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Good Morning.

Yesterday the president of the United States engaged anew in his favorite pastime of name-calling. Little boys used to have their mouths cleansed with a bar of soap, but this guy, an amply-grown adult in a seven-year-old schoolyard bully mind, would need a truckload of Proctor and Gamble to make any sort of impression on him.

We began learning about his penchant to assign unflattering modifiers during the 2016 Republican primary debates. He literally drooled with delight when he dressed down the other candidates, not by challenging them on the issues - which he knew nothing about - but through adjectival humiliation: Low Energy Jeb, Little Marco, and Lyin' Ted. The only woman in the field was told that she was too unattractive to be on the same stage with him, this predator who creeps up on anyone for whom he lusts even in passing. On the other side of the aisle we had Crooked Hillary and Crazy Bernie, and by association, a senator he named Pocohontas. He also attacked Megyn Kelly, Mika Brzezinski, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, and Bill Kristol, a nice sampling of liberals and conservatives from the American press corps. Every newspaper in the country from The New York Times to The Des Moines Register was failing, and every story reported by anyone was fake. Senator John McCain wasn't a war hero because he got captured, this nasty jab from a man who avoided the draft because of a bone spur. Obama, of course, wasn't even an American.

The current president has insulted the mayor of London and various members of the Supreme Court. He has repeatedly taunted the leader of North Korea who would like to bomb the United States out of existence and called him his pet name of Little Rocket Man even during a speech at the United Nations which he has also disparaged as irrelevant. More recently he has referred to his former political strategist as Sloppy Steve and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee as Sneaky Diane. The only requirement for admittance to his club is to be a news maker; he cannot abide anyone who upstages him, and nobody on earth has an ounce of credibility but Himself.

Yesterday he hit a new low, even for him, when he went after the countries of Central America and the entire continent of Africa with a term that is usually bleeped out on television, although some commentators last evening were spitting it out left and right for all to hear, including, probably, some children. I could imagine the parents scrambling to change the channel, at least the ones who didn't vote for him and whose heads have been shaking in disbelief over the past two years at his relentless unseemliness. The others I wonder about. They know he likes to incite people at his rallies, even encouraging the use of violence. They know he's a serial womanizer. They know he won't release his taxes. They know he hired family members to work in the White House. They know he blows off the intelligence community as incompetent. They know that several former members of his Administration, including a three-star general in charge of National Security, are either under indictment or have plead guilty to lying to the FBI that he regards as pathetic. They know, of late, that he doesn't go to work until close to noon and quits in time to have his cheeseburger at 6:30. They know he prefers to splash and play at one of his resorts when he should be reading up on issues like, say, crumbling bridges and trade agreements. And they know that more than anything, he likes to mock other human beings, even entire countries of human beings. The lack of maturity is utterly stupefying but even more alarming is that a certain segment of the population obviously thinks his behavior is acceptable and even amusing.

Best regards,

Elisabeth