A FAREWELL TO MY FRIEND

Every man is more than he seems.  So claimed the French philosopher John-Paul Sartre.  Sartre went on to liken every human death as a loss for us all, a unique life lived and taken from us, leaving us with no explanation of the loss and too few memories of the deceased.  Memories.

My top two memories of Dave Hanbidge are his ever-ready sly smile and his deep-down moral goodness.  They were on ample display at a monthly lunch a handful of us held for more than a decade to discuss the world’s latest ills.  

Dave was our constant table-mate the last Tuesday of every month, brightening the mood with his good humor and that smile of his.  He didn’t speak that often, but when he did it was always on target, delivered in a soft, dispassionate voice. 

I remember a particular lunch...must have been 2012, because we were noisily discussing what themes the Dems should be pushing in the upcoming presidential election—healthcare, minimum wage, gun violence, the usual items on the Liberal wish list...when Dave interrupted our blabbermouth contingent.  “Wait.  You’ve forgotten the most important issue of all.”

Sudden silence.  All looked to Dave for the last word.  “The overriding issue is climate change; if we don’t solve that, all these other matters will be irrelevant.” 

End of conversation.  Case closed.  Dave was a bottom-line kind of guy.

On another occasion, early on in our friendship, I reverted to the reporter I was trained to be, and asked him what he did for a living.

“I sell used cars,” he said.

Yep.  I was rather stunned.  By the answer and his matter-of-fact tone of voice.  I had never interviewed a used car salesman before.  

“Where?” I asked lamely, figuring he probably sold used Mercedes at Fletcher Jones Motor Cars in Newport Beach.  

“East LA.”

Speechless a first, I sputtered out the irrelevant fact that I spent my boyhood next door in neighboring Whittier.  Unnecessary. No harm, no foul.  That was Dave.  Stand-up, straight-up.  No pretensions.  You’ve heard the expression, “he had friends in high places?”  Well Dave went that one better—he had friends in all places.

I tried to pry into his past on another occasion.  Sartre was right.  There was so much to this quiet guy I just couldn’t absorb it all.  He seemed to have been everywhere...Canada, Cleveland, Costa Rica, South America, the South Pacific, and on and on.  As for his family tree, that was so twisted and tortured I thought he had pilfered it from a Faulkner novel.  

One thing was clear: Dave was a doer, a man of action, an adventurer who didn’t want to be cheated out of any experience.  He was an explorer of wilderness, a horseman, a pilot, a skipper of his own sailboat.  And a real winner to us all when he revealed to us one day, under our pressure, that he was one of the few long-term survivors of small-cell lung cancer.  All the ex-smokers in our lunch group silently shared his victory.

There was a certain serenity to Dave; he didn’t raise his voice or ever complain about anything.  Even after luck turned on him.  That’s when he had a heart attack at sea, in his boat, with only his wife Becky aboard.

Somehow they made it to shore, and Dave survived.  And after a brief break he was back with his Tuesday lunch-mates.  But he was not his old self.  We watched him slowly fade over many months.  On January 6 this year, at lunch, we became very concerned when Dave went into a series of coughing fits.  Could we help?  Typical of Dave, he waved us off.  Two days later his heart quit.  He was dead.

Let me close with some words borrowed from John Donne written nearly 400 years ago that seem especially appropriate to describe the essence of Dave:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thy friend's

Or of thine own were:

Any man's death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 

It tolls for thee. 

VENGEANCE IS MINE, SAITH THE RAT: PART II, TAKING TRUMP PERSONALLY

Age is supposed to bring acceptance if not understanding.  Not for me.  Not when it comes to Donald J. Trump, who offends me deeply at the personal level.  Felon Michael Cohen drove that home in his word portrait of our president during the recent House Oversight Committee hearing. 

I am no super patriot.  I believe war is evidence of our failure as a species.  But I am also quietly proud of my four-plus years in the Air Force during the Korean War; I learned a lot, I grew up, and I served my country.

That makes me a sucker, according to the draft-dodging Trump, who pled bone spurs (no medical records to support that claim), and confided in Cohen, “You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam.”  Square that with his continued dishonoring of the recently passed Senator John McCain, an American hero of the highest rank, whose major fault (in Trump’s warped ethic) was being captured.  It is hard to describe how raw that act of cynical cowardice rubs me.

Rawer still was Cohen’s testimony that Trump directed him to write threatening letters to high schools, colleges and the College Board not to release his grades or SAT scores.  This from the self-proclaimed genius with the bigly brain who had the gall to call Barack Obama “a terrible student” and to challenge him to “show his records.”  Trump said he would give $5,000,000 to charity if he did.  (Or was it “take” that sum from a charity?) 

Trump’s decades-long brag that he graduated at the top of his class at the Wharton School of Business has since been debunked; he didn’t even graduate with honors; precisely where he placed in his class of ’68 remains under lock and key, shielded from any “showing of the records.”  Obama, on the other hand, graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude.  That’s a GPA above 3.75, as I recall.

Maybe I am taking this too seriously.  As a retired academic who gave grades for twenty-some years, I perhaps put too high a value on them, but I do know they can be crucial to the careers of those who receive them.  Whether or not you win that scholarship you need.  Whether or not you get into the school you want...if you don’t have a rich Daddy to grease the ways.  So let’s be honest with how we give them and use them, and expose the cheaters for what they are. 

Mentioning Trump and charity in the same sentence begs a blue ribbon in the oxymoron class.  Cohen confirmed yet another crime against common decency when he testified that Trump directed him to fund a plant (later reimbursed) who successfully bid up to $60,000 on a portrait of Trump himself. 

Trump came out a triple winner:  his visage fetched the highest amount spent at the fancy Hampton auction and thereby served his vanity; he got to keep the portrait of himself; and he tapped his own Trump Charitable Foundation (to which he had contributed nothing) to pay for it.  Clever.  And convenient.  It sure beats robbing a couple hundred church poor boxes to get the money.

Words fail me.  I can’t help but think back 25 years to the Clinton Blow Job Scandal when Republicans made much of how “character” counts so much in a leader.  So effectively did they push that meme Vice President Gore held his boss at arm’s length while running for president, and duly lost...or so the Supreme Court tells us.

Apparently character matters not anymore to the GOP.  Whatever happened to the party of Lincoln?  To the party of the solid upper-middle class with its standards of decorum?  To those once stand-up citizens fallen into the steamy depths of the new and enlarged Trump swamp?  Bedmates now with Dear Leader, whose scandals bid fair to overtake the number of his lies.

Beyond contemptible.  Try execrable.

Sorry.  I had to get that off my chest.

VENGEANCE IS MINE, SAITH THE RAT: PART I

It is said that Americans are a forgiving lot, living in a land of second—even third—chances for those who stray from the straight and narrow...providing those sinners show contrition as a condition for redemption.  Not so for the 17 Republicans (presumed to be Americans) on the House Oversight Committee who met in D. C. last Wednesday to hear the confession of Michael D. Cohen.  They slashed away for about eight hours at the credibility and character of President Trump’s former personal lawyer and “fixer” who had turned on his boss after ten years of loyal service.

I had to admit it was truly an impressive job of savage shaming—skillfully done, with scarcely a mention of Cohen’s “boss,” who was at that very moment in Vietnam botching his latest try at “transactional” diplomacy with North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un.  Then I reminded myself that Republicans are superb at framing arguments and often win with the weaker case.  (Too bad they can’t bring that same gift to governing a nation.) 

Even the 21 Democrats on the Committee were slow to give Cohen their trust, having had him lie to them in previous testimony.  They, though, did not avoid mentioning President Trump and his prominent part in Cohen’s perjury—or the threat Trump poses to our democracy.

I was sooner to accept Cohen’s fulsome apology for past lies.  He seemed to me sincere in his vow to clean up his life.  In his opening remarks he said of Trump, “He is a racist.  He is a con man.  He is a cheat.”  Good start, I thought.  But we already knew all that; there had to be more.  There was.  While some pundits have said the hearing produced little that was new, I found some shiny nuggets in the narrative stream.  

First off, there was projected for all in the hearing room to see Document One, a facsimile of a check for $35,000 payable to Cohen for “legal services,” which actually was one month’s payment to reimburse him for buying the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels.  “The Check” signed by Trump was dated August 1, 2017, when he was president!  (Did he sign it in the White House?  Maybe in he hallowed Oval Office where so many great matters of state have been handled?  I think this item, prominently flaunting Dear Leader’s Gothic signature, would make a juicy footnote in some future, comprehensive History of United States, vying with one of Warren G. Harding’s more lurid capers for “most read.”)

Not only was the transaction a criminal violation of campaign finance law, it probably piqued the interest of agents at the Internal Revenue Service.  Writing off as a business expense a $130,000 settlement to a failed romance with a porn star seems a stretch to me.  And did Ms. Stormy declare that handsome sum as income?  I’ll stop here with my musings.  Truth is, I haven’t read the revised tax code since Trump and his GOP minions revised it to benefit the...uh, middle class.  Who knows?  They may even have included a new loophole for the licentious —say, for example, fornicators with an adjusted gross income above $500,000 can claim an extra tax credit.  Everything unfair has its place in a Trumpian world.

For me the most Trump-damning revelation in Cohen’s testimony was his claim that on either July 18 or 19, 2016, he was in candidate Trump’s Trump Tower office and listened in on a speaker-phone conversation. 

Between?  The president and that Iago for our time, Roger Stone.  

The subject?  Stone told Trump that he had just spoken with WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange who informed him that a massive drop of Hillary Clinton emails was imminent.

The response?  Something like “wouldn’t that be great.”

The rub?  Trump had denied in writing to Special Counsel Robert Mueller that he had any knowledge of the transaction.  Did Mueller already know he was lying?  Or was this new evidence that Trump perjured himself?

Cohen also testified that in early June of 2016 he was in a meeting with candidate Trump when Donald Trump, Jr. came in and in a loud whisper said to his father “The meeting is all set.” 

Trump responded with a “Good.  Let me know.”

Cohen believes this referred to the infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 9 with the Russians in which “dirt on Hillary” was discussed out of Trump’s hearing, but not his knowing.  Does Mueller already suspect this? Or would Cohen’s claim only corroborate what Mueller already knew?

I sat enrapt and attentive throughout the entire House Oversight Committee hearing, wondering why the Republican hit squad never challenged Cohen on his dealings with Trump, but stayed focused on Cohen’s many crimes, as though they were not done in service to his boss.  At one moment in the proceedings everybody seemed to gasp silently and pause to gain their bearings.  It came when Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, rather late in the hearing, asked Cohen if there were “any other wrongdoing or illegal act that you are aware of regarding Donald Trump that we haven’t discussed yet?”

Cohen didn’t pause for the tension to build.  “Yes,” he replied, ”those are a part of the investigation that’s being looked at by the Southern District of New York.”

Ouch!  A sharp left hook lands.  

GOP ferocity seemed to abate a bit after that blow as all thoughts momentarily turned to Gotham and what awaits Trump and his gang of thugs there.  Insiders tell us that whatever Special Counsel Robert Mueller may have on Trump in the Russia probe is a side-show compared to the three-ring circus of crime being exhumed and examined in the Big Apple.  Picture the Joker, the Penguin, and the Riddler dancing the tarantella with Satan on Fifth Avenue while Donald J. Trump, smoking gun in his hand, cheers them on.  If they televise this Manhattan spectacle, be sure to lay in a half-ton of popcorn.

Nudge, nudge. My editor (me) is telling his writer (me) to wrap it up.  I have exceeded my space limit. OK. I will end Part I here and now, with the promise of a Part II in a few days, in which I get really personal. 

SEND IN THE CLOWN

Where’s Rudy?  Where is he when you really need him?  Need him?  Yes.  For the buffoon’s comic relief from the mounting national tension peaking over the coming week of revelation, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller is supposed to release his report on Treasongate…and our Dear Leader will meet North Korea’s Dear Leader in Hanoi to bring even more peace on earth…and contrite felon Michael Cohen will tell Congress and us all (or some of us) of the Trump Administration’s dirty doings over the last two-plus years.

I wish I could say I looked forward to this imminent three-ring circus.  Instead, I feel like a character caught in the grim close of a Kafka novel edited by Samuel Beckett.  Talk about fear and trembling! 

You and I may hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst.  That nothing will be resolved and we remain a nation in pieces with our democracy imperiled—all because the Republican party has been taken over by racists and hate-radio anarchists, abetted by gutless Republican members of the United States Senate.

That said, if we do survive with our democracy intact and return to our former selves, we will owe it, ironically, to three Republicans with FBI backgrounds—Special Counsel Robert Mueller, former Director James Comey, and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.  Keep those Medals of Freedom handy, just in case.

Only now am I beginning to fully understand that old Chinese malediction, “May you live in interesting times.”  I am.  We are.

TRICKLE-DOWN TREACLE

It has taken me a week and a boatload of Pepcid to digest President Donald J. Trump’s State of the Union Speech for you sluggards and laggards who didn’t see or hear his fresh-from-Vegas lounge act.  I’ll try, belatedly, to fill you in on what you missed.

The State of the Union speech sure started out auspiciously.  It was all about unity and compromise and loving one another, burying the hatchet, the lion and the lamb cuddling—all very lofty and inspiring stuff.  I choked up for a moment and thought I was living in Sweden.        

The speech lingered long on the wars we have fought, especially World War II and the Holocaust and how brave Americans won it all.  The rather lengthy recounting was related with such passion and freshness that I had the feeling Mr. Trump had just learned of that historic fray.  (No mention of Vietnam, though, the one war Mr. Trump would have fought in had he not been sidelined with a bone spur in his foot.)

Then Dear Leader got down to business.  Meaning “The Wall.”  How we desperately needed it and he would build it himself if he had to.  His voice bordered on a quaver when he talked of this national emergency in which women were being raped and children abused and good Americans murdered by undocumented brown folks who were coming in yet another caravan...apparently to reinforce the “lost caravan” that vanished after last November’s election.

On the bright side, he introduced many citizen-heroes who stood and were applauded.  Our president seemed unpleasantly surprised though that the loudest and most prolonged applause was elicited by the newly elected freshwoman class of Democratic representatives, all dressed in dazzling white.

The president did not linger long in this scene of levity.  He went on to the hot and hard challenges facing the nation today, namely late term abortion, and abortionists who “ripped from their mother’s womb moments from birth...living, feeling, beautiful babies....”

There followed more grisly descriptions of the medical process and a conclusion that didn’t seem right to me.  “Let us,” he said, “reaffirm a fundamental truth, all children, born and unborn, are made in the holy image of God.”  Really?  God is a child?  Isn’t that an extreme example of Biblical anthropomorphism?  Frankly, I prefer Michaelangelo’s depiction of God.

Socialism also took it in the chops, as the President resolved that we would never be socialist and lambasted Venezuela as a current example of the ism that he threatens to get tough with.  Really?  Venezuela?  Why not choose as your example Norway, Sweden, or Denmark—successful nations that are far more representative of that choice of political philosophy.  (I suspect Dear Leader knows less about Socialism than I know about antidisestablishmentarianism.)

Gauleiter Trump saved his big bomb for last.  Having not mentioned, even once, global warming or the many Russia-linked investigations surrounding him and his fellow swamp dwellers, he boldly threw down his gauntlet to his many domestic enemies:

“An economic miracle is taking place in the United States and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous partisan investigations.  If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.  It just doesn’t work that way.”

Wow!  At first it seemed a no-brainer.  War?  No way!  The trade-off?  Cease investigation of the largest crime family to ever rule the United States?  No way!

One of the few blessings age bestows on the old is a memory of things past.  True to form, Trump lied.  Nixon faced Watergate while the Vietnam War raged.  As for his “legislation” red herring, what major legislation did President Trump back and pass in his two years in office?  Only the tax cut he is so proud of, which enriched him and his wealthy cronies at the middle class’s expense; last I heard their refund checks are down eight percent from last year.  Some legislative achievement!

So what is my final judgment on the SOTU speech?  Well, many whoppers attended the telling; they have been widely exposed as such by the media.  But if the purpose was to rouse the rabble, fire up his base of Deplorables, he was his usual effective self.  And if it was, as I believe he meant it to be, a stirring call to greatness, he failed miserably.  The speech was, in a word, bathetic.

I have heard the soaring eloquence of John F. Kennedy, and you, sir, are no John F. Kennedy.

SWEATING TO BEAT HELL

Did you hear what the Sibyl from Arkansas said last Thursday?     

Yes, none other than Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the Christian Broadcasting Network that God “wanted Donald Trump to be president.”

Ouch!  Now you tell me!  Here I’ve been calling our president a psychotic moron for going on three years now!  That’s at least a charge of blasphemy in the second degree and puts me smack dab in the hands of an angry God. 

The Oracle from Hope also said “it’s very hard at this point to even take a lecture from Democrats on what is moral and what isn’t.”  That hurts. Double ouch.  I’m a Democrat.  I like to think I’m moral...you know, within the generous bounds of 21st Century life.  Just check out my rap sheet:

I never killed anybody.

I never stole anything...OK, so I shoplifted a Heddon River Runt fishing plug when I was 14, but paid the price when the treble hook went through my Levis and planted itself in my thigh.  Quite painful, penance paid, lesson learned.

I don’t lie.  And I’m so honest that I’ll tell you why I don’t lie—I’m no good at it; I tried a few times when I was young but the would-be recipients all told me I had guilt written all over my face.  (Let me also admit that occasionally I can get away with what some call a little white lie...what I call a moral lie told out of kindness, Mrs. Sanders.  You know, like telling Ann Coulter she’s beautiful.)

As for my language, I would characterize it as really rather refreshingly clean in an age when fashionable ladies casually drop F bombs as though they were flying Phantom Jets over Hanoi.  My language seldom dips to such a crude low...except maybe when the UCLA Bruins are losing an athletic contest and my dogs run and hide from the salty expletives.  But seldom does that happen more than once a week these days.

I never coveted my neighbor’s goods.  Hell, I drive an eighteen-year-old Honda.  If you need more proof than that check out the clutter in my garage that has survived a decade’s length of yard sales.

I never coveted my neighbor’s wife.  Well, if I did it was only platonically.  Let’s move on to another commandment.

The Sixth? Haven’t I already answered that one?  Oh, I’ve addressed the Judaic Sixth, not to kill, not the Roman Catholic Sixth, which covers a wide range of...Hey! Got an idea!  Let’s all of us take a mulligan on the Sixth.  Agreed?  I thought so.

I realize, now that my confession is made, that I still have even more cause to fear the coming Judgment Day than our president has to fear Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final verdict.  Why?  Because Sister Sarah refers to God as “He,” with a capital H, and that means He’s a harsh, Old Testament macho guy short on mercy.  (I would have preferred a She, because she’d be gentler on me, and...well...you know, I’ve got this special charm with the gentler sex...or is it gender?  I do genuinely keep mixing them up.)

Whatever, however, Judgment Day cometh, and apparently I’m at greater risk than Roger Stone.  What chance does a Social Christian stand in the afterlife?  And just who is going to represent me in that heavenly jurisdiction?

Why of course!  Rudy Giuliani!  He’s a lawyer...or used to be.  More than that, he’s counsel for our God-sent president himself!  To top off all the good news, Rudy claims to have an in with Saint Peter.  Remember when he said that his gravestone would read “He Lied for Trump,” but figured he could “explain it all to Saint Peter,” who “will be on [his] side”?

Sounds reassuring.  But can Rudy get Sister Sarah to go along and have us all agree on a common story?  Or has she already retired as promised, and returned to Hope, Arkansas, to take a post as Oracle of the Ozarks?  And maybe I’d better check with Kellyanne to see if I’m still on our Dear Leader’s enemies list.

Damn! It’s so hard to be a good Christian these days.

DISHING WITH THE DUDE

So many of you have asked about the recent publication of a photo of Jeff Lebowski and me that I feel compelled to explain.  I ran into The Dude on the Central Coast last month and had a nice chat.  I asked him if some bowling tourney brought him so far away from LA.  No, he said, he was just checking out the price and quality of the local weed; the necessities of life can drag a man far from hearth and home and rug.

Did he still bowl competitively?  Sure, he said.  But not at the old place...that 1950s-style edifice with the bright plastic stars twinkling against a stucco sky, with its spacious parking lot where his buddy Donny Kerabatsos died of a heart attack.  “Naw,” he said, avoiding mention of the brawl with the Nihilist bikers that precipitated Donny’s cardiac arrest.  That bowling alley has been demolished in the tried and true LA way of making space for the novel new.  But, yes, he still bowls here and there.

Still teamed up with Walter Sobchak?  A trace of sadness scooted across the Dude’s bearded face.  No, he said.  He and Walter had split for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on, though he thinks the big guy soured on bowling when the Cornhole craze came along.  Walter reconciled with Jesus, he of the purple jump suit, of all people, and the pair now tour the state in those back-street, fight-club-style tourneys that bring out the high-rollers and a riff-raff fan base; apparently, the purses are good enough to keep them both clothed and fed.  El Duderino chuckled. “You ought to see Walter in his purple jump suit; looks like a freeway wreck of a farm truck carrying a ton of eggplants.”

His Dudeness asked me to join him in a White Russian.  I told him I’d been dry for two-and-a-half years, but I’d settle for a sarsaparilla.  Accepted.  I was tempted to ask him if he still resided at the same old pad with the same old high-end rug holding it all together, but I bit my tongue.  He was probably behind in his rent again and didn’t want to be reminded.  So to keep the talk going, I asked him if he ever did recover those stolen Credence tapes.  As you remember, His Dudeness rarely smiles, but I got a hint of one.  “Not the stolen tapes,” he said.  “But I got lucky with replacements at a Pico-Rivera garage sale.”

It was time for the question I was dying to ask.  “How’s Maude?”

“OK, I guess. Don’t see much of her.”

“She’s the mother of your son, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she is.”

“See much of him?  Jeff Junior, isn’t it?”

“No and yes.  Maude thinks it’s better that I stay out of his way.  That’s fine by me because he lives way back East in some cold, uptight place.”

“What’s he doing...you know, how does he pay the bills?”

“He has this post-doctoral job at MIT checking out the nature of dark matter, and...well I don’ think it’s worth the trouble.  Not when you can bowl competitively and live a peaceful life where the grass is greener...and legal.  Besides, how do you find anything that’s dark in the dark?”

What insight!  Proof of what we all already know: The Dude Abides.

BORN A POET: ROBERT BURNS, JANUARY 25, 1759

Born this day in 1759 was Scotland’s favorite son, Robert (“Bobby”) Burns, a natural born poet of humble origins and prodigious talent, whose words (his own and those gathered from Scotland’s Bardic past) are sung by you and so many millions around the world every New Years Eve.  Yes, that would be “Auld Lang Syne.”  But his gifts to world literature hardly end with a resurrected Gaelic melody and some borrowed words to go with it.  His verse and songs live on, in English or in Scottish dialect or a mix of both, particularly among the Scottish diaspora, who celebrate him and his lyric art far and wide.

Bobby (also called Rabbie) was, as his father before him, a rustic, hardscrabble tenant farmer with a hunger for learning.  To that Bobby would add a lust for female company attended by a severe manic-depressive disorder, according to his biographers.

In the vanguard of Romanticism, Burns was a man of the hard political left, supporter of both the American and French revolutions, and an outspoken foe of slavery and an advocate for the brotherhood of man.  Those stands then assured the spread of his reputation around the world as the personification of the noble man of the people.  The famed writer Sir Walter Scott, a fellow Scotsman, leaves us an admiring profile of this uncommon common man:

His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish, a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity which received part of its effect perhaps from knowledge of his extraordinary talents...there was a strong expression of shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament.  It was large, of a dark cast, and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest.  I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time.

Toil in the fields, it has been said, took Burn’s life early, in the summer of 1796 at age 37.  The exact cause of his death remains something of a mystery, though some uncharitable sorts claimed it was alcoholism and some said it was venereal disease—apparently afflictions poets are heir to wherever they may live.  A more formal and reasoned medical opinion is that his heart, weakened by rheumatic fever, simply quit on him.

I have chosen as my favorite Burns poem (even though I can’t fully appreciate the dialect it’s partly written in) “To a Mouse.”  It recounts an incident in the poet-farmer’s life on a day in November in 1783 when his plow upturned a mouse in his field.  His compassion for the animal and the feelings of shared mortality in a world of an uncertain future seem to anticipate Burn’s early death.

Ever wonder where John Steinbeck got the title for his masterpiece, Of Mice and Men?  Yes, here, where Burns’s rodent’s fate foreshadows that of Steinbeck’s George and Lenny, whose plans for a shared farm go so tragically awry.

To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November, 1785

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a pannic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion,
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell-
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

Thy wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e.
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

THE QUESTION OF THE DAY

Will Ann Coulter best Vladimir Putin for control of President Donald J. Trump?  Will the strong and strident voice of America’s archconservative harpy prevail over the wily KBG-trained despot who has had five private sessions alone with our vulnerable leader in which to steal the Trumpian mind?  Or will they share it—the home-grown, right-wing ectomorph in charge of domestic matters, while the savvy, murderous Russian continues to handle our foreign policy.  You might rightly say our lives are in the balance.

Our last two turbulent years as a nation have proven true what savants have been telling us for decades: we are a divided nation, practically down the middle.  What they haven’t told us (and they may not know) is how Donald J. Trump, a career criminal, became president of the once United States.  (I suspect Putin is better informed on that.)

We keep hearing that we are entering a constitutional crisis under Trump; it goes unresolved and merges into another constitutional crisis, then another, and so on, while the president (whose only gift is survival by any means) lobs grenades into the corrective government machinery.  Yes, our beloved Constitution has failed us; it was written expecting men like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Kennedy to lead us, not some mentally disturbed New York street thug.

You may object to my demeaning the Constitution.  And ask, what about the Twenty-fifth Amendment?  It provides for the president to be removed if he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”  Yes.  All it takes is for the Vice President and “a majority of the executive department,” and two-thirds of House and Senate to vote him out.  Good luck with that.  VP Mike Pence might go along, but the cabinet officers?  As we have learned, they come and go like thieves in the night...and the day, looters and grifters with investigators on their trail.  You think they’re going to rat on their benefactor?  And in the Senate you’ve got Mitch McConnell tending his sheep; you’d be lucky to get a simple majority there, let alone two-thirds “ayes.”

There’s always that last resort, impeachment.  Yes, and we’ll likely be binge watching those dramatic doings fairly soon and viewing less of True Detective and Game of Thrones.  But to little purpose.  At the end of the House festivities looms again the morally-challenged Mitch and his flock and another negative vote.  If he and his fellow Republicans haven’t acquired a conscience by now, there’s no way they’ll get one once the swamp is drained.

What do we do, California?  Time to go it alone.  Peacefully, of course.

THEY’RE OFF AND RUNNING!

If you want to be president, it’s never too soon to start.  Or so it would seem this early January, given the number of Democrats who have either announced their candidacy or are considering it. 

A long-time pony player, I’m drawn to any horserace—particularly one where the payoff is not in a purse or a winning wager, but where the imperiled future of my country is at stake.  Then I’m fully engaged, immediately.

That’s why I’ve jumped the gun with my own semi-scientific poll to see how the race shapes up in late December 2018.  My format mimics the possible line-up of likely candidates printed by the Des Moines Register, the leading newspaper in the Hawkeye State where the race officially begins.

My poll is a mere twig in a tornado, to be sure.  The sample size is small: 38 sure-to-vote Democrats.  The results are also biased toward the liberal end of the Democratic voter spectrum because all 38 are members of the Huntington Beach, California, chapter of Drinking Liberally.   

The results printed below will surprise many, but then the times are such that nothing should surprise anyone.  By the way, virtually all the voters reside in Orange County, California, where elephants have suddenly become an endangered species.        

What to make of this result?  It is, of course, in California, where all things possible are inevitable.

THE KING’S SPEECH

So I listened to Dear Leader’s address Tuesday night and to the host of critics who followed; they called it dull, flat, factually incorrect, a Nothingburger offering nothing new.

I disagree.  Our president gave the speech from the secularly sacred Oval Office, so the National Emergency must have been important.  The talk was also mercifully short—only nine minutes or so.  Yes, there may have been a few presidential misrememberings (such as blaming the government shutdown on Democrats when he, himself, on national TV, had proudly accepted the mantle of blame); but those can be corrected.  And there was something new: compassion and tenderness we don’t often see in a busy world leader.  My favorite passage was when Trump said:

Over the last several years, I’ve met with dozens of families whose loved ones were stolen by illegal immigration.  I’ve held the hands of the weeping mothers and embraced the grief-stricken fathers.  So sad.  So terrible.  I will never forget the pain in their eyes, the tremble in their voices, and the sadness gripping their souls.

You must have been as choked up as I was upon hearing those moving words.  Let’s face it, Donald Trump just may be the most sentimental and compassionate Republican president since Abraham Lincoln.  (Though I would like to see some actual evidence of his care for the afflicted, he’s probably too publicity-shy for any photos or such.)

I remember another time when Donald J. Trump showed his compassionate side.   That was just last June after his historic meeting with North Korean President Kim Jong-Un in Singapore.  After the meeting, Trump said that when he was a candidate for president “many people asked when I was on the campaign trail...when you can, President Trump, we’d like our sons brought home—you know, the remains.”  Trump delivered, and in July the bones came home with due pomp and circumstance.

I’m just not sure how many of those folks who had asked him to bring their sons’ remains home were present to meet the plane at the airport.  According to my calculations, parents of Korean War troops (I was one of them) would now be about 110 years old on average.

It takes a lot of gut for a manly man to show his soft side as he uses his high office to help the less blessed.

PROMISES MADE, PROMISES BROKEN: TRUMP'S TOP TWENTY BROKEN PROMISES

by Guest Contributor Kurt Meyer

New Year’s Day! A time of optimism and renewal!  A time when many millions of Americans envision for themselves a better life, a brighter future!  A time of renewed hope that this will be the year that we finally fulfill those resolutions that have eluded us in years past: to eat better and exercise more; to take a little less and give a little more; to be a kinder, gentler person.

Right?

Well, not for President Donald J. Trump, who has set a record, even among politicians, for the number of promises made and promises broken.

Just how many promises has our Dear Leader made and broken?  Too many to count!

Still, I invite you and your family and friends to try.  I offer this “Top Twenty” list—to which you can add a score or two more.

Which broken promises on my list also appear on yours?  Which have I inadvertently left off?  And does the broken promise topping my list also top yours?

Let’s find out.  Take a look!

20.  “I would like to sit down with Mueller.”  (April 7, 2018)

19.  “No obstruction. No collusion.”  (Feb. 16, 2018)

18.  “The economy will grow at 6%.”  (Dec. 6, 2017)

17.  “Don’t sell your house; no plants are closing down!” (Nov. 2016) I have found the magic wand for manufacturing.”]  (Nov. 2018)

16.  “We’re gonna save Medicare; we’re making Social Security stronger.”  (Sept. 5, 2018)

15. “Trade wars are easy to win.”  (March 6, 2018)

14.  “ISIS has been defeated.”  (Dec. 12, 2018)

13.  “Mine will be bigger, I believe, than any other tax cut ever. Maybe the biggest tax cut in history!”  (April 25, 2017)

12.  “I’m going to drain the swamp!”  (Dec. 23, 2016)

11.  “My administration has accomplished more than almost any other administration in the history of our country.”  (Sept. 2017)

10. “I’ll choose the best people for my administration.  I only hire the best people.”  (Sept. 15, 2016)

9. “I know words.  I have the best words.  Obama is stupid.”  (Dec. 30, 2016)

8. “I’m a stable genius.”  (Jan. 26, 2018)

7. “It has not been easy for me.  My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars . . . and I had to pay him back with interest.  I’m a self-made man.”  (Sept. 2016)

6. “Mine was the biggest inauguration ever!”  (Jan. 23, 2017)

5. “I’ll be the most transparent president ever!”  (Dec. 20, 2016)

4. “I’ll be the most presidential president ever!”  (Jul. 25, 2017)

3. “I’m going to build a big, beautiful wall, and who’s going to pay for it?  Mexico!”  (Oct. 28, 2015)

2. “You’re gonna be so tired of winning!”  (May 20, 2016)

1.     “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  (Jan. 20, 2017)

So there you have it: my “Trump’s Top Twenty Broken Promises.”

But why look back over the past two-plus years when you can look ahead?  Isn’t that what we Americans do best—look ahead?

What do you think will top your 2019 list of Trump’s Promises Made, Promises Broken?

“I will never be impeached.”

“I won’t be removed from office.”

“I will never serve a day behind bars.”

Personally, I’m going with the most predictable broken promise: “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

* Editor’s Note: Most, but not all of the dates listed above, are the first time Trump uttered such a lie or broken promise.

* Acknowledgement: Kurt Meyer thanks Jennifer Bledsoe for her contributions to this blog.

BORN A POET: RUDYARD KIPLING, DECEMBER 30, 1865

The first and youngest Englishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1907), Bombay-born Rudyard Kipling still elicits polar and varied judgments from readers and critics.  Novelist Henry James called him “the most complete man of genius…I’ve ever met.”  Novelist George Orwell differed, calling Kipling “morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting;” he also branded him, correctly according to today’s literary jury, a “jingo imperialist.”

Yet, for all the controversy Kipling’s out of tune and out of time defense of imperialism and colonialism (and, yes, a white man’s form of racism) prompts, his place in English letters remains secure.

His narrative skills are superior, his output voluminous, his facility across genres truly remarkable.  Journalist, short story writer, novelist and poet, he may be best remembered, ironically, as a writer of magical children’s stories.

“Tommy,” the poem reprinted here, appeared in Barrack-Room Ballads in 1892; a self-aware ordinary soldier tell us in the vernacular he’s neither the “unwelcome brute” we avoid in peacetime nor the “savior of his country” in time of war…a common lament of soldiers everywhere, for all time.

Tommy

I WENT into a public 'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, " We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' " Tommy, go away " ;
But it's " Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's " Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' " Tommy, wait outside ";
But it's " Special train for Atkins " when the trooper's on the tide
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's " Special train for Atkins " when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap.
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an` Tommy, 'ow's yer soul? "
But it's " Thin red line of 'eroes " when the drums begin to roll
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's " Thin red line of 'eroes, " when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an` Tommy, fall be'ind,"
But it's " Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's " Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an` Chuck him out, the brute! "
But it's " Saviour of 'is country " when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An 'Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

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.