Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Fort Mackinac (on Mackinac Island) with storm brewing overhead. Click to enlarge.

Do these individuals have nothing better to do with their time (and energy) than to delude themselves into thinking that Donald Trump won't be the Republican nominee for president? They live in Cloud Cuckoo Land! Hell hath no fury like an elitist scorned. Their dreams of open borders, free trade, and American military intervention abroad have been shot to hell by the people. The people! That's what really burns their asses. The people—hicks, hayseeds, yahoos, rubes, hillbillies, crackers, and rednecks—are supposed to accept whomever the elites anoint. Those days are over, and not a moment too soon. The elites will bitch and moan about their loss of power, but eventually they will either disappear from view or get right with Donald. (I don't care which.) In the meantime, I'm enjoying the hell out of the bitching, moaning, moral preening, and self-deluding.

Addendum: William Kristol continues to beclown himself. I'm dead serious when I say that I'm having a ball with this stuff. Grown men, acting like two-year-olds.

Nobody should be able to go uphill this fast.

The man quoted in this story says that exercising is useless as a way of losing weight. Instead, he claims, one should eat less (i.e., ingest fewer calories). Why must it be one or the other? Exercising is a great way to lose weight (or, put differently, to keep one's weight down). I ride my bike 136.8 miles per week at a pretty high rate of speed. That burns about 7,600 calories, which equals 2.16 pounds.

Another way to look at it is as follows: If I kept my caloric intake the same and stopped riding altogether, I'd gain 2.16 pounds per week! What the man should have said is that if you're going to exercise, exercise. Don't think that walking around the block a couple of times a week, or sitting on a stationary bike for 30 minutes twice a week, or playing softball once a week, or going bowling or dancing once a week, is going to counteract pizza, ice cream, cake, pie, beer, doughnuts, chocolate, soft drinks, hamburgers, hot dogs, and potato chips.

Body weight is a function of three things: (1) calories ingested; (2) calories expended; and (3) metabolism. (The older you get, the slower your metabolism.) People are fatter than ever because (1) they lack the self-control to say no to calorie-rich foods and (2) exercising is hard. One reason people lack self-control is that we are bombarded with images of delicious, cheap, calorie-rich foods. Don't believe me? Watch television for just one hour, on any channel. It takes more willpower to keep the weight off in 2016 than it did in, say, 1916, or even 1966. If willpower is constant (human nature is what it is) and temptation is ever increasing, then succumbing to temptation will increase. And there you go: an explanation of the obesity epidemic.

You are artistic and others can relate to you.

I have only four words to say to the likes of Stephen Hayes, George Will, William Kristol, John Podhoretz, Peter Wehner, and Jonah Goldberg: "Ginsburg," "Breyer," "Sotomayor," and "Kagan." Now shut up and get right with Donald.

Next Democrat cause: rock-control laws.

Duke (1980). This song was written (and sung) by drummer Phil Collins, who is ridiculously talented.

Here is something for the "scientists discover what everybody has always known" file (encapsulated in the expression, "Women and children first"). Note that science, by its nature, can never supply us with values or ends. All it can do is inform us of how things are, including how humans are (either by nature or as socialized), including how humans think, talk, and behave. The moral question, as opposed to the scientific question, is whether there is a relevant difference between men and women that justifies differential treatment of the sort identified by the researchers.

To the editor:

You state that Trump is a “loud-mouth huckster who managed to con his way into the nomination.” (["]GOP leaders made a deal with the devil, and now they are feeling the heat,” editorial, June 7)

Trump did not con his way into becoming the presumptive Republican nominee for president but was voted into that position by millions of American citizens. By supporting him, they have given their personal stamp of approval on bigotry, racism and misogyny (to say the least).

Personally, a single Trump does not frighten me, but knowing that there are millions of them in America is quite unsettling. I had thought we had come so far over the past 50 years but obviously, even at 53 years of age, I am quite naive about the mindset of many Americans.

Shari O’Connell, Santa Monica

Note from KBJ: What's unsettling to me is that there may be more than one Shari O'Connell.