You know that when a tough guy from the Balkans starts bawling in the middle of a championship match at Wimbledon that manliness isn’t what it used to be. Okay, so he was losing. That makes it understandable? The same guy who in the previous match was pumping his fist after taking the lead against his American semi finalist? Very disappointing, indeed distressing. Even bullies don’t have what it takes anymore.
To be fair, maybe he knew ahead of time what we’re crying about now. It was later reported that he was suffering from blisters and would need serious medical attention. But how in the world will he ever receive that now that Obamacare isn’t being “reformed”? He could see it coming. Even in the Balkans, they know that America’s Republicans are made out of Mediterranean sand.
To be sure, we’ve never seen Mitch McConnell cry, though we have seen him tipsy after a late night out. Majority leaders from Kentucky drink their bourbon unwatered. We’ll forgive him that. No breathalyzers allowed at Enemy Central. In fact, the time we saw him tipsy he was rather quite friendly. Makes us wish he did his drinking during work hours. Maybe then we’d see some serious progress on what everyone by now knows has been a Republican betrayal of faith, which is simply unforgivable. Mitch has never rapped anyone over the knuckles, let alone offered a knuckle sandwich. That’s not getting it done. Sure he’s got moderates at one end, Rand Paul and Mike Lee on the other. The former are the sort of women and girlie women Mrs. McConnell should be assigned to. Yes, that includes you, Senator Uncorker. If Kentucky is not big enough for both McConnell and Paul, how about they sit down with us while we’re in an expansive mood and figure things out. Everyone knows what needs to be done, and why, and there can be no excuses or further delays. So?
The silver lining is that it’s now universally known that Republicans have to do the right thing if they are ever to show their sorry faces anywhere in this country again. That means outright repeal. Reform will have to wait. Years of outright opposition do have consequences, and expectations that even opponents can appreciate. So they gave it, i.e. compromise, their best shot (if such a thing is possible while using a gun with a jammed and crooked barrel that pretty much guaranteed they could only shoot themselves in their clumsy feet), and now that’s out of the way for good they have no alternative but to proceed with the one thing they’ve been on record committed to. If they can’t handle that, maybe President Trump can trade them to the Russians for no players to be named now or later. (We assume that’s what his second meeting with Putin was all about.)
Speaking of secretive conversations, we have learned from yet another cheap leak that President Trump asked British Prime Minister Theresa May to “fix” things in such a way that he would be given good press coverage in the UK. You know what that means: yet another area for pioneering Special Counsel Mueller to investigate. We can’t wait to see him fired by the man he’s hounding. It’s just a matter of time.
We were away awhile, and during our travels came across just how conspiratorial the world has become in its single-minded campaign to stymie America’s hero president. Domestically, he’s made progress. A Watergate fanatic like Carl Bernstein now concedes that there are two “truths” at war with each other in our country. He never gave the savaged President Nixon that kind of break. The similarly obsessive Maureen Dowd has admitted that Trump’s main problem is that he’s driven official Washington bananas – exactly what he was elected to do, she can’t quite bring herself to admit. If only their overseas counterparts could acquire even a dollop of such wisdom. Instead, we learn that Angela Merkel has no intention of curtailing Islamic immigration into Germany whatsoever. No quotas, just an open invitation to all. How do you speak German in Arabic? Oh, well. As mentioned, we thought we’d have a pleasant getaway, but maybe we chose the wrong airline.
There we were, settling into a pleasant reading experience in the friendly skies over the Atlantic when what did we see in our in-flight magazine? An interview with the serene actor, Richard Gere. It included this question:
What we are currently seeing is political action in the [wrong] direction: fear, a retreat into nationalism and the erection of new barriers…
Wonder who they might have in mind. Gere tries to be somewhat diplomatic in his reply – “… Reinvigorating people in the democratic process is what’s happening right now, but it won’t work unless everyone is involved. Otherwise, you get demagogues and crazy people taking charge.”
“And how do you get rid of them?” the in-flight magazine bluntly asks.
“They are voted out of office more quickly than they think…” comes Gere’s suddenly impassioned answer. Via impeachment, anyone? Wagnerian music to the in-flight Merkelists’ ears. Yes, this was Lufthansa’s in-flight rag, doing its government’s seedy work. Who could have imagined that someday in the happy summer of 2017 an entire foreign airline would be named Enemy of the Week? May they never arrive on time again.
