You say Ted Turner became a prophet ... by saying, "Christianity is a religion for losers." How is that a prophet? It just sounds like he resents that there are some things his money can't buy. Maybe he's afraid that the Lord could cut his ego down to size.

You are full of beans. Biden is the best! Quit tearing him down. You sound like a Trump clone.

It doesn't matter that President Biden is 80. He has excellent policies, beneficial to the whole country. He has extensive experience in foreign relations, in Congress, and the White House. He hit the ground running after elected. He doesn't have to do all the work himself, he put good people in his administration who carry out his plans. You know, JFK had a good civil rights plans, but he couldn't get them through Congress. President Johnson was able to get them done because he had the talent to work?with Congress. So please stop with the age stereotypes and look at what President Biden is actually doing.

Classic Drabik. Thanks Harry

Thank you Mr. Raymond. I will quibble with you, however, the reactionary duo of Biden & Trump--both racist, both pro-Financial oligarchy, both committed to preventing Americans from having affordable health care, one deeply committed to endless Failed Neocon wars and the other one feigning anti-war actions while still hating the rest of the world, & proclaiming Late Capitalist U$A as "great" based on keeping out non-whites & non-Christians . . . my disagreement is that they are not Losers, however they are Looters!! They let their donors constantly crush the middle class & poor (afflict the afflicted), & both comfort the comfortable in their Elite "class" or corporate thieves & rapists (see Harvey Weinstein & many other examples. While my contempt for Herr Drumpf is massive, at this point I have more contempt for Biden's hatred for the Dem base & I consider him a bigger hypocrite than even Trump for betraying "his" voters!! I left the Dem. party forever in 2020 when for the 2nd time the corrupt gerontrocratic hacks that run it openly stole the Dem. nomination for senile, shambling & youth hating (War on Drugs for decades, massive debt stuck onto young people going to college that can never be paid off) Biden, the former Delaware "Senator for Mastercard" posing as working class!! The Dimmies just play good cop to the Rape-publicans Bad Cop, but they both work for the same people, destroying any hope for equality or justice in this country and around the world, as well as the natural world itself. Any American who is not Very Rich or very connected who supports either of the clowns you highlight here is either deeply masochistic or brainwashed!! "Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters," as a bard from Hibbing once observed.

M. Schneider should vote for RFK jr., since he seems to like conspiracy theories. President Biden is not a hypocrite, he is down-to-earth. There are still honest people in politics. Delaware is a small state, they can't just raise chickens. When Biden represented Delaware of course he welcomed business to his state like credit card companies. He would be a fool not to.

In the animated episode "The Man Who Killed Batman", Joker refers to Batman's killer as a gunsel, definitely using the 'gunman' definition

What a square

Excellence illustrated! Fantastic writing, Ed!! Thank you.

You appear to be a reader, Mme Grover, so I suspect that you've heard the name, Ernest Hemingway. In the intro to The Green Hills of Africa he refers to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as the single best American novel that he'd read. I suspect that even the members of the Duluth school board might acknowledge that Hemingway knew something about the written word. I don't believe, however, that that would sway their foolish decision.

Honestly i agree with your setiments. While they are both great books, I do not believe that is enough justification to keep it in curriculum. Consider all the other great books that aren't read such as Chaucer, Steinbeck, or as another commenter pointed out Hemingway. There is just not enough time in the school year to go over every single literary classic. And lets be honest here forcing kids to read these books will only make the kids resent them.

There is an eighth book in series coming out in October 2023

Too bad you are unable to recognize talent when you see it. President Biden is a better President than Bernie Sanders could be because not only does he have policies for the common good, he knows how to get it done. He has served in many levels of government and in both legislative and executive branches, plus has much foreign policy experience. He has held this country together at a dangerous time. Sen Sanders is a very forward- thinking man, but Biden has a broader view that we need at this time to hold things together.

While I'm generally fond of Mr. Raymond's writing, this is a rather disappointing sample to me. I just had a good belly laugh at the long list of policies the Dem's claim they will enact because based on the past 3 years they've held the Executive I know that they won't try to enact hardly ANY of them!! Biden ran as a pretend Bernie-lite, after Obama and the Dem thugs stole a 2nd nomination from him as the sleazy criminal Debbie Wasserman Shultz did in 2016. Oh we were going to have affordable Health Care (not!), infrastructure improvement (not-- we only got the "bipartisan" Chamber of Commerce version that the corrupt duopoly of the legacy parties want to continue distributing income "Upward" to our betters, which has been government policy since Reagan came in, at least, with both parties no matter whom we "elect.") What we got instead is an endless quagmire of corruption in shoveling $$$ to Ukraine to kill the "evil" Russians who were our allies in WW II to defeat Hitler, who the Ukranians revere alongside Stepan Bandera-- as just seen a few days ago on Yom Kippur, when the Canadian Parliament gave 2 standing ovations to a 98 year old "Ukranian-Canadian" war criminal who was in the SS from 1943 and wiped out villages full of Polish Jews. . . . Biden breaks strikes (the railroad workers), when areas like E. Palestine Ohio are poisoned by corporate greed or Maui burns down they are deliberately neglected and basically asked to die quietly, but we shovel billion$ to corrupt, literal goose-stepping Nazis in Ukraine. . . yes, the Trump Cult members are mostly dumb and ignorant, but no matter who we vote for of the 2 major parties, the corruption, environmental destruction, endless wars, etc. continue to fail and will never stop. Younger people are right not to vote for any of these thieving monsters, anyone who is not very rich or connected who supports either party is either a masochist or a moron. Way back in the 1960s in the song "Mississipi Goddamn," Nina Simone sang "This whole country is full of lies/ You're all gonna die & you'll die like flies." Not a very cheery message but that seems to be late Imperial failed 21st century "America" all over!! There are things to do that are pro-survival, but voting for ANY politician in the 2 major parties should win you a Darwin award. Our political leadership is toxic and cruel, & it's not really hidden that the massive contempt for education, social safety, peace or ordinary people comes equally from BOTH legacy parties. It can't end well!!

Unlike Bernie Sanders, Ed Raymond. Is a sore loser. Read "Has Bernie Sanders really helped Joe Biden move farther to the left?" by David Smith, The Guardian,, Feb. 27, 2023.

This current kerfuffle aside, Harry Welty is an obnoxious windbag with a long history of dubious judgement and not-even-half-baked politics. The Reader does itself, its other writers, and the community a disservice by indulging his unhelpful, banal rambling.

hear hear- indeed he is a dedicated loser... even more entertaining than his sore windbagging, is witnessing the local democrats turn on each other and start cat fighting for their pick of who will sit on the long-corrupted local board of education... harrys weapon of choice in this battle is the mighty pen which may sound noble, but won't get him very far against the west side connection gang.. especially in the modern era where his writing is less relevant than a rotary telephone instruction manual

its called trump derangement syndrome. i'm sorry you're under the weather, Harry

" You can be good without a god," quotes Ed Raymond.
But if you don't believe in the God of the Bible, then you substitute something else to be your God. Many people today are their own god, and so they fall to the sin of pride, a dead end trap.
Hamlet was not Shakespeare, he was a character created by Shakespeare. We don't know Shakespeare's religious ideas, the scholars disagree on what he believed.

Your first 7 paragraphs where you refer to President Biden, you use 3 propaganda techniques to badmouth him: logical fallacies, transfer, and name-calling. Then you tell a number of just plain lies about him. Could it be that you don't really have any valid criticisms so that's why you have to resort to double-talk?