I’LL BE CREEPING UP ON MY 96TH BIRTHDAY by the time the 2024 Election rolls around, and a lot can happen between now and then. But that election remains one of my several goals of the moment.

And fear not. While I can’t find a handy hook on which to hang a blog each and every week, I can still remember quite clearly making strawberry ice cream up on Willow Street during the winter of 1932-’33. We packed snow in lieu of ice into the hand-cranked freezer. Dementia is not a requirement of aging.

AS JUNETEENTH WAS PASSING BY recently, one writer observed: “The Grand Old Party is like the Boy Who Cried Wolf. It has churned through so many wild allegations against the ‘Biden crime family’ that its moment of self-righteous indignation risks getting lost in the noise.” He was referring to the GOP’s attempt to make Hunter Biden’s early drug use and gun-purchase application more of an attention detour as ex-President Trump faces a 37-issue felony arraignment centering on classified government documents.

And, lashing out after his arraignment on federal charges last week, Trump took aim at President Joe Biden and Democrats with language that seemed to evoke another era: Trump said he was being persecuted by “Marxists” and “communists.” One headline read: “Trump and other Republicans conjure a familiar enemy in attacking Democrats as ‘communists.’”

As a Free Press in general pointed out, “Trump has used the labels since he first appeared on the political scene, but it lately has become an omnipresent attack line that also has been deployed by other Republicans. The rhetoric is both inaccurate and potentially dangerous because it attempts to demonize an entire party with a description that has long been associated with America's enemies.

“Experts who study political messaging say associating Democrats with Marxism only furthers the country's polarization — and is simply wrong: Biden has promoted capitalism and Democratic lawmakers are not pushing to reshape American democracy into a communist system.”

In a rambling verbal assault recently at one of his golf clubs, ex-President Donald described Biden supporters as ”thugs, misfits and Marxists.” His blathering also refers vaguely to some non-existent glorious past of his own — as he throws trust in public forgetfulness into his bag of lies . . . and also attempts to snap up young voters who were only 12 years or so old when he first ran for office.

Which reminds me of attempts to make young Republicans of students in their early years of education by Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. I am probably best described as one of her critics from 2016 forward, including the nation's teachers unions, to whom she was a stone-cold villain who famously suggested guns belong in some schools (to fend off bears), who needed the vice president's vote to survive confirmation and who spent four years disparaging American public education — rather than fighting to improve it.

Which also leads my memory to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke of Trump’s early years of office. One CNN report on the Internet states: Former Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his then-chief of staff repeatedly lied to federal investigators about conversations they had with lobbyists, etc. Zinke left his post in the Trump administration in late 2018, after multiple ethics investigations into his conduct.

Trump states off-hand today that he only appointed “the best people” — and pushes on to more current lies . . . and propagandistic sloganeering,

MEANWHILE, the Supreme Court seems to be paving the way for Trump, who appointed many of its members.

Recent opinions appear to favor, in a thinly-disguised way, white supremacists, the well-to-do, a narrow version of sexuality. While President Joe Biden recently was denied the cancellation of student debt by the court, he continues to seek democratic equality under the U.S. Constitution in the days ahead. He stated that the Supreme court has leaked “long-standing laws that protect all Americans against discrimination in public accommodations—including people of color, people with disabilities, people of faith, and women.”

I agree with Biden and hope to have more on the subject in weeks ahead.

One hears a lot of late about the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It addresses many aspects of citizenship and the rights of citizens. The most commonly used — and frequently litigated — phrase in this amendment is "equal protection of the laws," which figures prominently in a wide variety of landmark cases,

IN THE BACKGROUND, Donald continues to work on plans to pardon himself after the same 2024 election.