Agreed. He loves power and abuses it, especially when good people might not notice. I'm just glad he didn't get far in the governor race.

I used to think Harry Drabnik (great name, his "Open Pits" are quite drab, as is his writing style) was the dumbest Reader Columnist, but Phil's usual "the Dem genocide is wonderful" exegesis here AGAIN (as nearly every week) is tiresome & gives Drabnik a run for his money. In answer to the first paragraph's question, "Who would Jesus vote for?", it obviously would not be either Trump nor Harris, since both full-throatedly support Israel's international terrorism (blowing up civilian pagers in Lebanon, killing at least one child, plus the open Palestinian genocide, the bombing of churches, mosques, schools, hospitals, reporter, etc. ad infinitum.) But Phil loves Harris, he won't even admit in passing that funding & supporting a racist genocide is unforgivable. Nice job quoting Zechariah, I'll give you that. But the US gov't. under Harris & Biden has specialized in "oppress[ing] the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner, or the poor." But it is great at endless, failed wars. Oh, & here's a flagrant lie by Phil-- "Republicans have blocked all efforts to control medical costs for decade." OK, this is more a half-truth than total lie. Phil, do you expect all the readers to have forgotten that when the Dem "progressives" in 2020 wanted Medicare for All, that Minnesota's own Amy Klobuchar's unpopular (deservedly) run for President was centered on ONE issue-- basically, "you stupid peasants need to shut up and stop asking for affordable health care!" Oh, like your genocidal hero Joe Biden who said that if M4A came onto his desk as President he would VETO it!! That's oppressing the widow, the poor, etc. I keep reading the Duluth Reader because I still find truth in some of its pages. BOTH letters featured on Oct. 3 were outstanding. Even Ed Raymond acknowledged the Neoliberal (duopoly R/D) "health care" system is execrable compared to every other country. And the "Dumb Politicians Series #21" admits that Harris' 100%+ support for the extermination of the Palestinians is losing her Dem. party votes & might give the election to Trump. So all in all Phil, it seems that your cheerleading for the murderous status quo because "Trump is worse" (a hypothetical at this point) is directly contradicting your mother's advice. Enjoy wallowing in your blinkered hypocrisy & keep cheerleading for more Palestinian, Lebanese, Iranian (etc.) children's deaths funded by the U$, Phil. I don't know how many readers are influenced by you. But at this point (I used to admire you), many of us see right through you.

From what I've seen, a lot of homelessness in America is caused by 2 things: 1) Closure of the mental hospitals 2) the idea that drug and/or alcoholic addicts have to "hit bottom" before they can get well. These 2 things allow a policy of "benign neglect." I saw this first-hand during the covid epidemic, when there were heroin and meth addicts living in my apartment building, not paying rent, who couldn't beevicted because of the covid eviction moritorium. They were not homeless, but they needed to be confined in a hospital. Since the hospitals are closed, they end up in jail or dead.

P.S. the hospitals closed after they came out with psychiatric drugs. The states said, "Oh,
Now we don't need the hospitals anymore, what with psychiatric drugs." But the drugs cause bad side effects. Do you then wonder why mentally ill people then turn to street drugs that also cause bad side effects but make you high? So we need hospitals back again for people when they are psychoyic and then to help them regulate medication when they don't need as much. We need housing and programs for mentally ill people. We have that, but not on the scale we need.

An expert is someone 70 miles from home with an briefcase. -K.V. Earth is less than 25,000 years young.

Wow!! Another Phil Anderson column saying, "Look away from the genocide in Gaza!! There is no genocide in Gaza!" "Biden and Harris aren't sending 2,000 pound 'baby buster' bombs by the 1,000s to murder children or (as we saw last week) to burn a 19-year old civilian in his tent. Phil won't come out and say he loves to see 10% of the population of Gaza murdered with OUR tax money (yes, they are underestimating the dead; if Phil were a betting man I'd bet him $50 that 2 years from now we will know that 240,000 Palestinians (10% of the populace) are now dead. . . Oh, gosh, the US warned Netanyahu that they KNOW that since Israel is blocking ALL food aid from entering Gaza now, and a major famine has started, they have "a month" to start letting aid in, the US won't "officially" endorse the war crime of mass-starving civilians. Hmmmn, a month from now? When the election is over? Where in the unlikely event word-salad, black-man enslaving (to fight fires at 4 cents an hour!) Kamala (who is now losing in the polls) is elected, the genocide can continue as is. Or, if the demon Trump wins, it can ramp up!! Phil doesn't care. He considers Palestinians sub-human, he has never said one word about them in his columns!! I bet if he had the courage of his convictions he would write some columns about how great it is that the whites exterminated the Native people here-- oop, maybe not, there are still some Native people, many, in the area, so that would be going too far even for Phil!! . . . I love when Phil's Trump Derangement Syndrome makes him openly lie. In a column some time back he said (paraphrasing) "No president ever in modern times has divided Americans like Trump!" I'm about 15 years younger than Phil, & I recall directly when Bush Jr. during his holocaust (1,000,000 Iraqis dead, 2 million in exile etc.) "If you're not with us, you're with the Terrorists!" Phil may consider me a "terrorist" since I don't think genocide by my government is something that can simply be ignored like Phil does? Well, fine by me. Oh, the Dems are "better" because they believe in "a woman's right to choose, yeah?" Hmmn, the IDF bombed EVERY IVF clinic in Gaza and the West Bank into smithereens, 1,000s of possible future Palestinians exterminated. Phil is fine with this though, I guess Palestinians & Natives don't rank as human to him. Hey Phil, the holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said, "The opposite of love isn't hate. The opposite of love is indifference." Very impressed with your indifference to the genocide. I'm sure if you had lived in Germany in the 30s & 40s you'd be the same as now: See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil. It never happened if you don't acknowledge it, right Phil?

Perform cranial impaction extraction?

Ha ha ha, Phil. You are a real Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, aren't you? Yo he leido el cuento del Don tragico en el espanyol original, being of Hispanic heritage on my mom's side & having a B.A., Major in Spanish, Minor in History, living in Nicaragua in 1983 & 84 when your beloved hero Reagan was sending Contra terrorists to kill the people, burn down their crops & reinstall the fascist dictatorship, volunteering to pick coffee with good people from Europe, Africa and elsewhere who hate fascism. Oops, didn't mean to offend Phil, you were a troop I know & you "support the troops" obviously, & the slaughter of innocents (women & children in Gaza & the West Bank.) America first, right!? Anyway, I'm calling you Don Quijote because of your utter failure as a columnist. You have NO influence with the public in Wisconsin, in Michigan, or up here in Minnesota!! So despite the fact that you have ignored the Biden-Harris genocide in Gaza, Jerusalem & the West Bank for 13 months, never once in print admitted it was happening, writing weekly columns telling everyone to vote for the senile old segregationist, jailer of 2 generations of poor and non-white people via the "Zero Strikes" policies as well as the man who enslaved millions of people in decades of debt peonage, then you told us to vote for the vicious Prosecutor who protected pedophile Catholic priests in San Francisco-- her predecessor as DA, Terence Hallinan, released the police reports on child rapes to victims' families, she put them in the deep freeze, gotta get that Catholic vote!! Oh, and she kept black men in jail PAST the time they were sentenced and forced them to fight fires for $4 a day, because as a "black" person, she's so pro-Civil rights, right? Oh, & she took political donations from the criminal Con Artist Steve Mnuchin who defrauded thousands of Calif. homeowners during the mortgage bubble & then didn't prosecute him, let him pay a token fine. What integrity! And let's not forget she threatened to put black & Latino poor children cutting classes & their parents in jail!! Well, okay, I'll admit she was/is great at Kissing Up (literally more than kissing, she whored herself out to sleazy Willie Brown, who is 2 years older than her dad!) & Kicking Down to get into politricks. That's the modern American way, obviously something you support. (I lived in the Bay Area from 1989-2021, mostly in Oakland. I followed her from the start.) And somehow the electorate KNEW not to trust her & rejected her overwhelmingly, despite Phil's plaintive sheep bleats!! You're zero for zero Phil. I know it offends you that the Arabs in Michigan (and elsewhere) wouldn't vote for the monsters who have been mass-murdering their relatives despite the "terrible Orange man." Would you ask white people to vote for a candidate who murdered their family members? I think not!! You are a racist and white supremacist, however, your actions of silent approval of the Gaza systematic genocide show it. . . . Now the noble Don Quixote thought he was fighting for justice so his tilting at windmills can be forgiven. (He took his bruised for believing in those patriarchal chivalrous stories. You believe in the "goodness" of skeezy Dem party predators who mass murder women & children.) Shame on you, Phil! There's nothing as sad as an old fool. Glad to see nobody pays attention to your blathering, although I do not look forward to 4 more years of Trump bullshit & MAGA racism. The election proves that people will choose something (even something bad) over nothing! Too bad you wasted all your words by not recognizing that. You have about as much influence as some of the schizophrenic people I see yelling on the street corner downtown where I live. Enjoy it.

Hey, Lady O, you are a pretty solid astrologer as well as a good writer. Although the column you wrote last year about Libras did not even graze me with a finger, this year you really called out some flaws I know I have and struggle with. Superficial!! Yes, gotta watch & check this despite Saturn in Capricorn, 10th house. Self-absorbed much of the time & a "lounge lizard"-- most def the latter when I lived in N'Awlins in my 20s and was seeing great music 3 or 4 nights a week . . . It's tough, but 3 planets in Scorpio (Uranus & Mars conjunct my Sun within 1 degree on the cusp) help me out in some respect. Thanks for your work!! Unlike the dippy old men political writers who write essentially the same column every week (Ed Raymond moments of brilliance despite fixation on sexuality, Phil Anderson "Vote Blue No Matter Who" every week, Harry Welty, a "good Republican" (contradiction in terms) who loves the Cheneys & some war mongering-Dems now, & the Drab Drabnik who hates on trans-people & anyone who aspires to a better world in weekly word salads. Keep up the good work!!

I want to comment on only one letter here, the one from your music writer, evidently, Jill Fisher-- Ms. Fisher, I think we are about the same age, but I want to state unequivocally that I am shocked at your overt Islamophobic racism toward Muslims in saying that while the Democrat party is killing their family members in the tens of thousands in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem that they must support the Dem party which has funded and armed the open genocide against their family members in Palestine for over a year! That is sickening & insensitive beyond belief. I am not Muslim or Arab (although I am Spanish & Sardinian on my mom's side, so my ancestors lived under Islamic civilization for at least 6 centuries.) There's an old joke about musicians which I shared with students who I was forced to teach high school economics to. Evidently it applies to Music writers, also-- "What's the difference between a Savings Bond & a Musician?" In time, a Savings bond will mature and make money!! Your letter is also a sickening insult to me as a person who believes in "Never Again," regarding genocide, a slogan that came out of Nazi Germany after WW II. Not despite, but because of my ugly German last name I have believed in "Never Again!" regarding genocide since my early teens. We currently have 2 corporate controlled & racist, genocidal political parties in the US who are mass murdering Palestinians (funding it & providing the 2,000 lb. "Baby Buster" bombs to kill women, children and civilians in Gaza & the West Bank.) Your childish demand that I abandon my principles-- a pretty basic principle, that would correspond to "Thou Shalt Not Kill" in the Old Testament, which sadly few Christians respect, & the Zionist Jews in Israel who have been destroying Arab villages, stealing land and murdering Arabs for the past 70+ years-- 503 Arab villages razed and emptied in 1948 alone, openly speak against. Do you admire the Israeli defense minister Itamar Ben Gvir who on Oct. 10, 2023 called the Palestinians "human animals" and vowed they would be denied "food, water, electricity" and would be bombed into extinction-- which has been happening and filmed for the past 13 months, with tens of thousands, overwhelmingly civilians, murdered & maimed. If you think this is acceptable or that I want my tax money funding this, you are a monster, not a human being. What gives you the right to tell me to violate my own conscience & ethics and support that? How dare you. As a Latino I lived in Nicaragua after their revolution for 4 months in 1983-84 when Reagan unleashed Contra terrorists (open fascists trying to restore an earlier family dictatorship of the Somozas), who killed civilians, raped women and burned down peoples fields and crops. I don't support endless wars in support of Ethno-Supremacism (and every sane person, including former President Carter, admits Israel is an Apartheid state.)
Nobody died and made you God, as far as I am aware. Write about music if that's what you know. But if you know nothing about history or philosophy (ethics) or human rights (the Nuremberg Conventions, what apartheid is, what the legal obligations of an Occupying power are) maybe you should pipe down & not spit on others' rights. Harris' (& Biden's) genocide is fascism!! Yes, Trump is also a fascist, I don't support him. But how dare you tell people that genocide is fine when Democrats fund & organize it, & will only be bad under Trump. A crime is a crime regardless of who commits it-- this applies to War Crimes (genocide) in Spades. Please grow up. If I can only vote for 2 parties, & both support ethnic cleansing & genocide, how is that a "Democracy." That is a totalitarian nightmare!! You clearly don't respect people of color & that reflects poorly on you. Deliberate genocide is not being "not perfect" it is a war crime under international law. I am hoping that monsters like Blinken, Sullivan and the other Dem. party advocates of Palestinian genocide will face war crimes trials in a decade or so. It happened to Eichmann and other monsters of the Reich. It could happen to those (including Trump if he continues it) if they live long enough. (To be fair, Trump probably won't, Biden won't, & that sick, senile old segregationist gets a mental health pass at this point anyway.)

You need to read the book of Ezekiel.

Love C N C! You should do a daily.

If we would have left Trump alone, he would be on his way out instead of in.

My husband was diagnosed of Parkinson’s Disease a couple of years ago, he had severe fatigue, difficulty with mobility and sleeping. He was placed on Sinemet 3 times daily, which helped but only for a short while. So, we decided to try alternative treatment and began on PD-5 protocol, it has made tremendous difference for my husband, he had improved walking balance, muscle strength and he is now very active. His Parkinson’s is totally under control, we got the treatment from binehealthcenter.com. This treatment is a breakthrough for PWP!

You just sent in a letter with your opinion for what reason? To hopefully sway readers to yuor view? Thats what voting does.

Nicely done. I had the good fortune to take a tour of the space with Bob this past week and it will be magical!

An professional is an person 12 miles from home who hasn't been found out yet . An expert is someone 70 miles from home with an briefcase,AND They will lie. Could you do this for me? Look at yourself in the mirror for me and say, "I will not laugh at myself". An very sincere thank you for any good you may have done in your life, and Every Best Wish to you and your loved ones for the Holiday season. SEMPER FI!

Re the list of Psychopath signs one needs to look in the mirror first .Jesus said "Thou hypocrite ,first cast out the beam out of thine own eye ;and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."Matthew 7:5 We all occasionally exhibit some of those listed and as I have seen ,the Democrats actually are more closely defined in many of your list.why did Kamala and all Democrats lie about Biden's cognitive decline where he never was or is in control of his presidency. and the biggest question is "who is controlling the country"? I'd like an honest answer.

You need more people being nice to you.

Hello Harry. I'd like to hear more about Grandpa Joe. He's my grandpa too! I have a totally different viewpoint! I will be arriving in Grand Marais in August now that I am 65 and retired. Life for me would not come full circle without indoctrinating my grandkids to Minnesota. We would love to invite you to dinner at our lodging.