[EDITORS’ NOTE:
To be honest and historically accurate,
we have quoted directly
from original sources.
As a result, we have used words
or phrases that would not be part
of our speech or writing today.
We trust you will understand
our editorial choice.]

“You can be sincere and still be stupid…
It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently…..”
Fydor Dostoevsky

The statistics tell the story.

By May 30, 2023 more than 1,033 of the January 6 Capital rioters and insurrectionists had been arrested and approximately 485 defendants have received federal prison sentences - up to 18 years for members of the Oath Keepers found guilty of seditious conspiracy; 277 defendants were sentenced to time in federal Gray Bar Hotels and roughly 113 to periods of home detention.

August 20 will soon come and quickly pass, its significance almost universally unrecognized.

For some, however, like December 7, 1941, it will remain “a date which will live in infamy.”

There are no “alternative facts.”

There’s

• Whoppers

• Mendacity

• Tall tales

• Prevarication

• Misrepresentation

Even (and this is “best of show,”)

• Cozenage

There is an important admonition missing in the rituals of the Ordination of Priests in our shared Catholic tradition:

“Trust the goodness of the People of God. God’s People – most of them - are good and – most of them - genuinely desire to love Him and all His Creation faithfully and well. They are growing. They are learning. They are a Pilgrimage People. Shepherd them. Listen to them. Serve and love them. And allow them to show you the Way.”

What

We speak

Becomes the house we live in.
Who will want to sleep in your bed

If the roof leaks

Right above

It?
Look what happens when the tongue

Cannot say to kindness,
“I will be your slave.”
The moon

Covers her face with both hands
And can’t bear

To look.
Hafiz

It’s like putting tooth paste back in the tube.

Just as there are certain words that, once you’ve heard them, you can never forget. (“Onomatopoeia” comes to mind.) there are life-moments so deeply imbedded in our neurological makeup that generations will carry them to their graves: President Kennedy’s assassination, 9-11, the murder of MLK, Barrack Obama’s speech on the night of his first presidential election, January 6.

Way to go, Pope Francis!

You’ve picked such great winners this time, we can hardly wait to see your next Fantasy Football line-up.

The instructions to A.B. McDonald (1871-1942), a veteran reporter for The Kansas City Star, were direct and simple: “Find out what made Atlanta crazy and how.”

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised
for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
It would be better to live under robber barons
than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep,
his cupidity may at some point be satiated;
but those who torment us for our own good
will torment us without end
for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C. S. Lewis

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil;
that put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"
(Isa. 5:20.)

“The greatest way to love another person is to pray for them.”
Father Frank Meccia, MM

How many twenty-second-century bureaucrats
did it take to change a light panel?
We’ll have a sub-committee meeting
and get back to you with an estimate.”
Peter F. Hamilton

“Let’s form a committee tasked with exploring
why committees are so ineffective.
Then we’ll stand-back and watch it
argue and self-destruct.”
Ryan Lilly

“The same thing happened today that happened yesterday,
Only to different people….
We must not indulge in unfavorable views of mankind,
since by doing it we make bad men believe they are no worse than others,
and we teach the good that they are good in vain….
Too many people expect wonders from democracy,
when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it….”
Walter Winchell

While his state legislature is still meeting, the governor of the Sometime State has already called lawmakers to a special session – beginning June 19th, an irony not noted by the governor or legislators - to pass a new series of “child protection” and “anti-pornography-in-our-schools” legislation.

The book – barely 9 x 7 inches and only 250 page – is falling part.

Its pages almost as brittle as ancient parchment, its binding broken and its deep blue cover scarred from too frequent use, it sits on my office shelf waiting for the next time I must apologize for its appearance.

We’ll take our cues from the television commentator who – at some point – hated a recent president “passionately,” called the Florida retiree “a demonic force, a destroyer” and specializes in the CYAs (look it up if you don’t recognize the acronym) “I’m just asking a question here… What actually happened? …Why can’t I ask questions? …Can I ask? I don’t really understand.”

Not-Serious-As-A-Heart-Attack, the oxymoronically self-described “Christian” morality- and-politics conglomerate, has been busy tying itself into a moral conundrum of oxymoronity.

It’s said his spirit – his ghost – still roams the building in which he once lived.

More than any other before or after him, he may well have been the most tragic occupant of the White House.

AMERICAN ASSOCIATED NEWS: Tallahassee, Florida. (Saturday, February 30, 2023)

Following the example of other would-be presidential candidates, Florida governor Ron DeSantis released his political tome – The Courage To Be Free To Twist Facts While Sowing Fear – on Saturday, February 30 with a press conference at the boutique What-A-Weird-Story.