Goebbels’ doppelganger is Trump’s top dog

Posted on November 12, 2026 by oddmanout215

I read aloud to my neighbor Swamp Rabbit from a book about leading figures in an infamous dictator’s inner circle:

… By denying the legitimacy of opposition to his cause, by cynically refusing to accept the truth when it turned out to be inconvenient, and by creating powerful but ultimately imaginary menaces to society that threaten to destroy it unless countered by the power of a supposedly great leader, [Joseph] Goebbels set an example that was to be followed long after his death.

“Substitute ‘Stephen Miller’ for ‘Joseph Goebbels’ and you have a good job description for Trump’s new chief of staff,” I said. “If Miller and Goebbels lived in the same era, they would be evil twins.”

“Gimme that book,” Swamp Rabbit said, grabbing my copy of Richard J. Evans’ Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich. “You gotta stop obsessing about them Nazis. The election’s been over more than a week now and Trump’s gang lost.”

Swamp Rabbit thinks Republican holdovers in Congress will back off from Trump because his tariffs and his disastrous war in Iran helped generate the blue wave that washed away so many far-right office holders. And he think Trump, humbled by the midterms catastrophe, might limit himself to championing his vanity projects — desecration of the White House, construction of a ridiculous ballroom and triumphal arch, and so on.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said.

Trump is taking zero blame for the Election Day debacle. He’s fighting the possible impeachment of Pete Hegseth, his goose-stepping Secretary of Defense. He has promoted Miller, who called Democrats ‘the jihad party’ and defended the federal goons who have killed more than a few immigrants and mistreated thousands of others. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress remain as loyal as ever to Trump and too corrupt to admit Miller is a little monster.

“Trump will fight the Democrats all the way to the Fuhrerbunker and Miller will be right there with him, cranking out big lies and repeating them for effect,” I said.

I let Swamp Rabbit take my copy of Hitler’s People. He promised to read the essay on propaganda pioneer Goebbels once he finishes watching the “Arrested Development” series for the fourth time.

Footnote: I’m far from the first observer to note that Goebbels is Miller’s doppelganger, or vice versa. It’s too bad the mainstream media have ignored the striking resemblance and failed to explore how badly Miller’s neo-nazi behavior has damaged democracy in America. The Republican Party is like a big tent for creeps, but this guy is special. And we might have to endure two more years of him.

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A blue wave to wash away Trump’s flunkies

Posted on November 4, 2026 by oddmanout215

I hailed Swamp Rabbit yesterday as he dozed with a can of beer on his chest near his shack in Bog Water Homes.

“Quit dawdling, you old lush. There’s still time to vote against Trump.”

He stood up and kicked a pile of dead leaves. “You must be tripping, Odd Man. Trump ain’t on the ballot, he’s gonna be president for two more years.”

I tried to talk sense to him. “Trump is always on the ballot. Every Republican running for office is Trump. They’ve been goosestepping for him for ten years now. A vote against any of them is a vote for democracy, not to mention sanity.”

I told him Stacy Garrity, the Republican running for governor against Josh Shapiro in our home state, approved of ICE activities and Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, a gift to billionaires. Mike Rogers, the GOP’s Senate candidate in Michigan, proudly emulated Trump’s bigoted attack on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate. Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins pretended to distance herself from the criminal-in-chief but has backed his positions 95 percent of his time in office. Ken Paxton in Texas —

“We live in PA,” Swamp Rabbit said. “We can’t vote in them other contests.”

I took a breath. “My point is you could search for a Republican in the Senate or House who disagrees with Trump on anything and you’d come up empty. In 2021 they tried to overturn Joe Biden’s election after Trump encouraged a MAGA mob to storm the Capitol. When Trump got re-elected two years ago, they pretty much turned over control of the legislature to him.”

“That ain’t why the Dems are kicking ass,” Swamp Rabbit said. “It’s because of his stupid war and his support for tariffs and ICE goons and polluters. It dawned on some of his rank-and-file peeps that he don’t care about the price of food and gas and housing and health care and so on, and that his rubber stamps in Congress don’t care either.”

I shook my head as he finished his beer. “So will you vote today or just get buzzed?”

He flashed a yellow grin. “Keep your shirt on. I mailed in my vote two weeks ago.”

Footnote: The hoped-for blue wave turned out to be a blue tsunami. Even the mainstream media saw it coming. As always, the question is whether the incoming Dems are bold enough to pursue real changes now that the wave has crested.

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Leftover Halloween treats

Posted on November 1, 2026 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit was knocking on my front door. He wanted to know why I was playing music so loud at such an early hour.

“I’m working on a soundtrack for a remake of Psycho. I’ll use Bernard Herrmann’s ‘Psycho: Prelude,’ if I can get his permission. David Byrne will play Norman Bates, and Norman will be a frustrated musician this time. ‘Psycho Killer’ will be on the soundtrack and ‘Electric Guitar,’ because it sounds like something Herrmann would write if he was into rock ‘n’ roll.”

Swamp Rabbit frowned. “Bernard Hermann is dead, Odd Man. And David Byrne is way too old to play Norman Bates. And there ain’t no way you’ll find a girl for that shower scene.”

“I’m gonna run an ad in the South Philly Review this week,” I said. “A casting call.”

After a minute he realized I was putting him on. “You should make a movie out of ‘People Are Strange,'” he said. “You oughta star in it, too.”

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Why are Halloween candy prices so scary?

Posted on October 30, 2026 by oddmanout215

The local CVS is as big as a supermarket. The good drugs are locked away in the pharmacy, but the rest of the store is jammed with “over-the-counter” drugs, cosmetics and junk food. Halloween candy is stacked in plastic bags emblazoned with brand names — Snickers, M&M, KitKat and so on — spelled out in cartoonish, attention-grabbing fonts.

“We hit the motherlode,” my neighbor Swamp Rabbit said. He’s an alcoholic who craves sweets when he’s off the booze and trying to dry out.

We were waiting inside the front door for Swamp Rabbit’s parole officer, Victor Cortez, who was buying candy in the hope it would discourage Swamp Rabbit from falling off the wagon.

“I changed my mind,” Victor said, emerging from the candy aisle. “Candy costs almost as much as street drugs these days.”

Victor had just learned that a Cadbury bar would have cost him five dollars, taxes included, about 50 percent more than it cost last year. Bags of candy in mini-servings — handouts for trick-or-treaters — were priced at $10 or more.

Swamp Rabbit was distraught. “It ain’t fair. I used to buy two candy bars for a dime at the kiddie matinee.”

“That was a hundred years ago,” I said. “The world has passed you by, swamp thing.”

I told him Victor was right — ill-advised tariffs, bad chocolate-growing weather, corporate execs and hedge fund managers have turned candy into a luxury item. Contemporary candy influencers are like drug dealers or booze peddlers, enriching themselves by taking advantage of our bad habits.

Swamp Rabbit looked bleak, so Victor relented. He bought a 10-dollar bag of mini-KitKats but ordered Swamp Rabbit to save most of them for the trick-or-treaters who come knocking on Halloween night.

Swamp Rabbit looked relieved, and I knew why. I said, “We live in deep South Philly, Victor. In Bog Water Homes, remember? Nobody comes knocking down there on Halloween, it’s too scary.”

Footnote: Forget the price of candy and food and gas and housing and everything else. Did you know that the U.S. economy grew this summer? I read this in the newspaper owned by billionaire Trump toady Jeff Bezos, so it must be true.

I’m kidding. What really grew was inflation and the AI bubble.

Another: And monopolies. Robert Reich recently noted that the price of a bag of Halloween candy has gone up 71 percent since 2021 partly because two huge companies control the candy market.

Scared by Candy Prices? Here’s Why. – YouTube

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Vance makes strong bid for Most Hideous Man award

Posted on October 23, 2026 by oddmanout215

I thought of the perfect title for a book that profiles Donald Trump’s most prominent lapdogs and liars — Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Unfortunately, that title was used in the 1990s by David Foster Wallace, so I’ll have to go back to the drawing board if I decide to pursue the idea.

“You ain’t gonna write no such book,” my neighbor Swamp Rabbit said. “You couldn’t get within a mile of Trump’s lapdogs, and if you did their handlers would sniff you out and send you packing.”

He’s right, but if I could write the book I’d start by interviewing Vice President JD Vance, who pretends he’d make a less heinous president than Trump but succeeds only in convincing most observers that he’s just as vile as the felon-in-chief, although he tries to seem more civil.

I reminded Swamp Rabbit that Vance became a Catholic years ago, but his conversion apparently didn’t make him any less dishonest and heartless.

I’m thinking of two well-publicized incidents. The first, Vance’s reaction to being criticized when he helped spread the rumor that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating the dogs and cats of law-abiding (white) Americans. After being caught in the lie, Vance said, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

More recently, he endorsed the conduct of the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s running a TV ad in which the Democratic candidate, Amy Acton, is falsely accused of lying by her estranged mother, who lost custody of Acton decades ago after her husband — Acton’s stepfather — was indicted for raping Acton. Vance praised Ramaswamy for having “the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar.”

I referred Swamp Rabbit to a Washington Post story for more sordid details about Acton’s family history. He said, “I get your drift, but what did you expect? Vance is sticking up for ‘Swami because they’re both loyal Trumpers.”

I told him it’s worse than that. Vance is saying the end justifies the means no matter how many innocent people you hurt or principles you betray. He’s the guy who called Trump “America’s Hitler” but sucked up to him a few years later in his successful bid to become the vice-presidential candidate.

Swamp Rabbit remained unconvinced. “Vance ain’t no worse than them other lapdogs. How can you say he’s more hideous than Stephen Miller?”

I had to think about that one. “I guess because Vance looks like a big teddy bear when he’s really a vicious, small-minded fraud. With Miller, what you see is what you get — ugly inside and out.”

“Feel free to choose your own Most Hideous Trump guy,” I added.

Footnote: Hideous women have been admitted to the Trump gang, too — Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi and so on — but he’s too much of a misogynist to keep them around for long.

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It’s time for a remake of ‘A Face in the Crowd’

Posted on October 18, 2026 by oddmanout215

“This movie is good but it’s old,” I said to Swamp Rabbit. “It should be remade and updated.”

We were watching A Face in the Crowd (1957), starring Andy Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes, a folksy drifter turned reality TV star who becomes a demagogue with great power and influence. The movie must have seemed over the top when it was first released. It is over the top. No way Americans could be hoodwinked into electing to high office a fascist clown with delusions of grandeur.

Not until the Trump era, that is.

“I’ll tweak the story to make it contemporary,” I told my bibulous neighbor. “The main character will wear a fat suit and have orange skin. The corporate overlords who suck up to him will be Silicon Valley billionaires. His handlers will stream campaign ads and text each other all day. Viagra will replace Vitajex. The woman who betrays him will be coarse and lowdown, like Stormy Daniels, not Patricia Neal.”

Swamp Rabbit was unimpressed. “You ain’t no Budd Schulberg. And you ain’t got the money to make a movie like that. If you did, it would be the worst sequel since Exorcist II.”

I told him the movie would be a remake not a sequel. My main problem would be with the screenplay’s climax. In the original, Lonesome Rhodes’ army of fans turn against him when he mocks them after making a TV speech, unaware that the sound is still on. His political career is finished.

In the remake, the general public won’t disavow their demagogue. They’ll remain loyal even after he mocks them to their faces. I’ll base the key scene on Trump’s words to the crowd at a recent rally in Tennessee: “It’s amazing. When you stand up here, it’s just like — the love. I could say the stupidest things and you’d clap [for] me.”

Sure enough, the Tennessee crowd laughed and applauded him. True life is stranger than fiction, and often more depressing.

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ICE to cops: Want some shiny new patrol cars?

Posted on October 12, 2026 by oddmanout215

We were in South Philly, discussing the state of the nation over lunch from a local pretzel factory. “Did you see this? ” I said, showing Swamp Rabbit a passage from historian Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of the leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and official police and military intermingle, the end has come.

Granules of salt fell to the floor of my scruffy neighbor’s porch as he finished eating his second soft pretzel. I noted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents don’t march with torches or carry pictures of Dear Leader, but they definitely belong to a paramilitary — an official paramilitary — and are intermingling more and more often with police departments around the country.

“You’d better wake up, Swamp Rabbit. Fascism is on the march, and its footfalls grow louder every day.”

He swallowed some dough then drank from a can of beer. “That’s very poetic, Odd Man, but I’m gonna take a nap when I finish these pretzels. I had to run a long way after I swiped ’em.”

I told him about the U.S. citizen in California who was shot and wounded recently by an ICE agent after he cautioned the agents that children were in the area. And the Venezuelan in Texas shot by ICE and sent to a detention center with a bullet in his back. And the undocumented immigrant in New York City who was shot and wounded by ICE while driving with his 5-year-old son.

In fact, it’s a rare day that passes without news of arrests and assaults by ICE, a federal agency with a mandate to make life miserable for immigrants, foreigners here on visas, U.S. citizens — virtually anyone with dark skin or a Spanish-sounding surname.

Unfortunately, many law enforcement agencies are turning a blind eye to ICE misconduct, or openly coordinating activities with ICE agents, either because they agree with their tactics or because they fear opposition to them will result in retaliation from the Trump administration.

To help increase arrests, the administration is offering big incentives to law enforcement agencies that play ball with ICE. (How would you like some shiny new patrol cars, Chief?)

In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is walking a tightrope by trying to show support for popular opposition to ICE — he has called the agency “rotten to its core” — without totally alienating the New York City Police Department, which is allegedly cooperating with ICE goons as they do their dirty work.

“This is what Snyder was getting at,” I said. “Officeholders and cops and citizens who don’t oppose paramilitary misconduct help normalize fascist behavior. The next thing you know, the Gestapo is running the show.”

Swamp Rabbit yawned. “What can we do about it, start a civil war? You better take a nap, Odd Man.”

Footnote: One thing we can do is vote out of office on Nov. 3 all the politicians — the vast majority are Trumpers, of course — who approve of or condone deportation of law-abiding immigrants.

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‘Influencer’ weaponizes cheesesteak in South Philly

Posted on October 4, 2026 by oddmanout215

We were arguing about a customer who bought a cheesesteak at Pat’s King of Steaks on Wednesday and allegedly shouted “It’s garbage!” before throwing the sandwich in the face of the shop’s general manager.

“What’s the big deal?” I joked. “The customer was exercising his First Amendment rights.”

Swamp Rabbit paraphrased Oliver Wendell Holmes: “The First Amendment don’t give nobody the right to shout ‘It’s garbage’ at a crowded steak shop. It don’t allow for assault with a cheesesteak.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” I said. “Cheesesteaks can be hazardous to your health, especially if you add Cheez Whiz.”

But Swamp Rabbit wasn’t laughing and neither was the owner of Pat’s, who offered a $5,000 reward for information that would lead to an arrest. The assailant filmed the incident by holding a camera in one hand as he threw the cheesesteak through the shop’s service window with the other. Meanwhile, surveillance cameras at Pat’s were filming it, too.

“You gotta be ready for your closeup these days,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Cameras are everywhere.”

The cheesesteak hurler turned himself in to the cops the next day. I felt sympathy for him until I read he’s an aspiring “social media influencer” or “content creator” who films himself at local eateries in the hope of attracting online followers. According to Fox 29, “The influencer says his approach is to review food and throw it back if he thinks it is bad.”

I told Swamp Rabbit that ad salespeople and publicists are being supplanted everywhere by influencers with ring lights and camera phones. Most of them don’t make much money, but not for lack of trying. They hound potential clients and would pimp their own grandmothers to attract online followers.

“You’re exaggeratin’, don’t you think?” my seedy neighbor said.

I shrugged. “Maybe they wouldn’t pimp their grannies, but they definitely will hit you in the face with a cheesesteak if they have to.”

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Faith in Dear Leader tested by diesel prices

Posted on September 28, 2026 by oddmanout215

My neighbor Swamp Rabbit thinks MAGA zealots will stand by their man. They didn’t lose faith when Donald Trump imposed counterproductive tariffs, undercut freedom of the press, sabotaged renewable energy projects, and deported immigrants who are U.S. citizens. According to the polls, even the jump in food and gasoline prices caused by Dear Leader’s “little excursion” in Iran didn’t drive away his hardcore cultists.

Hold on, I told my bibulous buddy. A recent Washington Post article has shed light on a new, dirtier problem — six-dollars-a-gallon diesel fuel — which is threatening to make agnostics of Trump’s true believers in districts he used to take for granted:

The political fallout [from rising diesel prices] is landing in deep-red voting districts the hardest. Federal data shows these tend to be the places where diesel powers the fuel-thirsty tractors and other machinery that the agriculture industry relies on.

Which means that farmers, who make up one of MAGA’s core constituencies, might not be able to turn a decent profit unless they pass on the rising cost of diesel to food shoppers.

“That’s us,” I said. “You might have to resort to shoplifting hot dogs at the SuperFridge again. I’ll have to live on lentils and ramen noodles.”

“You’re crazy,” Swamp Rabbit replied. “I predict them farmers will tell Trump they ain’t gonna vote for his lackies in the midterms unless he makes a deal with Iran that brings down fossil fuel prices.”

“Too late for that,” I said. “The midterms are only five weeks away.”

Desperate Trump boosters are saying the crisis will end if we stop exporting diesel produced in the U.S., but economists think that move would result in a glut that would make the problem worse. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress and farming industry leaders still don’t have the guts to speak out against the idiot responsible for the crisis. The head of the Iowa Corn Growers Association blames “all our elected officials in D.C.”

Maybe farmers and other hardcore Trumpers will wise up after the midterms, but who knows? Zealots rarely defy their god, even when their livelihoods are at stake.

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The windmills of Trump’s mind

Posted on September 19, 2026 by oddmanout215

“The news is bad, Swamp Rabbit. We’re keeping coal plants on life support, propping up super-emitters of methane, ignoring record heat and wildfires and long-term droughts, blocking production of electric cars and offshore wind farms, all because of one spiteful old fool.”

I was on my mangy neighbor’s rickety front porch, complaining about Donald Trump’s increasingly loony efforts to discourage development of renewable energy sources. For example, when recently asked in Ireland to comment on that country’s political future, the orange fruitcake responded with an unrelated rant about his favorite bugaboo, “windmills”:

It’s the most expensive [energy source] — it’s so sad. You know, Ireland’s been very good at windmills. They have proportionately far less than Scotland. Scotland is—it’s a shame what they’ve done.

Dear Leader was alluding to his failed legal attempt more than 15 years ago to halt construction of offshore wind turbines that, in his mind, spoiled the view from his golf course in Scotland. His opposition to wind farms — solar installations, too — has grown over the years into an obsessive desire to punish anyone who advocates their usage.

I kept thinking of that goofy Michel Legrand song, “Windmills of Your Mind.” Trump’s mind is like a wind tunnel swirling with perceived insults and injuries — fuel for his revenge schemes.

I sang a few lines from the song (lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman) for Swamp Rabbit: Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own/Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone.

Swamp Rabbit said, “That’s all well and good, Odd Man, but the warthog has two years left to do even more damage. What do we do about that?”

When I didn’t respond, he posed another question: “What’s the point of having a 25th Amendment if no one has the guts to use it?”

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