When I listen to and watch clips of Trump speeches, where he sticks to the teleprompter, I almost automatically think that it’s not him I’m hearing. The big words and concepts, the rhetoric, the poison are all products of other minds, other people who are still tagging along and writing this drivel and vitriol.

Trump is a mouthpiece. It seems all he’s doing is saying the words because he thinks they have a nice ring to them, and maybe they resonate in the depths of his own depravity and anger.

We know Stephen Miller is still part of the Trump entourage, and who knows who else. Miller is a damaged individual with dark thoughts. His influence has loomed large in this whole nightmare. In some ways, Trump is just a slimy real estate guy mesmerized and intoxicated by the siren song of authoritarianism. Well versed in deception, no doubt, but caught up in something much bigger than himself. A willing sucker, a talking head, a spokesperson for the real “visionaries” around him who can get him to say just about anything.

Which doesn’t absolve Trump, a 77-year-old adolescent who’s capable of saying some pretty mindless stuff on his own.

Ah, Mike Pence and the rest of the Mormon plastic people. Straight off the toy shelf at Walmart, straight out of a Barbie movie. Somehow naive, sheltered and protected from the world, a holier-than-thou vibe. Kind of a strange, almost creepy lot.

Pence in particular has always gotten under my skin by merely speaking. There’s something about his tone of voice, like he’s on a game show telling the contestants what they’ve won.

The cadence of his speech, the delivery, the faux gravity and seriousness, his brown-nosing subservience to Trump, wearing his faith on his sleeve– it was all too much. I’m glad he’s out of the race. He had no business being there in the first place.

Kind of feel sorry for him, because it seems almost impossible for him to turn off the animatronics and be human. And his attempts at humor invoke nothing but eye rolls and embarrassment for his efforts. It might have one wondering what his formative years were like.

Haley, Christie and the rest—pretenders all. Forty-plus points behind the former POTUS, who keeps sailing along despite 91 felony counts and a lifelong history of being a scumbag’s scumbag. The latest debate was laughable—predictably unenlightening and a showcase for the tired tactics of going low and avoiding questions.

Meanwhile, Trump was just down the road, seeking solace from his lackeys, playing the room, spewing his poison.

All of it useless, yet telling.

It’s pretty safe to say that the Belichick era in New England is over, and Mac Jones will be playing somewhere else next year. Or maybe he won’t be playing anywhere. Awful performance in Germany yesterday, 10-6 loss to the Colts.

It was a nice run. Patriots fans won’t see such a thing for a long time, if ever again. Brady made the difference. He may have bought into Belichick’s system, but he also was just that good, the difference maker.

It’s amazing how fortunes and opinions can turn. It happened again yesterday, with the gushing love coming from the CBS panel of experts after Cleveland beat Baltimore. It’s like they all climbed onto the Deshaun Watson bandwagon.

I’m amazed at how much verbiage is expended over football. Breathless analysis and discussion and arguments over nothing. And the cherry on top was Fox’s set at the Air Force Academy, with all those weapons of war sitting in the background. Veteran’s weekend or no Veteran’s weekend, it certainly kept with Fox’s America–love it or leave it vibe. The Fox shtick creeps into everything.

Meanwhile, hell on earth continues to unfold in Gaza.

I wonder if cameras will be scouring the sidelines looking for a guy with Groucho moustache and glasses. Barring an 11^th hour pardon, Jim Harbaugh won’t be coaching his team when they play Penn State at Happy Valley.

I don’t think it will matter much—PSU has a knack for coming up short when they play contenders.

I suppose Tommy Tuberville can view his obstinacy as being principled, maybe even brave, in the face of the mounting pushback and calls to go around him in his one-man crusade to deny approval of over 300 military promotions.

In reality, he’s just another male of the species who has trouble with a military provision that grants access to abortion services. Apart from this situation, the visual, the “optics”, just reinforce the derisively laughable notion that men have the last word in this matter.

I suppose as a “concerned” Christian who takes the Ten Commandments seriously, Tuberville may think he has the only leg anyone should be able to stand on. But he needs to realize it’s not as simple as holding one’s ground based on something the Bible says. It’s time for him to back off, let go of his stubbornness or whatever it is that’s driving him, and stop messing with our national security, which according to some, is being compromised more with each passing day– because of one old school, obstinate former college football coach.

Football isn’t life. What worked in football doesn’t necessarily work in the real world, especially when you’re a guy trying to tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

Give it up, Tommy. You’re barking up the wrong tree, and you won’t be proving your point—if there is one—anytime soon.

It might be difficult to get one’s head around what’s happening in Gaza. It’s difficult to gauge what Netanyahu’s end game is, or if anyone has even thought about the end game. So far, it’s been exactly as Bibi said it would be, or as we’ve known the Israeli response to be in previous conflicts—excessive and disproportionate. But the civilian toll—in lives and in upset and dislocation and horrible living conditions—is what’s getting the world’s attention.

It’s not as if the only source of information is a screed from Hamas. The major networks, the traditionally trustworthy outlets, are all reporting pretty much the same things. Soon twelve thousand civilian deaths running the gamut of age and gender, a majority of the population displaced and on the run, half of all dwellings destroyed, growing shortages of life-sustaining necessities, woefully inadequate medical care.

It’s hard to visualize a daily four-hour stoppage in fighting to allow for refugee movement and humanitarian aid. How easy is that to pull off? And what good will it do? How long is it going to take to rebuild, or is that a sadly laughable consideration at this point? By the sound of it, there will be little left for families to go back to, anyway.

So many lives destroyed and upended. It’s a tragedy among worldwide tragedies, I know, but this is too much. We’re no better than your average animals fighting over territory or a harem.

And I can’t shake the highly unsettling, infuriating thought that religion is playing a role in all of this. Mere words are inadequate when trying to express how tragic that is. Opiate of the masses? How about curse of the masses?

Ivanka walks into the courthouse like she’s the Queen of Sheba. I can’t stand these people. It’s not a trial, it’s a fashion show, a chance to show off the latest plastic surgery, to prance and thumb noses. Just another photo op.

They drink in the attention, try to cover their asses, then go home to their palatial penthouses and drink their aperitifs, unless they’re all tea-totallers. They get on with their cake eater, insulated lives, wondering why they’re so picked on and vilified, or maybe not caring at all about stuff like that.

Like father, like children, though.

The Trumps are a black eye on humanity. Yet there are many who wouldn’t mind being them, who think they’re livin’ the Dream.

Ugh.

There hasn’t been space. There hasn’t been a period when we’ve been able to take a breath and a break from the noise of election season. Trump has made sure of that, with his non-stop whining and griping and laser focused vengeance crusade. Not to mention his attempt at tearing it all down on 1/6/21.

He dares crave another shot at POTUS—not because he cares about the country, but because he’s a sore loser and he dreams of payback. And he has designs on making all the indictments he faces go away.

At the moment, polls have him in the lead, despite everything that a sane person might think would have him sucking hind teat. He is infuriatingly persistent. What the hell drives him?

He needs to go away- whether holed up at Mar-a-Lago, or to Rikers for a while. Either way, the unanswerable question will persist: why do people still plan on voting for him?

He’s a soulless paper tiger. Self-serving, crafty, conniving, and somehow dumber than a bag of hammers.

Not sure what Maddow was doing the other night, with her interview of the reporter from the Washington Post re Jeffrey Clark and the alleged efforts to hit the ground running with the Insurrection Act, if Trump (gulp) wins a second term as POTUS.

From what she was saying, it sounds like Clark and others are already working on how to implement such a plan on Day 1 of Trump’s time in office—i.e. call in the U.S. military to patrol American streets and quell the inevitable demonstrations that will result if Trump happens to win.

OK, first of all, holy shit. And second of all, I can’t get used to the matter-of-fact discourse surrounding the topic of Trump winning another term— like his candidacy is just a given, an assumption, a part of the normal course of events. Despite everything that’s on his plate. And, more pointedly, despite the kind of person he is.

People would vote for him despite his incompetence, despite knowing that a central reason he’s running is revenge– to punish those he perceives as being disloyal? Not to mention having designs on dismantling the Justice Department and facilitating the dissolution of all those nuisance felony counts?

Anyway, the Post reporter didn’t come right out and say that this is what’s happening. Unless I missed something, I didn’t catch this gentleman directly corroborating Maddow’s assertions regarding the Insurrection Act or other details she was sharing with us, which was kind of weird.

So even Maddow engages in sensationalism from time to time, needs to keep the viewers engaged by raising her voice and dangling juicy tidbits of stunning news that may or may not be factual? That’s disappointing, if true.

Come to think of it, she spent the first five minutes of the show plugging her new book, so I guess all’s fair in love and ratings and free enterprise.