BORN A POET: MATTHEW ARNOLD, DECEMBER 24, 1822

Mathew Arnold  (1822-1888) came from a distinguished literary family (his two brothers were fixtures in the English literary scene, and his father Thomas, was headmaster at the famed Rugby School).  A critic, essayist, and poet, Mathew became a major voice of England’s Victorian Age.  Some scholars consider the socially conservative, high-minded Arnold a bridge between the Romantic and Modern Ages, as well as an astute commentator on the events of his day.,  That said, much of his voluminous work is now read only by scholars.  “Dover Beach,” though, remains a staple in college English courses, a favorite of poetry lovers generally, and a fascination to other writers (Ray Bradbury and Ian McEwan among them) who are drawn to it.  Why?  “Dover Beach” first appeared in 1867, shortly after Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species and the conflict between religion and science raged.

Arnold found himself mired midway between the two worlds…one dead, and the other “powerless to be born.”  Clearly, some folks are still caught betwixt and between the two.

This post is second in a sporadic series of happy birthday wishes to poets in the English Language hagiography.

This poem is hardly joyous, but it is not irrelevant this particular Christmas season.

DOVER BEACH

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

SURELY SOME REVELATION IS AT HAND!

I’m still recoiling from last week’s flurry of ominous news, staggering, wobbly legged, about to hit the canvas where my country prostrate lies, put there by the mad moron who obeys alien voices entering his right ear.

What news?  The nation shut down because a peevish boy couldn’t get the wall he wanted, for starters.  Our troops withdrawn from strategic Syria without warning, shocking our allies and the Middle East generally, bringing wide smiles to Messrs. Putin and Erdogan, ever ready to fill a power vacuum.  Half our troop commitment to NATO’s presence in Afghanistan summarily brought home, leaving our allies to play out the “Great Game” on their own.  The resulting protest resignation of General James “Mad Dog” Mattis as Secretary of Defense, widely considered the last rational person in Trump’s cabinet and the lone defender left between our impetuous president and the nuclear football.  Secretary of the Interior Ryan (“Stinky”) Zinke canned after setting a new record for corruption in the Trump administration.  Growing chaos and human suffering stalks our southern border.  A Texas judge declared Obamacare unconstitutional, eliciting huzzahs! from our  Queens-trained Caligula.  Meanwhile, climate-change-induced severe winter weather that cometh early, is predicted to stay late.  Then there’s that bottomless swamp of investigations into the conduct of our dear leader—a waxing 17 at last count.   

There’s more.  But I’m spent.  Can’t keep up.  Crises now come at an ever-mounting  frequency and intensity without resolution, slipping from surface memory into the overcrowded depths below.  Who remembers beyond a blur the Floridian nutjob who tried to take out the entire Democratic political leadership group with pipe bombs?  Was that only this October?

Or the anonymous author (authors?) who told us on the front page of the New York Times not to worry about the antic doings of the boy president—there were wiser heads present to keep him from going off the rails.  Presumably, those wise guys were the military triumvirate of Generals Kelly, McMaster and Mattis—all of them now going or gone.  That reassuring editorial appeared in September.  How should we feel now?

In past funk attacks I’ve found relief in booze, baseball and poetry.  But I’ve been dry for the last two-and-a-half years, and baseball doesn’t start again until spring, so I must turn to verse—which will find space here over the next ten days.

Apologies for this rude lament.  I wish you the best of holiday seasons, with the hope that the horsemen pass us by.

WE SAY GOODBYE TO THE MOUSE THAT MURMURED

Let’s mutter a fond farewell to Paul Ryan (the Speaker of the House of Representatives and third in line to the presidency) who, after twenty years in the House, is retiring from his lofty post with a whimper, not a bang.  Truth told, he will not be missed here; yet, in the generous spirit of the holiday season, we wish him success in his life-long search for a spine.  (We may assume the Wisconsin “young gun” will be devoting his retirement to writing an appreciation of his guru, Friedrich A. von Hayek, rumored to be titled “The Road to Smurfdom.”)

You will recall that Congressman Ryan was a failed candidate for Vice President when Mitt Romney ran for the top spot in 2012, then reluctantly (or so it seemed) accepted speakership of the House in 2015.  Passing for an intellectual in conservative circles, the self-styled policy wonk had the chance, as Speaker, to advance his ambitious long-time goals of balancing the budget and reducing the deficit.  Instead, he failed miserably, blowing up both to new highs in a mere three years—the last two as a pliant tool of President Donald J. Trump.  

Paul’s exit has been welcomed by both left and right with a hearty “good riddance!”  “An abject failure” (Reason magazine), “Just a con-man” (Salon), “Biggest phony” (Vox), “A creation of Washington, an insider beloved only by insiders (Vanity Fair), “Has done such a poor job that it has become impossible for even the paid sycophants of Conservative Inc. to whitewash his record” (Townhall).

Such barbs fail to pierce Paul’s hide.  Or if they do, the Fox News pundit has a knack of drawing healing media attention to himself and soft-soaping his detractors.  His glowing self-assessment?  He tells us, with an earnest, wide-eyed faux sincerity, that he “achieved a heck of a lot” and left “a darn good legacy.”  (Nice, got your G rating there, Paul.)  His greatest achievement?  No surprise.  The supply-side, trickle-down laggard cites last year’s tax cut act, a law that now assures the haves will have more, the have-nots a lot less, and pushes the nation as a whole to the brink of a fiscal abyss. 

Our take?  Two-shoes Ryan has a nice-guy face masking a shallow mind that finds no contradiction in a good Catholic worshiping both Jesus and Ayn Rand.  (Paul, you’d better pray that Saint Peter moonlights as a hedge fund manager.)

Apparently Ayn had Ryan’s ear on his way out; the departing Speaker couldn’t help trashing, in his cautious way, California for its “bizarre,” “strange,” and “logic-defying” electoral practices.  He says he went to bed election night with the Republicans leading in four or five of the seven of the state’s House seats in play, only to learn three weeks later that the Democrats had swept them all.  

He wasn’t insinuating any “nefarious” doings, he admitted under questioning.  But they do it differently in Wisconsin, he said.  Indeed they do, as we shall see.

A quick rebuke to Ryan’s meek slander came from Alex Padilla, California’s Secretary of State, in charge of our elections:

It is ‘bizarre’ that Paul Ryan cannot grasp basic voting rights protections.  It shouldn’t ‘defy logic’ that elections officials are meticulous in counting every eligible ballot.  California works to ensure every ballot is accounted for.  In the most populous state in the nation—and the state with the largest number of registered voters—this takes time.

To further explain, California has recently encouraged vote-by-mail to make it easier for all citizens to do their civic duty.  The result?  Of the more than 12.5 million ballots cast in November, more than 40 percent of them (mail-in, provisional, etc) arrive for counting after election day, and a month is allowed for that laborious process.  The late-count batch consistently favors Democrats by roughly two percent, explaining their late, come-from-behind victories in close contests.   You know, Paul,  you really ought to come out here and visit us.  Get a glimpse at 21st Century living.  (And check out the latest advances in the dairy industry; you may know ours is the largest in the nation.)

Turnabout is fair play, they say.  Now it’s us Golden Staters’ turn to ask you, Paul, how you Cheesy State guys run your elections.  You didn’t tell us when you lectured us, and we think we know why.  You didn’t want us to know about your party’s latest dirty trick, November’s shameful heist of power in Wisconsin from the newly elected Democratic governor Tony Evers.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but it kind of goes like this: Voters vote out your Republican governor, Scott Walker, but before his Democratic successor Evers can take office, you use the lame-duck legislative session to pass laws that transfer power from the newly elected governor to whatever legislative branch or branches your party still holds...kind of a three-card monte scam gaining favor with the GOP nationally.  We hear that Michigan (also with an incoming Democrat succeeding a vanquished Republican) is considering adopting this Banana Republic ploy.   

But give credit where credit is due for this latest breakthrough in electoral corruption.  That honor goes to the up-and-coming state of North Carolina, home of the famous Research Triangle Park, of which Tar Heelers are justly proud.  Republicans there are keeping abreast in the political field.  Not only were they the first to pull off the lame-duck power heist in 2016 on incoming Democratic governor Roy Cooper; they perfected it, patented it, then exported it to the Badger State.  Now, as we speak and read, they are on the cheating edge of Republican politics again with their latest trailblazing experiment.  That is forging absentee ballots, and stealing and destroying others that don’t favor their candidate.  That test is going on in Bladen County, North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District, and, if successful, will soon be fit for export to Republicans everywhere to add to their bulging bag of dirty tricks. 

Golly!  This is mind-bending stuff for us simple, honest West Coasters.  Which leads me to ask you three final questions, Paul, before you stroll off into the moneyed halls of lobbydom:

1. Don’t you think such political “advances” might damage our democracy?  Seriously, how the hell do these sordid stunts move our nation forward...you know, the USA, the begetter of modern democracies, AKA the hope of the world, the land of the free and the home of the brave?

2. What would Robert La Follette think of your conduct if  “Fighting Bob” were alive today?

3. Can you tell me why political corruption is so rampant east of the Rockies?  Why is it that those states have so much trouble conducting fair elections?  You know, your own Wisconsin, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Georgia, North Carolina, Illinois, Texas, Alabama, to name just a few.

All we can say is wow!  Your tactics leave us clean, honest folks on the West Coast behind the curve of corruption, at a constant disadvantage in the national governance.  Time to take drastic action.  Californians!  Oregonians!  Washingtonians!  Hawaiians!  Unite!  Time to peacefully part from those chronic cheaters east of us and form a more perfect union of our own.  We’ll call it Pacifica, with liberty, justice, and fair elections for all!

IS OUR PRESIDENT REALLY A GENIUS?

A few of my million-odd readers took exception to my calling our President a “moron.”  One of my more aggressive critics said if I hadn’t seen his tax returns, how could I possibly have seen his IQ scores? 

True, to a degree.  But scholars have other means beyond checking test scores to arrive at their sound conclusions; in addition to circumstantial evidence there is direct evidence—in this case the testimony of Trump’s close associates who worked with him in governing and should know him best. 

Yes, time for some scholarship.  So I’m donning my academic robes again and invoking my status as Professor Emeritus to settle, through research, whether Donald J. Trump is indeed a moron. 

I will employ the scientific method in my research.  Sound science, as you know, relies on accurate measurement, and therefore I will use the Stanford-Binet Fifth Edition classifications...with one exception: In the lower reaches of the scale I will use the older classifications (Idiot, Imbecile, Moron, etc.) in place of the politically correct verbiage substituted in the 1960s.  Why?  Because our best witnesses—those associates (mostly former associates) who have worked with the president in close proximity over time—use that outdated nomenclature in their appraisals.  The hybrid scale looks like this:

IQ Range Classification

145-160 Very Gifted or Highly Advanced (Genius)

130-144 Gifted or Very Advanced

120-129 Superior

110-119 High Average

90-109 Average

  71-89 Low Average (Dull Normal*)

  51-70 Moron*

  26-50 Imbecile*

    0-25 Idiot*

 *Previous nomenclature that my study subjects use.

Let’s start our inquiry with the president’s own self-evaluation; he above all should surely know himself.  His self-assessment is a “very stable genius.”  We accept his word on it and assign him a base score of 150, a consensus figure for genius status. The fact that he is “stable” would not add any points to the score; it refers to temperament, not intelligence.  Normally the adjective “very” would raise the score ten points to 160, but that would put our president at parity with Albert Einstein, and I’m reasonably sure he would not be so immodest as to put himself on a plane with the greatest physicist of the Twentieth Century.  So to be fair, we’ll split the difference and add another five points, bringing us to an IQ total score of 155.

 Mr. Trump claims he has a second opinion to back him up.  With a proud lift of his chin, he has told the world several times that none other than Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, agrees with him, and has branded him a genius.  We were about to credit Mr. Trump with 150 points, then Putin himself came forward to correct the mistranslation of the Russian word “yarkii” that he had used to describe Trump.  It can mean “bright”  (but not in the sense of being intelligent), but is better translated as meaning “flamboyant.”  The word may or may not be complimentary to our president, but it certainly has nothing to do with intelligence quotient.  (Et tu Vlady?)  Again, a description of personality, not intelligence.  No points.

Let us now move back closer to home, to those who work or worked closely with Trump in what passes for governing our nation.   Following are their judgments.

Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury: Called him “An idiot.”     

25 points

General John Kelly, White House Chief of Staff: Called him “An idiot.”   

25 points

Reince Priebus, former Chief of Staff: Called him “An Idiot.”    

25 points

Gary Cohen, former Chief Economic Advisor to the President: Mr. Cohen is prolix in his evaluation, offering such appraisals as “an idiot surrounded by clowns” and “a fucking asshole.”  The noun “asshole” is mainly descriptive of Trump’s personality, not his intelligence, and will not result in a point deduction; however, the present participle “fucking” is a modifier of some negative impact and must constitute a five-point take-away from the max in the idiot range.

20 points

Rex Tillerson, former Secretary of State:  A “fucking moron.” There’s that modifier again.  Believing it is meant pejoratively, I will adjust the score downward from the top of the moron range.

60 points

General H. R. McMaster, National Security Advisor:  An “idiot,” “dope,” with “the mind of a kindergartner.”  Hard to quantify this one.  I’ve taken the liberty of interpreting the “dope” and “kindergarten” references negatively and made the appropriate downward adjustments of 10 points.  

15 points

Steve Bannon, Former White House Chief Strategist: “He’s like an 11-year old child.”  At first, I was inclined to dismiss the judgment as not of relevance to our purpose here.  But then I encountered the same evaluation again (below) and was forced to reconsider.  Yes, it was giving me a mental age, which divided by the chronological age of 18 (a constant in calculating IQ) and multiplying by 100, gives you the numerical IQ, which here would be 61.

61 points

Katie Walsh, Deputy Chief of Staff: “It’s like trying to figure out what an 11-year-old child wants.”  Corroboration of Bannon’s judgment.

61 points

Republican Senator Bob Corker: “The White House has become an adult day care center.”  Further corroboration.  Eleven-year-olds would require such care.

61 points

I believe this is a sufficient sample to begin our calculations and answer the question posed above.  Is our President a moron?  We’ll now add up the score from each of our participants for a sum that will then be divided by their number, like so: 155+25+25+25+20+61+15+61+61+61=509 divided by 10=50.9 rounded up to 51,which proves Donald John Trump to be, just barely, a...moron!  A mere .9 points from being an imbecile, but a low-range moron nonetheless.

This learned paper should not only preserve my tenure, but emboldens me to seek a GOFUNDME so I can tackle an even greater question facing our nation: What is the IQ (average and median of course) of those Americans who voted to put a moron into the highest office in the land? 

Should I succeed and get that study done, I have this feeling that those folks in Stockholm will sit up and take notice, and probably some sunny spring they’ll tell me I’ve won the prize I’ve so long deserved....

HAD TO PILE ON

I tried not to take the bait, but in the end couldn’t help myself.  I refer to our president’s recently tweeted threat to cut off aid funds for California in the wake of our most tragic wildfire in history.  Here’s his gratuitous twitter take in full:

There is no reason for these massive, deadly, costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor.  Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests.  Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!

Where to start forking through this fetid word stew...OK, first off, you, Mr. President, are wrong—totally: there is not one but several reasons for California’s forest fires:  

A unique climate of modest winter rains followed by many months of dry heat and low humidity.  (Just the opposite of what you and your mates living east of the Rocky Mountains suffer in your six-month summer sauna season.)

Powerful seasonal winds (we call them Santa Anas, but you can call them Mariah) that blow down from inland desert high-pressure areas through mountain passes toward he Pacific, heating and drying as they gather momentum to blow down and dry out whatever is in their path.

As you may have heard, Mr. President, California has a complex and varied geography that defies easy generalization.  For instance, did you know that Southern California poses quite a different challenge to the fighter of wildfires?  Up north the fuel is diverse, with many tall stands of conifers intermixed with oaks and scrubland; down south we have a predominant, dense shrub-like growth called chaparral (more poetically referred to as the Elfin Forest.)  Its many drought-resistant plants have a high oil content and lose their winter olive green quickly with the onset of late spring or early summer and become a most combustible brown tinder.  A mere wind-driven ember can cause this ready kindling to literally explode into flames able to leap deep canyons with a single spark.

As for those relief funds you are so eager to withhold from a state that rejects you at the ballot box, surely you must be aware that 60 percent of our forests are federally owned and managed.  (30 percent are privately owned, and the state controls only seven percent.)  So, as you can see, you, Mr. President, are chiefly responsible for our calamity.  Have you consulted with your Secretary of the Interior on the matter?  You know, Ryan “Stinky” Zinke, presently the subject of six separate ethics investigations?  Or is he too busy rolling back regulations on fossil fuel industries for you to reach him?

Moreover, if you want to cut off relief funds to California, then we will cut off the tax revenues we send to the Federal government.  I’m sure you know that for every buck California sends to Washington we get 81 cents back.  So lets make a deal.  How about we keep all our dollars and you don’t have to send us any at all.  Agreed?

One day after the fund-freeze tweet above, Trump followed with a less combative round of flawed counsel.

With proper Forest Management, we can stop this Devastation constantly going on in California. Get Smart!

Putting aside his puzzling practice of capitalizing some nouns and not others without any rhyme or reason, and the strange reference to a long-gone TV show (you would have thought as a reality television star he would have known that), he gave us some hard advice to go on.

That came when he made a personal visit to the ashes of Paradise (a vanished community he repeatedly miscalled “Pleasure”) last Friday. 

There, flanked by outgoing California governor Jerry Brown and incoming governor Gavin Newsom, the founder of Trump University expanded on a simple solution he said he learned from President Sauli Niinistö of Finland, that far-north land of year-round rains and long cold winters: RAKE THE FOREST FLOOR OF ITS UNDERGROWTH!  (President Niinistö denies ever saying such a thing; perhaps our leader got him confused with the President of Nambia.)

Rake the forest floor of its detritus…why didn’t we think of that?!  We did, and quickly laughed it off.  Removing that duff robs trees of the nourishment they need.  It also leaves the land bare for the rains when they do come, inviting mudslides and floods on a grand scale.  In addition, the bare earth invites the invasion of non-native plants to take root and force the native flora out.  And if it’s the thick and spiny chaparral forest you’re clearing, be sure to wear a suit of armor. 

Enough of this pointless beating around the bush.  California will always have wildfires as long as it has floral fuel to oxidize.  That’s part of nature’s cycle.  What we want to control is the frequency and intensity of these burns.  And as all intelligent citizens know, the late burgeoning threat of same has one cause that our president and his willfully ignorant and subservient GOP bed-wetters in Congress deny: it’s called Global Warming.

Their script is the same whenever you see them asked on the television news whether global warming is a fact or not; they put on this humble look of sham frustration, as though they’ve spent nights tossing and turning in a vain search for an answer: “I don’t know.  I’m not a scientist.”

Really?  

Then why he hell are you in Washington, D. C. charting our destinies?  

Don’t you know any climate scientists...not employed by the fossil fuel industry? 

Have you thought of consulting one for an answer on our behalf?  

Have you considered having one of your aides read a copy of Scientific American and give you a report on consensus thinking?

I thought not...to all of the above.

Thanks for nothing.

#

All this was foretold by Omar a thousand years ago.

Some for the Glories of This World; and some

Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come,

Ah, take the Cash, and let the Promise go,

Nor heed the rumble of a Distant drum!

#

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS COMETH

Shed tears and lower your Confederate flags if you must…Jeff Sessions, our Attorney General until he was fired by President Donald J. Trump a few days ago, is the latest guy in Trump’s vaunted brain trust to get canned by Il Duce.  Irony dwells here.  Yes, the Alabama dweeb who was the first Senator to back Donald J. Trump in his bid for the presidency, became the first post-midterm election casualty in the Trump Administration’s dizzying in-and-out shuffle of the “best people.”  One fears they will soon run out of recruits to join the GOP Legion of the Fallen.  Don’t despair. This swamp has no bottom.

The firing, of course, was neither surprising nor without cause...in Trump’s mind anyway.  Sessions had recused himself (properly so according to Department of Justice rules) from meddling in the Mueller investigation into Trump’s possible collusion with Russia in fixing our 2016 national election.  Not prudent.  Not in the Court of King Trump.

Others—commoners like us—might have our own reasons for wanting Jeff gone: his opposition to civil rights his entire political life; his “no tolerance” policy in separating Central American refugee parents and children at our southern border; his “reefer-madness-era” war on all drugs even as much of the nation is relaxing it laws on their use; his lying before a Senate committee that he had not met with any Russians during then 2016 election campaign.

As for that crisis upon us...behold Trump’s day-one quick pick of a successor to Jeff Sessions: meet Mathew Whitaker, far-right political hack from Iowa, defeated candidate for senator from Iowa, in the running for sycophant of the year, who sports some mighty strange beliefs and took some mighty dubious actions.

He believes that Marbury versus Madison, the 1803 landmark decision that put the Supreme Court on equal footing with the legislative and executive branches of government and preserved our balance of powers, was wrongly decided.

He believes that states have the right to nullify federal law, an issue that most thinking folks consider dead now, resolved with the conclusion of the Civil War.

He has for over a year, in written and spoken words, claimed that Mueller leads a “lynch mob,” and that Trump is innocent of all charges made against him without seeing any of the evidence in Mueller’s probe; as Attorney General, of course, he would oversee Mueller’s investigation with the means to stop it in its tracks.

He is not popular with the voters, twice proven.  In 2002 he ran for Iowa’s State Treasurer and lost to the Democrat, 55% to 43%; in 2014 he ran in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate and finished a dismal fourth, tallying less than 8% of the vote.

He has the reputation of being a sycophant non pareil, a singular qualification with Trump and his neo-fascist cronies.   

He’s on the record that he opposes “secular judges,” and that judges should “have a biblical view of justice.”  The Constitution says something quite different about mixing church and state.

Most concerning to many, he was a board member of, and worked for, World Patent Marketing, a Florida-based firm that bilked its clients and threatened those who complained of their treatment.  The scammers were ordered by the Federal Trade Commission to close its doors this May and pay $26 million in fines.  Whitaker did not respond to FTC subpoenas regarding his participation.  The FBI is currently investigating the World Patent Marketing fraudsters. 

Finally, legal scholars of many political persuasions concur that Whitaker’s appointment is unconstitutional.  Under the Constitution’s “advise and consent” clause, filling a position as high as Acting Attorney General requires Senate approval, and Whitaker lacks that.

President Trump was asked about his appointee’s sketchy past as he boarded his flight to Paris to join world leaders in observance of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.  He dodged the question with the lie (quelle surprise!) that he had never met Whitaker (he said he had a month earlier), then reportedly spent his weekend in the City of Light as a grouchy loner at odds with the rest of the world (except, of course, for dear Vlad, with whom he was all smiles).

Today he’s home again and mad as hell.  The election didn’t go his way.  The voting was rigged, as it is whenever it goes against him and the Russians aren’t able to help him out.  The Democrats have control of the House with all its investigative powers.  Acting Attorney General Whitaker makes the perfect first target.  Can Trump be far behind?

Get ready for a major rumble!  And pray for the survival of our Constitution.

AND THE WINNER IS?

As the dust settles, and you read the voting results’ fine print, no one really won yesterday.  At best, call it a draw, a push, no gain, a dead heat, a split decision, inertia sustained, stasis.  Sure, the Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives by a modest margin, the Republicans padded their majority in the United States Senate (once known as the world’s greatest deliberating body) by a modest margin, and the Democrats flipped seven governorships their way, enabling them in the approaching census year to better compete with their Republican masters in the heinous art of gerrymandering.

There was a big loser, though: the United States of America.  Constitutional crises aplenty loom in the nation’s near-future, as Donald J. Trump’s singular brand of Funky Family Fascism threatens to destroy the world’s oldest living democracy.  The Constitution did not anticipate an unlettered psychopath.

Those who shut their ears, eyes, and mouth to Trump’s egomaniacal putsch for unfettered power set themselves up as marks for a swift and wrenching change in lifestyles.  It is time for us all to shout our opposition to what’s happening in Washington.  Take it to the streets.  Now.  And hope we’re not too late.

OUR DEMOCRACY IMPERILED

Today’s election is the most important of your life.  I know, you’ve heard that scare every two years since you were of voting age.

But this time it’s true.  Democracy as we know it—indeed, as we invented it!—is at the crossroads.  One way returns us to the winding and often difficult path we’ve traveled as a nation for 242 years; the other leads straight to the latest version of Fascism.

What do I know about the subject, you may rightly ask?  Not enough, to be sure.  But I am a political junkie, have studied the subject long and hard, and have lived 86 years in our democracy.  Some of those years were tough: the Great Depression; World War II; the Korean War (tough for me personally); the Cold War; Nine-Eleven; the periodic economic downturns and joblessness.  Not one of them, not all of them taken together, prepared me for our latest and greatest threat: Trumpian Fascism.

Novelist Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, warned us of its danger in 1935; his It Can’t Happen Here was written at the peak of Fascism in Europe, and though some Americans  (William Randolph Hearst, Father Charles Coughlin, Aviator Charles Lindbergh, and Poet Ezra Pound, to name a few) embraced it, the ideology failed to take root here.  Not then.  Quite the contrary.  In World War II the United States went to war against Fascism around the world.  And won.

Now it is back in its new guise bearing the brand of the accidental president, Donald J. Trump; with the skillful assistance of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, they threaten to supplant democracy as we know it with a self-absorbed nation state at war with itself.  No matter that Trump is demonstrably a man of limited intelligence, with a range of mental disorders that, if distributed evenly, would fill all the beds in your average psycho ward.  Yet he has the cunning and manipulative powers of the consummate conman, the gifted grifter, the demonic demagogue able to stir the herd, inflame all those who feel cheated by life, or their neighbor, or “their government.”  His real gift is that he does this remarkably well, able to play savior and victim at the same time, without compunction, without empathy, without even a glimmer of guilt.  

It is time to reverse course.  Bring our democracy back.  And we start that today in the only way we have available to us.  We vote.  And we assist others in getting to the polls to vote.

I don’t know if the much discussed “Blue Wave” is about to break on our soiled nation or not.  While hoping for more, I post here my predictions on how it will likely go in our fight to save the best of what we are.  

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

The Democrats will take control of the House by picking up 36 seats nationwide.  Some final results will probably not be known until early December, given the many close contests in California.  Here are the competitive California Races: the projected winner is in boldface; the incumbent is in italics.

UNITED STATES SENATE

Given that the Democrats risk 23 seats this year compared to only 10 Republican seats in play, I believe the GOP will keep control of the Senate, otherwise known as he Chamber of Cowards.  I predict the make-up will be 51-49, as it is now, or possibly 52-48 in favor of the GOP.  The key races that will determine the actual outcome are listed below, with my prediction of winners in boldface, and again, incumbents in italics.  (If O’Rourke pulls off an upset, and the Dems hold their vulnerable seats (excluding North Dakota, which is likely lost, they still might have a slight chance of taking control of the upper chamber 51-49.)

STATE GOVERNORS

Democrats’ brightest prospects are in the governorships, where the resistance to Trump’s authoritarianism is strongest.  Credit a bottoms-up strategy that the party has been tardy in employing until now.  Due to the great number of states in Republican hands that are up for grabs, the Democrats have a going-in advantage, not unlike the one the GOP has in Senate contests.  I predict a net gain of nine governorships for the Dems—many of them in the larger states.  In the listing below I project what I think will be the outcome in the closer races.  (Winner in boldface, incumbent in italics.)

Vote with the ardor and urgency you’ve never felt before.

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Did you go with my midseason prediction (7/31/18) and make a bloody fortune?  Are you are now driving your Ryder truck to Vegas to collect?  Good for ye of much faith.  You are among the “haves.”  You remembered my prophetic message at baseball’s midseason:

In the spring I called for a very predictable season.  It still is, with some notable exceptions.  Washington has sputtered, giving both the Braves and Phillies a real shot at the Eastern Division crown.  The Cubs are a good bet to blow it to the talented Brewers in the NL Central, while the Dodgers, strengthened by the trade for Machado, will take the NL west title and go on to win the NL championship.  Unfortunately, they will meet the winner of the two American League super teams, the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox, and lose.  Pick a winner in the AL?  With shaky hands I don my Red Sox.  (The Indians and Yankees are AL runner-ups.)

Wow!  One hundred percent correct!  If you put your money down midseason, then you’re already in first class on a jet to meet and party with the Kardashians and the Koch brothers!  And, once more, you have me to thank.  You’re welcome. 

Unfortunately, as you surely know, at season’s end I second-guessed myself and dropped the Red Sox in favor of the Cleveland Indians over the Dodgers in seven.  That puts you late bettors in the “have not” category.  Sorry.

Why did I switch and make such a crazy choice for the World Series?  Well, I let my heart overrule my head, gave in to emotion over reason.  How could I do such a thing?  Well, I was exposed to the bug early and caught baseball fever, which has been likened to prostate cancer: you usually don’t die of it; you just die with it. 

Back in the summer of 1938 my machinist dad took off from his WPA Depression day duties of leaning on a shovel and took his five-year-old son to League Park in Cleveland for my first Major League game.  It was love at first sight.  I don’t remember whom the Indians played that summer day.  All I know is I came out of the encounter a fan of Roy “Little Thunder” Weatherly, Bruce Campbell and Hal Trosky—names as familiar today as a roll of Nubian queens.  

As my father took me to more games, I soon showed signs of becoming a more discriminating fanatic, idolizing Bob Feller, Bob Lemon and Lou Boudreau, and listening to the grainy radio voice of Jack Graney on those lucky days when I was sick (or faking it) and home in bed from school listening to the Tribe’s feats of daring done. 

I also remember the suspense of waking to the front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer where a line drawing of Chief Wahoo would signal the results of the day before.  If the smiling Chief had a scalp in his hand, the Tribe had won; if he had a black eye, we’d lost; if he held a scalp and had a black eye, we’d split a double header; if he had two black eyes, well, you know....

It all came to a glorious climax in 1948 when the Cleveland Indians won the American League Pennant in a one-game playoff with the Boston Red Sox (Lou Boudreau was the hero) and then went on to defeat the Boston Braves four games to two in the World Series.  I was not among the celebrants in Cleveland streets, however, for my father had already moved his family to Southern California, where I rejoiced by myself from afar, my addiction sealed.

The Indians have not won a World Series since 1948, yet I remain a lifer among its fans.  Try as I might, I can’t kick the habit.  Each spring brings hope anew; by most Junes the Indians are struggling; and by August they’re mathematically eliminated.  Have I ever returned to the city of Cleveland proper, you might ask.  No.  Why should I?  No World Series win draws me there to celebrate.  And, as Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, who did some brief time with the Tribe as a first baseman, is reputed to have said, “Cleveland is the only city where it’s better to have a plane crash flying in than taking off.”

Sad.

You see that tear Chief Wahoo is shedding at the top of the page?  It’s not just because we failed to win another World Series this year.  It’s mainly because he has been told he will be “retired” (eliminated) next year, which my daughters say is long overdue, and I, despite my personal nostalgic feelings, must agree.  

Sad.  Bigly sad.

Still, I believe with Monte Python that we should always look on the bright side of life.  That in mind, I’ve made a Faustian bargain with  Thanatos that I not die until the Indians win another World Series.  What does Mr. T get in return?  My complete collection of Cleveland Indian baseball cards.  

The way it’s going, I have at least another 70 years of collecting.

HORSEHIDE HEAVEN!

Welcome back baseball fans to the most exciting time of the year—the playoffs to see who goes to the World Series and wins it all.  Last I engaged you was July 30 with my minor midcourse corrections to my picks in this year’s quest to make you rich!  You will recall that I predicted the finish below.  (I include only the top three finishers in each division...the also rans are of no consequence to us). 

You will also note that these nine teams in the American League finished exactly as I predicted, save for Seattle and Oakland, which are reversed.  As for the National League, I missed a few.  While I pegged the Dodgers as winners in the West, and selected Chicago and Milwaukee 1-2 (they tied) in the Central, in the East I never saw Atlanta coming, and my choice, the Nationals, finished second.  

Now let’s look forward to the hard part.  Picking the winners in the playoffs, when the chips are down, the best meet the best, and the challenge is greatest.  Here goes:

Crazy choice for the World Series?  Probably looks that way.  But I had this visitation from Lady Luck herself last night and she whispered in my skyward ear to bet this month’s whole Social Security check on such a strange outcome; she said I would not regret it.  So I invite you all to join with me in wagering against all wise men and their odds and get rich quick with me...and together we can uplift our middle digits to all those inhabitants of Trumpland as we purchase our one-way tickets to Tahiti.  Bora Bora beckons, mes amis!

SO MANY WITCHES, SO LITTLE TIME

Things happen so fast for a witch-tracker these days that even a dedicated chronicler can’t keep up with Russiagate.  No sooner did the ink dry on my last tally of witches (more than 35 if you count home-grown traitors who have pled guilty, and you include indicted Ruskies) nabbed by Grand Inquisitor Robert S. Mueller III than he surpassed himself, flipping the head necromancer of the Trump Bunch, sending its members scattering like roaches at dawn.  Yep, Paul Manafort, the president’s one-time campaign manager with the key to the coven caved at last; he pled guilty to defrauding the United States and witness tampering—both big-time felonies.   

This sudden revelation of Manafort’s turning turncoat lifts expectations that our national humiliation at the skilled and dirty hands of Vladimir Putin can at last be understood, and perhaps put behind us, even as any and all home-grown traitors get their due.  Expect nation-shaking events to be upon us before we know it.  

Let’s put aside such happy thoughts for the nonce to note another minor catch in Mueller’s successful witch hunt; this one may have escaped your attention.  His name is Sam Patten, an American by nationality, a D.C. blueblood by birth, a lobbyist by trade...as so many entrepreneurial Republicans are in this shady age of influence peddling.

Sam’s crimes include forgetting to register as a foreign agent for a Russian-backed Ukrainian political group and assisting, through a third party, a Russia-favoring oligarch (believed to be Serhiy Lyovochkin) in his secret and illegal purchase for $50,000 four tickets to Donald Trump’s Inauguration.  (The high price was probably justified given the record crowd attending.)  Patten also withheld incriminating documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee.  He pled guilty to the charges, which could mean five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

 Who sold him those prized tickets?  Konstantin V.  Kilimnik  (now there’s a good Irish name for you), Sam’s sometime business associate who has been charged by Mueller with obstruction of justice and has fled Ukraine into the protective arms of Mother Russia.  (Oh, the stories KVK could tell if only he were in our clutches!)  

But the conspiratorial coziness doesn’t end there.  Patten also did work for the notorious (and now defunct) Cambridge Analytica, dirty-trick artists for sale who messed with our 2016 elections, among those of other countries near and far.  And what other unsavory political fixer-for-hire did Patten work with?  None other than Kilimnick’s bosom buddy and former business partner, our own convicted felon, Paul Manafort, who just flipped and agreed to tell Mueller all. 

What a tangled web those witches weave when first they practice to deceive; in Russiagate those webs are so gigantic, erratic, and ensnaring, it would take an army of spiders on speed to weave.  Too tough a task for wizard Mueller and his team of crack investigators to unravel?  I think not.  He and his skilled associates appear to be on the brink of solving most Russiagate mysteries and naming a host of witches...err, traitors.  Or so I hope.

Few of us realize we are living through the greatest conspiracy in human history, with our lives and futures in the balance.  As they say in Hollywood, it’s got a cast of thousands, as many thrills, and takes you all over the world.  

So hang on for the existential ride of your life!  (Which, of course, could be short.)

PROGRESS REPORT ON THE WITCH HUNT FRONT!

Eureka!  I just found an ancient woodcut (Nostradamus’s work?) that prophesied Grand Inquisitor Robert Mueller’s current haul of witches!  To date, that is.  See below for identifications of those demons who have a stake already reserved for the coming bonfire festivities.  Left to right:

*George (“Coffee Boy”) Papadopoulos, the president’s former and sometimes tipsy foreign policy advisor who pled guilty to lying to the FBI about interactions with Russian agents. 

*Rick (“Swinging”) Gates III, a larcenous member of the president’s campaign committee and transition team, who pled guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements; this junior partner to Paul Manafort ratted on his boss and testified against him in the latter’s first criminal trial. 

*The infant being proffered to the central figure by Gates is thought to be Paul (“Croesus Wannabe”) Manafort, the president’s second campaign manager and suspected pipeline to Vladimir Putin by way of Ukraine; he’s been convicted of eight felonies (including bank fraud and tax evasion), and is facing another criminal trial this month.

*Michael (“The Fixer”) Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney and mobster who got religion and spilled all he knew (and that was plenty!) about presidential naughty doings, including paying off known playmates with whom the president was romantically involved.  (What Cohen’s extended hand is offering is not known for sure, but is thought to be a baseborn child fathered by the president, according to a Trump Tower doorman). 

*Michael (“Out-Like”) Flynn, retired Air Force Lieutenant General and briefly National Security Advisor to the president before being caught lying to the FBI; this quondam dining mate of Vladimir Putin turned on his commander-in-chief and blabbed all to Grand Inquisitor Mueller.

And who, you are wondering, is the central figure in this tableau?  Yep.  You guessed it.  None other than Beelezeboob himself, shown here in better times.  And those critters in he sky?Believed to be flying Foxes raining ideas down on his receptive head.

Wait!  There’s more!  Grand Inquisitor Mueller has also identified by name, and indicted, 25 Russians in his witch hunt.  True, they belong to the Saint Petersburg Coven (so like the blasphemers to hide behind a saint’s name!) and will probably never feel the heat of a fire...unless they wander from Russia’s bounds on holiday and get nabbed by Interpol and extradited to you-know-where.  I can hear their lamentations now: “Sheesh!  That means another boring Black Sea vacation.”

Meanwhile, the implacable and unflappable Mueller proceeds in his silent, methodical way to stalk other evildoers, so far unimpeded by their spells and incantations, least of all those cast by that daffy sorcerer’s apprentice Rudy (“Fogbound”) Giuliani.  Yes, our special investigator, Mueller, left free to do his duty, will root them all out.  And there are many more witches fearing and trembling in DC at this very moment.  (Rumor has it that Mueller may next snare one of Beelzeboob’s own sons!)

I sense some skepticism.  Trumpenproles will protest that the “good men” referred to above have not practiced witchcraft as described in such seminal works as Inquisitor Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum (1487), or Francesco Maria Guazzo’s Compendium Maleficarum  (1608); the indicted and confessed folks did not consort with wizards, attend Black Masses, dance wildly and lewdly with unclean spirits; they did not dine on unbaptized babies, kiss Satan’s anus, or faithfully keep the Witches Sabbath.  Where do I come off tarring them with the word witch?

I don’t.  You’ll have to check with Mr. B himself on that.  He’s the one who expanded the definition of witch to include—get ready for the bombshell!—traitor.  He is so smitten with his broadened definition that he complains of “witch hunts” in virtually every public utterance he makes, even as Mueller piles yet another traitor on the pyre-to-be. 

Pray for their unholy souls if you will.  I will not.

So, see y’all sometime between the closing of the polls in November and next spring’s Walpurgisnacht.  Maybe we can celebrate by lifting a brew or two and throwing another witch on the barbie.

HATS OFF TO LAST WEEK’S HERO!

These days heroes are as rare as gelded unicorns...but last week we had one step up and tell the truth to a cowed and sadly confused nation.  Yep, John Brennan, former director of he CIA, got his Irish up and told us all that our Colluder-in-Chief is an existential danger to our republic.

For his act of courage he got his security clearance yanked by Dear Leader and reprimands from those spineless eunuchs who dress up like Republican senators.

Fortunately, Brennan got quick backup from retired Admiral William H. McRaven, former Navy Seal and architect of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden; the retired admiral wrote to Trump asking that his own clearance be withdrawn and telling the president his action had “humiliated” Americans before the world and “divided us as a nation.”

A wave of additional support came in a letter to Trump from 13 former senior intelligence officials of various political persuasions who chastised him for politicizing intelligence work and punishing those who exercised their First Amendment rights of free speech.  

Apparently Mr. Trump was not moved, revealing that he maintains an “enemy’s list” (the spirit of Richard Nixon lives!) of others who can expect to lose their clearances soon.  Their offenses?  All were either critical him or his policies, or were involved somehow in the Mueller Investigation into whether Trump and his cronies colluded with the Russians in fixing the 2016 election.  Lifting their clearances!  What a clever way of barring witnesses from classified materials they might need to defend themselves in court.  

The reason given for Brennan’s punishment?  Depends on who you listen to.   Spokeswomen Sarah Huckabee Sanders read the official line to the press that it was because Brennan had behaved ”erratically” and made a series of “unfounded and outrageous allegations.”  But our elected president and sometime soothsayer, Donald J. Trump himself, leveled with the Wall Street Journal in an interview: “I call it [the Russian investigation] a rigged witch hunt...And these people led it.”

Isn’t he being investigated for obstruction of justice?  Isn’t that an admission of the same?

The noose tightens.

#

MIDCOURSE CORRECTION

Welcome back baseball fans and the just plain greedy who want to get rich quick on my proven powers of predicting.  As all of you true fans know, as the trading deadline approaches its end, I make my modest first-half corrections.   

Why?  Because it’s about half way through the season, and, as every true fan also knows, teams that have played well go into the trading market seeking quality guys to shore up their weakness and enhance their chances of making the prestigious and lucrative playoffs.  Where do they get those players?  From the weaker teams already out of contention and in need of better talent to bank for the future; as you might expect, they seek younger promising talent (performers) on the rise in exchange for older, established players with expensive contracts.

Does my update negate the April picks?  No, merely sharpens them, alters them to current rosters and offers you the chance to hedge any bets made in the spring; for those who have not yet taken the player’s plunge, you have the edge with fresh info.

In the spring I called for a very predictable season.  It still is, with some notable exceptions.  Washington has sputtered, giving both the Braves and Phillies a real shot at the Eastern Division crown.  The Cubs are a good bet to blow it to the talented Brewers in the NL Central, while the Dodgers, strengthened by the trade for Machado, will take the NL west title and go on to win the NL championship.  Unfortunately, they will meet the winner of the two American League super teams, the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox, and lose.  Pick a winner in the AL?

With shaky hands I don my Red Sox.  (The Indians and Yankees are AL runner-ups.)

Note that my long shot picks of spring—the Seattle Mariners in the American League and the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League—are still in the thick of the pennant races and would still fetch a fancy return from the Vegas books.

Below, my picks from the spring, followed by the revised choices of July 30.

So there you have it...your keys to your fortune, free of charge.  Plan now to rent a Ryder or pinch a Penske to pick up your Vegas swag when the World Series ends in October.

Let me just say again in closing, as I did last spring, that in these iron times I find it a comforting distraction watching another outdoor spectacle of chess and ballet played out on a stage of green by the Boys of Summer.

Finally, a reminder that these selections are guaranteed.  If the teams do not finish in the order predicted, I will provide you picks for next year’s season absolutely free of charge!   

SCANDAL BACKTRACK SERIES: CLINTONGATE

We truth-seekers continue with our search to find whether Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s fourteen-month-long investigation into Donald Trump and the president’s possible collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election has gone on too long.  Should it be “wrapped up” as  Rudy and Fox Vox demands?   To discover the answer we return to our method of comparing Treasongate’s duration to another presidential scandal that rocked the nation.  Today we go back to Bill Clinton’s impeachment and the sex circus of the late 1990s.

8.  THE CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

Americans love a good sex scandal, and Bill Clinton, always ready to serve the people, saw that they got a tasty one.  But it didn’t start out that way.  Actually, the big tuna got hooked and cooked in the carnal soup after a lengthy fishing expedition by conservative legal terrier Kenneth Starr.  Starr took over in August 1994 as an independent counsel investigating a corrupt land deal to which the Clintons were a party.  Turns out the Clintons were innocent and lost 40 grand in the so-called Whitewater deal.  But Starr, backed by an angry Congressional Republican majority long frustrated by the skill of “Slick Willie” (as they called him) at finessing them in the give-and-take of politics, shifted his attention to a softer target: Bill’s “women troubles.”  

The president’s eighteen-month affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky didn’t begin until November of 1995, but Starr, even before the Whitewater trial ended in May 18, 1996, was on the new and sordid trail, rife with titillating details.  Lewinsky became a witness in Paula Jones’ civil case (first filed in 1994) of sexual harassment against Bill Clinton.  Before you could say Don Juan, other paramours from the president’s past popped up to add spice to the tabloid stew.  I won’t offend you with a rehash of the salacious details, except to say word of Monica’s fellate-and-tell tales spread like an STD through an Army base.   (No mention of any muff-diving reciprocity.)

The upshot?  Bill denied.  Then lied.  Not prudent.

On October 8, 1998 the House of Representatives voted to begin the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton; a week later House Judiciary Committee chair Henry Hyde, a self-appointed general in the eternal war on sin, fixed Congressional focus on two charges: obstruction of justice and lying under oath.  In a predictable act of political piling on, Republicans added campaign finance law violations and abuse of power over the next two months.

On February12, 1999 Clinton, tarnished to be sure, was acquitted of all charges; in the Senate trial 50 (all of them Republicans) voted to expel Clinton from office on obstruction of justice, 45 of them voted “aye” on perjury charges.  All Democrat senators voted against conviction.  For the second time in American history, the impeachment of a president fell short of the two-thirds Senate vote needed for expulsion from office. 

No surprise that the forward-thinking nations of the world expressed open amusement at the salty spectacle and our fixation on the sexual misconduct of a political leader.  An Australian journalist summed it up best: “Thank God we got the criminals and America got the Puritans.”    

In a sense, the humiliation of Clinton proved a Pyrrhic victory for the GOP.  In a spate of lurid revelations and forced admissions that followed, the seedy Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, resigned; his would-be successor as Speaker, Bob Livingstone, declined that powerful position and then resigned from Congress, admitting that he, too, had been unfaithful in his marriage; Henry Hyde, chief prosecutor in Clinton’s trial, likewise had to confirm he had had a young dolly on the side for five years.  One could go on with the roll of the randy...Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth, Congressman Dan Burton...and so on.  But those were the least of GOP losses.  In an off-year election in which they were projected to pick up many seats in the House of Representatives, they actually yielded a total of six to the Democrats—the first time an out-of-president party failed to gain seats in an off-year election since 1934.  Some numbers!

Now it’s time do our own math in pursuit of the truth and in service to history.  Let’s see, the legal hunt of Clinton began with Whitewater in January 1994 and extended to Impeachment acquittal in February of 1999...why, that’s more than five years.  Five plus years!  Write that down.  Show it to Rudy and his skulk of Foxes.  No, Mueller shouldn’t wrap it up.  He’s got promises to keep, and many miles to go before he sleeps.

One must ponder and shudder at what punishment the future may bring the convicted.  If nine White House blowjobs will get you impeached, just imagine what betraying your country to Russia will get you.  Picture being drawn and quartered in a four-way tractor pull on the palm-studded grounds of Mar-a-Lago.

ARE YOU SMARTER THAN DONALD TRUMP?

Try the pop quiz below to see how you stack up against the man Vladimir Putin called a “genius”...or so Trump keeps trumpeting.  A score of eight or more gives you the right to call yourself a “Genius,” proof that you have an IQ of 140* or more.

THE QUIZ

1. WHERE IS NAMBIA?  

2. WHO BURNED DOWN THE U.S. WHITE HOUSE IN THE WAR OF 1812?

3. IN WHAT YEAR WAS IT BURNED DOWN? (Take your time on this one.)

4. HOW MANY TEXANS ENJOYED HURRICANE HARVEY FROM THE COMFORT OF THEIR OFFSHORE BOATS?  

5. HOW MANY CORINTHIANS ARE THERE IN A BALLGAME?

6. WHERE DO YOU GET THE BEST TACO BOWLS?  

7. WHO TWEETED “IT IS BETTER TO LIVE ONE DAY AS A LION THAN 100 YEARS AS A SHEEP?”

8. PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS REPEATEDLY SAID THAT PAUL MANAFORT WAS HIS CAMPAIGN MANAGER FOR “A VERY SHORT TIME.”  WAS IT 49 DAYS AS HE CLAIMS OR WAS IT 144 DAYS AS THE FAKE NEWS REPORTS?

9. WHY IS TRUMP SO EAGER TO HOLD A SUMMIT MEETING WITH VLADIMIR PUTIN IN THE NEAR FUTURE?

10. PRESIDENT TRUMP ON HIS RETURN FROM SINGAPORE AND HIS MEETING WITH KIM JONG-UN SAID, “SO MANY PEOPLE ASKED WHEN I WAS ON THE CAMPAIGN [TRAIL]...WHEN YOU CAN, PRESIDENT TRUMP, WE’D LOVE OUR SONS TO BE BROUGHT BACK HOME—YOU KNOW, THE REMAINS.”  HOW MANY PARENTS IS “MANY”?  BEST GUESS WINS.

* You may wonder how Vlad the Impaler arrived at that number of 140, considering that Donald only measured out at a 68 on the Stanford-Binet test.  Well, that was, of course, for the forebrain alone;  Vlad helpfully added in the score of 72 for the cerebellum and the brain stem (the so-called “reptilian brain”) to get to the required 140.

THE ANSWERS

1. You’re right if you said it was in Trump’s brain only.  He was apparently trying to name either Namibia or Zambia in a speech but confused them and created a brand new African “shithole.”

2. Canada, as Trump recently told Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau to his face prior to the G-7 meeting.  That there was no Canada in 1812 is a loose end still to be tied up.  You might try England.

3. Fake history theorizes that it was probably 1812.

4. According to Trump at a recent FEMA meeting, 16,000 of those thoughtless, rubbernecking party people had to rescued by the Coast Guard.  He praised members of the CG for their heroics; they modestly kept their silence, perhaps not aware of what they had done.

5. The answer is two.  Addressing a student audience at conservative Liberty University, the renowned Bible Scholar Trump vowed to protect Christianity, then told the students that “two Corinthians 3:17, that’s the whole ballgame….is that the one you like?”  The students snickered at his botch of Second Corinthians, the school’s favored dictum: “Now the Lord is that spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty.”

6. The Trump Tower Grill.  The president said so.

7. The man who has lived 72 years as a weasel, Donald J. Trump, pilfered the words from Benito Mussolini because he likes to “be associated with interesting quotes.”  Not to mention interesting Fascist dictators.

8. If you are Fox Watcher, it’s 49 days.  If you follow the Fake News, it’s 144 days.  Score accordingly.

9. Because he’s seeking political asylum with dear friend Vlad after Robert Mueller’s report is made public.  Maybe he can share digs with Snowden.

10. As a Korean War vet I should know the answer to this.  But I’m having trouble with the calculation.You see, my mother died in 1972 at age 65; my father passed away in 1983 at age 78.  And I shipped out to the Far East in 1952 at age 19.  Although I’m not too good at sums and take-aways, I think I’m looking for folks at least 116 years old to verify their campaign trail requests to have the remains of their fallen sons brought home.  But what really intrigues me is how those aging centenarians knew in 2016 that Trump would be elected president.  Mighty few of us did.

SHAME!

As a veteran of the Korean War, I find this photo obscene in the extreme.  What madness presides in Washington D. C.?  Explain this our national debasement to the descendants of the 33,741 Americans who died in frozen Chosun!

I suggest that every Democrat running for office in November include a copy of “the salute” in his or her mailer to voters.

SCANDAL BACKTRACK SERIES: THE PLAME AFFAIR

Truth-seekers awake!  Here we continue with our search to find whether Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s year-long investigation into Donald Trump and the president’s possible collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election has gone on too long.  Should it be “wrapped up” as Fox vox demands?  To discover the answer we return to our method of comparing “Treasongate’s” duration to other political scandals that have shaken the nation.  Today we go back to the George W. Bush reign and the Iraq War.

Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s assistant, took the hit for the Bush Administration’s outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame (right), apparently an act of vengeance for her diplomat husband’s failure to find yellow-cake uranium in Africa that would justify the war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq

9.  PLAMEGATE

The Valerie Plame Affair really opened in July 2003 when conservative journalist Robert Novak outed an undercover CIA agent named Valerie Plame.  Why do such a nasty thing?  Because Plame’s husband, diplomat Robert Wilson, had been sent by the George W. Bush administration a year before to Niger, Africa, to confirm that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was trying buy “yellow cake” uranium for its nuclear weapons program; Wilson found nothing of the sort and told the world so in a July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed piece titled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.”

Apparently, that was unacceptable, because the Bush administration had already launched the Iraq War, partially justified by President Bush’s own words that “Saddam Hussein recently sought quantities of uranium from Africa.”  (Saddam hadn’t.)  Apparent as well, the administration was going to punish Wilson for his “disloyalty.”  A week later it leaked through Novak in his column titled “Mission to Niger” that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA agent.  That may have been payback.  It was also a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

To investigate the matter, Patrick Fitzgerald was named Special Counsel by DOJ Deputy Attorney General James Comey (of all people!) on December 30, 2003, and a lengthy legal/political drama involving a cast of many ensued.  Several of the prominent Neocons who plunged us into a major war that destabilized the Middle East—including the grandest chickenhawk of them all, Vice President Dick Cheney—emerged from the legal proceedings unscathed.  They had their fall guy, though, in Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s Chief of Staff, who on March 6, 2007 was found guilty of obstruction of justice and four counts of lying under oath, fined $250,000, sentenced to two and a half years in prison and two years of probation.  President Bush commuted Libby’s prison time, but did not pardon him and left the fine in force.

That same year the Wilsons also sought redress separately in a civil suit against Libby, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove in Wilson vs. Cheney.  The judgment went against the plaintiffs because “the disclosure of Mrs. Wilson’s status as a covert operative was incidental to the kind of conduct that defendants were employed to perform.”  Huh?

The Wilsons’ appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was denied in a 2-1 decision; a further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was stymied by the Justice Department on May 20, 2009, which upheld the Appeals Court Decision and said “further review is unwarranted.”

Life brightened after that for the Wilsons.  Books and a movie, Fair Game, based on their experiences transformed Valerie Plame from a spy to a writer of spy novels, a career move far more lucrative and far less dangerous.

Time now to do the addition.  Let’s see, Plamegate started in July 2003 and ended in May 2009.  Why that’s five years and eleven months!  Compare that to Mueller’s progress on Treasongate!  If it helps, write that down.

Curiously, the duration of Plamegate might be double that if you take into account President Donald Trump’s official pardoning of “Scooter” Libby of his crime just this April.  Wow!  Most presidents wait until the end of their terms to give out pardons.  Such a compassionate man!  

HOW LONG SHOULD A TREASON PROBE LAST?

Here the promised follow-up rebuttal to the Faux News-Pence-Giuliani shrill scream that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s inquiry into Trump’s Treason has gone on too long.  From them comes the predictable panic-laced cry of  “Wrap it up!”  

I believe their protests should be faced and answered forthrightly, and that I intend to do.  My credentials? Well, as a sometime historian without portfolio, I have published on historical matters before (for example: here, here, here, and here).  Historians, of course, rely on the written record, as do I.  And they deal with real facts, not “alternate facts” or “relative facts,” nor do they ignore precedent.

With that in mind, I submit that the truth-seeker Mueller has not exceeded his “time limit;” indeed, considering all the facts in play, he’s barely begun, with a long, long way to go.  To prove the claim, I’ve researched the last ten major scandals that have rocked our nation, and focused on how long they occupied the civic mind and lasted in legal time.  Moving pastward, we have:

10.  Benghazi. 

This fresh-in-the-mind “scandal” that began in September 2012 when Islamic terrorists attacked and killed the American ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, along with three other diplomatic personnel in the city of Benghazi.  Who was to blame?  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the prime target of Republicans.  After at least eight congressional investigations spanning four-plus years, the final probe, held by the Republican-led House Select Committee on Benghazi and chaired by Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, reluctantly found in its June 2016 report no evidence of her culpability.   Conveniently, the televised eleven-hour questioning of Clinton, marked by angry exchanges, was held during the summer of 2015, as her candidacy for the presidency was just gearing up.  

Well, if she wasn’t to blame for the tragedy, then who was?  That vaguely and thinly spread to lesser officials among the diplomatic corps—and to the U. S. military for not effecting a timely (and impossible) rescue.  Realists and veterans of conflicts know it all falls under the common label, the ”fog of war.”

In my version of the truth, the only real scandal was that House Republicans used a national tragedy to play an obvious and odious game of partisan politics.  Duration of the farce?  Well, Gowdy’s committee actually issued its final report on December 12, 2016 –when the mare was already out of the barn and the reptilian monster was on its way in.  My addition comes up with four years and three months. Compare that with Mueller’s mere year on Treasongate. 

Next to come in a Ten Part Series:  “The Valerie Plame Affair”

FOX FRIENDS CLAMOR FOR CLOSURE

No mas! No mas!  Hear that wail from the Fox folks’ whiners’ chorus?  

No more what, you may ask.

No more investigating President Donald Trump and his amorphous administration for multiple crimes, including conspiracy to collude with Russia in meddling in our 2016 presidential election.  Investigated by?  Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his crack legal team, don’t you know.

Leading the pleading is Vice President Michael Pence, known as Puritanism’s last best hope.  Pence told NBC News’s Andrea Mitchell last week that he thinks “it’s time to wrap it up.  And I would very respectfully encourage the special counsel and his team to bring their work to completion.”  So gently put by the fawning toad in the oaf’s shadow, who nevertheless is widely reported to be secretly assembling a politically friendly group to help him succeed Trump, come what may.

America’s former mayor Rudy Giuliani, recently hired to replace the disgraced Michael Cohen as the president’s personal lawyer, “respectfully” echoed Pence’s sentiment to Politico: “I think he’s [Mueller] sensitive to the fact that he’s gone on a little bit too long....He’s certainly getting a certain degree of questioning about that.”  So daintily and diplomatically put. 

But that’s where the soft talk ends.  Sean Hannity, Devin Nunes and the masses of Fox-trained “deplorables” are out in force to oust Mueller ASAP.  Pry no more into the dodgy doings of Dear Leader they rant and roar.  When we ask why, we are told that the Special Counsel has been snooping for a year now and found nothing in his “witch hunt.” 

Nothing?  Really?  Then how do we account for Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russians: Anna Bovacheva, Maria Bovda, Robert Bovda, Mikhail Burchik, Irena Kaverzina, Alexandra Krylova, Dzheykhun Ogly, Vadim Podkopaev, Sergey Polozov Yevgeny Prigozhin, Gleb Vasilchenko and Vladimir Venkov; repeat those names rapidly to cleanse your palate.  Also indicted was the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company that infiltrated our social media and surreptitiously pimped for Trump during the 2016 presidential election, plus two financial shell companies, Concord Management and Concord Catering, that facilitated it.

Yeah, but we’re never going to try them, the Fox knaves say.  Wrong answer.  The right one?  Your admission that the Special Prosecutor is not on a witch hunt or a goose chase.  As for bringing the Russian culprits to justice, that may never come to be in an American courtroom, but they will not be visiting the Big Apple or Miami’s beaches any time soon.   And before booking a European vacation, they had better check for extradition treaties in force.  (“Drat! Looks like another boring Black Sea summer.”)

But let’s go domestic and look for evil-doers nabbed here at home.  Start by explaining Trump aide George Papadopoulous’s guilty plea to making false statements to the FBI regarding contacts with Russians.  (He’s talking to Mueller, by the way...flipped, as they say.)

Or address the conviction of London attorney Alex Van der Zwaan, son-in-law of a Russian oligarch, for making false statements to the FBI regarding contacts with Russians—first to receive a jail sentence in the probe.

Add the guilty plea of Richard Pinedo to identity fraud charges for selling bank account numbers with stolen identities to the Russians.

On to bigger fish now, starting with General Michael Flynn, Trump’s short-term National Security Advisor who has confessed to lying to the FBI about phone conversations with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; Flynn’s the first of Trump’s men to plead guilty in the Russian investigation.  He has flipped big time.

Moving on to even bigger fish, Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager for five months, hasn’t pleaded guilty to anything yet, but faces charges of money laundering, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign power, and making false and misleading statements...all to be adjudicated in a Washington, D.C. courtroom.  Separately, he’s charged in the state of Virginia with 18 counts, including nine concerning bank fraud and five for filing false tax returns.  Manafort may yet break...or he may prove his loyalty to Trump and do enough prison time to welcome in the 22nd century from his own private cell.

Finally, there’s Rick Gates, former business associate of Paul Manafort and a Trump campaign insider.  He has turned on his former partner, owning up to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States, and is supposed to have told Mueller enough to make Devin Nunes sweat.

Golly!  This sure seems like more than a witch hunt.  Sounds like a traitor hunt to me, what with every day more damaging admissions and revelations getting dragged into the public consciousness by a pesky press against the Fox folks’ wishes.  

But... I am running out of time and space to respond to the Trumpsters’ second concern: why it is taking Mueller so long to “wrap up” his investigation?  I will research that and get back to you all soon with an answer.

P.S.  Observe how many times the words Russia and Russians show up in the blog above.  I count 12.  How about you, Mike?  Rudy?

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