Fidel et Ali

The death of Fidel Castro conjures up the memories of nearly a lifetime for nearly everyone. And for dissident leftists everywhere, the brutality that comes with dictatorship – no matter how congenial the ideology behind it. But when I see the jubilation of all those pale-faced denizens of Little Cuba, I have to credit Fidel for all the revolution brought to the poorest of the poor on the island nation. Part of the exercise in reminiscence has brought me back to Muhammad Ali and his courageous resistance against the "good old American values" of war and racism. We all knew his quip regarding the Vietcong and name-calling to justify his draft resistance, I'd never heard this poem he read in 1971 on RTÉ.

Trumpland "diversifies"

In naming Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education, Donald J. Trump is guaranteeing that secular U.S. education further declines, producing even more citizens with deficient learning to make reasoned choices for their future. As the NYT reports, DeVos is a militant advocate of vouchers for private and prochial schools, loves charter schools, and has "tried to strip teacher unions of their influence." And, of course, she has the time to do it, since she's married to the heir to the Amway fortune.

Meanwhile, on the diplomatic front, Trump is putting Nikki Haley up for U.N. ambassador. The South Carolina governor has virtually no international experience except if the fact that she's the daughter of immigrants.

But the Groper-in-Chief has diversified his rollout of cabinet choices at the level of gender. And the forces of the politically correct will toil to suppress any criticism, based on the mere fact of Haley and DeVos's sex.