BETWEEN GOD AND GAIA

Representative Tim Walberg of Michigan (R) said last week he believed in climate change, but he is also a Christian who believes that God would take care of us if it were to become a “real problem.”  Tim and climate-change deniers generally should be informed that God is currently busy putting out the seven supernovae fires in the Arp 220 Galaxy and has turned Earth’s management over to Gaia.  No friend of her chief tormentor, the goddess may be expected to use all her considerable defenses against us featherless bipeds as we continue to spew CO2 into the atmosphere.  So count on more violent weather the likes of which we’ve never seen, and a hot time on the old globe tonight.

I am not a scientist, but I did go to weather school full time for six months.  That was at Chanute Air Force Base, Rantoul, Illinois, back in 1951-1952, preparation for what was to be my job during the Korean War: a rawinsonde operator serving the weather needs of our combat pilots.

If I remember one thing from that six months of marching to and from school in the prairie winter cold, it was Master Sergeant Bryant, our teacher, telling us every Monday morning when class began: “Remember, don’t confuse weather with climate.  Weather is local, climate is global. Weather is today. Climate is longer than you’ll live.”

That made sense to me then, as it does now.  Not, apparently, to our President, most Republicans, Fox News, and the overwhelming majority of Trumpenproles—a malignant minority overall that’s fond of flaunting every surprise snowstorm in May as proof global warming is a hoax and the climate scientists are wrong. 

No, they are not wrong.  Let me dredge up some basics from what I remember of my Air Force education.  Even then—1952—global warming was taught to us as aknown fact.  The culprits were CO2, methane, unburnt hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen, particulate matter, etc., vented into the atmosphere where it formed a canopy that trapped heat that would normally be sent back into space through terrestrial radiation.  The man-made source of the pollutants mostly came from fossil fuel consumption in industrialized nations, rising steadily and dramatically ever since the Industrial Revolution began.  The cumulative effect was to heat the earth itself, most importantly the oceans which retain more heat and retain it longer than land.  Warm oceans evaporate, sending skyward warm air that is able to house more water vapor in the process; rising moist warm air collides with descending colder air; add to the mix the motive power provided by winds and ocean currents prompted by the earth’s rotation, not to mention orographic lift and...well, we get weather—familiarly known to us as rain, hail, snow, sleet, fog, storm, lightening, thunder, gales, twisters,  cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons.   If severe enough, they bring us flood or drought and more human misery.

Satellite photos show an alarming shrinking of earth’s polar ice caps, decades-old plane crashes in the high Andes are ghoulishly revealed in the melt, oceans rise, crops fail, storms increase in frequency and intensity, record floods wreak havoc on communities, and the warming permafrost waits to release its carbon stash.

How can climate change deniers ignore the visual and experiential evidence?  And claim it is due to natural climate cycles, not caused by human activity?  Whatever, they do, at our collective peril.

Initially, I thought climate change deniers should be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.”  Then I softened.  They were probably acting out of ignorance rather than malice; their direct contribution to the problem was likely no more than the carbon dioxide they emit whenever they exhale.  What they lacked was an education in the subject.  But that also posed a problem.  While not as daunting as quantum mechanics, meteorology could still be challenging for the science-shy among us. 

Then it hit me!  Why not appeal to the innate logic gifted to our species.  OK.  Here goes.  What if, against all scientific evidence to the contrary, Representative Walberg is right and global warming is caused not by our man-made carbon canopy, but rather by God’s...uh...oversight...or his will!  And Gaia is playing defense.  Shouldn’t we rush to her aid out of enlightened self-interest?  If we continue in our current wanton ways and add even more CO2 to God’s up-cycle dump, we’ll almost certainly pass into extinction...like the Dodo bird.

So let’s go on the attack and actively try to reduce CO2 by our own actions.  Go green...if that’s what it takes.  Take the initiative and compensate for others’ ruinous excessesTry to save our own hides.

Makes sense to me.  How about you?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t to our reichsleiter, Herr Trump, who, after peevishly pulling us out of the Paris Accords (had to, Obama put us in), gave his go-ahead blessings to the oil and coal industries to burn on. 

Utter madness!  Is he playing some kind of weird, lose/lose variation of Pascal’s Wager with the laws of probability?  You know, you see a guy with revolver in hand, about to play Russian Roulette and you rush over to stop him before he pulls the trigger; he waves you off, and with a superior smile says, “Don’t worry, one of the chambers is empty.”

Descent into a Maelstrom

Help Me!  I’ve fallen and cannot reach my short sword.  Yes, I’m contemplating seppuku. I’m that depressed.  I didn’t think I could descend this low in the reign of Trump, but his just-completed trip abroad has sent me hurtling deeper into the maelstrom. And the bottom still is not in sight. 

Of course, Trump’s lickspittle lackeys (most Republicans and the brighter dull-normal Trumpenproles who watch Fox News) are touting the trip as a great success.  Sure, the Saudis gave Trump a Caliph’s welcome with the attendant pomp and pageantry.  (Authoritarians get along well with authoritarians, don’t you know.)

Then it was on to Israel, where, with the exception of Trump blurting out confirmation that Israeli intelligence was the source of our knowledge of ISIS’s laptop bomb-making capability, things went smoothly enough.  And Netanyahu gets high marks in Diplomacy 1A for his frozen smile during his guest’s unwelcome revelation that he passed along the info to the Russians.  (Thugs get along famously with fellow thugs, don’t you know.)

The Vatican?  No better than a perfunctory draw, from what I saw.  Pope Francis looked ill at ease with Trump, while our reichsleiter, rightly so, looked as comfortable as a whore in church.  Only with Melania (a Catholic, I assume) did the pontiff look his warm and loving self.

Next it was Brussels for the NATO meeting and...disaster!—to borrow a word from the fifth-grade vocabulary of our dear leader.  First to go viral was footage of his boorish shove of Montenegro’s prime minister out of his royal way.

Getting almost as much coverage was his practiced handshake-wrestle with newly elected French President Emmanuelle Macron, showing the world’s millions who the alpha-male ruler of the sandbox was.

Not yet done trashing the porcelain shop, Trump next turned his wrath on Germany.  (Full disclosure: my ancestral homeland.)  “Bad, very bad” was his terse verdict on Deutschland, our long-time ally and democratic bulwark in Europe.  (The crime?  It seems they sold too many cars in the U. S.)

Chancellor Angela Merkel, a loyal admirer of America but repeatedly insulted by our oaf-in-chief, had had enough.  She soon announced to her fellow Europeans (and the world) that their fate was now in their own hands and they couldn’t rely on its traditional guarantor of peace and reason...party unnamed but obvious to all.

Damage done, Trump flew to Sicily for a final stop at the G-7 meeting in Taormina.  He must have been bushed.  When the G-7 leaders walked the quarter-mile distance to the San Domenico Hotel, he went a different way by golf cart.  Short of that stamina he bragged about in the presidential debates?  Or was it a gesture of fancied superiority over those folks from the uppity smaller nations with their irksome claims to culture?  Only The Donald knows.

The biggest question remains, who benefits most from Trump’s Brussels body blow to the 68-year-old NATO alliance that has kept an uneasy peace?  I don’t believe Herr Trump really knows that much about geopolitics to assess the damage he’s done.  But the guy who could have scripted Trump’s trip could not have fared better.  Yep, that’s the oh-so-clever Vladimir Putin.  No, Uncle Vlad isn’t Uncle Joe.  Stalin starved to death more than three million Ukrainians in 1932-33 alone; Putin’s kills fall far short than that. But give him time and Trump’s continued help and watch him close the gap.

What should you do?  Well, you could always seek asylum in Saudi Arabia; just leave your Christianity and your drugs behind.  Or head to the Philippines and the open arms of Trump’s buddy Duterte; but definitely leave your drugs behind.  

Or you could secede with me and found a new land of liberty, Pacifica.

BACK ON THE BEAT...BRIEFLY

A reader reminded me recently that when I started this blog I said I was going to talk about the misuse of words in public discourse.  Be a word cop, in short.  I confess I’ve strayed from that mission, what with Reichsleiter Donald Trump threatening our very lives nonstop here on planet earth. 

In any case, I resolved early this week to find time to return to my original purpose.  

My first action was to put two much-abused words on the disabled list (DL), with hopes that they might return to health and use with rest. 

The first was “absolutely.”  You can’t listen to talking heads talk these days without set-up questions being answered with an “absolutely.”  Besides the lethal repetitiveness of the word, it’s risky usage: in a post-Einsteinian world of relativity, very little, if anything, is absolute.  Give the word a break.

Second is the puzzling popularity of “existential,” as in “existential threat.”  Why this fancy way of saying “real,” “factual,” or “empirical”?  Is it because of its visually close association with the word existentialism, the fashionable philosophy that makes you sound important?  Then quit showing off, I say as a practicing existentialist (Camusian variety).  You’re only confusing your listeners for no good reason.

That’s where I was when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.  Why?  Front and center with the answer came the president’s back-up flack,  Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Trump did it “for atrocities [committed] against the chain of command.”  Really?  Against Trump’s chain of timid and misinformed toadies?  Atrocities? Really?  Did Comey bomb Yemeni hospitals?  Re-open Auschwitz?  Or not swear loyalty to the mentally deranged New York street thug who obstructed justice by demanding he do so?

I suggest all you Trumpenproles out there open a dictionary and look up the word “atrocity” for starters.  And do I think firing Comey after asking him to end his investigation of General Flynn for his ties to Russia poses an existential threat to our continued existence as a democracy?  Absolutely!

LATE, BUT WORTH IT

Sorry to be two weeks late and two rubles short, but here, by popular demand, are my (and your) picks to click in the 2017 Major League Baseball Season.  You’ll remember that last year, against the wisdom of my higher paid colleagues in the soothsaying business, I predicted a Cub/Indian World Series; those of you who listened, drove to Vegas, bet a wad on my prescience, shoveled your haul into the Brinks truck rental, and were rewarded by being bumped up into the 39.6% tax bracket.  You are welcome.

Why not do it all again?  I must alert you though that picking the winners this year is far more difficult than last—particularly in the American League East and National League West divisions.  In the former any team but Tampa Bay could win it all this season.  In the latter the Dodgers will have their hands full fighting off the Diamondbacks and Rockies; the Giants will do a major fade, however. (Ditto for the Angels, I’m sorry to report.)

Without further ado the final regular season standings for 2017 are:

What about those playoffs?  Well, the Chicago Cubs will face the Washington Nationals in the National League final series.  The Cleveland Indians will face the Boston Red Sox in the American League final.  World Series?  Washington over Cleveland in six.  You can take it to the bank.  Or to Las Vegas again, if you’re one of those greedy folks intent on passing our president in personal wealth.  And remember...per my usual policy, these selections are guaranteed.  If they all do not finish in the order predicted, I will provide you next year’s picks absolutely free of charge!   

By the way, I remain a baseball card collector in my old age.  And I’m desperately seeking the Major League Rookie card for the guy pictured below in an early photo.  If you have it, or know where I can find this guy’s rookie card, I will give you $25,000 cash for it!  Help me out.  Remember all I’ve done for you.

Jus' Askin'

Is the spy net closing on Putin and the Trumpsters?  Jus’ askin’.

Did British intelligence (MI6) really pick up on this crazy scheme to fix the 2016 U.S. presidential election back in late 2015?  Jus’ askin’.

Didn’t the French and Dutch, not to mention the Germans, Poles and Estonians, also know before we did of the treasonous traffic in what promises to be the spy scandal of the century?  Jus’ askin’.

Why did it take over a half a year for our CIA and FBI to take seriously the ample evidence forwarded to them from abroad that the clumsy Putin-Trump gang were up to no good?  Jus’ askin’.

If our worst fears prove out and we learn that our election was stolen by a bunch of lucky bunglers manipulated by uncle Vlad, do we hold another make-up election not provided for in our Constitution?  Jus’ askin’.

And what do we do with the conspirators, including Reichsleiter Trump, upon their possible conviction for treason?  Do we follow defendant Flynn’s advice given at last summer’s Republican Convention on what to do with the vanquished Hillary and “lock them up!”  Or do we bow to a more traditional arbiter of Old Testament American Justice, Clint Eastwood, and “hang ‘em high?”  Jus’ askin’.

AN APOLOGY BEFORE ARMAGEDDON

I know, I know.  Your reviews are in and my Divertimento Number 2, Variations on the Madness of March, from the Caligula Suite, was a bust...both critically and financially.  The Arizona Wildcats took a dive early and even my beloved UCLA Bruins bowed to Kentucky (more Wildcats) in the Sweet Sixteen; did you, Coach Alford, forget that you just can’t give Kentucky’s guards shooting space?  (Reminder: Per my gold bond guarantee to you subscribers who took my advice and bet accordingly, you’ll get my NCAA Hoops Tourney picks for next March absolutely free!)

Now let’s move on to grimmer matters, namely the future of this great land of ours.  Expect today’s roiling political scandal to beggar all scandals previous.  It’s coming, and sooner than expected.  Expect a constitutional crisis to follow, leading to a murky future fraught with peril.   

For you brave sorts who can confront the carnage, I will remain your faithful reporter attempting to track the Byzantine particulars of Trump’s deal with Vladimir Putin—and how much of this once-great land of ours is now owned by Uncle Vlad.  Need I remind you that it was I who tipped you off last Oct. 7, on these very pages, on the suspicious doings of Lt. General Michael J. Flynn and Fixer Paul Manafort in Russia and Ukraine, respectively?  Now they are front and center in a conspiracy that threatens to break up your beloved country before your eyes.  I intend to chronicle the Russian subversion of our once-esteemed democracy, all in keeping with my past employment and the motto of this blog: Thank God for schadenfreude!

For you frail folks who can’t bear to watch the carnage, I suggest you take a healthy dose of tranquilizers...or slumber aids—and sleep early, deep, and long.  Shakespeare, as usual, said it best in Macbeth (2.2):

...Sleep that knits up the revell’d sleeve of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher of life’s feasts.

You might even consider binge reading The Bard.  In any case, sleep with hope in your heart, ready to awake anew and be delivered to the aborning nation of Pacifica!  

See you there. 

MADNESS IN MARCH

Ready for a break from life-or-death matters?  To ease your ongoing suffering in the Time of Trump, I bring you my second composition from the Caligula Suite, “Divertimento #2: Variations on The Madness of March.” Enjoy!

Anyone can play Bracketology.  And watch the NCAA basketball tourney on the telly. Be assured it’s good clean fun, exciting to see the world’s best pure athletes compete in a game famed for its nonstop excitement.

You need not bet on the madness in one of those popular brackets you have heard about.  Not mandatory.  But for me, the absence of a monetary stake in the games has all the thrill of kissing a sibling.  So I advise putting some fleeting spice in your life and plunge a fin or a sawbuck or next month’s mortgage payment into the nearest pool.

The odds of picking every winner in the pool are approximately 3.4 trillion to one, I’ve been told.  Not an easy task, even for a seer like me.  So I trust that if I miss a pick or few, you’ll cut me some slack.

Donations to your favorite gambling guru are not required but welcome.  No, I’m sorry to say, such humane and worthy acts are not tax deductible.  I do stand by my standard guarantee, however: if you do not profit from my predictive powers, I will provide you with the same service next year absolutely free!  How fair is that?

May the peace of Pacifica be with you.

Going to Vegas?   Remember to reserve your Brinks truck rental early.

BRUSH UP YOUR RUSSIAN

 

Start quoting your Vladimir now!  Brush up your Russian, and the Trumpenproles you will wow!*

Yes, folks, I could be wrong, but it would appear that behind all that smoke there is a major fire about to break out in our earthly house.   It will start in Washington and quickly spark to life in London-based WikiLeaks, and then engulf the Putinites in Moscow.   If you’ve read the newspaper the last few months, you know of the Russian pro-Trump interference in our last national election; you also know of the suspected collusion of Trump and Putin in fixing the surprise outcome, and of our new president favoring policies agreeable to Russia.  (By the way, why hasn’t he denounced Russia for its latest dump via WikiLeaks of CIA secrets on a waiting world?)

For months now you’ve heard Trump and his cronies deny there was any hanky-panky; no, they never even met with any Russians, they claim.  Now we know differently: General Michael J. Flynn, once the president’s closest advisor and a foreign agent working for Turkey, had to resign for lying about his conversations with the Russian ambassador on the day then-President Obama levied additional sanctions on Russia; Attorney General Jeff Sessions committed perjury when he denied before the United States Senate any meetings with that same ambassador (there were two); Paul Manafort, Trump’s second Campaign Manager and former fixer for the deposed pro-Russian president of Ukraine, is up to his ears in ill-gotten gains; then there’s the American investment banker Carter Page, former policy advisor to Trump who is now doing business in Russia; and, of course, the master liar himself, President Trump, who denied as recently as last month any contact with Russians during his presidential run.

Expect more dirt to come soon; prepare to be shocked.  And while you’re brushing up on you Russian, do the same for your Swedish, German and Ukrainian as well.  You’re going hear more names trickle out, some of them hard to spell.  Keep a note pad handy so you can keep track of the players during the House and Senate hearings to begin shortly. Also, be on watch for revelations of a companion conspiracy involving Trump, Putin and a few of their shady minions to conclude a Ukrainian peace deal...favorable to Putin, naturally.  Bigger than Watergate?  Bet on it.

We should all make our voices heard, firmly and loudly and now: GOP congressmen must choose an independent prosecutor, and not allow Republicans (those hatchers of such past scandalous entertainments as Teapot Dome, Watergate and Iran Contra) to investigate themselves.   You know where that leads.

We must resist!  Let’s make sure Pacifica survives any intended Russian coup to carry forward that ever-fragile idea of democracy.  We may be its last hope.  Those of you who don’t know what and where that is can find the first two chapters of my Pacifica manuscript here. Courage, mon brave!

*Apologies to Cole Porter for mangling his lyrics from "Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” in Kiss Me Kate.

OFTEN IS THE QUESTION ASKED: ARE YOUR PRESIDENT SANE?

At long last (has it been only a month?), the mental health professionals have stepped forward to evaluate our new president...without any close-up examination, they concede.  Fortunately (if that’s the right word), our reichsleiter exhibits his psychic wounds like campaign ribbons for all to see.

The shrinks seem to have come to a consensus diagnosis:  Mr. Trump is a Paranoid Narcissistic Sociopath.  I’ve also heard a professional in the field describe him as a malignant narcissist.  Yet a third suggestion, that of infectious disease specialist Steven Buelter, in a recently run piece in the New Republic, opines that Trump may be suffering from neurosyphilis, perhaps picked up during his extended, carefree, salad days that even he admits were fraught with risk.  Beulter adds that this king of STDs can be easily cured if treated. But who among us has the courage to tell the emperor he should get a Wassermann Test?

Meanwhile, we’ve lately heard that the Russians are building a psychological profile of Trump in advance of his first post-election meeting with his Russian chum, Vladimir Putin.  Do you think Donald is doing the same?  (Given his low regard for intelligence in all its forms, I doubt it, too.)

So what do we do?

First and foremost, go back and read my blog entry of October 7, 2016, in which I made light of my fears, reproduced here.  Note the section in bolder face.

Mural by Mindaugas Bonanu.

THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION

Why won’t Donald Trump show us his income tax returns? Every other presidential candidate has in the last 35 years.  Why should he deny us a look into his bona fides?  They would shed much light on the claims and character of a man who wants to lead us? 

Trump has an oft-invoked answer.  He can’t because he’s being audited by the IRS.  Lame response; the IRS itself says an audit should be no hindrance to their release.   Donald and his son Eric tell us the current return runs to more than 12,000 pages—apparently more than we could digest and understand is the clear implication.  Try us; surely we can hire a skilled accountant or two to explain the contents.

Hillary Clinton in the first presidential debate echoed a common speculation that Trump was hiding the fact that he was worth a lot less than he claimed—not a billionaire at all.

And that he was most likely gaming the tax code and paying no federal tax at all.

Investigative reporting by The New York Times has since confirmed the likelihood of both, though Trump stays mum on the subject.   The greater part of the story—a complex one of international import at the highest level—is yet to be fully told.  We only know it in its sketchy outline as The Trump-Putin Affair.  Yes, the short and fit Russian assassin and the American Master of Bluster have something going.

Open and Inquiring minds want to know more about this strange match.  Just watch the orange heap light up at the mere mention of Putin‘s name.  What’s behind it?  Is it a joint power grab...or...what?

Well, it’s widely believed that Trump, who has for many years wanted to build hotels in Russia, is deeply in debt to Russian oligarchs.  Putin, on the other hand, flatters Trump with kind words, including the Russian word yarki, which Trump chooses to translate as “genius” while Putin prefers “flamboyant.” (Western analysts believe Putin’s flattery is meant to encourage Trump in his disruptive view of the West’s geopolitical interests, thus serving the Kremlin’s own.)

 Add to this strange pairing Paul J. Manafort, a shady lobbiest who received millions for helping pro-Russian dictator Viktor Yanukovych to power in the Ukraine, subsequently becoming Trump’s second Campaign Manager before the press got wind of his past and the man was summarily demoted out of sight.

Complicating matters further is Lt. General Michael J. Flynn, the fired former director of the pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency and now one of Trump’s closest advisors, previously seen seated next to Putin at a Russian state dinner.  Apparently he was also present with Trump more recently at the top-secret security briefing given to presidential candidates.  Now season that mix with Russian hackers who seem to know every other secret we as a nation have, and feed them to Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, who has threatened to alter the outcome of the pending American election with an October bombshell.  Yes, it’s all a big puzzlement.

While no one has put all the puzzle’s parts together yet, Trump’s attachment to Putin was evident in the first presidential debate.  Though Trump had been informed of Russian intrusions into our cyberspace at a previous security briefing, and heard it again from Clinton at the first debate, he quickly came to Russia’s defense, saying we didn’t know for sure it was Russia, that it could have been China (always his favorite scapegoat) ... or somebody else, for that matter.  Trump as skeptic...now that’s a new one on me!

I despair of ever unraveling this Gordian Knot of international intrigue, preferring the less complicated and more hopeful back story I’ve been told by reliable sources who prefer to remain anonymous.  What if all this cloak-and dagger stuff is just a cover?  For what, you will ask.  Some good old-fashioned amour, that’s what!   Yes, I’ve heard it said by some very, very smart people, whose names you would recognize, who say the vodka the lovers share has been spiked with bearnip.

Moreover, while I have no first hand knowledge, I’ve been reliably informed by unimpeachable observers in the know that Trump recently went on one of those legendary manly rides with Putin and his biker gang, the Night Wolves.  Can’t you see them now, Vlad and Donnie (as they call themselves when mounted in tandem on Putin’s Harley) preparing for the adventure.  The short, fit conqueror of Crimea gallantly helps the pudgy would-be leader of the free world with his girdle as the “Wolves” look on.

Picture them now on their wild ride east at dawn over the Moscow River on Vlad’s hog, roaring across the meadowlands and past the Isle of the Dead before spending a stormy night on Bald Mountain, only to descend onto the steppes of Central Asia, there to pitch their tent and snuggle up against the autumn chill by generating some real heat in their shared sleeping bag.  Ah! A little warming of the earth to speed along the thaw.  Ain’t love wonderful!  And to think there might even be a split Nobel Peace Prize in the offing!  That’s the good news heard on the grapevine. Amor Vincit Omnia.                                                  

To echo Hamlet’s words, “oh my prophetic soul!”  Put aside my self-indulgent final paragraph meant to playfully show off my knowledge (and love) of Russian music that amused no one but me.  Focus instead on the bold-faced section and the names mentioned.  Flynn.  Montrafort.  Murky background players then, central figures in a widening scandal of truly unimaginable magnitude now.  I hope I’m wrong.  But the more I hear of the election last fall the more likely it seems that Trump and his alt-right associates have sold us out to Putin and imperiled our democracy.  Absolute proof may be lacking now, but evidence is mounting in spite of Trump’s desperate and diversionary attacks on the press.  And so we slip and slide rapidly toward at least a constitutional crisis.

Usually I fight fear by writing light and harmless fantasies intended to amuse. It’s not working this time.  I’m scared. 

So what do we do? Let’s first remind ourselves again that change is the only constant.  We should seize it and the opportunity it inevitably brings.  Let’s move briskly and peacefully away from the doomed union and establish ourselves as that sovereign nation, Pacifica, where we preserve and improve on the best of what was.

A TIME TO LEAVE AND START ANEW

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Law of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation...

It took us a mere two weeks to reach the  “necessary” stage—to confirm our worst fears.  Donald Trump has proved he is unfit to be president.  That brings to the fore my longstanding argument that it is time for the peacefully Pacific states to peacefully secede and form a new peaceful nation, Pacifica, allowing other former states to peacefully go where they will...or stay attached, if they choose.

Two weeks and The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists cites global warming and the accession of Donald Trump to the American presidency for moving the Doomsday Clock forward 30 seconds; that puts us at a mere two and a half minutes to midnight.  They mean the final midnight.

Two weeks!  Time enough to insult and alienate good neighbor Mexico, infuriate loyal ally Australia; ban Muslims from traveling to and from the United States; confound our long-time friends around the world with mindless declamations; welcome former KBG agent Putin into our family as dear old “Uncle Vlad,” and give him a seat by the hearth; reverse any number of Presidential Orders meant to protect the environment, minority peoples, and ordinary folks from our ambitious, heretofore shackled “entrepreneurs.”

What can we do?  Start by reading my book in progress, A Left Coast Manifesto:  Why the Pacific States Should Secede and Form a More Perfect Union of Their Own.  The first half of it has just been posted to my website—CHAPTER 1: BREAK-UP, in which I discuss the worldwide phenomenon of nations breaking apart in our times, and now the just-completed CHAPTER 2: PACIFICA, in which I suggest the time is ripe for the Pacific states to separate themselves from the Union to form a great nation of our own. 

You may have read that one third of Californians already favor secession, and that the #Calexit movement is growing by leaps and bounds.  I agree with them but think we should go further and invite the other Pacific states to join us.  In my book I discuss why we should secede and why we are likely to succeed in ways never dreamed.  All done peacefully, of course.

May the peace of Pacifica be with you!

IT'S A DOG'S WORLD

I’m back!  Again.  You thought I was hiding out somewhere from Herr Trump and the New Order (Neuordnung) and had deserted you in your hour of need.   Not so.  Got a cold and the shingles at the same time.  Not recommended for the living... and those who wish to go on with it.

Accept my apology for not covering President Elect Trump’s first press conference for you Wednesday last; I bailed on it early with the hope I could take an incomplete, pleading the above illnesses as an excuse, when it was really my state of mind that was hurting.  Every time I see our reichsleiter-to-be on TV I feel as though his angry eyes and fulminations are directed directly at me for stumbling into his alternate universe, and he means to persecute me for my faith (in science).

So what did I do?   What you should do. I changed channels.  To?

Dog TV, my usual refuge in trying times.  For those of you who know it not, I give it five stars in stress relief.  Yes, as you rightly guessed, I first subscribed to it for my two dogs, thinking they would enjoy having kindred company when I left them home alone.   Not to be. They just didn’t dig it, and went back to reading The New Yorker for their escapes. I think Gypsy looked up once while I held her and forced to view another Golden Retriever on the tube; not interested.  As for high-strung Heidi, true to her shepherd genes, she cannot be forced to look at anything when on the trail of imaginary possums.  And that’s almost always. 

Talk about balms to hurt minds.  Dog TV delivers comfort and solace, a quiet joy along with a sense of what is right in nature.   The background barking is simple, pleasant, unobtrusive—and when a human voice intrudes, it is brief and muted.  And added plus for me is that some of the scenic footage was shot at my very own Dog Beach here in Surf City.  How do I know?  Because when I watch those pups splashing joyfully in the waves, I see in the background the familiar oil-drilling platforms in stubborn place.

As for our unaware canine friends, photographed mostly in the outdoors and free to be their antic selves, they run and roll at will, yip and woof without restraint, wag tails and sniff out all identities in soothing harmony.  Such a melodious melee!  It makes you want to pile right into the frolic and forget the millions of folks about to lose their Obamacare.  

The cost for Dog TV?  A measly five bucks a month.  Am I your best friend or not?  (By the way, this is Divertimento Number One in a series from my Caligula Suite, composed to get you through the Reign of Trump.  More to follow.)

Here are three happy subscribers to Dog TV,
With Heidi, left; Gypsy, right; I’m in the middle.
(We are real dogs and people, not paid actors.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS, READER FRIENDS!

Here is that Christmas gift I’ve wanted you to have ever since I exited the hospital this past August 23.  That was the day I was told I’d survived a second attack of West Nile Virus.   That’s when I realized I feared what most writers fear at life’s cruel end—with most of your books out of print, you’ll probably go down in literary history as just another anonymous and forgotten scribbler.  I didn’t want that sad fate for my books...to go unread.

And so I have PDFs of four out of nine so far uploaded to my site, available to be read at your leisure, free of charge.  The other five I hope to post once copyright issues are untangled; at present, hard copies are still available (not free) on Amazon and through other dealers who traffic in used books.

All you have to do is click on the book you want, then enlarge it to a readable page size by clicking on the little square in the lower right corner (these directions are for people like me who aren't particularly intuitive about "teckmology").  Below I include a brief note on the four available that should give you a choice of the free reading fare:

Number 1, Shadow of a Continent, was my first book, published during the USA’s Bicentennial 1976.  It’s a history of the imperial struggle between England, France, Spain, and the American colonists for possession of the American West.  It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

Number 2, California Quake, is a history of earthquakes in the Golden State, covering also the cause of earthquakes, and the likelihood of predicting them.  Then-Senator Alan Cranston wrote the foreword for the book.

Number 3, My Summer with Molly, The Journal of a Second Generation Father, is the story of me playing ”mom” to my newborn daughter Molly for the first three months of her life.  It won the 1990 Benjamin Franklin Award for Autobiography.

Number 4, The Complete Works of Marcus Uteris, an experimental novel, accurately reviewed by one critic as “Samuel Beckett on the loose in Los Angeles.”  Read at your own risk.  If you read it and never speak to the author again, I will understand.  It has happened before.

Season’s Greetings!

                                                                        Lorenzo and Heidi

MAD ABOUT DYLAN

Is my envy showing?  I suppose it is.  I know I’m still seething.  About what?  About Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, that’s what.  Dylan?  Literature?  Come on!

True, I confess that I no longer polish my own acceptance speech for the Nobel Committee.  Yes, I’m man enough to face the fact that I’ll likely never receive the Nobel Prize for Literature...at least not while I’m among the living.  But Bob Dylan?  For literature?  Be real!

Maybe Bob Dylan agrees with me.  That would explain his rude behavior for the last month and a half, when he failed to acknowledge the Prize and planned not to go to Stockholm to receive it...until last Saturday when his singer friend Patti Smith showed up at the last minute to accept the Prize in his stead and read for him his almost acceptable acceptance speech.

Since when do guitar-strumming troubadours long over the hill win against serious novelists, dramatists or poets, many with a voluminous life’s work behind them, in competing for what has been considered in some quarters to be the world’s top literary prize?  Was Dylan’s body of songs compared to David Mitchell’s many brilliant novels, for instance?   Or if you Nobel judges were dead-set on wading into the shallower water of pop culture, why not Paul Simon or Leonard Cohen over Dylan?   Did you even compare them?

It is possible, of course, that Bob Dylan is not a reader and thus unaware of the gravity of winning the prize that is newly his. That would explain his inability to make it to Stockholm to claim the prize in person.  Talk about your chutzpah!  Something tells me he still managed somehow to collect the million dollars or thereabouts that comes with the honor.

If Dylan thought he was dissing the Nobel people with his above-it-all conduct, I have the pleasure of informing him he was beaten to that dubious achievement at least twice.  Yes, two predecessors had the gall to actually decline the award.  Well, it was the Soviet government, not honoree Boris Pasternak (a Russian poet and author of the novel Doctor Zhivago, 1958), that declined it for the author.   (The Cold War raged then, don’t you know.)

More telling, John-Paul Sartre (yes, the world renowned philosopher, novelist and dramatist) refused it outright in 1964 because, according to the French polymath and political activist, he would lose his independence as a writer, and if his name were tethered to the Western-biased Nobel folks, it would be used against the Eastern Bloc, where his true sympathies lay.   It gets pretty abstruse after that.  Yes, J. P. remains his hyper-intellectual self, and reading him is just as challenging as ever.

Or maybe all this is just symptomatic of the times in which we live.  Which leads me to ask the question that is becoming increasingly rhetorical.  Doesn’t anybody read anymore?  Does everything have to be reduced to a one-page gulp of  few words to get read or heard these days?  Has the tweet word limit been imposed on literature? I believe we’re all in trouble when the Swedes reading for the Nobel Committee think so.

Escaping the Big T

I thought a little skin might coax you in for my announcement that the blog is taking a slight turn in direction.  I’m guessing that many of you reacted as I when the doctor came out of the lab Wednesday 11/9 and gave us the diagnosis: “I’m afraid I have bad news. You have Trumpoma.”  I remember we asked as one unified but terrified voice: “Is it curable?”  The doctor grimaced, then turned away, saying nothing. It was then we knew our days were numbered.
 
Wait!  Don’t give up! Many of you already know I’m at work on my ninth book, A Left Coast Manifesto:  Why the Pacific States Should Secede and Form a More Perfect Union of Their Own, the first chapter of which is posted on this very website.  Indeed, one of you blessed readers quoted three lengthy paragraphs from it and posted same on Daily Kos, giving me national exposure and triggering a debate in the comments section.  Just what I wanted.  Thank you.
 
Obviously, the recent tumultuous election and its surprise results have stirred international concern; they have also spurred me to revise extensively a manuscript first completed in rough form back in 2011.  Chapter 2 (of a total five) of the updated version will be up later this week, and Chapter 3 in weeks following.  Don’t despair, ye of little faith.  I’ll be showing you the way to escape the grim fate of your quondam countrymen.
 
As you can sense from my recent blog posts, there’s a fire burning within me, and nothing can stop me now from saving myself, family, and you favored children of paradise on earth.  I have even agreed to bare my breasts as I hold high Pacifica’s flag and...let’s agree to call the whole heroic spectacle “Larry Leading His People to Liberty.”   Note also I hired a painter of ample gifts.
 
Together we’ll make Pacifica greater than great again.

 Believe me!

Your Verse for the Day

Today, I’m speechless.  But fortunately W. B.  Yeats (my favorite poet) is not; he saw all this “coming” almost a hundred years long ago.

       THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

MONDAY'S POLITICAL CLEAN-UP: AND THE WINNERS ARE...?

Fresh from successfully predicting the World Series participants six months in advance, I’ve decided to put my newly discovered powers of prophecy to work on tomorrow’s election.  Why?  To calm your fears if you’re a Clinton voter, ease you into your impending disappointment if you’re a follower of Gauleiter Trump, and advance my own late-in-life change of career from aging scribbler to internationally celebrated soothsayer with my own prime time, hour-long show on Fox TV.

So, without further ado (as we say in show biz), here are your final results for president and senate two days in advance.  (Yes, you may quote from them to astound your friends; all I ask is that you credit me as your personal prophet and guru.)

You're welcome,

Vaya con Lorenzo

MONDAY'S POLITICAL CLEAN-UP: SO MANY QUESTIONS

And so little time to find the answers before that fateful November 8.  For example?  Why did FBI Director James Comey release such sketchy information on newly found e-mails eleven days before the election?  Why was the bombshell so vague in its particulars?  Did Obama’s Republican appointee break the Hatch Act by divulging to his party’s congressional members what must be called a tenuous connection bound to raise doubts about Hillary Clinton’s character and take her off her message?  Most importantly, why did Mr. Comey break protocol if not the law by making public his renewed Clinton E-mail investigation, yet mentioned not a word about his current probe of a possible link between the Trump campaign and the Russian government?  Is not the subversion of our democracy of more pith and moment than the waywardways of some nutcase smitten with his penis?

Hillary’s predicament reminds me of the one Josef K faced in Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial: Being charged and convicted of a crime never named by people you can never confront.  Or is my allusion to Kafka’s masterpiece dead on arrival?  As dead as K is after his execution?  Or is Kafka even read any more?  Shouldn’t it be required in high school?

Questions seem to beget more questions, until they start sticking together to form a many faceted major question/nagging puzzle that you want to forget about but can’t because the answer seems too threatening.  Normally, I am not big on conspiracy theories.  That said, I confess to being deeply troubled by what I call the Trump-Putin-Assange Triad.  What are the three up to?  Trump says on telly that he’s met Putin and he finds him an agreeable fellow who considers him (Trump) a genius. He’s also said on the telly that he’s never met Putin.  So Trump’s a serial liar, but we already knew that.  Putin flatters Trump but appears to put some distance between himself and the American entrepreneur.  Doth he protest too much?  Where does Wikileaks fit in this sorry scheme of things entire? What moral justification does Julian Assange have for meddling in U.S. domestic politics?  Is he merely an indifferent conduit for Russian hackers?  Acting at Putin’s behest?  Is Trump wired directly into the operation as well?  We know the Ruskies have hacked the Democratic National Committee and individual Democratic politicians; we also know they’ve attempted to penetrate several of our voting systems.  What other institutions have they compromised that we don’t know about yet?  The defense establishment, maybe?    Are we drifting toward a renewal of the Cold War?

Am I coming down with an acute case of paranoia?  Ya think?

TIME TO PAY THE PROPHET

The World Series begins today, dear reader, and it’s time for you to pony up.  Pay the guy who made it possible for you to rightfully claim your place among the nouveau riche and buy that dream house in Newport Beach.  Yes, I’m that same guy who told you via this blog, early in April this year, that the Chicago Cubs would meet the Cleveland Indians in the World Series. 

I recall you were more than a bit skeptical, asking me where I got such a foolish notion that two such perennial losers could contend for baseball’s biggest prize.  Why that would make for one of the longest of long shots in the annals of wagering, you said.  I agreed, while attributing my insight to some mysterious late-in-life powers of reading the future that had been slowly invading my mind.  Your skepticism persisted, as it should have. Then why, you asked, wouldn’t I keep this knowledge to myself and thereby up the take I’d make from an all-in bet?  I countered by telling you that my religion forbade gambling, but not from passing the results of my prescience on to friends...and all of you out there in Bloggersville are my friends—good friends.  All I ask is to be remembered with a pittance...say a 15% agent’s fee...yeah, let’s call it a standard agent’s fee.

Here, if you wisely burned my message after making your Vegas bets (or even if you didn’t act on my inside information and regret it now), are those picks made then and given to you with the correct calls of playoff teams shown in All caps and bold face.  You will note that I correctly picked five out of six playoff teams; only with the Los Angeles Dodgers did I miss.  (Not even Nostradamus batted a thousand.)                                                                                                    

                                    (EXCERPT FROM THE PRESEASON BLOG)

NATIONAL LEAGUE

 

WEST                                      CENTRAL                               EAST

SAN FRANCISCO                     CHICAGO                                WASHINGTON

**Arizona                                  St. Louis                                   *New York Mets

L.A. Dodgers                             Pittsburgh                                  Miami

Colorado                                    Cincinnati                                  Philadelphia

San Diego                                  Milwaukee                                 Atlanta

                                                           

AMERICAN LEAGUE

 

WEST                                      CENTRAL                               EAST

TEXAS                                     Kansas City                                BOSTON

**Houston                                 *CLEVELAND                         TORONTO

L.A. Angels                               Detroit                                       New York Yankees

Seattle                                       Minnesota                                  Baltimore

Oakland                                     Chicago                                     Tampa Bay

 

         *Denotes First Wild Card Team

** Denotes Second Wild Card Team

You can take it to the bank.  Or to Las Vegas, if you’re so inclined.   Now you’ll no doubt want to know who among these powerhouses of the enchanted diamond will meet in the World Series?  And who will be crowned World Champion?  Prepare yourself for a shocker.  The Chicago Cubs will face the Cleveland Indians in the World Series!  And the ultimate winner is?  I won’t help you there... for personal reasons that I may or may not divulge in a later blog.   But haven’t I brought you far enough already?  So how do you pick a winner between two habitual losers?  Flip a coin or bet them both; either way, you come out mucho chips to the good.

By the way, these selections are guaranteed.  If they all do not finish in the order predicted, I will provide you picks for next year free of charge!  And be sure to reserve the largest U-Haul truck available when you arrive in Vegas to collect your winnings.   You’re welcome.

That was back in April.  Let’s return to the here and now.  Yes, I know that a few of you did not take my baseball predictions seriously and did not act upon them; you now feel left out of the company of swag takers.  Take heart.   I will soon be putting my predictive powers to work again on the upcoming national election.  I will be posting on this blog November 6 the winners and losers of the presidency and the U.S. Senate, with the hard numbers –in time for you to lay your wagers in Vegas and make a social splash at your Election Eve party by calling the results before the pundits do.

Until then, happy days!  And kindly remember your agent.  A measly 15%.

THURSDAY'S POLITICAL PRE-DUMP: SELLING OUT TO A GENIUS

When I played football (poorly, to be sure) many years ago, the game exacted a 15-yard penalty for“piling on”— that is, for leaping on the heap forming over a player already on the ground.  Apparently that transgression is now covered under the catch-all words “unnecessary roughness,” because I haven’t heard the specific foul cited for many years now.

I prefer “piling on.”  Not just for its specificity, but it also soothes any guilt I might feel at this, my piling on Gauleiter Trump along with the many other fault-finders.   Yes, I realize you will accuse me of missing the forest for the trees...or fixating on one insignificant sixth magnitude star out of the entire Milky Way array.

Point well taken.   Hasn’t he’s been branded with virtually every neurosis and psychosis and mental shortcoming known to man by those more learned than I?  What could I possibly add?   Well, I do have a modest past in academia, and I feel professionally obliged to protect our beloved language from every very terrible, horrible, disaster of a Trumpian trampling.  And I must defend our noble tongue from a self-proclaimed genius no less. 

Genius?  Who says?  Vladimir Putin, according to Trump.

At issue is the Russian word “yarki,” used by the shrewd ex-KGB agent in his wooing of our vain sociopath.  The word can be translated as “very bright,” but is more commonly rendered by western scholars to “colorful.”  When recently asked for clarification of what he meant when he first used the word, the wily Putin chose “flamboyant.”

Trump will have none of this pointy-headed hairsplitting.  Once a genius, always a genius.  And the good news must be spread.  Tellingly, the day after Trump bragged at the first presidential debate about his brilliance in avoiding paying taxes, his top two lickspittle knaves, Chris (“Rosenkrantz”) Christie and Rudy(“Guildenstern”) Giuliani, appeared separately on the tube trying to convince the world that only a “genius” (parroting their master’s word choice, under orders no doubt) could come up with such a scheme.  Really?  Hasn’t many a common tax cheat done the same thing many times over?

But I digress from the subject of Trump and Language.  Let me submit that Trump communicates by Twitter because its word limitations fall nicely in line with his working vocabulary. More than a few linguists have applied their scientific tests to Trump’s tweets and addresses and found a third-grade level vocabulary in use and a high-fifth-grader’s command of grammar; that’s somewhat below the levels of your garden variety genius, but good enough, I guess, for a six-year-old bully vying to remain king of the sandbox.

My own year-long analysis of Trump’s diction confirms these studies.  You will find among the limited and recurring words disgusting, terrible, horrible, believe me, rigged, crooked, lying, by the way, huge, great, tremendous, bad, good, very, very very.  Not only are they few in number, there are often vague in meaning.  As a former teacher of writing and editing, I feel professionally obligated to tell The Donald there are remedies. Vocabulary building would be priority one, Donald.  And that’s best done the old fashioned way—reading.   That means “reading up,” challenging your mind (something by Frederich Nietzsche or Martin Heidegger might have special appeal), not escape reading like Playboy. That may mean getting help with your ADHD, but it’s worth the investment, believe me Don.

Unfortunately, limited vocabularies invite a related fault: word repetition—a sure sign of an amateur at work.  And when those words are “terrible," "horrible," "disaster,” and the like, the reader concludes that the writer flushed his morning lithium tablet.

Then there’s the vagueness problem.  You solve that with the words you employ.  Choose concrete words over abstract words, nouns over adjectives, short words over long, words with Anglo-Saxon roots over those with Latinate origins. And it’s no crime to have a model, by the way...someone you admire, feel comfortable with, providing he or she has a definable writing style.  I recently heard you on the telly voice your affinity for Ernest Hemingway.   A worthy model — especially for you.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I believe I can make a writer of you yet.  But it won’t be easy and I don’t come cheap.  Giving you my standard politician’s discount, we could seal the deal in the mid six figures within the month.  Payment in advance, of course.

Good.  A deal, then.  What I want you to do is spend the next four years immersing yourself in Hemingway’s oeuvre, then bring me a 10,000-word essay on what you’ve learned from Papa.  Then I can spot where more work needs to be done...all contingent of course on my being back from Cap Ferrat.

THURSDAY'S POLITICAL PRE-DUMP: THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION

Why won’t Donald Trump show us his income tax returns?  Every other presidential candidate has in the last 35 years.  Why should he deny us a look into his bona fides?  They would shed much light on the claims and character of a man who wants to lead us?  

Trump has an oft-invoked answer.  He can’t because he’s being audited by the IRS.  Lame response; the IRS itself says an audit should be no hindrance to their release.   Donald and his son Eric also tell us the current return runs to more than 12,000 pages—apparently more than we could digest and understand is the clear implication.  Try us; surely we can hire a skilled accountant or two to explain the contents.

Hillary Clinton in the first presidential debate echoed a common speculation that Trump was hiding the fact that he was worth a lot less than he claimed—not a billionaire at all.

And that he was most likely gaming the tax code and paying no federal tax at all.

Investigative reporting by The New York Times has since confirmed the likelihood of both, though Trump stays mum on the subject.   The greater part of the story—acomplex oneof international import at the highest level—is yet to be fully told.  We only know it in its sketchy outline as The Trump-Putin Affair.  Yes, the short and fit Russian assassin and the American Master of Bluster have something going.

Open and inquiring minds want to know more about this strange match.  Just watch the orange heap light up at the mere mention of Putin‘s name.  What’s behind it?  Is it a joint power grab...or...what?

Well, it’s widely believed that Trump, who has for many years wanted to build hotels in Russia, is deeply in debt to Russian oligarchs.  Putin, on the other hand, flatters Trump with kind words, including the Russian word "yarki," which Trump chooses to translate as “genius” while Putin prefers “flamboyant.” (Western analysts believe Putin’s flattery is meant to encourage Trump in his disruptive view of the West’s geopolitical interests, thus serving the Kremlin’s own.)

Add to this strange pairing Paul J. Manafort, a shady lobbyist who received millions for helping pro-Russian dictator Viktor Yanukovych to power in the Ukraine, subsequently becoming Trump’s second Campaign Manager before the press got wind of his past and the man was summarily demoted out of sight.

Complicating matters further is Lt. General Michael J. Flynn, the fired former director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency and now one of Trump’s closest advisors, previously seen seated close to Putin at a Russian state dinner.  Apparently he was also present with Trump more recently at the top secret security briefing given to presidential candidates.  Now season that mix with Russian hackers who seem to know every other secret we as a nation have, and feed them to Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, who has threatened to alter the outcome of the pending American election with an October bombshell.  Yes, it’s all a big puzzlement.

While no one has put all the puzzle’s parts together yet, Trump’s attachment to Putin was evident in the first presidential debate.  Though Trump had been informed of Russian intrusions into our cyberspace at a previous security briefing, and heard it again from Clinton at the first debate, he quickly came to Russia’s defense, saying we didn’t know for sure it was Russia, that it could have been China (always his favorite scapegoat)...or some 400-pound bed-ridden nobody, for that matter.  Trump as skeptic...now that’s a new one on me!

I despair of ever unraveling this Gordian knot of international intrigue, preferring the less complicated and more hopeful back story I’ve been told by reliable sources who prefer to remain anonymous.  What if all this cloak-and dagger stuff is just a cover?  For what, you will ask.  Some good old fashioned amour, that’s what!   Yes, I’ve heard it said by some very, very smart people, whose names you would recognize, who say the vodka the lovers share has been spiked with bearnip.

Moreover, while I have no firsthand knowledge, I’ve been reliably informed by unimpeachable observers in the know that Trump recently went on one of those legendary manly rides with Putin and his biker gang, the Night Wolves, on a magical musical tour.  Can’t you see them now, Vlad and Donnie (as they call themselves when mounted in tandem on Putin’s Harley) preparing for the adventure.  The short, fit conqueror of Crimea gallantly helps the pudgy would-be leader of the free world with his girdle as the “Wolves” look on.

Picture them now on their wild ride east at dawn over the Moscow River on Vlad’s hog, roaring across the meadowlands and past the Isle of the Dead before spending a stormy night on Bald Mountain, only to descend onto the steppes of Central Asia, there to pitch their tent and snuggle up against the autumn chill by generating some real heat in their shared sleeping bag.  Ah! A little warming of the earth to speed along the thaw.  Ain’t love wonderful!  And to think there might even be a split Nobel Peace Prize in the offing!  That’s the good news heard on the grapevine.  Amor vincit omnia.