As the Son-in-Law Sets

Jared Kushner’s position as President Donald Trump’s son-in-law seems secure for the time being, so far as we can tell, but otherwise it’s hard to see how he continues doing the additional jobs of bringing about Middle East peace and reinventing the federal government and solving America’s opioid crisis and being the country’s go-to guy with China and getting Mexico to pay for a border wall.

A pesky bureaucracy has denied him top-level security clearance, what with all the meetings with foreign powers that he forgot to disclose on his forms and the recent reports by the even peskier news media that China and Mexico and a couple of other countries have tried to exploit the billion-dollar debts owed by the company he last ran and is still fully invested in. The White House press secretary assures us that Kushner can continue dealing with the Middle East and China without access to the most top-secret stuff, and has the full support of former the four-star Marine general and current White House chief of staff who doesn’t seem to like Kushner much and recently announced the street policy limiting access to the top-secret stuff to those with top-secret security clearances, but that seems suspicious.

We suppose that Kushner can reinvent America’s federal government and solve its opioid crisis and somehow convince Mexico to pay for a border wall with the same meager information available to the internet-browsing public at large, but our reading of the news suggests these are all tough tasks. All the tougher when you can’t get a security clearance and reports are swirling that foreign government have been trying to exploit the billion-dollar debt you incurred in your last job and still owe, and the father-in-law who handed you these tough jobs has his own problems dealing with eerily similar swirling reports about possible indebtedness to foreign powers.

There’s also the lingering question of why any 37-year-old without any previous public service or foreign relations experience, whose only credentials were taking over the family real estate business when his dad went to prison and driving it a billion dollars into debt and marrying a future president’s daughter, wound up in such demanding jobs. When Trump ran for president he promised that he would hire only the best people, and but it turns out he meant the best people he knew. His limited circle of acquaintances includes his son’s wedding planner who wound up in a sweet position at the Department of Urban Development, a former bit player from his “Apprentice” reality show who wound up as the only black woman in the white House but got fired and wound up on another reality and got fired again, as well too-many-to-link-to others who wound up in high-ranking jobs after serving low-level duty in Trump’s businesses or campaign.

Trump is reportedly going to appoint his former personal jet pilot to head the Federal Aviation Administration, and we marvel at how all the best people happened to be people he knew before he ran for office. Still, we hope he starts considering other job applications from outside his family and circle of friends, if any are forthcoming,

— Bud Norman

“Lord Jim” and South Florida and the Gun Debate

One of the names in the news lately is that of Broward County School Resource Deputy Scot Peterson, who is suddenly infamous as the armed and body-armored guard who was outside Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and didn’t rush in when he heard the first shots fired in a deadly rampage that took the lives of 17 students and faculty and wounded a dozen others on St. Valentine’s Day. He’s since been forced into early retirement, condemned for cowardice by the Broward County Sheriff and the President of the United States, and widely criticized even by those who aren’t in need of a scapegoat for the tragedy.

We’ll leave it to the Broward County Sheriff’s office to determine Peterson’s professional fate, let God judge his soul, and hope that whatever his culpability in the tragedy he finds redemption in this life or the next. His story has a certain fascination for us, though, as it recalls a favorite novel called “Lord Jim.”

If you’ve never read it you really should, because Joseph Conrad was one of the English language’s greatest writers and “Lord Jim” is one of his greatest masterpieces, and it has some wise and pertinent things to say about the human condition. The story concerns a young 19th Century British fellow named Jim, no better or worse than anyone else, who becomes a competent enough seaman on a ship transporting “pilgrims of an exacting faith” through the Red Sea. One stormy night when the ship is endangered through no fault of his own, young Jim fails to act as he was diligently trained and fairly paid to do by prematurely abandoning the ship, and although so did the ship’s captain and other higher officers he’s the only one who winds up on trial and found guilty of dereliction of duty and scorned by respectable people. With the help of a few sympathetic writer types Jim winds up in a series of desultory jobs and eventually on a remote island with no civilized norms of behavior, and without giving away the entire plot suffice to say he pays a steep price for atonement in his second chance to do the right thing.

Sorry to get so literary on you, but we wish that a better scribe such as Conrad was around to provide commentary on the current political debate regarding the Douglas High tragedy in particular and the peculiarly American phenomenon of mass shootings in general. Alas, the sorry situation is now beyond the satirical talents of ourselves or even a Jonathan Swift, so only such a tragedian as Conrad could do it justice.

Former Broward County School Resource Deputy Peterson is lately defending himself, saying that he followed training and had reason to believe that the shots were being defending outside the school, and while that seems quite plausible to such uncertain and forgiving sorts as ourselves there’s no way to recast him as the hero of this tale. For now, that makes him a plausible villain.

The Broward County Sheriff’s Office that trained and meagerly paid Peterson had several presumably better-trained and better-paid deputies who also took some time before rushing into the building, and by then the alleged shooter was being apprehended down the street by a patrol car on routine duty, and the entire office had failed to keep an eye on the alleged shooter despite numerous domestic abuse calls to his various homes, warnings from school officials, tips from classmates and neighbors, the alleged shooter’s postings on social media about shooting up the school he’d ben expelled from, and various other warnings that something very bad was about to go down in Broward County.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel defended himself in a disaster of an interview with the Cable News Network, citing his “amazing leadership to this agency,” and wound up seeming to blame it all on “one deputy who was remiss, dereliction of duty, and he’s no longer with this agency.” There are already calls on both the left and right for his resignation or firing or tarring-and-feathering, not to mention the criticisms of all the grieving or scared parents in even the richest parts of Broward County, but we’ll leave to to the locals to decide his professional fate and let God judge his soul.

Israel can still kick the blame up to a higher power, though, which is one of of those literary twists that best of the satirists and tragedians could have never come up with. The federal government’s Federal Bureau of Investigation was also tipped off about the alleged school shooter allegedly responsibly for an undeniable school shooting, and similarly failed to act, so there are also calls on the left and right to replace the guy in charge of that agency that didn’t turn out to be the hero of this instead tragic tale.

President Donald Trump always imagines himself as the hero in all these tragic subplots of the ongoing American reality show, but he’s also the guy who appointed the current FBI director, and he’s meanwhile leaving open the possibility that the once-venerable FBI is still engaged in a “deep state” “silent coup” against his presidency. At this point neither Swift nor Conrad are equal to the convoluted plot, but even a hack reality show writer would have the Trump character saying that Peterson and other Broward County Sheriffs deputies are “no Medal of Honor winners” and his behavior was “frankly, disgusting,” and although acknowledging one never really knows about such things claiming “I really believe I’d have run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon.”

There’s nothing in Trump’s by now well-known biography to back up the claim, of course. His tough guy reputation is based mostly on the schoolyard taunts he “tweets” against political opponents too dignified to respond in kind, and back when he was a boastfully athletic American youth he used educational deferments and some spurious bone spurs that never seemed to interfere with his golfing to avoid serving his country in war. We’ll not judge him for that, but we’ll dourly note that he’s disrespected the service of men who were prisoners of war and almost any decorated veterans who are of the Democratic persuasion, and we’ll not indulge the comic book fantasy of Trump as the superhero of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High if he’d only been there with his bare hands.

Meanwhile, on the left, they’re searching for other scapegoats. Those uncannily well-spoken and well-groomed and telegenic kids from the shot-up school are disinclined to blame Porter, who they seemed to know as a nice enough guy no better or worse anyone else, and are instead blaming that Sheriff they’ve never met and Trump and the National Rifle Association and anyone else who ever had a nice thing to say about the right to keep and bear arms. As much as we like those Douglas High kids and sympathize with their horrific pain, we also cherish our right to arm ourselves should it ever become necessary in this tragic world, and thank the NRA for its efforts on our behalf, and hold out the usual hope that youth doesn’t achieve its most idealistic aims.

We won’t mind if they achieve some of their more  modest goals, though. The same people who are saying that the opinions of 17-yeaar-olds who have survived a mass school shooting should be dismissed as the uneducated rantings of a mere child are simultaneously saying those same people should be allowed to buy the heaviest weaponry on the market the day turn 18, so it seems reasonable that you shouldn’t be allowed to buy an AR-15 until you’re allowed to buy a martini. Fixing whatever bureaucratic glitches obviously occurred at the county and state and federal levels seems reasonable enough, too, but given the NRA’s obstinance and the Republican party’s never-give-an-inch stance  it remains to be seen how the the polarized sides might work that out.

The best solutions will require some political courage on both sides of the political divide, and these days that’s even harder to find than the physical courage that Conrad and Zane Grey used to write about. Still, Douglas High’s burly and balding and unarmed football coach, Aaron Feis, gave his life  to save the lives of several students at the school he loved, though, even if his name isn’t as prominent in the news as Peterson’s. We’ll hold out hope, therefore, and in the meantime wish  all the School Resource Deputy Petersons of the world a chance at redemption.

— Bud Norman

The Good Neighbor Policy

The United States has long benefited from its location, with vast oceans between us and all the troubles that are always brewing in Asia and Europe, and only two abutting countries to deal with. Except for that unpleasantness back in 1812 and some fuss over “fifty-four forty or fight” a few years later we’ve generally gotten along well enough with Canada, and although our relationship with Mexico has occasionally been more contentious we haven’t fought a full-fledged with war with it for 170 years.

Maintaining such friendly relationships with the neighbors has been a longstanding tradition of America’s foreign policy, but President Donald Trump is that newfangled sort of conservative who doesn’t care much about longstanding traditions. He’s threatened to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement if it’s not re-negotiated to his satisfaction, pressed various trade disputes with Canada, and his dealings with Mexico started with a campaign announcement that accused the country of sending rapists and drug dealers into America as a national policy, and things have not since become any friendlier.

Trump’s most recent diplomatic outreach toward our neighbors to the south, a telephone conversation with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, reportedly ended with a “testy” Trump still demanding that Mexico pay for the massive wall he wants along the entirety of the border and Nieto canceling a tentatively planned state visit to the White House rather than talk about it further. This is at least the second time Nieto has declined a visit rather consider Trump’s demands, and given how absurd the demands seem to pretty much every single Mexican voter and how important making Mexico pay for a wall is to Trump and a significant chunk of his supporters it probably won’t be the last time.

Which further complicates an already complicated relationship with the folks next door, which in turn further complicates all sorts of other problems that could easily be amicably settled by more cautious stewards of America’s longstanding foreign policy traditions. Trump is opening his planned renegotiation of the NAFTA treaty with a promise to his most loyal supporters that it will ultimately put America first, which puts the governments both of our neighbors in the awkward position of explaining to their voters why they agreed to second or third place, and we don’t see the as-nationalist-as-the-next-guy people in either country to the north or south being cowed by Trump’s bullying tactics. Neither is Trump’s international reputation as a blustering bully boy likely to yield any successful negotiations with the dangerous and lucrative Asian and European nations that lie just a few days shipping or a few hours of intercontinental ballistic missile travel across those once-vast oceans.

Meanwhile, here at home, Trump’s demand that Mexico pay for his big, beautiful wall is also complicated several domestic disputes. There’s an increasingly pressing question, for instance, of what to do with all those illegal immigrants — mostly from Mexico — who were brought here through no fault of their own as children and are provably not rapists or drug dealers. Their presence was tolerated under an executive order of questionable constitutional provence by President Barack Obama, and although that order was rescinded by Trump even he has since expressed sympathy for their plight and doesn’t seem to have the heart to kick them out, which has disappointed many of his loyal supporters. Trump is currently taking the position that the so-called “dreamers” can stay so long as the Democrats cough up $25 billion in funding for his promised big and beautiful border wall, but he’s also still promising that the Mexicans are going to pay for it, so that’s pretty darned complicated.

Our own long personal history with neighbors to the south and north and east and west has from time to time been complicated, but we’re pleased to say it’s mostly been amicable, and very rarely come to blows. The longstanding traditions that have guided us through it all are never being bullied but never being a bully, striving for solutions where everyone wins, and working the messier matters through the existing legal institutions, and don’t insist that the neighbor to south pay for the big and expensive wall you want block his view. We recommend this approach to the country at large.

— Bud Norman

Conservatism in the Age of Trumpism

Way back in late February of 2011, the reality show star Donald Trump was roundly booed during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual convention. Trump declined his next invitation to CPAC’s 2016 convention during the Republican presidential primaries, which is something Republican presidential hopefuls normally don’t dare, but was nonetheless roundly booed when then conservative hero Sen. Ted Cruz derisively mentioned his name.

President Trump was greeted as a conquering hero at the 2017 CPAC confab, however, and is expected to as rapturously received when he returns today. This raises question of whether it’s Trump or conservatism that has changed over the past six or seven years.

There’s a strong case to be made that Trump has been transformed. Back in ’11 he was still flaunting his friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton, writing checks to all the New York and Florida Democrats he relied on for favors, and was still on the record in favor of banning “assault rifles” and allowing unrestricted access to abortion, among his other many heretical opinions. By 2016 he’d been a leading proponent of the “birther” theory that President Barack Obama was not and American citizen, was saying the nastiest things anyone had to say about the Clintons, promising to get tougher on illegal and legal immigration than anyone else dared, all in the snarling rhetorical style of talk radio, but his conservative credentials were still in doubt.

By the time he made his triumphant return to CPAC last year as the Republican party’s very own president, having triumphed over such well-credentialed conservatives as the aforementioned Cruz, Trump was clearly not the New York City liberal he had once claimed to be. When he takes to the stage today he’ll be able to wave a big tax cut bill that he signed into law, point to all the burdensome regulations he’s eliminated, brag about the strict constructionist he appointed the Supreme Court, and rightly claim that although he didn’t repeal and replace Obamacare his tax cut bill at least rescinded the hated individual mandate. So far he hasn’t caved on promises to kick out all those illegal yet sympathetic “dreamers” who were brought here as children, or his promises to deliver the favors the National Rifle Association paid him for, and although he’s sounded kind of wobbly on both lately his conservative credentials probably won’t be checked at CPAC’s door.

Still, we can’t quite shake a sad feeling that this is not the conservatism we signed up for so long ago. In our idealistic youth, which occurred during one of those occasional epochs of cataclysmic cultural change, we embraced a Burkean conservatism that sought to maintain the best of what our culture had established over the generations, to move cautiously toward its highest and most time-tested ideals, and resist the worst of all the craziness coming from the left. This led us to certain conclusions about the government that governs best being the one that governs least, the enduring wisdom of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the many ways that humans gotten it wrong, not letting petty disputes devolve into warfare, and the importance of eventually balancing the books.

For the most part the Republican party has imperfectly followed these general principles for most of our lives, but these days it seems to have made a predictably bad deal with the guy who had “The Art of the Deal” ghost-written for him. The craziness coming from the left is crazier than ever, and we feel it must be resisted, so it’s especially sad to realize that’s about all we have left in common with the right these days.

The conservative cheers for Trump won’t be for the enduring wisdom of Judeo-Christian tradition, as anybody understands it, and the mention of any institutions that have been painstakingly established over the generations to resist his worst impulses will surely be met with talk of “deep state” “silent coups” by “enemies of the people” and chants of “Burn it down!” The CPAC crowds have already indulged themselves with the ritual chant of “Lock her up” at the mention of vanquished Democrat foe Hillary Clinton’s name, just like the crowds at the Ukrainian strongman’s rallies arranged by Trump’s former and now-indicted campaign manager, which did result in the losing opponent going to jail, which actually outraged most conservatives way back then.

These days too many self-described conservatives seem to like that strong man style of governance, even as they insist they’re freedom-loving small government types. They still insist they’re against annual deficits and multi-trillion dollar debts, but don’t seem to mind that all of Trump’s budgets lead to a bigger-than-Obama hole. They still insist they’re the party of family values, but they’ll give a Trump a pass on his extramarital flings with porn stars and Playboy centerfolds. They still want to lock Clinton up for mishandling classified information, but they’re perfectly fine with alleged-wives beaters and a suspicious-as-hell son-in-laws and dozens of other uncleared staffers getting daily access to top security intelligence briefings.

At least he’s not Hillary, the CPAC conventioneers will surely say, and we have to admit they’ve got a point. The CPAC convention has always drawn almost every sort of self-described contrastive, but mostly the types who take it far too seriously, so it’s always been a bit of a freak show. When Trump was booed back in ’11 it was because he disparaged far-libertarian Rep. Ron Paul, who had easily won the convention’s primary straw poll over eventual nominee Mitt Romney, and this time around it featured the last French election’s nominee from the National Front, a far-right nationalist party with fascist roots whose campaign also received cyber support from the Russian government, and she was more warmly received than Trump was back in ’11. As bad as that sounds, though, we’re quite sure the next big liberal confab, full of people who also take this stuff far too seriously, will have something just as bad. The CPAC convention’s one saving grace has always been that it united all those factions in their opposition to the worst of all that leftwing craziness, and for now Trump is the only champion to rally around in that righteous cause.

If conservatism is thus defined as rallying around Trump, though, it’s in worse trouble than anybody at CPAC seems to realize.

— Bud Norman

The Latest Children’s Crusade

America’s permissive-by-global-standards gun laws and social attitudes have survived all the political outcries that followed more mass shootings than we can remember in the past many years, but the latest tragedy seems different.

The St. Valentine’s Day massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 students and faculty dead and more than a dozen others injured, was no bloodier than usual but has somehow set off a nationwide youth movement protesting for stricter gun control. Students have staged walk-out protests at high schools around the country, shown up en masse at boisterous protests at the White House and the Florida statehouse, and started the effective sorts of social media networks you’d expect of today’s young people. All the politicians have taken notice, and even President Donald Trump found himself in a “listening session” on Wednesday.

Perhaps it’s just been one mass shooting too many, but important another reason this time is different is that the students at affluent and usually placid Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are a telegenically sympathetic and uncannily eloquent bunch of teenagers.

We know this because all but one of the cable news networks have lately made reality stars out of them, which puts the more rightward media in a tough spot. There are cold and dispassionate and harshly logical reasons for America’s permissive laws and social attitudes regarding guns, but they’re hard to make in the hot media of television, as Marshall McCluhan famously described it, especially when it has such telegenically sympathetic and well-spoken stars on hand.

A few of the rightmost media have conjectured that these kids are just a bit too-uncannily well spoken for teenagers, and must have been hired from central casting by George Soros or some other left-wing conspirator, and that the kid with the former FBI father is especially suspicious given the bureau’s insidious role in the “deep state” plot against Trump. These conjectures have been passed along on social media by a couple of obscure Republican politicos and the president’s namesake son, but for the most part it’s been a futile gesture. The more respectable rightward media take care to be respectful of the terror and loss these telegenic kids have suffered, though, and even such a politically incorrect president as Trump wound up enduring their sob stories with an appropriately somber face during Wednesday’s “listening session.”

One of The Washington’s Post fancy-schmantzy high-resolution digital cameras took a picture of the talking points memo Trump was holding in his normal-sized hands, and it’s clearly discernible that fifth on the list was a needed reminder to say “I hear you.” That was about all Trump had to say to the mass-shooting survivors he’d convened, and although he’d been careful not to invite any of the kids from Douglas High, many of whom had already said they’d decline the invitation, the people Trump and the rest of the country were listening to were also remarkably sympathetic and well-spoken. Trump spoke at a relatively modest length about his campaign promise to arm all the teachers in America, admitting that most of them would probably prove quite ineffectual but holding out hope that a certain number of them would be bad-assed enough to take care of the situation, but mostly he responded to every tear-jerking story by saying “I hear you.”

There’s still a cold and dispassionate and harshly logical argument for America’s permissive laws and social attitudes regarding guns, and much of what these telegenically sympathetic and remarkably well-spoken high school students are proposing is easily refuted bunk, even if we can’t bring ourselves to blame their youthful selves for that, but Trump and his most rightward media apologists don’t seem up to making that complex case. This time around the high school kids and gun-grabbing crazies on the seem more careful to mostly propose more modest proposals about more careful background checks, fixing the bureaucratic glitches that kept federal and local enforcement from acting on numerous tips and intervening with the crazy mixed-up kid who shot up that upper-class Parkland high school, and other non-controversial solutions.

Not so long before he became a Republican candidate for the presidency Trump was yet another Democratic New Yorker who endorsed the easily refuted bunk about banning semi-automatic long guns, and although he’s since promised the gun rights absolutists that he’ll never let them down and his elephant-hunting namesake son has “tweeted” his urgings not to give an inch, we don’t expect him to start “tweeting” taunts about high school kids and holding the line. Some modest measures will likely be passed, the kids will forever remember that glorious day they walked out of algebra class, and the the political ramifications won’t be felt until all those high schools become eligible to vote.

— Bud Norman

Finding True Love in Trump’s America

According to all of the public opinion polls President Donald Trump is widely unpopular among women, and the anecdotal evidence we’ve gleaned from conversations with our numerous female friends suggests that many women would not consider dating a Trump supporter. Fortunately for all those lonely fellows in the red “Make America Great Again” ball caps, there’s now an internet dating site that can match them with a politically compatible mate.

Trump.dating’s web site promises to “Make dating great again!” and help those who pay a matchmaking fee “Find the America first partner of your dreams.” After all, the site says, “When the political foundation is the same, the sky is the limit.”

The web site once featured the picture of a smiling couple who had found true love through their services, with the fellow’s “MAGA” cap on backwards and flashing the word “Trump” while his smiling sweetheart poses in a more feminine pink “MAGA” cap with the bill properly facing forward, but that was scuttled after the couple’s hometown newspaper revealed that the fellow had a past conviction for indecent liberties with a child. The updated site features a far more handsome fellow, who might or might not be an actual Trump supporter but is presumably not a convicted child molester, along with four other rather comely people who don’t look at all like stereotypical Trump supporters.

Trump.dating does not facilitate same-sex relationships between Trump supporters, as you can only register as a straight man or straight woman, and there’s been some predictable tsk-tsking about that in the leftward media. Based on the anecdotal evidence we’ve gleaned from conversations with our numerous homosexual friends, we guess Trump.dating is not missing out on much business with that policy, and we don’t think all those leftward media are really all so eager to hook up the few homosexual Trump fans.

The site should do well with many of those single and straight males who support Trump, on the other hand. In this age of bra-burning and man-hating women’s lib gone wild it’s hard to find a woman who shares your admiration for an obese serial adulterer with a bad comb-over who boasts of grabbing women by their wherevers, so it’s well worth a matchmaking fee to wind up with such a rare gem. If she looks anything like the hotties featured on the web site’s opening page, even the one who wound up married to the convicted child molester, so much the better.

Whether that proves the basis of a lasting relationship remains to be seen, though. Our own hard-luck romantic history has included some very opinionated liberal women, but they generally tolerated our conservative opinions, which were rather old-fashioned and as respectful of women as our loving Mom insisted on with a slap to our heads whenever we fell short, and they had many memorably fine qualities and  politics was never the problem. We had a couple of flings with some women who were generally in agreement with our daily rants, several more with women who didn’t care to talk about that nonsense at all, and although the lattermost group were by far the best of the lot none of them worked out.

In the unlikely event we ever encounter an attractive and intelligent and age-appropriate yet still-single woman whose political and cultural opinions are completely aligned with ours, we’re sure we’d be quickly bored. We still consider ourselves conservatives, but in the more likely event we encounter an attractive and more-or-less age-appropriate woman who likes the obese serial adulterer types with bad comb-overs and grab-’em-by-the-wherever tendencies, we’ll stand in solidarity with most of our women friends and won’t consider dating them. If that puts us in better stead with most of our women friends, so much the better.

— Bud Norman

In the Calm, Peaceful Eye of the Hurricane

According to The Washington Post, an anonymous White House official said that after the horrific mass shooting at a Florida high school on Valentine’s Day “A lot of people here felt it was a reprieve from seven or eight days of just getting pummeled.” It’s a morbid thought, but there might be something to it.

Prior to the tragedy all the talk was about the departure of the staff secretary who’d been kept on the job even after the administration was made aware that he couldn’t get the security clearance needed for the job because two ex-wives were accusing him of physical abuse. That led to stories about the under-oath testimony by the Federal Bureau of Investigation director that the White House had lied about when the White House had been made aware, embarrassing questions about why so many White House officials can’t get a security clearance, another story about another accused wife-beater leaving his speechwriting job, and after days of praising his staff secretary the president being hectored by the press to at long last say that he doesn’t approve of wife-beating.

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer also admitted he paid $130,000 to a pornographic film performer who had once alleged an affair with then-reality show star Trump but stopped doing so after the payment. Then there was the story that Trump’s friends at The National Enquirer paid big money for a former Playboy centerfold model for her own exclusive and unpublished story about an affair with Trump, which she alleges occurred around the same time as the alleged affair with the porn performer, which was just months after Trump’s third wife gave birth to his fifth child. There were also stories, perhaps related, about all the visible evidence of a frosty relationship between the president and First Lady.

Once upon a time in America such titillating tales of porn performers and Playboy models and a president would have crowded even the wife-beating stories with national security implications out of the news, but by now we have a First Lady who’s done some pornographic modeling of her own and a reality show president that no one, even his most evangelical apologists, looks to for moral leadership. The leftward media that once defended President Bill Clinton’s presidential peccadillos don’t want to seem puritanical about it, so they’ve mostly focused their attention on the possible campaign law violations that are clearly implied, and it’s not the big deal it would have been back in the good old days.

After the tragedy in Florida the “Russia thing” nosed its way back into the news. Special counsel Robert Mueller obtained an indictment against 13 Russians for fraudulently running an internet propaganda campaign during the last presidential campaign that was clearly designed to benefit Trump, which came after all of the Trump appointees to all of the nation’s intelligence-gathering agencies testified under oath that they were certain the Russian government had indeed launched a sophisticated effort to influence the presidential election that included hacking into e-mail accounts and trying to hack into state vote-counting computers and spreading propaganda.

The announcement of the indictment was read by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee who is in the awkward position of overseeing Mueller’s investigation after the full-blown Attorney General Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself from the “Russia thing,” and he stressed that only Russians were indicted and the indictment mentioned “unwitting” Americans who might have been involved. Trump and his apologists read this as vindication in the whole “Russia thing,” but that required Trump to acknowledge that Russia’s meddling wasn’t the hoax he’d long claimed.

This was followed 14 presidential “tweets” that would have dominated a day’s news cycle in the relatively recent past. Trump blamed the school shooting on the FBI’s obsession with the “Russia thing,” blasted his national security advisor for acknowledging Russia’s meddling in the last election without mention that Trump would have won anyway, and even described Oprah Winfrey as “insecure.”

It was all too much to follow over a long President’s Day Weekend, especially with all those remarkably eloquent and righteously impassioned kids telling all the cable news networks about the tragedy they lived through, and in an odd sort of way that does somehow seem to redound to Trump’s political benefit. Those poor souls in the White House communications team charged with spinning all the various scandals might well have felt able to take a federal holiday off on Monday.

They’ll have to be back on the job today, though, as it looks to be a brief respite. The alleged wives-beaters who gained entree to the White House are already long forgotten, but the hubbub about all the White House staffers without security clearance has prompted the chief of staff to impose a new rule that will likely demote senior advisor and ambassador-at-large and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner. The possible campaign violations involved in those six-figure payouts to the porn performer and Playboy model might yet wind up in court, or under the special counsel’s scrutiny, and that will keep these otherwise boring stories in the news. Mueller’s indictment not only mentioned “unwitting” American participants in the Russian campaign meddling but also referred to “persons known and unknown to the grand jury,” which has an ominous ring about it.

That tragedy in Florida doesn’t seem to be redounding to the president’s political benefit, either. Those sympathetically grieving students are remarkably eloquent and appealing — we got choked up watching one respectful and well-groomed and well-spoken senior who has already signed up for Army service even though he looks and sounds like a college man — and so far they’re winning in the public opinion polls against Trump’s un-parseable and profane and Oprah-bashing “tweets.”

We hold out hope that some solution can be found to end the ongoing problem of mass shootings without infringing on the God-given and constitutionally-protected right for a citizen to protect himself, but we expect a lot of bad news before we arrive at that happy day.

— Bud Norman

Tweeting Instead of Golfing

President Donald Trump didn’t play his usual round of golf at his wholly-owned Mar-a-Lago resort during his usual federally-funded weekend visit there, ostensibly out of respect for those mourning the deaths of 17 students at a nearby high school in yet another American mass shooting. Instead he spent much of the weekend sending out ten “tweets” on various subjects in the news, but we figure his time would have been better spent on the golf course.

The “tweet” that got the most attention was the one blaming the mass shooting tragedy on the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which Trump alleges was too preoccupied with that phony-baloney “Russia thing” to pay much attention to a kid in south Florida that pretty much everyone down there knew was likely to shoot up his former high school. By all accounts the the very screwed-up kid in question was quite predictably a mass school murderer, as concerned neighbors and Facebook friends and school officials had repeatedly warned both the FBI and local law enforcement officials, and both the FBI and the local law enforcement officials now freely admit that they pretty much screwed the pooch in this deadly case.

Blaming it all on the phony-baloney “Russia thing,” though, smacks of presidential desperation. The FBI has some 35,000 employees and only a relative and specifically-qualified few of them are involved in the “Russia thing,” none of whom were diverted from taking the calls from the neighbors concerned about that next mass school shooter, and we doubt that any of the local law enforcement officials who got the same concerned calls were at all distracted by the “Russia thing.” This all comes after a week when the president’s own appointees to the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency and the rest of the national intelligence agencies testified before congress that yeah, Russia meddled in the last in the last election to Trump’s benefit and is is eager to do so again. The kids at the south Florida high school who saw 17 of their classmates gunned down by a a screwed-up former classmate aren’t buying it, and we guess that neither will the public at large.

Although we still defend the constitutional right to bear arms, no matter how tricky that seems at the moment, we have to admit that the latest mass school shooting occurred at an upper-middle class where the students are unusually well-spoken and media-savvy and quite righteously pissed off, and that so far our president’s unfounded and profanely worded “tweets” are getting the worst of it.

Other Trump “tweets” attacked his own National Security Advisor, didn’t mention the porn star and Playboy playmate that have lately figured in the presidential news, and basically did nothing to make America great again.

— Bud Norman

Warmth, Basketball and All the Bad News

Most of the news on Thursday was hard to take, what with all the tear-jerking up-close-and-personal accounts of the heroic dead from the latest mass schooling shooting, the ongoing scandal about the high-ranking wives-beater in the White House, not to mention the latest revelations about that whole “Russia thing.” On the other hand, here in Wichita the weather was unseasonably warm, the stock market was slightly up, and our Wichita State University Wheatshockers men’s basketball team toughed out a crucial win.

At the risk of sounding shallow, there’s something to be gratefully said for an unseasonably warm mid-February afternoon around here, even if we did wind up sleeping through much of it. Even if you aren’t invested in the stock markets it’s always a good thing when those green arrows point up, as it reassures that at least the broader economy isn’t in imminent danger of tanking. Unless you grew up in the local hoops-crazed basketball culture around here you won’t fully appreciate the significance of that toughed-out ‘Shocker victory, but we hope you’ll understand why it’s such a welcome distraction.

According to the subjective rankings of America’s sportswriters and college coaches the ‘Shocks are the 19th best best team in the country, but on Thursday by objective measurement they were three games behind the University of Cincinnati Bearcats in the more important American Conference race. To keep hope of a conference championship alive they had to beat a tough and championship tournament-contending Temple team at home, after suffering an embarrassing loss to them on the road. Temple jumped out to a 15 point lead in the first half, the ‘Shocks played some tough defense and crisp offense to cut it down to a three-point lead, but the Owls of Temple had it back up to double-digits by half-time, but the ‘Shocks came back with their patented bear=down defense and a case of characteristic loose-ball hustling that resulted in player-of-the game big man Shaquille Morris’ deft assist to the relatively stubby white boy Conner Frankamp,who is somehow the Wichita City League’s current all-time scorer, and the ‘Shocks won by a deceptive seven points with their usual good free throw shooting down the stretch.

Meanwhile Cincy lost to a tough and tournament-contending University of Houston team that split its home-and-home series with the Shocks, and with a home-and-home left again Cincy in the ‘Shocks last four games championship hopes remain alive, and according to all the experts there’s the relative warmth of March Madness waiting for us in any case.

Which is not to diminish our mourning for those folks in sunny south Florida, or our disdain for the White House and the wives-beaters it has embraced, or our suspicions about that whole “Russia thing,” or even a nagging anxiety about the stock market and the broader economy. It’s just to say you should find solace in whatever your local weather and sporting culture might offer.

— Bud Norman

Another St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

The horrific mass shooting at Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday, which left at least 17 dead and at least another score injured, was the 18th school shooting in America in this young year by the American Broadcasting Company’s count. The Cable News Network counts it as only the 12th mass school shooting in the past month-and-a-half, but everyone seems to have lost count of how many there have been in the past few decades, not to mention all the mass shootings at gay night clubs and country-and-western concerts and post-game celebrations and other non-school events, and by now it’s almost numbingly routine.

Respectful mention must always be made, but it’s increasingly hard to think of anything new to say. At this point most of the media don’t bother to rerun all the familiar arguments for and against further gun control measures, or the similarly complicated arguments about dealing with the apparent pandemic of mental illness in America. One of the right wing talk radio talkers took a day off from blaming the “deep state” Democrats and Republicans for the whole “Russia thing” and instead railed against the bleeding heart public education types who don’t post armed guards in every school, which we have to admit is a reasonable suggestion, but the rest of the media coverage had a depressing feel of deja vu.

We have nothing new to say, just the same old heartfelt offer of thoughts and prayers. We well understand how insufficient and stale that sounds to an impatient secular society, but note that our impatient secular society has nothing more fresh and satisfying to offer. As long as we’re all at least talking about it, though, we’ll hold out prayerful hope that the conversation might lead us to some mutually agreed upon and at least slightly ameliorative solution to what everyone agrees is an intolerable problem.

The important thing is that we not come to regard it as normal and therefor tolerable. Human beings in general and Americans in particular have that unfortunate tendency. The left did it to the point that President Donald Trump was elected, now the the right is just as busily devoted to defining deviancy down, and the cynical center is more convinced than ever that both sides were a scam all along and there’s nothing to be done about it.. Which makes it hard to confront the uncomfortable but undeniable fact that an extraordinary and heartbreaking number of our nation’s  children get shot down in their schools by mid-February.

— Bud Norman