Editorial

A Franklin County map from 1892 of “ancient earthworks,” or Native American burial mounds and other structures, may show that Shrum Mound on the near West Side does have a sibling mound nearby, after all.

The map, uncovered by fringe historian and author Fritz Zimmeran, is pictured above with an arrow pointing to two mounds. One of those dots is believed to be Shrum Mound (pictured on right), which is on present-day McKinley Avenue. It is one of region’s last remaining conical Native American burial mounds. The Ohio History Connection believes it was constructed by the Adena people 2,000 years ago and possibly homage to a distant mountain.

No doubt, map making from the late 1800s was an imperfect task. Nevertheless, the map suggests there are two Adena burial mounds off McKinley Avenue, as amateur historians have speculated for decades. They have dubbed the second mound “Quarry Mound” (pictured on left) and Shrum Mound stands stoically in a small public park on the banks of the quarry roughly three hundred feet away.

Corporations are obsessed with their public image, intensely concerned with how they appear to both customers and prospective customers alike. And for some corporations, good community relations are also vital. One example of a Central Ohio corporation which has strived to establish community relations is the Honda Motor Corporation, which has one major plant in the region.

Honda has brought thousands of decent jobs to our area, albeit non-union. But you may not be aware of their civic engagement. For example, Honda partnered in the completion of a much-needed domestic violence shelter for Delaware City. They are the largest annual sponsor of Columbus’s Festival Latino, which draws nearly 200,000 people over two days. And they are the major sponsor of the Ohio Wildlife Center and Hospital in Dublin.

On a national level, Honda is working directly to aid in areas such as environmental management, waste reduction, renewable energy, and reduction of CO2. They also make their environmental reports and goals publicly available.

I was asked by a friend and Progressive Democrat of America (PDA) Fellow Traveler to share my thoughts on how PDA will respond to yestersday's election results.  Here's what I wrote:

Tuesday’s election results were dire, but now is not the time for progressives to retreat. American society will be best served by a progressive movement that plays strong defense and offense.

Progressives must continue to be vigilant in defending democracy, the rule of law, and the constitutional republic. In order to be most effective on these matters, we should maintain our recent alliance with liberals and conservatives of conscience.

We must also lead in protecting the environment and vulnerable communities, both at home and abroad.  

On Tuesday evening October 29, 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at the Ellipse, supplanting—with unifying oratory— Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric that prompted an attack on the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. Advocating a platform that both protects and expands freedoms, Harris has donned the mantle of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

During the 2024 Democratic National Convention, most media interpreted the repetition of “freedom” as a reclamation of that word from the Republican Party. But what I heard was FDR’s "Four Freedoms Speech," and I still do. That speech was President Roosevelt’s State of the Union address presented to a joint session of Congress on January 6, 1941. Yes, precisely 80 years prior to Donald Trump’s Outrage on the Ellipse and inside the selfsame Capitol Building where MAGA followers tried violently to usurp power. In addition to defining democratic freedoms, Roosevelt denounced dictatorial tyranny in his address, making his words from that January 6th resonate today as a rebuttal to Trumpism.

I expose MAGA hypocrisy on everything from abortion, the ten commandments and the deficit to poverty, gun control and immigration.

I've heard you MAGAs. Unlike me-first Americans, you aren't driven by the desire for prosperity and personal recognition. What motivates you are your deeply held beliefs and patriotic fervor, or so you say. Well, I'm not convinced. I don't believe your convictions are as strong as you claim. I think you often say one thing, do another and act like hypocrites.

Take, for instance, those of you who are religious. You say your goal as Evangelicals is to promote biblical ideals. But your leader is Donald Trump and his conduct has been about as unbiblical as it can get. He's abused, betrayed, cheated, coerced, deceived, harassed and threatened “friends,” acquaintances, business cronies, supporters, adversaries, relatives, mistresses, and wives.

I know. You religious MAGAs don't like being called hypocrites. Here's my advice. Find a leader who keeps at least one of the Ten Commandments before you have them displayed in public school classrooms across the US.

President Trump will go down in history as the US President who told the most lies. He spews lies like a slot machine spits out nickels. Trump should be the last person to complain about fake news and quit calling the US media the enemy of the American people.

Politico reported that Trump lied on average every five minutes over the course of 4.6 hours of speeches and press conferences. 

The Huffington Post recorded that he told 71 lies over the course of just one town hall event. However, 

The Washington Post reported in July 2020 that President Trump made over 20,000 "false or misleading claims." This amounts to an average of 23 false claims a day. (A polite way to describe lies.)

Here is my favorite 7 lies of Trump with my response:

1- President Donald Trump has lied for several years that he was honored as "Man of the Year." The truth is, he received only a plaque as a thank gesture for speaking at a Michigan Republican dinner in 2013.

We are living in a golden age of humorous political commentary. This is not surprising, given the abundant comic material oozing from every pore of the American body politic these days. From Donald Trump’s bizarre declarations about illegal immigrants (“They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats!”) to Kamala Harris’ indigestible word salads (“It’s time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day”), from Marjorie Taylor Greene’s befuddled culinary claims (“Pelosi’s Gaspacho Police [are] spying on members of Congress”) to Tim Walz’s addled declarations (“I’ve become friends with school shooters”), the comedy quotient in American public life has never been higher.

Just days ago at a rally in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump said: “Your child goes to school and they take your child. It was a he and comes back a she. And they do this. And they do it, and often without parental consent.” It is, of course an absurdist lie, now repeated more times than you might believe. The claim is so non-credible that we should wonder why Trump is employing it. The probable answer lies in the race for US Senate in Ohio.

Long before Trump imagined that American children are given sex-change operations at school, the race between Sherrod Brown and car-salesman Bernie Moreno for the US Senate in Ohio devolved to blaring accusations that “Brown backed allowing children to receive sex change surgery.” This too, of course, is a lie except in the technical sense that some children are born with conditions that require procedures to resolve gonadal ambiguity as part of standard health care, obviously with parental consent.

A sociopath is a person whose behavior is antisocial, often criminally greedy, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility, empathy or social conscience. Sociopaths never sincerely apologize nor are they capable of exhibiting remorse for wrongs that they have committed.

 A narcissist is person who has an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration, sexual gratification, applause and a lack of empathy for others.

A paranoid person or group exhibits excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of other individuals or groups.

 A megalomaniac is a pathological egotist, someone with a psychological disorder who exhibits symptoms like delusions of grandeur and an obsession with greatness, power or wealth.

A xenophobe is a person who is fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or of people from different countries or cultures.

A demagogue is a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument.

I predict that Israel will create an “October Surprise”event attack with the intent of swinging the election to Trump prior to the November election. The term October Surprise originated after Iran took American Embassy personal hostage in 1979 after overthrowing tyrannical Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In that event, the Reagan campaign committed treason by negotiating with Iran to hold the American hostages until after Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter by offering them a better deal for badly needed airplane parts and other military equipment. History sometimes repeats itself. Expect Israel to attack Iran in a big way during this month of October. This will force Kamala Harris to take a position, losing either Muslim voters or Jewish voters in the process.