, want is more, any more, about the presidential election, or Hillary or the Trumpster. And yes, I know that I promised that my last posting on him would be my last. But like most politicians, I lied. I cannot help myself. I recently read an interesting piece by a reporter for that reportedly liberal rag, The New York Times, wherein he posed a question to himself. It went something like this, “Will I be able to explain to my kids that I did all that I could to make sure Trump did not become president?” For those like me who are aghast at even the remote possibility of Trump as the...

Bloviator in Chief

Given that those who trouble to read these blogs are of inordinately high intellect, I’m sure that you not only know the definition of the key word in this title, but also could easily suss out to whom I refer.  However, in the off chance there are some small few for whom the word does not ring a bell, I offer the following definitions: BLOVIATOR 1.  A public figure, such as a politician or an actor, who makes outlandish, strident statements on issues, thinking that the average man will care about their opinions. 2.  Someone who pontificates about issues of which they are uninformed, yet pretend to be expert. 3.  A pompous blowhard who uses their...