The third Democrat debate is this week. Thank God, there’s just 10 candidates left. That’s what you’d think, but there are really nearly 20 still in the mix.

The past week or so saw the president engage in virtually all the traits making him unfit for office. Maybe the only one we didn’t see was his predatory sexual nature. All the rest, narcissism, corruption, racism, treason, etc., were on full display.

Once, there was a poet. I think the name was Joyce Kilmer. The poem started something like this:

Oh, unpredictable nature. Haven’t we come far enough that we can predict with accuracy what these giant 300-mile-in-diameter weather systems will do?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren isn’t directly responsible for the deaths of nine in Dayton, Ohio. The shooter was a fan of “Liz.”

Time for everyone’s favorite topic: tax-increment financing. Cut this column out, and keep it beside the bed, available in case of insomnia. Or use it to induce paralysis and stupor in case of zombie attack.

The United States is under a severe, ongoing terrorist attack. You probably think I’m going to talk about the white-nationalist scourge we are currently suffering, but, while that is a factor in it, that’s not the offensive I am going to describe.

Last weekend saw a confluence of three of the most pressing problems facing this nation: guns, immigration and hate. As typical, our president played golf during the tragedies, and then offered a tepid, at best, response that addressed none of them with any degree of adequacy whatsoever.

Growing up, I played just about every sport that included a ball of some sort. The single rule in all of them is “Keep your eye on the ball.”

What did I tell you about Congressmen Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff? I told you they’re unwittingly on my team.

There are two types of invention recognized in the patent office. There are useful things, and decoration. A clever person can invent a new bulb for lamps, or some new ornament for a lamp, and have patents issued.

I believe those residing on the right side of the fence are better politically educated and less polluted by a biased and calculated media. And I’m surprised that “The Squad” matters much at all to anyone, with two dozen contenders vying to face President Donald Trump.

With the death last week of former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, America lost one of its giants of jurisprudence. Serving from 1975 to 2010, Stevens was the third-longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court.

Congratulations to the Deltona City Commission. They are learning what people think of them, hearing about it in great detail. There are still towns in which the ancestry of the commissioners is uncertain, but Deltona is no longer among their number.

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

My two wonderful granddaughters are biracial. When my older granddaughter, Maysen, was almost 3, we were reading “The Ugly Duckling.” I didn’t remember that the ugly duckling was black, and the other ducklings were yellow.

Last week, I wrote about a Gallup Poll showing how Americans’ pride in our country has been diminishing in the Drumpf era. Sunday, we were provided with the first event since the 2016 election worthy of pride in what our country has produced on the international stage.

Just a couple of months ago, County Council Chair Ed Kelley was going around the county telling people that he was not bright enough to come up with a Plan B in case the sales-tax increase failed. Well, this is a rare occasion, but I have to accuse him of honesty.

Happy birthday, America. I hope this next year is your best one yet.

So, we won’t have a question on the census form asking if the respondent is an American citizen.

As we celebrate American democracy on the Fourth of July, we should celebrate and reinforce our support for freedom of the press.

If you are a loyal MSNBC/CNN viewer or if you subscribe to The New York Times and/or lesser liberal rags, you’re certain that the top five or six Democrats vying for the nomination can defeat President Donald Trump in the popular vote and, most importantly, in the Electoral College in 2020. …

A couple of stories in the news this week were even more concerning than the usual, ongoing train wreck of this administration. Neither had to do with the issues taking place in the Persian Gulf.

When my son was a little guy, Ron Howard made a film that was the definitive movie on firefighting. The Backdraft poster was on my son’s wall as long as he had a room in our home.

Learning something in Deltona

Devoted readers of this column (all five of you) will know I have long held the belief it will be women and kids who will save this country. A Pew Research Center poll prior to the 2018 midterm elections shows Democrats had better have the right answers and policies to do so, because they ar…

Mueller, Mueller, Mueller. He spoke. Some heard something very different from what I heard.

He’s now in full denial mode — it was only some “well-meaning” staffer who did it. But his chief of staff is now on record saying it was OK by him, and it would be “silly” to fire anyone over it.

I attended the joint special meeting of the DeLand City Commission and the Downtown Community Redevelopment Agency May 28.

For die-hard traditionalists May 30 was, is, and always will be, the real Memorial Day.

Every once in a while an email hits my inbox turning the tables on me. I’m talking about a reader who makes me sit back and think.

Game of Thrones has captured the fancy of the American viewing public as nothing has in a generation. The novels that spawned the series have now sold more than 90 million copies worldwide.

Today, I have some good news. It turns out that some criminals do change their ways. Departing from their evil habits, they reform themselves.

I remember walking into school one morning and realizing my best friend and I weren’t friends anymore.

It’s women, mothers and the kids who are going to save this country if it is salvageable. That is just as true at the state and local levels as it is nationwide.

I won’t be voting on the half-cent sales surtax. I decided that I don’t trust the current and future politicians to spend the money wisely, but I did recommend voting for the tax in a previous column. I’m in a predicament, wouldn’t you say?

It looks so good in the adverts. They show a nice, big, juicy burger, piled high and tasty. So, there is naturally some disappointment when you see the actual deliverables.

Plenty of competent legal minds have read The Mueller Report. With the exception of a small cadre of political henchmen surrounding the president, the general consensus is, were he not president, he would have been indicted on multiple counts of felony obstruction of justice.

I am truly baffled by the negative response to the proposed half-cent sales tax.