One thing you got to give him, the Oval Office occupant knows his way around a misdirection. Every day the magnificent media magician manages to conjure up some wacky stunt, verbal flub or piece of shocking news designed to distract the spotlight from his staggering pile of emerging scandals in the manner of sawing a lady lobbyist in half in the front glass lobby of a children’s library.

A partial chronicle of his repertoire consists of name-calling, fact-mangling, verbal burps, Russian hugs and making stuff up while denying stuff that everyone agrees on. Accompanied by loud crashes, bright flashes and “Breaking News” slashes, syncopated to the drumbeat of that sound that hypnotizes him, his own name “Trump… Trump… Trump.”

Standing next to the Japanese Prime Minister, the President of the United States praised North Korea’s Beloved Leader Kim Jong Un for sharing his opinion that a possible rival to his second term, Joe Biden, was a low I.Q. individual. He tweeted the same thing and misspelled the Democrat’s name as Bidan. It would be funny if only it weren’t.

Earlier he walked out of a Congressional meeting on infrastructure with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer because the Speaker had the temerity to suggest he was engaged in a cover-up. This precipitated a reaction that many referred to as “over the top.” And over the top for him involves a lunar landing.

“Cover-up” hardly sounds antagonistic considering he’s been accused of obstructing justice, being an agent of a foreign power and a man who puts kids in cages. Maybe he thought it was a swipe at his hair.

In response, Trump again called himself “an extremely stable genius”, this time forcing staffers to line-up and describe how stable he was, out loud, in front of cameras, or else. Which on the creepy scale registered in the high teens. Made walking the last mile look like a skipping stroll to an ice cream truck.

The man is an absolute expert at throwing bright shiny objects, which the press and public chase after like Golden Retrievers lunging for steak-flavored Frisbees. So, what else can we expect to divert us from the various investigations, subpoenas and jailed advisors that will soon be targeting him? Glad you asked. 

Next…

• He’ll get the Secret Service to round up all the dismantled Confederate statues and reassemble them on the South Lawn.
• Melania will contemplate another nude photo shoot.
• Kellyanne Conway and her husband will get into a fight and throw a lamp that sails
over the South Portico while Donald is holding a press conference in the Rose Garden.
• Puerto Rico will be sold to a Russian oligarch giving residents 4 months to get out. But not here.
• McDonalds builds a personal private franchise in the basement of the West Wing.
• For a third time he will announce he wants to form a cyber-security task force with Russia.
• Eric Trump will quit whatever he does in the White House and go back to college.
• Donald Trump will announce his A1C diabetes results are off the charts. The highest of any human in the history of being alive.
• He’ll start a war with Iran.
• And finally, he’ll scrap the plan to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill and replace her with Ivanka.

Internet privacy. Forget about it. It’s another of those oxymorons you hear so much about; like gluten-free dim sum or fully satisfied Game of Thrones fan or Donald Trump’s Modern Guide to Etiquette and Manners. You got a better chance of finding a pod of humpback whales in your office cubicle than online security.

And the greatest threat in this confidentiality crisis is Facebook, the information octopus that disguises its sticky tentacles with cute kitten videos and pictures of grandmas blowing out birthday cake candles while it records your every keystroke. Every “like” of every post. Your favorite porn gif.  

The situation has become so alarming, co-founder Chris Hughes called for the company to be broken up. Mark Zuckerberg says no need for that: he’s learned his lesson and promises to be good from now on. And we can trust him, right? Because he’s only lied about every privacy issue that’s ever emerged so far. Ever.

The Mueller Report detailed how Russian trolls used Facebook’s analytical tools to flood America with fraudulent groups and ads for the single purpose of opposing Hillary Clinton. By the time the accounts were deactivated in 2017, 126 million Americans had been exposed to, well, no other way to describe it than…fake news.

Remember when Facebook admitted to manipulating posts to gauge our emotional response then sold the research data? They’re still doing it. We’re just lab rats to them. But even lab rats get some cheese. Hey Facebook, keep your cookies: how about some cheese?

The standard defense is we signed on when we signed up, but you’ve seen those user agreements. Nobody reads them. It’s doubtful the people who write them, read them. Lawyers speaking in a language solely understood by other lawyers. And even then, only occasionally.  

The agreements are longer than the migratory path of a monarch butterfly and in a font so tiny it would make a flea squint. So we scroll to the bottom and click “accept.” And if we wake up two weeks later in a bathtub full of ice with a scar where our kidney used to be, well, them’s the breaks.

And the internet never forgets. Check out a piece of hardware, then decide you don’t need it. Doesn’t matter, because… boom, there it is. On every website you visit for the next six months. Follows you around like a haunted fungus. Suddenly everybody is having a sale on a festive array of red white and blue plastic bull semen inseminators. Don’t ask.  

We got no one to blame but ourselves. It’s too late to put this genie back in the bottle but there are going to be plenty of other bottles to worry about. Universal facial recognition is right around the corner. Although some of us are lucky enough to have faces no one wants to recognize.

You think its creepy when Facebook tags us in photos we didn’t post; wait till they develop an algorithm in which we're the villains in videos where the hero ruling over the Seven Kingdoms bears a striking resemblance to Mark Zuckerberg.

Most importantly, we got to learn not to post anything on social media we don’t want prospective employers or mothers-in law or IRS agents to know about. Back everything up. With hard copies. Cloud storage if fine, until it rains. And there's a storm coming.

For all those who keep saying it can’t get any weirder, this is on you. Haven’t we learned not to taunt the gods? Like those good people whose only motivation for voting for Donald Trump was to shake things up. Are we shook up enough yet?

But who would have thunk the new man in charge of the Justice Department could establish a world record for shameless obsequiousness this fast? He’s put the “olé” in grovel. Makes Rudy Giuliani look like a blundering, bumbling bungler. Well, he is, but in contrast, the distinction is even more acute.

In less than 10 weeks, Attorney-General William Barr has defied subpoenas, Congress, the Constitution, common sense, good practices, good grammar and good grooming all to protect the President of the United States from being held responsible for his actions.

Appearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Donald Trump’s handpicked replacement for former AG Jeff Sessions proved to be such a Presidential lapdog, he should be recognized by the American Kennel Club as the 194th breed.

Listen close and you can hear the wailing from Hollywood publicists who realize Barr has lowered the bar and they’re going to have service their clients with even more excessive sycophantic subservience. The phrase “bow and scrape” will take on asphalt-scuffing connotations.

A problem with this new breed of cur is they’re not very housebroken, as he’s refused to appear in front of the junior chamber’s version of a Judiciary Committee, objecting to having committee staff lawyers interrogate him. Answering questions from Congress members is one thing, but actual lawyers- that’s another. Some of those people are smart.

He said when the president told former White House counsel Don McGahn to tell Sessions to fire the special counsel that didn’t mean Trump wanted to fire the special counsel. He also believes a president can terminate any proceeding he wants. Because he is The Law. Sylvester Stallone would be so proud.

Barr has effectively created a Catch-22: implying that the president cannot commit a crime; hence he can’t be subject to a criminal investigation. Funny, he doesn’t look like a Joseph Heller fan.

Under questioning by California Senator Kamala Harris, Barr then claimed he couldn’t remember if the White House ever asked or suggested that the Justice Department investigate anybody, you know, like an enemies list. Dodging Richard Nixon’s playbook he stole a page from Bill Clinton’s, saying he was confused by the word “suggest.” He seems perplexed by quite a few words like “truth,” “justice” and “the American Way.”

The House plans to initiate contempt proceedings unless Barr hands over the full unredacted version of Mueller’s report, but enforcement of a contempt charge is the purview of the Justice Department. Headed by the aforementioned William Barr. So chances of him throwing himself in the hoosegaw are somewhere between less than none and dream on big river.

Now, calls for the Attorney-General to resign or threats to impeach him are competing directly with the president’s sticky situation. Maybe the Democrats can set up an abbreviated process. Impeachment: The Short Form.

What the hell, throw Mike Pence on the fast-track as well. Get some Silicon Valley venture capitalist to fund a start-up. Launch an Impeachment IPO. As Hunter S. Thompson once said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

Everybody is talking about it. Well, around it: vacillating, cogitating, salivating, fluctuating, aspirating, constipating, meditating, figure-eighting, and to prove they’re serious, polling. We’re referring, of course, to the “I” word; Impeachment. Methinks they doth protest too much.

And when we say everybody, we mean EVERYBODY. Talk-show pundits. Gesticulating anchors. Brooding Danes. The only people not talking about it are the vast majority of the 21 Democratic nomination wannabees who are ignoring the question to concentrate on more important issues, like fund-raising. Should the Chief of State be held responsible for possible high crimes and misdemeanors? After all, everyone agrees: something is rotten in Denmark.

To impeach or not to impeach. That is the question. Whether tis nobler in voters’ minds to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous leadership or to take arms against a sea of treason and by opposing, end him.

Elizabeth Warren was first to walk out on Elsinore’s foggy balustrade and sound the alarm proclaiming it our constitutional duty to catch the conscience of a king. Kamala Harris seconded the motion but the rest of the players are following Hamlet and Nancy Pelosi’s lead of exercising caution. Any more cautious and they’d be walking backwards. There are more things in heaven and earth, N. Pelosi, than in your philosophy.

xMust give her pause to think back to the trap that ensnared Republicans after impeaching Bill Clinton; who then suffering disastrously in the 1998 midterms. Visiting the undiscover’d country from whose bourn no Party returns. For a couple of election cycles at least. No one can say she doesn’t know a hawk from a handsaw.

When not changing the subject, the candidates are thrusting lick’d fingers into the air to see which way the wind blows. But you don’t need a weatherman to tell you Donald Trump is not going down without his trademark bluster. Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. He can’t help it. To thine own self be true. 

Says he plans to fight impeachment in the courts. But see, that’s part of the problem because the process doesn’t work that way. The House of Representatives impeaches, which is like an indictment resulting in a trial over which the Senate presides. The play’s the thing.

Ay, there’s the rub. Not just every Democrat but 20 Republican Senators would have to vote to convict and the chances of that happening are about the same as the Islamic Brotherhood scheduling a barbecue rib cook-off in a strip joint on the outskirts of Kronborg.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Thus the complicated calculus begins. Do the seekers of the nomination risk backlash from centrists if they do come out in favor of impeachment or annoy the base if they don’t. Do they bear these ills they have or fly to others they not know of? To sleep, perchance to dream.

Especially when the slightest of slipups will act as the whips and scorns of time causing them to shuffle off this mortal coil and dropping from the grown up debate table to the kids table?

So expect calls for patience and further investigations, and the native hue of resolution to be sicklie’d over with the pale cast of thought, which in the end, will, like conscience, make cowards of us all. Exeunt.

The eagerly awaited Report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation was finally released and cleared up the situation like a forty-pound dirtball dropped from the roof of a ten-story penthouse. Into a child’s wading pool. With children in it.  Imaginary children, of course.

The report was 448 pages long, only 52 short of a ream. Although both President Donald Trump and the Democratic Congress must be feeling like the full weight of a ream is banging them in the head. He, for what it said, and they, for what it didn’t.

As surprising as a 420 run on ranch Doritos, the release turns out to be as different from Attorney-General William Barr’s 4 page summary of the Report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation as baby salamanders are from nuclear powered submarine biological waste disposal canisters.

At least the parts that weren’t redacted. Those little black bars covered about a tenth of the Report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation. Barr’s bars. Barr’s barren bars. Which barely barred us from seeing what the bard of special counsels wanted bared.

Official Lapdog Barr’s yapping misdirection before the public unveiling of the Report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation was hard to hear due to the clicking of his toenails on the linoleum. The drool was also distracting. Records for gratuitous sycophancy have been shattered. This is what was expected from Jeff Sessions. Rudy Giuliani must be green with envy.

A less redacted version of the Report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation will be available to a limited number of members of Congress. The apparent goal is to give each and every American citizen their own version of the Report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation with individual redactions. Here’s hoping there's a rainbow of stripes to go with the black bars.

The Attorney-General said the Report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation totally exonerated the president pretending the account didn’t include “While this report cannot conclude that the President committed a crime, it also cannot exonerate him.” Which is as far from exoneration as can be accomplished using the English language.

Barr went on to echo “no obstruction” approximately 7,000 times when actually the Report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation says, and this is a direct quote: “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.” But so state, they do not.

In other words, if they thought he didn’t do it, they’d tell us. But they’re not telling us. Which might lead a normal person to conclude that the Report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation is saying the opposite. In it’s own sly way.

The Report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation described Moscow’s attempts to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy as “sweeping and systemic.” And as everyone knows, Russia only helps Russia.

The Report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation also referenced the justice department’s policy not to prosecute a sitting president but mentioned that Congress could, or just wait till he’s not president anymore.

It’s almost like the Report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation proposed trying one or the other. Forcing democrats to ask themselves the tough question: “why not both?”

There are enough tugs-of-war playing out inside the Democratic Party to keep a multi-franchise, company picnic busy for an entire summer. We’re not talking about which of the umpteen gazillion candidates to nominate. That’s the easy part: quarrelsome, bothersome, nettlesome, toothsome and gruesome, but easy.

Much tougher questions abound concerning how far left to pull the party for the next election. Do they advocate Medicare For All? Some fervently say yes while others ardently say no. Free college? The New Green Deal? African-American reparations? Should NASA continue sending astronauts into space? How about sending Trump to the sun? To be honest, there’s general agreement on that.

Democrats also need to figure out a way to tamp down their tendency to eat their own. Robust policy debates are one thing, but gouging huge gaping holes in each other for momentary hand-holds can prove to be awfully inviting to circling sharks. The ones that haven’t been sent to the sun, that is.

Additionally, the Democrats find themselves saddled with a significant white man problem. Multiple white man problems, actually. You could say that the party responsible for Civil Rights is now handcuffed by and to it.

Part of the difficulty is Democrats find it harder to attract the votes of white men than vegan hot dog vendors have selling their meatless sticks at a Wyoming rodeo.  Only 34% of Caucasian males voted for the democratic candidate in the last presidential election, which is approximately the same percentage that would vote for a yellow dog.

Another worry is that Democrats are not shy talking about wanting their next presidential candidate to be anything but another boring white man. Too bad Barack Obama can’t run again. With the amount of minorities and women he brought to the table, he didn’t need white men. Whereas Hillary Clinton actively avoided them, and yes, that includes Bill.

To complicate matters, the two folks leading the liberal polls right now are Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who are not just white men, but extremely old white men. On election night 2020, Biden and Sanders will have trod this orb a cumulative 156 years. Which will come in handy in case history starts to repeat itself, because then either one could alert the rest of us.

Joe hasn’t officially entered the race yet and Bernie isn’t really a Democrat but the two control 53% of the latest Emerson poll. Throw in Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke and you got four white men hogging the top 70% of all likely voters.

Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana gets a White Man Pass because he’s gay and Beto is not just the hot new thing, he’s the hot new Texas thing. And the prospects of winning the Lone Star State has the party drooling like the aforementioned yellow dog on a summer day at high noon.

Nobody knows why women have yet to ignite the passion of their party. Maybe their sheer numbers cancel out what was previously a novelty. Or maybe since 44 of the 45 POTUSes so far have been white men, we are conditioned to think pale people with a y chromosome make the best president. Although, you got to admit, the current office holder is testing the limits of that presumption.

Forget the tulips. Ignore the robins. Don’t let the hummingbirds, awakening bears, geese flying north or egg-coloring kits on sale in the grocery store fool you.

The date of the vernal equinox doesn’t matter one single whit, because the true start of spring is that bright and shiny day when Christ comes out of his cave, sees his shadow and baseball season starts. There’s your rebirth, boys. The slate has been swiped clean and anything is possible. This Is Next Year. Spring has indeed sprung.

It seems, however, that the 45th POTUS disagrees with that sentiment. In lieu of throwing out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals home opener, Donald J. Trump encouraged his newly appointed Attorney General William Barr, to throw out the 1st Amendment instead.

The baseball season is a long grind. 162 games. Six months of battling bitter rivals, self-inflicted errors, special counsels and the vagaries of supposedly impartial umpires. You’d think Mister Trump would appreciate the similarities to his new job.

Nobody knows why the Oval Office Oompa Loompa refuses to drive the 2.9 miles from the White House to Nationals Park. Maybe he thinks all that green is wasted by not being part of a golf course.

You know if his good buddy Vladimir Putin asked, he’d snap to it so fast he’d startle beer vendors. Same with Kim Jong Un and the Saudi Crown Prince. Nobody, not even the president, wants to tick that guy off.

Its not like Trump has a candy-ass arm either. In 2004 he landed a Trump helicopter in the middle of center field and threw out the first pitch at a Somerset Patriots game, throwing a damn good high fastball. Just a little outside, but if Curt Schilling or Greg Maddux had thrown that pitch, it would have been called a strike.

Everybody likes baseball. Even ogres and trolls and troglodytes enjoy baseball. And yes, that includes George Will. Maybe President Snowflake can’t risk having non-rally fans boo him. It’s not like he has to do it every home game. It’s once a year. That’s what presidents do on Opening Day. Ever since William Howard Taft in 1910. 109 years ago. They don’t call it the American Pastime for nothing, you know.

FDR did it 11 times, most of them from a wheelchair for crum’s sakes. George Herbert Walker Bush, who was captain of the Yale baseball team, threw a wicked slider. Barack Obama famously threw a ball while wearing a Nationals jacket, a White Sox hat and mom jeans.

Harry Truman threw out 7 opening day pitches, the same as Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ambidextrous Gerald Ford threw 2, one left-handed and one right-handed. It took Ronald Reagan four years to throw his first opening day pitch, so maybe there’s hope Donald Trump will get in the swing of things, because every single President has done it, except Jimmy Carter, who was a one-termer. Ominous.

On this end, we’re picking the San Francisco Giants to beat the Milwaukee Brewers for the NL pennant. And the New York Yankees to beat the Oakland Athletics in the AL. Then the Giants reverse the results of the 1962 World Series and win it all in 7. Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he? Play ball.

Q. What just happened?
A. After 675 days, 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, 500 search warrants, 2800 subpoenas, 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, Robert Mueller delivered his report to the Attorney-General, William Barr, putting the investigation to rest.

Q. With no new indictments?
A. Nope. Just the 34 already filed, with 8 guilty pleas including the president’s former lawyer, first national security advisor, former campaign manager and a slew of top aides.

Q. And what was the overall impression of the final report?
A. To commemorate the opening of the baseball season, it seems fitting that the Special Counsel stepped to the plate, swung and missed. Three times. On collusion, conspiracy and obstruction. The Mighty Mueller has struck out.

Q. How have Republicans responded to this apparent vindication of the President?
A. The entire Party is performing little pirouettes of joy, toasting each other with champagne, caviar and cigars, while visions of sugar plums dance in their heads.

Q. And the Democrats?
A. Oooh. Sad. Don’t look. They’ve wilted like freshly cut lilies placed in the back window of an 82 Mustang at the Wisconsin State Fair the second week of August.

Q. Would you say they’re disappointed over the revelations or lack thereof?
A. America has become accustomed to historical incidents where the buildup far exceeds the actual event, like the Comet Kohoutek, George McGovern, Michael Jordan’s baseball career, Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, the jetpack, Star Wars- Episode 1, Theranos, Season 2 of True Detective, the Galaxy 7, Ryan Leaf, Google Glass, Y2K and the Edsel.

Q. Not to mention your comedy career?
A. Was that absolutely necessary?

Q. I ask the questions. So where would this particular disappointment rank?
A. Near the top. Somewhere between Geraldo Rivera’s unveiling of Al Capone’s Vault and Howard the Duck the movie. But Democrats are used to it.

Q. Didn’t Mueller himself say this probe is not an exoneration of Trump’s possible obstruction of justice?
A. Yeah, but nobody knows exactly what that means, since we only have William Barr’s 4 page summary of a report that may be thousands of pages long.

Q. What will Barr agree to release?
A. Trump’s newly appointed Attorney-General doesn’t look like he’s inclined to release anything more than a few heavily redacted prepositions and maybe a random conjunction or two, patting Congress on the head, saying “don’t worry, nothing to see here. Just move along.”

Q. Will House Democrats go gentle into that good night?
A. You’d have a better chance of seeing piles of sand replace furniture in the next Architectural Digest spread on the living rooms of Houston oil executives.

Q. And the mood of Donald Trump?
A. The President is near delirious, hopping around like a leprechaun, chanting “no collusion, total vindication” over and over in the manner of a parrot with Turrets Syndrome.

Q. Has he changed his tune on the Special Counsel?
A. Indeed. Instead of “a prosecutor gone rogue, aligned with his gang of angry democrats,” now he’s a noble man who has done the country a great service. 

Q. So they’re good buddies now?
A. Wouldn’t be surprised if he invites Mueller down to Mar-A-Lago for a few rounds of golf.

Q. Would he still cheat?
A. Probably. Might give him a discount on greens fees though.

Stop the presses. Hold the phone. Call the queen. Ring a bell. Do the math. Cut the cheese. Bring the hurt. Mind the gap. Get a clue. Catch a break. Hook me up. Cancel lunch. Aid and abet. Alert the media. Blow the shofar.

The cause of all this consternation? Evidence has emerged that rich people use their money to access privileges that poor folks can’t afford. I know, right? What next: the Pacific Ocean is moist? Plumbers are expensive? Landlords opposed to rent control? Couch cushions in suburban Midwestern basements soiled with beer stains? 

This isn’t just about being able to travel to exotic destinations at a moment’s notice or having decent health care on call or buying in bulk at Costco. This is the dark underbelly of people who never need to glance at the right side of the menu or steal Kleenex from the hotel room or hold up the grocery store lines sifting through coupons.

After conducting Operation Varsity Blues, the FBI arrested 33 rich parents accused of trying to buy their kids’ admission to prestigious universities through nefarious means: having ringers take SAT tests in their stead. Claiming students were disabled, and while retaking the test, proctors would slip them answers. Other families pretended students were upper level athletes going so far as to Photoshop heads onto team pictures. Hopefully, not football.

This was done in lieu of earning a slot to matriculate the old-fashioned way: by bribing schools with hefty financial incentives; the traditional and tax-deductible method that Jared Kushner’s father implemented by donating 2.5 million dollars to Harvard. Of course Jared did learn important lessons such as how to marry into a richer family. Or at least what he thought was a richer family.

Colleges involved announced internal investigations destined to get to the bottom of things somewhere near the turn of the next century. The scheme unraveled when admissions consultant William Rick Singer, who said he built a “side door” to get into the best colleges, cooperated with the investigation in return for immunity. No honor amongst the rich. BSOC: Big Snitch on Campus.

A couple of famous actresses were rounded up in the sting, and both lost work in the ensuing publicity, though maybe they can play themselves in the Hallmark Channel Movie of the Week about the College Admissions Scandal. Of course it would need to be a Christmas special.

Lori Laughlin paid $500,000 to get her two wee bairn into USC pretending they were crew athletes. That's 250k apiece. How cluelessly entitled were these girls? One daughter went on Instagram and posted a video “I want the experience of, like, game days, partying…I don't really care about school, as you guys all know." Not sure what her grades were, but sounds like she couldn’t spell GPA it if you spotted her the G and the P.

And now the inevitable deluge of civil lawsuits begins. One student is suing because she couldn’t get into USC and had to settle for Stanford. A Bay Area teacher, Jennifer Kay Toy, whose only son had a 4.2 GPA and couldn’t get into his school of choice, is suing for 500 billion dollars. With a b. This single mother obviously went to a good school. And majored in fantasy. Probably a graduate of Trump University. Dean’s List.

The problem is more obvious than half a leech on the sneeze guard of a salad bar: we’re paying much too much attention. Our national obsession with new news concerning the man blundering about the Oval Office has obscured any overview at all. He has the unique ability to blot out the big picture. Especially when standing sideways.

Every time we think we’ve hit rock bottom, another subbasement gets dug, hidden in a cloud of smoke and mirrors. Donald Trump hasn’t just lowered the bar. He’s buried it. So deep you couldn’t come close with a hydraulic excavator equipped with space-age sonar.

We still pour over his tweets like anthropologists dusting the bones of a calcified civilization, but the outrage is wearing off. After decades of press pimping and 17 months of campaigning and 2 years into his reign of error, the world is becoming numb to the president’s dumpy trumpy trampy shenanigans.

It becomes routine. Every day- the same damn thing: the White House is discovered to be involved in some dastardly situation. Either there’s proof they did something they swore up and down they didn’t do, or they get caught in an astonishing lie, or somebody says something out loud that would have sunk a previous Administration so deep in a swamp of disgust they’d be found floating upside down like tropical fish after a week of not being fed.

It’s a dance and all the players know their part. The Smoky Hokey Pokey. We got ourselves a bad case of the deja voodoos.
First the Shocking Revelation. Then the hasty denials.
Then The New York Times trots out evidence that not only did this happen, but even more egregious stuff went down as well.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders says the official White House stance is that it never happened, and even if it did, Barack Obama did way worse.
Democrats argue amongst themselves over whether the latest disclosure is an impeachable offense- coming to no conclusion.
Mitch McConnell makes turtle noises.
Donald Trump says he doesn’t know the guy, can’t remember what happened, everyone besides him is lying and that the revelation bolsters his claim there was “no collusion.”
Some Republicans are outraged, then they aren’t, then support the president.
The Washington Post needs 3 pages to print a graph that documents this sort of thing happened 18 gazillion times before.
Fox News hosts call for more hearings on Benghazi.
Some pundit on MSNBC becomes so overwrought a blood vessel in his head bursts on air.
Donald Trump’s base laughs and laughs.
Rudy Giuliani says he doesn’t believe it happened, and if it did, Hillary Clinton would have done way worse. And she’s a woman.
Bernie Sanders supporters say this is further proof that Bernie would have won.
The National Enquirer prints a cover photo with Michelle Obama holding a bloody knife in front of what looks to be a pizza parlor.  
Mike Pence says he doesn’t know anything.
Snow falls. Or it doesn’t.
And then the very next day it starts up all over again. This nation is stuck on a rollercoaster of spin with a minimum of 2 years before we can get off. Strap on your seat belts extra tight, everybody. It’s going to be a bumpy rest of a first term. Pass the Dramamine please.

Democrats applying to be their party’s next presidential nominee constitute the second largest growth industry in America surpassed only by those providing legal advice to Trump Administration staffers. It’s a number climbing to where it might be easier to list those currently not planning a run. And no, we can’t rule out Jimmy Carter, Anthony Weiner or Lyndon Johnson.

Holy moley catfish, there’s a ton of them. Scads. Gobs. Reams. Oodles. A raft. A mob. A plethora. A profusion. An abundance. Veritable boatloads. Some might say a rash of candidates. A plague or even an epidemic.

Already! We’re still a year out from the Iowa Caucuses with the first debate not scheduled to start serious internecine squabbling until June. According to Ballotpedia, 192 Democrats have officially entered the 2020 contest for the White House including a guy named Cohen Eden Solutionator. 11 are considered authentic, legitimate, bona-fide but many more big names are poised to leap into this liberal scrum like lemmings off a cliff with a 60 mph wind at their backs.

The presidency of Donald Trump has resuscitated a term popular back in the early 20th century–“Yellow Dog Democrats.” Those are voters who would rather elect a saffron colored canine than a Republican. You know, like California.

Many Dems would vote for the Solutionator, his pet ferret or a child’s beach pail full of wet sand, if they thought any would have a chance to deny the New York City real estate developer a second term. A banana faced monkey dribbler. A reeking heap of steaming feces. Because it would be their reeking heap of steaming feces. As opposed to the reeking heap of steaming feces currently soiling Oval Office furniture.

With no front-runner, the field is more wide open than a condo complex at Chernobyl. Hillary Clinton is such old news, her S’s look like F’s. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker is running as a feistier sequel to Obama. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren may be the candidate the president fears the most since she’s the only one with a nickname. So far.

Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar just want people to pronounce their names correctly. Julian Castro needs separation from his twin brother. Sherrod Brown, Michael Bloomberg, Beto O’Rourke and some guy named Joe are biding their time and former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper gets points for being fun to say.

Kamala Harris is a woman, half Jamaican and half Indian. If only she were lesbian suffering from bipolar issues who owned an anxiety peacock, she’d be perfect. The California Senator survived the curse of being referred to as the front-runner for about a minute until Bernie Sanders threw his hat into the ring. Well, near the ring. His aim isn’t what it used to be.

In this race, the Vermont Senator will have to share his far left lane. He might not even be the most socialist candidate, which is the seam Mister Trump looks ready to attack. And attack he will.

After all Bernie blazed the trail and energized that part of the party that thinks Karl Marx was too middle of the road. But we can say with the upmost certainty the Bernmeister will retain the mantle of crankiest candidate. Pretty sure his campaign website is heyyoupunksgetoffmylawn.com.  

President Donald Trump loves him some wall. Not the wall of corruption he’s surrounded himself with. Not that karmic wall of wasting all his political capital sucking up to superstitious xenophobes. Nor the huge self-erected wall that keeps him from learning or uttering or even caring about the truth. No, not those thick as a brick walls.

We’re talking about his obsession with a physical structure on our Southern border. Which he’s variously described as being “big and beautiful, see-through, transparent, steel slats, concrete, fences, barriers, whatever you want to call it, you can call it Peaches.” So Peaches, it is.

Resolving a 35-day government shutdown, he agreed to a congressional compromise that gives him less money for Peaches than they agreed to back in December, before he got chastised by Fox News. They don’t call him Mister Art of the Deal for nothing.

In response he declared a national emergency and wants to take money from other programs to build Peaches. Or does he? He knows this maneuver will put reluctant GOP senators on record and be challenged in the courts. And he’s already set himself up to lose by announcing he didn’t have to do this now, he could have waited. Which seriously questions the “emergency” part of national emergency.

The dirty little secret is he doesn’t actually want Peaches. He just gets a kick out of talking about her. To goose his base into roaring and cheering while demonizing people who don’t look like them. To get liberals so red in the face they make ripe tomatoes look pale pink covered in talcum.

Recently the president switched from having rallies chant “Build the Wall,” to “Finish the Wall,” as if he already started construction. Which is like a naked guy asking for alterations to the cuffs of the suit he isn’t wearing and doesn’t own. Adding another chapter to that whole Emperor’s New Clothes analogy. Only true supporters can see his kingly robes.

It doesn’t make any sense. Riling up Texas ranchers by invoking eminent domain. Slashing pet projects of the military. Besides, exactly how does he plan to build a 1952 mile-long wall on the Mexican border without using Mexican labor? Is he going to draft housewives from La Jolla? “Marilyn, hand me that masonry trowel.”

And why does he need Congress to give him money? Whatever happened to Mexico paying for Peaches? Are we supposed to just forget about that? Perhaps he was kidding. He didn’t mean it. Or was it a figurative “paying for it?”  He should build Peaches around his refrigerator. Or between his hands so he can’t tweet.

Doesn’t matter that undocumented immigrants commit less crimes than native-born Americans. Pay no attention to the studies that say crime in cities with larger amounts of undocumenteds is less than other cities. These aren’t facts, they’re fake news.

“But they’re taking all our jobs.” Dude, if you’re losing your job to someone with a 5th grade education, who doesn’t speak English, maybe immigration isn’t your biggest problem.

He certainly is right on one point. This country is experiencing a state of affairs that requires quick and decisive action. As that self-described American patriot Ann Coulter said after his announcement, “The only national emergency is the president is an idiot.”

The president gave a pretty good facsimile of a normal speech the other day during which he presented 5540 of his best words using his indoor voice. He didn’t rattle unhinged or erupt into paroxysms of fire breathing rage or seem blinded by paranoia. Well, not too much, anyway. He even got clapped at by Nancy Pelosi.

Indeed, he did boast of inflated accomplishments, made grandiose predictions and not less than a couple of exorbitant claims but that’s all part of the grand tradition of the State of the Union Address. That’s what a SOTU is. Time to preen and strut and prance and flounce. Everybody does it. Even Jimmy Carter.

What everybody normally doesn’t do is threaten the opposition party by saying that the authorization of any “partisan investigations” might cause the country to go to war. Sounds more than vaguely like an extortion threat. Obviously something he picked up from his good buddy, the publisher of the National Enquirer. Or maybe something he taught the unfortunately named David Pecker.

It was the same-old, same-old-he says something and all the members of his party stand but the other party doesn’t-sort of thing. While behind him, the frosty tension between Vice-President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi could have been cut with an al dente strand of spaghetti.

At one point, the 45th President of the United States bragged about more women serving in the 116th Congress than ever before, ignoring the fact that out of 127 female representatives, 106 are Democrats. Most of them clumped together wearing white, to symbolize the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment being passed. A stark visual contrast to all the white men on the other side of the aisle.

One of his least controversial moves was coming out against childhood cancer. Wow. Really going out on a political limb there, eh? Can’t wait for your next position paper on flesh-eating-bacteria. He talked a lot about kids, but not one word about putting them in cages.

Other things he failed to mention were the Government Shutdown. Vladimir Putin. Mitch McConnell. Maria Butina. Jamal Khashoggi. Michael Cohen. Paul Manafort. Kim Kardashian. $2 trillion added to the national debt. Handing the EPA over to oil and coal industries. Fox News pulling his strings. His paternity of a resurgent white supremacy movement. School shootings. Global warming. Subpoenas. Pardons. Tax returns. And the Super Bowl Halftime Show.

Dropping a preemptive strike onto the 2020 Democratic campaign, the former real estate developer lashed out against socialism somehow linking Bernie Sanders to the economic meltdown in South America. And he’s right. Venezuela and Vermont do have a lot in common. Well, they both start with V. He may or may not make America great again, but using communist scare tactics indicates he’s certainly attempting to make America the 50s again.

Finally, he called for civil discourse. You read that right, Donald Trump called for civil discourse. The guy who refers to Representative Adam Schiff by replacing the “F”s in the man’s last name with “T”s called for civil discourse. Which is like a man working in a sewer all day complaining someone spilled coffee on his shoes. Or a rabid wolverine telling the rabbits they should dial it down.

The State of the Union Address, about to be presented by President Donald Trump, is a week late, due to the government being closed for five. In the shutdown showdown, the 45th POTUS blinked. He got stared down by Nancy Pelosi, which has to tick him off not less than somewhat, especially since she didn’t have the decency to gloat.

Of course, if there’s one thing we’ve gotten used to, after living under the wild emotional swings and unprovoked rants of our plump swaggering Oval Office ego sausage, it’s that everything is all about him. Always. That’s the way it is, has been and forever shall be.

So the State of the Union will actually be the State of The Donald. Not the authentic condition but the extravagant hyperbole he uses as brand. Which means we can expect to hear that the State of the Union is not orange, overweight and bedraggled but rather “tremendous. Fantastic. The best it’s ever been. In the history of ever.

Since we have been blessed with Captain Get-Things-Done at the helm, our Ship of State is headed in the right direction. Finally. After You Know Who, the guy with the phony birth certificate, tried to steer us into the rocks. He was a disgrace. Seriously, folks, a disgrace. I’m much better. I got all the good words and I know how to use them.

And this is just the start. Major projects are in the works that will neutralize the Lying Mainstream Media, which cannot go a day without picking on me like no other president has ever been picked on. Ever. That’s a fact. You can look it up.

Then we’ll lock up Crooked Hillary and her criminal cronies in Congress and those activist judges who do nothing but obstruct our plans to Make America Great Again. We’re not going to divulge those plans until we’re ready. Don’t want to give them advance warning. But you’ll see. And you will be amazed. Seriously, folks, huge plans. Really good ones.

The wall will be built. Make no mistake about that. We will have a great big beautiful wall protecting our country from crime and disease and earthquakes and hurricanes and the measles. And there will be no skirting of that wall. We’re going to make ladders and shovels illegal in border-states. Canadian borders too. Puerto Rico.

And we’ll have cheaper, better health care for everybody. The best health care. It’s easy. You know it and I know it. The only reason we haven’t done it before is I’m forced to work with idiots. People who won’t do what I tell them to do. Trust me. I know more than anybody else. A lot more. These so-called experts are passive and naïve. That’s the truth. Everybody knows it.

It won’t be long before the yellow lines down the middle of our highways are outlined by real gold and double quarter-pounders with cheese pop right out of your phone and the chickens lay nothing but soft boiled eggs and people won’t need to go on holidays, because everywhere in this great nation will be a vacation spot. Just wait and see, it’s going to be amazing. Thank you and God Bless the Soviet Union, I mean America.”

Way past time to congratulate the baby Jesus on the anniversary of his birth but especially for blessedly ending all those annoying unending ads for the Christmas sales only to be replaced by all those annoying unending ads for the after-Christmas sales. A major difference being- much fewer jingle bells on the soundtracks.

It’s also a relief to have the traditional holiday music stuffed back into the poisonous mistletoe vault, meaning we’ll have to wait nine whole months to hear the same thirty songs sung by the same thirty dead white men. And Nat King Cole.

As we throw the last shovel full of dirt on the most festive of seasons and kick the dried-out fir tree to the gutter, it is our self-imposed, public-service task here at Durstco to right the many wrongs perpetrated by the corpulent bearded cisgender male in the scarlet suit on his global flight.

Apparently Santa had some holes in his bag and a few folks didn’t receive the gifts they so richly deserved. A little mistake we would like to rectify here with WILL DUR$T’$ AFTER XMA$ GIFT WI$H LI$T.

At least the After-Christmas sales will make the purchasing of said items more bargainy. And by delaying another week or so, we could dovetail into President’s Day sales. What with the government shutdown, every penny saved is a penny earned. Earning a couple hundred or so could buy us a cup of coffee. Not a latte, but still.

For Kellyanne Conway: a red, white and blue muzzle.
For General James Mattis: an all-expenses paid vacation to the relative calm of Damascus, Syria.
For Melania Trump: not a designer coat, but a new coat designer.
For Nancy Pelosi: a whip, a gun and a chair.
For Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III: a cold dish of revenge.
For Sarah Huckabee Sanders: a round-trip ticket on the clue train.
For Michael Cohen: a poster to hang in his cell that reads “What Happens in Jersey Stays in Jersey.”
For Mitt Romney: a cape and pair of tights to help him single-handedly save the Republican Party.
For Kamala Harris: some of Hillary Clinton’s excess testosterone.
For Donald Trump and Roseanne Barr: two pairs of those Chinese finger traps for their thumbs.
For Ivanka Trump: a fully furnished pied-a-terre in the Seychelles.
For Jared Kushner: the same kind of family reverence his father showed his uncle.
For Kanye West: a new hat.
For Brett Kavanaugh: Clarence Thomas’ primer on how to question Supreme Court litigants.
For Mike Pence: a strobe light, so at press conferences, he can at least give the appearance of movement.
For Elon Musk: A years’ supply of whatever medicine they give kids with Attention Deficit Disorder.
For Bernie Sanders: a series of bushes to lurk behind for the next two years.
For Rudy Giuliani: a case of mint-flavored shoelaces for the multiple occasions he puts his foot in his mouth.
For Joe Biden: a 55-gallon drum of patience.
For Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: a wall to control our immigration.
For Rachel Maddow: a nice blue sweater.
For Ruth Bader Ginsburg: two six-foot spools of industrial strength bubble wrap.
And finally for the American People: total gridlock of the 116th Congress. No harm, no foul.