They say he sniffs out his opponents’
weaknesses like it is some kind of

compliment for an unusual ability.
That’s like saying a Chocolate Lab

has the incredible ability to sniff out
disgusting things along the sidewalk

to eat. How hard is it to sniff out
the desire for fame and fortune?

Duh. So he got power through
election and now he sniffs out

the desire of so many of elected
officials’ addiction to fame and

fortune and finds a way to call in
those cards and keep them real

close to him and beholden to him
and, basically, they have sold their

soul to him for fame and fortune.
Duh. Didn’t Faust do something

like this at the instruction of the
Devil who is really good at sniffing

out weaknesses? Is that really all
that hard?

A truism joke of Debate 101
is that if you have a weak
argument, yell. Same for
sermons: if your sermon is
falling flat, raise your voice
for emphasis and authority.
Well, that is what we are see-
ing from the Republicans on
the House of Representatives’
Judiciary Committee — yelling
because there is no legitimate
argument against the facts of
impeachment, only in their case,
it is a copy of the one they copy
in all things, the Occupant and
his childish yelling when things
don’t go his way — the little
piggy who went, “’Wa, wa, wa,
wa,’ all the way home.”

Democrats are so very dumb
about picking a candidate;
their behavior makes me numb;
It is narrowing, as of this date,

to old (some super-rich) whites — Dems beating old drums
leaving browns and blacks to debate
off stage, wondering how to run
and get back on stage before it’s too late.

When will Democrats get up to speed
on our national diversity
instead of doing that which will impede
progress and ethnic inclusivity?

The stakes for democracy are much too high,
for the Dems, come the election, to go bye-bye.

It’s seventy degrees outside
and I’m watching puffballs,
cotton balls, popcorn balls
and fluff balls fly through the
air in the northern climes but
no snowballs to be found at
this time. In a hyped, hyped
interview of the president’s
AG, the AG didn’t even have
to duck what was tossed his
way. It was a balmy day in the
studio and the AG had it his
way, the president’s way and
in this case, the really tough
questioner’s powderpuff way.

The head of Medicare and Medicaid
had $43,000 worth of jewelry stolen
and she wants the taxpayers to come to her aid.
On a business trip, from an SUV in her possession,
she had a $5,600 piece of Ivanka’s jewelry raided.
Some may think my poetic protest is a digression,
but, seriously, isn’t the head of Medicare and Medicaid
supposed to hold the elderly and poor as a sacred trust with affection?
Her behavior is a charade,
the theft reveals her attempt at circumspection
while she continues a political masquerade.

At the restaurant, the waiter asked what I wanted to drink.
I said, “Water with a slice of lemon.” He said, “Perfect.”

My wife ordered a glass of water with ice but without any
mention of lemon. According to the waiter, that, too, was

perfect. Did he know something about me that water with
lemon was perfect for me? Did he know something about my

wife that water with ice but without any mention of lemon
was perfect for her? And so I tried an experiment. When my

water glass was empty, I ordered a different glass of water,
one with ice but without any mention of lemon. According to

the waiter, that, too, was perfect. Might he have mistaken
my wife’s water order for mine? Then my shrimp scampi was

perfect and my cup of coffee was perfect and my wife’s steak
salad with medium-rare steak was perfect. As the waiter hand-

ed us the bill, he asked how everything was to which we re-
sponded simultaneously and quickly, “Perfect,” when, in fact,

not everything was perfect. I just didn’t want to bother him
with the results of my annual physical. It isn’t anything serious —

just not perfect.

He sat in the sand;
he watched the waves rise and fall;
he felt the pounding.

He was a year and a half into severe
grief when the congregation basically
said enough is enough when all the

stats were still looking really good —
good income, good attendance, good
youth group, good Christian Education

program, really good everything as the
institution measures it, and so he sub-
mitted a nice letter of resignation, which

needed to be approved by the higher
judicatory, but which he was pretty sure
would happen with a safety package

for him and the concerns of the con-
gregation accounted for, and so it was,
and then the congregation embarked on

a “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” the
wilderness of an eighteen-year journey
into dwindling and dwindling statistics

until the whole thing almost collapsed
and then they hired a kid, like the kid
who then wound up in severe grief,

through no fault of his own and things
picked up until the new kid had an affair
and things took another nose dive and in

the  meantime, the guy in deep grief, has
gone on to live a full life and a fine spiritual
existence without the institution and the

people in the institution, who, like Alfred
E. Newman, look around and, in true comedic
fashion, like those who make things happen

and those who watch things happen and
those who wonder, “What happened?” ask,
blankly “What just happened?”

Her dad sat contemplating words, images,
similes, metaphors, analogies. To the best
of anyone’s knowledge he didn’t do cross-

word puzzles. He just contemplated language,
the English language, not Hebrew even though
he was Jewish converted to Roman Catholic-

ism, maybe a bit of Latin, which we all were
told we had to study in high school because
so many English words have their origin in

Latin. While his wife left the house every day
to work for an insurance company, it wasn’t
easy for her, given her semi-paralyzed legs

and one day the little girl would take care
of her mother and do so gladly. The little girl
sat in her dad’s lap as he recited Shakespeare

and then he up and died when the little girl
was seven and for the next forty years she
went in search of the man who gave her the

love of language and she found him through
her own writings and she whispered, “I love
you, daddy.”

In a writer’s biography, the man read the following lines,
the first of which he thought was just wonderful: [Her father]
adored his family and radiated charm, but never radiated much
cash. He worshiped intellect and religion, and cherished a
dream of being a writer. The father radiated charm but
never radiated much cash. What a great sentence. The man
wondered if the father was derelict in his duties or just a
romantic who loved language through and through — a
modern-day Don Quixote defending the honor of the mythic
Dulcinea — a metaphor for literature — or perhaps a bit of
both. He adored, he radiated, he worshiped, he cherished,
he dreamed. Apparently, while he didn’t generate a lot of hard,
cold cash, he plumed the great and rich veins of a passionate
life. And apparently, there were no hard feelings between father
and daughter because she fulfilled his dream by becoming a
writer of estimable esteem.