I like vengeance as much as the next guy, if the next guy likes vengeance a whole lot.

If there is ever a fascist takeover in America, it will come not in the form of storm troopers kicking down doors but with lawyers and social workers saying. "I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Forests are breaking out all over America. New England has more forests since the Civil War. In 1880, New York State was only 25 percent forested. Today it is more than 66 percent. In 1850, Vermont was only 35 percent forested. Now it's 76 percent forested and rising. In the south, more land is covered by forest than at any time in the last century. In 1936 a study found that 80 percent of piedmont Georgia was without trees. Today nearly 70 percent of the state is forested. In the last decade alone, America has added more than 10 million acres of forestland.

Republican politics have been off-kilter for several years now because a large segment of the conservative base does not look back fondly on the Bush presidency.

Keep in mind that Eric Alterman is media critic for The Nation-a hysterically left-wing magazine dedicated to the proposition that corporate America, U.S. foreign policy and the Republican Party are criminal, racist or both. The simple reality is that, for him, the Democratic Party is far too conservative.

We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young.

The problem is I think Howie is exactly right, is that Donald Trump would rather be at the center of a media controversy in a negative way than allow the limelight to move to Hillary Clinton and let her actually take heat in the public - in a public arena. And it just sucks up all of the oxygen.