Did you happen to notice the white smoke wafting out of this page as you opened The Voice today? Hard to believe it, but we finally have an American Pope, and from Chicago no less. For the previous week or so it was so nice for the focus of the news to be on a good, decent, intelligent person rather than the cruel, evil, ignorant person we all know, and some of us love, Donald J. Trump. And the icing on the proverbial cake for many of us is that Pope Leo XIV is anti-Trump. Think about the situation we now have in the world: It’s as if on one hand you have Christ, on the other the Anti-Christ; or maybe Mother Theresa and Hitler; or Dudley Do-Right and Snidely Whiplash.
By now, I think most of us have seen the White House AI-generated pictures of Donny Dum-Dum dressed up as the Pope and broadcast for the general consumption and adoration of the MAGA misguided, even while the official mourning for Pope Francis was still going on. It was like seeing an image brought to life in living color from the mind of Steven King. I wonder if the real Trump even pondered why his hair suddenly burst into flame for no reason when the images were published? Probably not, because it appears Donald J. has left his mind somewhere, maybe in a rough on the 13th hole of the Mar-a-Lago golf course when he bent over to sneak his ball back on the fairway.
Who says Trump has cognitive decline? Just because he can’t remember that on both of his inauguration days, he took an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution? On Meet the Press a couple of weeks back he said he’s not sure he has to do that and would have to ask his lawyers if he actually does. So go figure.
What’s even more sacrilegious than a Pope Trump is that he wants to hold a military parade, just like Putin, North Korea’s Little Rocket Man and other despots do. This from a five-time draft dodger who calls veterans “suckers” and those who died fighting overseas “losers.” He now wants to round up thousands of the currently-enrolled suckers to march past him on the viewing stand and pay him tribute on his birthday. Former military members say current troops want no part of this sham and are in an uproar about spending $90 million on a parade, not to honor veterans, but to honor our orange-faced dictator inhabiting the White House who also wants to rename Veterans Day and cut veteran benefits.
Speaking of cognitive decline (not mine, I’ll address that at a later date), Donny Dimwit seems to be ill equipped to recognize a doctored photo of an “MS13”supposedly tattooed on the fingers of Kilmar Ábrego García by one of his White House toadies. Any kid old enough to hold a cell phone could see it was a phony picture and a bad one at that (which gives you an insight to Trump’s mental capacity). For that matter, I don’t even think it was photoshopped as critics contend. I’ve been using Photoshop since 1989 and I can tell a good job when I see one (Just look at my photo on the top of this column). The photo that Trump was pushing on correspondent Terry Moran during an interview looked as if somebody had used press-on letters from Michael’s on a black and white print. Other photos of Kilmar’s hand show no such markings, only the H-E-L-L-O K-I-T-T-Y tattooed below his knuckles.
I hope all Chicagoans had their dogs safely inside when Kristi Noem was in the city recently, or at least had them protected with bulletproof tick spray. Kristi’s trigger finger gets itchy when she spots a dog head. Our own Illinois Congressional Rep. Lauren Underwood put Kristi Don’t-No ‘em on the hot seat in a subcommittee meeting and made her squirm when she hit her with facts gleaned from the Constitution and other facts related to budget reductions, most of which required simple Yes or No answers. Kristi tried in vain to evade answering by spouting political babble. Lauren wouldn’t let Kristi wiggle out with her typical non-answer, and in one case finally got a “No” answer from Don’t- No ‘em after about four attempts. Thank you, Lauren. You did Illinois proud.