News Vérité

Turnabout is fair play, as they (whoever they are) like to say, so it wasn’t too surprising tonight that President Trump basically credited Joe Biden’s election as president to Chinese election interference. This follows the 2016 Democrat mantra that Russian election manipulation got Donald “Hitler” Trump elected. Which Trump cleverly labeled  — and dismissed — as the “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax. Trump took to the airways tonight to lay out his case for Chinese involvement in our election process, but never came out and proclaimed that Xi Jinping et al. got Biden his White House throne. “Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost,” he said. He even suggested that no third-world country would tolerate the election vulnerabilities that we do. Except for rigging them outright, I guess. The president, in his talk, referred everyone to the WhiteHouse.gov website, which he said contains documents proving not only Chinese interference but also U.S. Swamp complicity and cover-up. I looked and the site does contain documents under four categories: election vulnerabilities, Chinese exploitation of voter info, Michigan election irregularities, and noncitizen voter registrations. The files are in zip format, however, and

The French stormed the Bastille, a notorious prison, on this day — July 14– in 1789. A tumultuous turn of events ensued, starting with the execution of King Louis XVI. Events began swirling out of control as ideas and politics kept taking increasingly bizarre twists until Napoleon came along to restore order. In short, the French Revolution did not lead to freedom, as our July 4th did. Quite the contrary, after years of sending their political opponents — and the public at large — to the guillotine, the French ended up with an Emperor. Napoleon, indeed, had quite the run, and his legacy carried on long after his death. There was even a Napoleon III. The French monarchy was restored as well for some time. At any rate, France celebrated Bastille Day this year with a huge military parade (taking a lesson from Trump, are they?) down the Champs-Élysées, which ends at the Arc de Triomphe, a monument Napoleon commissioned to honor his military victories. (Interestingly, Trump is now copying the idea for a similar arc in D.C. Donald Bonaparte?) I was in Paris for the 200th Bastille Day in 1989. Doubtful I can live long enough for No. 250,

President Trump vowed the destruction of Iran if he were to die at their assassins’ hands, so what if it’s shown that Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina were an Iranian victim? After all, during the staged funeral procession for the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei this past week, (paid) mourners toted placards (top image) calling for Graham’s death. Then today, after he suddenly died from what has been unofficially termed an aortic rupture, Iranian State Media cheered his demise. A TV anchor told Iranians that Graham had been “sent to hell.” I’ve seen enough TV crime dramas to know that one way to get rid of someone is to make their death look like it came from natural causes. There had better be a thorough autopsy of the late senator’s body to determine the exact cause. Graham was in Ukraine on Friday, the day before his death, so it appears more likely that the Russians would have had some access to the senator, perhaps putting something in the food he ate or the tea or coffee he consumed. It’s also possible that an Iranian stooge in Kyiv might have done the same (though Russia is famous for concoctions that kill its