Headlines

Democrats roll out super PAC aimed at swing states

Trump may end up torpedoing the new NAFTA deal after threatening Mexico with costly tariffs

Ron Paul: US/UK trying to kill Assange?

Fact check: No, Trump did not admit that Russia helped get him elected

Construction of privately-funded border wall begins

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un reportedly executes official after failed Hanoi summit with US

[Nikki] Haley re-emerging on 2020 campaign trail ...

Nearly 9 in 10 illegals released into U.S. not showing up for court hearings

Third House Republican blocks massive disaster aid package

The yuan is creeping toward 7 against the dollar, and that could be a problem for Chinese firms

Disney threatens to boycott Georgia over abortion laws

Barr: I don’t think people who oversaw Russian probe committed treason

Thanks for Nothing!

One is allowed to speculate about the collapse of  the Hanoi summit with Km Jong Un. My take is that Kim saw Trump as besieged because of the Cohen hearings and thought our president was desperate for a deal ... and concluded he could get a weakened Trump to drop the sanctions.

He was wrong ... and a golden opportunity was sacrificed on the alter of internecine American politics.

Thanks Elijah Cummings and the many spittle-flecked myopic House Democrats who elevated Cohen in this shameful stunt! You have likely traded a huge long-term international win for your short-term petty political advantage.

So What ...

Michael Cohen will do his level best to eviscerate President Trump in public House Oversight Committee hearings today. He will use every card in the Democrat deck ... Trump is a liar, a racist, a cheat, a con man, a misogynist and a traitor ... in other words, there is a rail, a vat of hot tar and a pillow-full of of feathers that needs to be used on this man as soon as he returns from Hanoi ... where he is doing his level best to eliminate North Korea’s threat to unleash a nuclear winter.

Obviously it is not coincidental that the House Democrats are trying to rain on Trump’s Vietnam parade. Politics is politics after all. And it is also fairly obvious that a man facing three years in prison for, among other things, lying to Congress ... might abandon his vow to take a bullet for Trump. Instead, he is doing his damnedest to shoot Trump clear through the heart. Somehow this dramatic U-turn on Cohen’s part does not put a shine on his character.

But, you know what? I don’t think that Cohen’s open-hearing mud balls will have the expected effect on Trump. I could be wrong, but I think most Trump supporters (not loyalists) understand our president’s foibles ... and, although not happy about them, still appreciate that there are far bigger things at stake here. If Trump can keep us from being vaporized by nukes from any adversary, we can overlook a payoff to a porn star. To me, so what ... it is the Democrats and Cohen who are appearing the most sullied in this whole sordid sideshow.

Fond of Fonda?

Jane Fonda once took a junket to Hanoi,

Where, with the enemy, she played coy.

Astride an antiaircraft gun,

She seemed to be  having  fun

Pretending to zap an American flyboy.

Three Faced

That truly deplorable harridan, Jane Fonda, was a hottie when she was young ... many think she still is. But she also was and still is a traitor ... a traitor who supported her country's enemy in time of war ... and has justifiably earned the animus of much of America, including this writer.

Back in 1972 while the US was at war she traveled to Hanoi, North Vietnam where she was pictured womaning an anti-aircraft gun ... smiling from ear to ear. She also said that American pilots held as POWs nearby were war criminals and should be put on trial and, presumably, executed ... see: The Lily Story.

After living under this cloud for 44 years, she finally seemed to rue this youthful indiscretion and, in particular this photo, saying "I was wrong. It was a huge, huge mistake." ... which also helped push her just-released book ... see: Hollywood Reporter Story and  Fox News Story

But now, after seeing herself on the Ken Burns documentary on this subject, and in a rethinking of her rethinking, Hanoi Jane now says, "I do not regret going to Vietnam" -- "I'm proud of it" ... see: Breitbart Story.

What a three-faced hottie hag!

Have you now figured out that I am not fonda Fonda?

A Silk Purse

Ho Chi Minh, when he became North Vitnam's leader, made a silk purse out of a sow's ear. He rounded up all the prostitutes in Hanoi and turned them into public nurses ... not a bad idea. So how come our political leaders can't be equally innovative? For instance, every year a too large portion of rural California burns down ... primarily because the officials there won't spend the money to cut back the scrub brush that grows in the public spaces and along the roads ... see: CNBC Story.

Then, during the dry season, when lightning strikes and/or a powerline falls, it takes millions of dollars to subdue the resulting conflagrations ... often with the loss of life and personal property. The cost to put out these fires is probably much larger than what it would have been to remove the dangerous overgrown underbrush to begin with.

And how about a little icing on this cake? Why don't the California authorities use convict labor, welfare recipients and their myriad homeless people performing this clean up duty as a condition for their parole, welfare payments or shelter? This gratis exchange seems very much like a Ho Chi Minh silk-purse solution ... one that would save this state lots of money and grief every dry season.

Afterward: Over six years ago I wrote a similar, albeit better post, California is Burning, in which I made many of these same points. In the interim, California has done nothing to reduce this fire hazard ...