Red line? Come off it. Trump erased any red line for himself long ago. It vanished, washed clean out by his vomiting a sewage of lies, innuendos, cruelties, and threats.

Same essay:

Donald Trump, willy nilly, has provided a platform to those extreme elements in American society. In order to garb himself with Presidential robes, Trump would not hesitate to sell his grandmother's dentures. Never has ever been apparent in American Presidential politics such avarice for power, such greed for prestige and such pursuit of falsehood.

By being a victim of a gunshot in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024, Donald Trump has effectively become a victim of his own vitriol, of his own pursuit of polarizing politics.

Thanks for that, Coriolanus.

#5
Release the pearls.

Trump is the only major political figure in this country who has been consistently involved in pitching hate and conspiracist lies, stirring the cauldron with the sort of violent rhetoric often displayed by physical cowards. Sometimes, when you play with fire you get burned. He will, however, learn absolutely nothing positive from the experience. Nor, it would appear, will those whose self-esteem is so damaged they've signed on for cultic worship.

#6
Of course they would. Because they're ignoramuses.

#43
Reilly was branded as well: "D" on cheek for "deserter." By one account, on both cheeks. Immigrants of the "wrong sort" - Irish and others as well -were treated like crap in the US. Glad to see you bring them up. That correction of mi e was a minor one. There was no need for a draft at the time. Ripping off Mexico was quite a popular idea in the US (He ry David Thoreau and others of like mine excepted). And the military offered, or seemed to offer, some respite. But the US Army in those days was an awful, brutal outfit. William Harney, who supervised the sadistic hanging at Mexico City, went on to spread horrors among the Plains Indians.

#14
Trump is a lard-loaded cautionary monument to that old piece of sage advice: "Eff around and find out."

The San Patricios are honored in Mexico. The US didn't hang John Reilly, their leader, because he deserted prior to the start of the war. (They weren't conscripts in the US Army prior to desertion, by the way; no draft for that war.). I think about 30 were hanged as they watched Marines take the palace at Chapultepec (the proverbial "Halls of Montezuma..")

Boebert is a train wreck aspiring to be a car wreck. It's going to always be a bumpy road for her with plenty of potholes along the way. And it just won't end well.

Susan Collins, such a dithering ditherer. Her profound cluelessness is, for me at least and weirdly, reminiscent of Margaret Michell's utterly useless Scarlet O'Hara character.

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."

No, not in Two Corinthians, Donnie.

You shouted to the high heavens for violence, stoked fires and stirred the pot bloviating about your sick fantasies. Then violence paid old Cadet Bone Spurs a call. Whispering something in your nicked ear, Donnie. What was that? Oh, yes, now you remember: "Karma."

What's guns got to do with it?!?
~ N.R.A.

#36-37
The history of the Borderlands is astonishing when you really get into it. Consider today. It's soon past the summer solstice, coming up now on mid-July, time for the Katsinam to make their appearance in northeastern Arizona for this round - until after the winter solstice - in village plazas atop mesas, perform their Home Dance rituals, receive blessings from the believers upon whom they also extend blessings, then, led by an elder-priest, make their way off for the spirit home in the mountains off to the west. That is but one tiny tessera in a fabulous regional mosaic.

Then there's this predictable gem:

Intrusion as in intrusion of reality into a mythologized cultural landscape. Mythologists hate it. But there it is.

Instrusion rather than instruction at #32

The Comanche reputation for the behaviors you've described was earned. Different time, different place. The past, as has been observed on many occasions, is foreign country; they do things differently there. Aside from being hunters, the Comanches were wide-ranging raiders and traders. As were the region's Spanish, Kiowas, Mexicans, and Gringos. As for Santa Ana, a bad news boy. But let's not cleave to the ahistorical Texas Iliad take on the Alamo. (Although I wouldn't be shocked if they stick to that; it's a fairy tale they've told for nearly 200 years and I can't see an adjustment to the accepted party line that actually allows for the instruction of reality other than on a carefully scripted, very limited basis.)

"So that didn't go over too well."

Not with a bunch of slavers and filibusteros who never had any intention of holding up their end of what became, from their perspective, a bad bargain. Mexico was in tumult, of course. And the slavers and filibusteros and some real Tejanos joined in. So?

Your largely ahistorical understanding of the history (and histories) involved in that is understandable.

After all, reality really does bite the Texican Iliad b.s. in the proverbial buttocks. Like Travis and that "line in the sand"? Really?

Going genocidal on Indians and oppressing Latinos? Now, that is Texas history, delivered ready, quick, and raw.

His shtick wasn't anything that attracted me, but you could see where it appealed to many and actually helped a lot of people. Well done. RIP.

How about Queen For A Day?!?
~ Jack Bailey

#24
Oh, thanks for that. Although a creaky amusement park dedicated to fantasy does sound a lot like Texas.

Those six flags represent claims, not necessarily actual political or military control. And those claims were immensely complicated because they were sideshows to the relationships between what were then European great powers. Texas as a territory was no exception. But in Mexico's Texas a bunch of slavers and filibusteros from the US decided to renege on a deal they'd made with Mexico (where the Revolution as ongoing).

You do know that a pile of Texicans were US citizens who took up Mexican citizenship, yes? Even at the Alamo?

"The others [suspects] are men, with one of the three identified by police as 34-year-old Tommy Whack ... "

Him being dead and all aside, surely Elmore Leonard had a hand in writing this script
.

" 6 flags over Texas mean anything?"

It sure does: an ancient amusement park with carnival rides.

Sounds a lot like Texas.