Mort Report is a labor of love by old-style correspondents with lifetimes on the road and young ones with fresh eyes. Our philosophy is simple: we report at first hand with analysis based on non-alternative fact, not opinion. If we get something wrong, we fix it.
PARIS — Back in America, that hapless adjective, incredible, sheds its beaten down cliché status to take back its original meaning: You can't freaking believe it. Spin the globe and point anywhere. Then just zero in on East Asia.
A Cloud-Cuckoo president embraces the wrong Korea, trashes crucial allies and chest-bumps China toward armed conflict. Yet he diverts America's lone aircraft carrier in Asian-Pacific waters toward a crippling war in Iran he spectacularly lost months ago.
It no longer matters whether Donald Trump is Hitler, Caligula or Bozo the Clown. He has exploited cupidity and stupidity to amass personal billions while reshaping America's 250-year-old democracy into his own despotic image.
And now he has lost his last marbles.
Robert Reich was probably America's best-ever labor secretary. Now 80, he is a gifted economist and an indefatigable educator. He just sounded an alarm that far too many Americans will ignore:
"Trump’s mind has gone. He is capable of doing almost anything, and evidently the people around him are unable to control him. (He) constitutes a clear and present danger to the United States. The 25th amendment must be invoked, or he needs to be impeached and convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors. Now."
Exactly. And both cabinet and Congress members who spurn their oaths of office must be held to account. The right to a fair vote is the only way a representative democracy can survive. Use it or lose it.
Late in 2004, Ukrainians stormed Kyiv streets and stayed three months in the bitter cold until they forced the declared winner of a corrupt election to back down. Look what they have suffered since February 2022, and they have no intention to back down.
Americans only need to stand up, inform themselves with observable hard facts from trusted sources and then herd persuadable people to the polls.
Nothing sways Trump's Kool-Aid cultists or rich people bent on increasing their fortunes while so many others suffer. They make up less than a third of the electorate. At least that many would walk barefoot over hot coals to thwart him.
Only a fraction of the remaining 40 percent would be enough to overwhelm Republican voter suppression, their gusher of money and their dirty tricks in an outmoded Electoral College. Then a new majority can begin depoliticizing the judiciary.
Congressional control by Democrats and Independents would prevent Republicans from declaring martial law before 2028 with some trumped up version of the Nazis' 1933 Reichstag fire.
Who should then run for president? I'd vote for Sarah Palin provided Tina Fey shows up to do the job. For, the focus is now on November midterms only weeks away.
PARIS — Tommy Tuberville, a 71-year-old Alabama cracker elected to the U.S. Senate after too many hits to the head on football fields, recently told Fox "News" that Dr. Anthony Fauci "killed or was involved in the killings of nine million people."
An AI check helpfully called that "a claim the network said was unproven and lacked supporting evidence." Ya think? When people like that serve in Congress, a dis-United States is the polar opposite of a representative democracy.
For three hours, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky forced a man America should revere to invoke the Fifth Amendment 111 times lest some slip of the tongue — or any remark inquisitors could twist — enable faithless Republicans to burn him at the stake.
Every Republican on his committee echoed his bogus charges. Afterward, Paul skirted normal procedure to demand Fauci be prosecuted for contempt of Congress, possibly imprisoned. "One million died, and I think they deserve the truth," he said.
The man is a pathetic little pissant. I've spent decades watching dipshits savage truth for self-glorification. Consider established fact and the wider implications of faithless lawmakers, then judge for yourself.
