This week Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden released a 3 minute video packed with lies, announcing his decision to run for reelection next year.  He’s touting the great achievements of his Administration.  That’s why he had to lie.  The fact of the matter is that, like Trump or not, absolutely everything was better before Biden took over at the White House.  The Trump era saw higher wages, lower taxes, a secure border, energy independence, a stronger military, a revitalized NATO alliance, greatly improved trade agreements, no inflation, and a world in which China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea were under control.  Under Biden, all those things have changed for the worse.  But, without a doubt, the worst aspect of the Biden years is the crippling inflation that has been brought about by his reckless printing of trillions of dollars, resulting in a debt approaching $32 trillion.  Real wages are down 11%.  Credit card debt is up 27%.  And the price of everything is much higher than in 2020.  Gasoline prices doubled.  Heating oil up 87%, natural gas up 57%, and electricity up 23%.  Food prices are out of control.  Eggs up 229%, flour 33%, butter 21%, and coffee 23%.  This week the small cream cheese that used to be $2.99 was $5.99.  Meanwhile, in his insatiable drive toward equity (whatever the Hell that’s supposed to mean), Sleepy Joe has announced that he’s fighting the obscene increase in housing costs by imposing monetary penalties on home buyers with good credit, so he can subsidize buyers with poor credit; people who really can’t afford mortgages with inflated interest rates.  When this inevitably results in a 2008-like housing crash, and the poor credit risk buyers are foreclosed on, we’ll no doubt be told it’s due to systemic racism, instead of the real reason, governmental stupidity.  Inflation is so bad under Biden that he’s even managed to inflate the price of the money itself.  A nickel may buy less than it did before, but it costs more than 5 cents.  That’s right, the U.S. Mint announced that it now costs 10.4 cents to produce one nickel.  When the Mint produces coins, the amount that the face value exceeds the cost of production represents a profit to the government that’s called seniorage.  Producing nickels is costing the government money, as they lose 5.4 cents per copy.  They minted about 1.5 billion nickels last year, so they lost $81 million making nickels.  The price of pennies is even worse.  It now costs 2.72 cents to produce one penny, and they minted 6.4 billion of them in 2022.  That means we lost $110 million minting pennies.  I know they say you have to spend money to make money, but that’s ridiculous.  The increased coin prices are due to increased prices of the metals that make up the coins.  Biden inflation strikes again.  There is talk of reducing the amount of nickel in the nickel to keep costs down.  This really is nothing new for the Mint.  Until 1866, the 5 cent piece was called the half-dime, and was silver.  A run on gold and silver caused by the Civil War made those metals scarce, so the nickel nickel was born.  World War Two changed the nickel’s composition.  Nickel was needed for war industries, so the “nickel” was composed of copper, silver, and manganese.  A nickel with a new composition will continue to be produced.  Not so the penny.  The Mint expects that 2023 will be the last year the penny coin will be produced.  It costs too much to make, and there’s not much you can buy with one cent.  Plus, the penny already has been through a number of composition changes in its history, and you just can’t make a one cent coin out of any metal that costs less than one cent.  So the penny is going away, and it will be missed by collectors.  Until 1856, one cent coins were called large cents, big, ugly coins about the size of a half dollar.  In 1856, the small cent was born, and we haven’t seen many design changes in nearly 170 years.  The first small cent depicted a flying eagle.  The Indian Head cent reigned from 1859 to 1909.  Since 1909, Abraham Lincoln has graced the obverse of the penny.  Fun fact – While all other presidents on our coins face to the left, Honest Abe faces right.  That may be because he’s the only Republican on a coin.  The composition of the Lincoln cent has changed as events dictated.  From 1909 to 1943 the penny was bronze, a mix of copper, zinc and a small amount of tin.  Copper was in great demand during World War II, so the 1943 penny was cast in stainless steel.  From 1944 to 1946, the Mint produced what were called “shell case” pennies.  This might have been the first recycling project.  Spent shell casings from ammunition used in the War was made from copper, zinc, and tin – the same  bronze alloy as the pre-War pennies.  Empty casings were collected, melted down, and turned into new pennies.  The bronze cent was made until 1962, when the tin was removed.  Then in 1982, the penny went from 95% copper to 95% zinc, and the rest copper plating.  Cost has been a problem for a long time.  There was talk of making an aluminum penny, or even a plastic penny, but every time it came up, representatives of the vending machine industry shot it down.  Now that vending machines take mostly dollar bills that shouldn’t be a problem, but it looks like the penny is going the way of the Dodo bird.  The Mint says they’re not needed, as there are trillions of pennies sitting in drawers and in jars that could go back into circulation.  The Mint still makes money on dimes, quarters and half dollars, so presumably they’re safe.  Maybe the answer is more Biden inflation.  It still costs only 17 cents to make a hundred dollar bill.

This week is the 53rd edition of Chicken Little Appreciation Day, also known as Earth Day.  The title of this week’s offering came to me when I thought of Erich Segal’s book, Love Story.  In it, a character says, “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.”  With the history of Earth Day, and the predictions of global warming/climate change activists in mind, it occurred to me that being a so-called Progressive means never having to be right about anything.  A similar observation was made by Ronald Reagan, who famously said that, “It’s not that liberals are bad people, it’s just that they know too many things that aren’t so.” The record has proven that the super-geniuses of the Left, who are so positive that they and only they have the only possible plan to save the planet, have been dead wrong about absolutely everything for the past 53 years.  Simply put, the Earth Day story should be called B.S. Story.  The first Earth Day in 1970 was organized by Ira Einhorn and Paul Erlich.  This was before it was discovered that Einhorn had killed his girlfriend, stashed her mummified body in a trunk in his apartment, got lawyer (later Senator) Arlen Specter to bail him out, and absconded to France.  Erlich is a scientist, who “knew” that the global population of 3.7 billion was too high, and that hundreds of millions would die of starvation by 1980.  That was wrong.  Global population is approaching 8 billion, and people are better nourished than ever.  In 1970, the experts “knew” that we were running out of oil.  That was wrong.  They “knew” that we had to move to Green energy, or else the world would come to an end.  This sparked the Green movement, which gained momentum after the Berlin Wall fell and all the Reds became Greens.  The fact that the Communists simply repurposed themselves is lost on the super-geniuses.  Because they believe themselves always to be right (the mental defect I call delusions of rectitude), the Left adopted the climate change mantra as its religion.  Their religious fervor is what makes them so dangerous.  Of course, they never stopped to consider that they were being used.  And of course, even had they considered this they would have dismissed the notion, because, due to their psychosis, they have amended Descartes’ cogito ergo sum into cogito ergo verum (I believe therefore it’s true).  For 53 years, these people have been preaching the end of the world, but not just from climate change, which is a recent innovation.  Anyone who bothers to take a close look will see that, in the 1970’s, they predicted mankind would succumb from a new Ice Age.  This would have been troubling because humans are 27 times more likely to die from cold than from heat.  The Ice Age never came.  Then they moved to global warming.  “Woe is us, temperatures will increase 1.5 degrees in 100 years.  Mankind is doomed.”  When temperatures flattened out over more than a decade, the hucksters changed “global warming” to “climate change.”  This permits them to blame any increase or decrease in temperatures on CO2, which they consider a poison, and to blame all storms, winds, tornadoes, floods, or droughts on industrial and personal use of fossil fuels.  These are lies, of course, but remember, we’re dealing with religious fanatics.  It’s a matter of faith to them.  The Old Testament tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for.  Third century bishop Tertullian was asked how he could believe the fantastic miracles in the Bible.  He responded, “I believe because it is absurd.”  That’s what we’re dealing with from the Green fanatics.  Undeterred by their half century record of always being wrong, the Earth Day celebrants continue to preach Armageddon.  Their official website EarthDay.org is replete with the disproven predictions of five decades.  Here’s some of their claptrap –  “The scientific evidence is clear and irrefutable — human activity is causing our planet to warm at an alarming rate.”  That’s the same story from 1970.  “In October 2018, the IPCC released its special report on Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees Celsius, giving us just a dozen years to halve our greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of a climate crisis.”  Of course, the report was based on the “hockey-stick graph.”  The man who created it later admitted he fabricated the data.  Never let a crisis go to waste though, even if you have to make up a phony one.  “There is simply no time to waste.  We need urgent and ambitious action at every level, from heads of state submitting increased national commitments to the Paris Agreement on climate change and cities walking the talk, to private sector leaders addressing climate change at every step of the supply chain, finance heads committing to divest from fossil fuels and green their investments and individual citizens using their unique influence to drive change and make an impact.”  The Paris agreement?  Only one nation on Earth met the Paris CO2 reduction goals.  The U.S.  We met the goals after President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement.  The Paris goals are designed to strangle industry in the West, while permitting China, Russia, and India to pollute at will.  Only religious fanatics seeking martyrdom would sign up for that. “Travel smarter.”  Save the planet by taking public transit or walking.  Unless you’re a celebrity, John Kerry or Al Gore.  In that case, fly your private jet.  Carbon footprints are only made by the little people.   But here’s the best one – EarthDay.org calls for climate change action to reduce particulates (translation – eliminate industries) based on a World Health Organization report on pollution-related illnesses.  This is the topper.  The WHO is run by China, the world’s worst polluter.  The WHO is motivating well-meaning young people in the West to protest industrialization in their countries, which are also being hampered by the nonsensical drive toward green energy, which doesn’t work, and is prohibitively expensive.  Meanwhile, the Chinese are building a new coal plant every week.  Our industries die, and China rules the world.  The Communists once planned to take over the West by revolution.  Now there’s no need for war.  EarthDay.org urges Americans to “Vote Earth.” It’s ingenious.  The Reds turned Green and they will prevail when climate change activists in democratic countries, vote an end to their industries, their jobs, and their own prosperity.  Meanwhile, China, which permits no voting and no complaints about pollution, just takes over.   Happy Earth Day.  May the B.S. be with you.

For a number of years, many people, including myself, have been waiting for the moment at which the majority of the public will decide it’s had enough of the insane slaughterhouse that has become what used to be the United States of America.  At that moment, or so we expected, people would wake up from the fever dream that has featured Antifa burning down cities, Black Lives Matter marching, burning, shooting, and then extorting 10’s of millions from feckless business leaders, defund the police, the Green New Deal, dueling pronouns from gender non-specific gargoyles, and the insane musings of Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden.  When that day came, we thought, sanity would reassert itself, and normal, sane people would send the messages that we really do want laws enforced,  criminals punished, and gee, maybe it’s not such a good idea to keep printing nonexistent money.  But on reflection, now I’m not sure that day will ever come.  No city in America is in worse shape than Chicago.  Crime was out of control before Rahm Emanuel left town.  He was succeeded by Beetlejuice impersonator Lori Lightfoot, who only made things worse.  Dozens of city residents were shot and killed each day.  Every weekend was a new contest to see how many men, women and children would be gunned down.  The 2020 riots destroyed the city’s Miracle Mile shopping district.  Residents and companies like Boeing, Citadel, Tyson Foods and Caterpillar fled, and even grocery stores shut down.  Mayor Lightfoot lost her bid for reelection.  There was a runoff election between two Democrats, Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson.  Vallas, a former city budget director and CEO of city schools, ran on a platform of enforcing the law, community policing and protecting riders on mass transit.  His main concern was for restoring public safety, which is supposed to be the first duty of government.  None of these things should have been controversial, and Vallas was hardly a right-winger.  He was supported by Senator Dick Durbin, no conservative he, and Congressman (and former Black Panther) Bobby Rush.  So a Vallas victory wouldn’t have been a victory for Republicans or conservatives, just a return to sanity and normalcy.  He lost to Brandon Johnson, a progressive community organizer (not again) who was backed by the teacher’s union and the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.  Comrade Bernie denounced Vallas as being supported by “billionaires and speculators.”  I guess he wasn’t talking about people like Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Bankman Fried, because they supported Bernie he Red.  But Johnson won, so what does he have to offer Chicago?  Nothing but more Progressive pie in the sky. Johnson promised to reduced public transit fares and to increase social services spending, but not to raise property taxes.  He says he will fund this new spending by increasing taxes on big businesses, which, I guess means the ones that haven’t already left town.  Johnson would make “suburbs, airlines, and ultra-rich pay their fair share.”  Sound familiar?  Just how he’s going to tax people who don’t live in the city is unclear.  And Johnson is for all the right, that is to say Left, things.  His policies are a festival of Woke nonsense, doubletalk, and bullshit.  He’s for environmental justice.  Translation – he’s opposed to industries that create jobs.  He’s committed to gender equity and justice, “and will make the structural changes necessary for all girls, women and transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) persons in Chicago to thrive.”  If you understood that, you’ve got me.  Johnson says “our public schools must be sanctuaries for all children by investing in dual language programs, ethnic studies and English as a Second Language.”  That actually would be an improvement, as the Chicago schools haven’t managed to teach natural born Chicagoans to speak, read, and write English proficiently.  80% of students are below grade level for reading, and there are 22 schools in the city where none (0%) of students are reading proficient.  By the way, Johnson was a teacher, and he says that puts Chicago on par with other big cities.  Maybe that’s why the teacher’s unions supported him.  His crime plan is a Civilian Office of Police Accountability and the Police Board.  He’ll end the gang database and support Treatment Not Trauma, reduce inefficiencies in public safety spending, and direct more funds to violence prevention and community safety programming that address the root causes of community violence. Translation – he won’t enforce the law.  Johnson promises to get the city budget in order – by spending more money.  That ought to work.  So let’s see, spend, tax, spend other people’s money, don’t investigate crimes, don’t punish crimes, but have lots of rainbow flags everywhere so people know you care.  Forgive me, but it sure doesn’t seem like the long-awaited day when sanity returns is coming to Chicago anytime soon.  H.L. Mencken said people get the government they deserve, and they deserve to get it good and hard.  I’m afraid Chicagoans are about to get it again.  I never thought I ever would quote the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary on these pages, but as I surveyed the wreckage of the City of the Broad Shoulders, their song, Where Have All The Flowers Gone, ran through my head.  You remember –

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

That was  written almost 70 years ago.  We’ll have to update it.

Where have all the normal gone, long time passing?
Where have all the normal gone, long time ago?
Where have all the normal gone?
The Woke have chased them everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

I don’t think they’ll ever learn, and what’s worse, they’re about to put their Woke dystopia on full display, as next year the Democrat National Convention will be in Chicago, the mass shooting capital of the world.  Those of you who are old enough may remember the 1968 Convention, when protesters rioted against a war and in support of those who were denied the protection of the law.  Latter-day Progressive Democrat rioters have a different motivation.  They rampage through the country denouncing anyone who dares to seek the protection of the law.  I guess that’s progress.

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the American author O. Henry coined the term Banana Republic.  The term describes a politically and economically unstable country with stratified social classes, and a ruling class composed of the business and political elites.  A nation that’s a banana republic is run by the wealthy business elites and political leaders, who gain their wealth by exploiting the public.  Tell me that doesn’t describe the United States of America in 2023.  Do we not have stratified social classes?  The wealthy exist in a world of their own, exempt from the daily inconveniences that trouble the rest of us, like inflation, higher taxes, green energy restrictions and rampant street crime.  They live behind their walls, protected by personal security, fly on their private jets, and avoid contact with the savages in the streets by traveling by limousine rather than by subway.  Do we not have a shrinking middle class, courtesy of liberal Democrat policies?  And do we not have an ever-growing underclass, fueled by the erasure of our borders, and the illegal entry of millions of “migrants” who immediately qualify for government benefits?  Not convinced yet?  Another mark of a banana republic is  a corrupt media that serves the elites, and not the truth.  The words of Malcolm X are instructive on this point, “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth.  They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power, because they control the minds of the masses.”  Look around.  Tell we’re not there.  The final component of a banana republic is the corruption of the justice system, which is weaponized for use against political opponents.  On this score, I refer you to this week’s indictment of former president Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  Alvin Bragg is aptly named, because he gained election to his position through braggadoccio.  During the campaign, Alvin bragged that he had sued the Trump Organization more than 100 times and that, if elected, he would get Donald Trump.  He said this in 2021, when he wasn’t part of the Mahattan DA’s Office, and thus unconnected to the ongoing Trump investigation.  Now, I was a prosecutor for 25 years, not a fake prosecutor like Chris Christie, but one who actually appeared in court and prosecuted defendants.  The job of an honest prosecutor isn’t to name a target for prosecution, and then search for facts that might constitute some crime.  An honest prosecutor is presented with facts concerning a person or persons, and then decides if those facts contitute a crime that should be prosecuted.  Bragg used the KGB method, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”  Those of you who have followed these pages know that I’m not a MAGA fanatic.  I’m not looking forward to a Trump 2024 campaign.  I voted for him twice, and I’ll do it again if I have to, but I’d prefer a Republican with less baggage.  That being said, if you’re going to indict a former president, you ought to charge a real crime.  By now, you’ve heard enough about “34 felonies” and “136 years in prison.”  Take it from me.  Working for the NJ Division of Criminal Justice for so long, I saw plenty of shitty indictments, but the Trump indictment is pure horse shit, right off the stable floor.  Where do I begin?  34 felonies.  First of all, if the crime isn’t a felony, you can’t put it in an indictment, so sure their felonies.  34, not so much.  The whole indictment deals with payments to two bimbos, and a Trump Tower doorman, all of whom were trying to blackmail Trump during the presidential campaign.  Each of them threatened to reveal embarrassing information about Trump, and each signed non-discloure agreements, which the lying media (see above) calls “hush-money,” and were paid to keep silent.  The indictment doesn’t charge those payments as crimes, because they’re not crimes.  Non-disclosure agreements are perfectly legal.  Bragg’s indictment charges making false entries in business records about reimbursment payments made to convicted liar, and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, which listed the payments as legal expenses.  Bragg claims they were really campaign expenses, should have been logged that way, and paid for with campaign funds.  The FEC, which is in charge of such things, disagrees, saying that payments which would have been made regardless of an election, are not campaign expenses.  There are myriad reasons why a billionaire businessman and TV star would make those payments.  The upshot?  If Trump used campaign money, the Feds would charge him with a violation.  Because he used personal funds, Bragg charged him.  Doesn’t seem right somehow, does it?  So how do you get to 34?  It’s what’s known in the trade as a multiplicious indictment.  There are 11 monthly payments in 2017.  Each was split into 3 false records crimes for “making a ledger entry,” “making an invoice,” and “making a voucher.”  11 times 3 is 33, then add 1 for the doorman, and voila, 34 felonies.  Horse shit.  Then, these acts, if indeed criminal, are only felonies if they were done to aid or conceal another crime.  What crime?  We still don’t know, because the indictment doesn’t say.  Bragg says it’s not necessary.  The Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution say otherwise.  A defendant must be given notice of the charge and must be able to understand that against which he must defend.  This indictment falls short.  You know, in New Jersey we sometimes name laws after people, usually victims, like Megan’s Law and Philomena’s Law.  Bragg’s indictment falls under what should be called Kafka’s Law.  In Franz Kafka’s book, The Trial, defendant Joseph K. is arrested and put on trial, but no one will tell him on what charge.  Here, Donald T. is called upon to defend himself from the charge that he was covering up another crime (unspecified).  We’re told it might be a campaign law violation.  That was detailed above.  Horse shit.  We’re told the crime might be conspiracy.  Conspiracy to do what?  Hold onto your hat.  Conspiracy to defraud the public, by not letting the bimbos reveal embarrassing information before the election, thus permitting Trump to win in 2016.  No, I’m not kidding.  If lying to voters to try to get elected was a crime, Hillary Clinton would be walking the Green Mile now.  And if Bragg is suggesting that the 2016 election was tainted, doesn’t that make him an election denier?  Not shitty enough yet?  How about all this shit is beyond the 5 year statute of limitations, which bars prosecution?  Here’s what I think will be Bragg’s answer to that.  The NY statute of limitations law has a part (b) that allows the deadline to be extended if the defendant was continuously out of the State.  Bragg will say Trump was in D.C., being president.  Don’t laugh, it might work in Manhattan.  All this reminds me of the Woody Allen movie Bananas, set in the banana republic of San Marcos.  “I object, Your Honor!  This trial is a travesty!  It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham!  I move for a mistrial!”

I’m sure I speak for a lot of you when I say I’ve had about enough of Progressives.  Maybe it’s just a question of semantics.  For my money, the word “Progressive” suggests that adherents are interested in, or are working toward, the betterment of a society in which the individual is happier, healthier, independent, and economically secure.  However, a cursory examination of what Progressives have wrought proves this is not the case.  Uniformly, Progressives have succeeded in making people and institutions angrier, less healthy, incapable of independent thought or action, and destitute.  Progressives are sometimes called “woke.”  The newly accepted definition of the word “woke” is, “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues.”  This suggests that Progressives are acutely aware of and are in touch with reality.  If that was the case, I wouldn’t have a problem with them.  But sadly, they’re not.  Were they aware of and attentive to facts, then they would understand and accept the fact there are two, and only two, genders, not 57 like Heinz.  They also might be expected to be aware of the fact that males are incapable of giving birth.  They not only aren’t aware of these facts, they deny them, and denounce as heretics any who fail to ignore reality as effectively as they do.  This would be bad enough had Progressives not succeeded in cowing compliant politicians and businesses to accept their nonsense.  I say cowing, and not convincing, because I refuse to accept that otherwise rational people really believe this crap.  They are following the path of least resistance, but that path leads only to ruin.  University of Texas Professor J. Budziszewski recently commented on what he called the normalization of disorder and empowerment of lunacy, noting that many purveyors of “woke” derangement are con artists who do so for status, wealth and power.  The Professor noted that pushing unbelievable silly notions causes serious problems, such as, disfiguring and providing hormones to children to “alter” genders; having doctors actually debating whether to surgically amputate limbs of intact people who have decided to “identify” as quadriplegic; and sponsoring “Drag Queen Story Hours” for children.  Simply put, rather than advancing society, by denying reality, Progressives are destroying our society and culture.  And even more destructive is the damage so-called Progressives are doing to women and girls.  Those of us old enough to remember the 1960’s remember “the sexual revolution” and “women’s liberation.”  Females, too long devalued at home and held back at the workplace, found new careers open to them.  In 1970, about 3% of all lawyers and 6% of doctors were female.  Now females make up almost 40% of those professions and 60% of college students.  The enactment of Title IX greatly advanced women’s athletics.  This was real progress, but Progressives are in the process of erasing women as a gender.  The mania of trans-gender politics is out of control, and no good can come of it.  And the best examples of this mania can be found on recent lists of Women of the Year.  When Katherine Hepburn starred in Woman of the Year in 1942, she actually was female.  When contestants on the old game show Queen for a Day were crowned, they were women as well.  But not anymore.  Elle Purnell of The Federalist recently reviewed Woman of the Year honorees named by USA Today, Glamour Magazine and Time Magazine.  The preoccupation with trans-gender mania has rendered the lists both ridiculous and grotesque.  Here are some examples.

U.S. Surgeon General Rachel Levine.

She (He) has the distinction of having been named both Woman of the Year and Man of the Year (By The Babylon Bee)

Newly elected Minnesota State Representative Leigh Finke.  If one picture is worth a thousand words, none of those words would be repeatable.

The very elegant Caitlyn Jenner.  Enough said. MJ Rodriguez, a male stage performer who “identifies as an Afro-Latina trans woman.”  I guess that’s what you would call a quadruple threat.
“Women’s” Weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who brings to mind the East German women’s Olympic teams from the Good Old Days of the Cold War.And, of course, swimmer Lia Thomas, who has made a mockery of women’s collegiate sports, resulting in true female athletes being denied the benefits promised them by Title IX.

To quote The Federalist, “Nothing says ‘we respect women’ like elbowing them out of their own awards to laud a man who makes a mockery of womanhood.”  The perpetuation of trans-gender mania evidenced by the blatant disavowal of reality of the Left is rooted in an attempt to make the abnormal seem normal.  Which is not to say that trans-gender people should be ignored or dismissed.  They exist, but their recent notoriety isn’t proof of societal progress, but merely a more widely publicized recognition of the plight of unfortunates who suffer from very real psychological problems.  What society owes these people is not the renunciation of all reason, and the denial of reality, but concern, assistance, and protection.  In short, we have a duty to tolerate, and to accommodate them as best we can, but we have no duty to celebrate them.  Our indulgence of that which is lunatic, unreal, and patently absurd is tearing the fabric of society to pieces, weakening us as a nation, and giving aid and comfort to our enemies.  I’ll wrap up with a perfectly ludicrous example.  This week, a trans-gender “woman” sued the TSA, claiming that a TSA search of “her” person at JFK Airport injured “her” testicles.  The Plaintiff said that “she” was left crying for over an hour because “my balls still hurt so bad.”  “She” doesn’t want the TSA agent to be fired though, but would like the TSA abolished altogether.”  Well, at least there’s one thing we can agree with.