Shut Up

At the risk of the invitation to take my own medicine, I offer a short list of people currently speaking a lot who shouldn't.

-- This item at Mediaite notes that former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, two grandfathers who have recently been pointing out how each other "should be" handled and how they'd be the ones to do it, share ten Vietnam-era draft deferments between them. Trump's were for bone spurs and Biden's were for asthma.

-- Parkland, FL, high school student David Hogg went through an awful thing when a gunman shot and killed 17 of his fellow students. His response has been to call for regulations on guns, especially the type of gun used by the shooter at his school. That's an established policy position which he has every right to advocate -- in fact, if it's what he believes he has an obligation to do so. But when he starts in with lines like "our parents don’t know how to use a ****ing democracy, so we have to," he sounds like he ought to ditch the lecture tour for some time in class. History would probably be good, and maybe English, because the interview at The Outline suggests he doesn't know a lot of adjectives.

-- Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, who is retiring this year because it looked like he would have a pretty tough time winning the Republican nomination for his re-election, let alone the general election, is giving his well-coiffed mane a scratch or two over the idea of challenging President Trump for that nomination in 2020. You have to wonder: If you are stepping down because the voters of your own state's party organization want to vote for someone else, why would you do any better in a national primary?

-- Karen McDougal, a woman who claims she and President Trump had an affair back in 2006, was asked in an interview what she would say do the President's wife, Melania Trump, if given the opportunity. She said she would say she was sorry, and that "I wouldn't want it done to me." You wonder if she would want her spouse's hypothetical lover to offer details about the affair on national television, but that's not nearly as bad a thing to do, apparently. Blogger Ann Althouse is a little tougher on her than that, for what it's worth.

-- The President, of course, should start thinking more before speaking and should stop tweeting altogether.