Tea and Vitriol

 Isn't it rich? Are we a pair? Me here at last on the ground, you in midair. Where are the clowns? Isn't it bliss? Don't you approve? One who keeps tearing around one who can't move. But where are the clowns? Send in the clowns. Just when I stopped opening doors, finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours. Making my entrance again with my usual flair. Sure of my lines, but no one is there. Don't you love farce? My fault, I fear. I thought that you wanted what I want. Sorry, my dear. But where are the clowns? Quick, send in the clowns. Don't bother, they're here. Isn't it rich? Isn't it queer? Losing my timing this late in my career. But where are the clowns? There ought to be clowns. Well, maybe next year. "Send in the Clowns" was the most famous song in the musical "A Little Night Music." It was about numerous people of the demimonde whose timing was off throughout their lives. Sort of like The Donald's second presidenti...

Let me state for the record that I am a lapsed Catholic. I survived the ordeal of a Catholic education and walking through the penguin compound at zoos still makes me nervous. However, I will argue to my dying day that people have the right to practice their religion even if I do not subscribe to them. It is a right enshrined in our own Bill of Rights in the Constitution. This, however, does not give practitioners of various religions the right to harangue people in order to proselytize them or to preach politics from the pulpit, which I have seen only too often during political campaigns in Rochester, New York and I can safely assume it occurs elsewhere as well. This violates the principal of separation of church and state. Violators and their churches can lose their tax-free status if caught. But I do not consider talking about peace, ending the violence and bloodshed of wars or constraining elected political leaders to behave with more modesty, humility, humanity, decency and approp...