Gee Officer Krupke, Krup You!

Somebody with a formidable sense of irony turned a little song that I listened to over and over again as a four-year-old into a video packed with tons of unspoken social commentary. Listen (and watch) anyway. Then we’ll meet again on the other side of the music.

So listen up. I'm certifiably a doddering geezer, but when I was a kid, this song, recorded and played on a 78 rpm shellac record, was practically my national anthem. It taught naive little me that the policeman was my friend. And, perhaps because I’m white and I was a cute kid, he was. I did get lost once, in Coney Island, at the age of five. And I did walk up to the nearest policeman. And he did indeed help me find my frantic uncle, who lost me on the crowded boardwalk.

It took a while for me to learn that the real world of grownups, particularly grownups of color, is a lot less rosy than I imagined as a little kid.

Bad apples, barrels, and cops

Y'see, a funny thing happened in the past few weeks, on the way toward exposing the bad apples that spoil the cop barrel. All the apples have begun spoiling sympathetically, and at a fearsome clip. The examples of police brutality, police sadism, and (pun intended) flatfooted police stupidity proliferate at warp speed. 

It’s not just cops shooting at people. It’s not even just male cops. For example, in San Antonio recently,  a woman, Natalie Simms was sitting on a curbstone waiting for her boyfriend when the cops came by. Well, clearly, by some lame brained logic that only a cop could understand, she had to be hiding drugs somewhere. Otherwise, why would she be sitting there? So a female police officer was summoned to search her.

A pat-down revealed nothing, so naturally, the cops concluded she had to be hiding the drugs (What drugs? On the basis of what rational probable cause?)…where was I? She had to be hiding the drugs in her vagina.

So the lady copy reached up there, felt around between the woman’s labia and among her pubic hair for a while, found a really, really suspicious string...and then yanked out a bloody Tampax. 

And when that search revealed nothing more than blood and  soggy cotton, the cop did an anal search next. Which yielded…surprise! Nada!

A cop can't be too suspicious
— or too stupid

And all this was happening on the street, with pedestrians passing by.

What was the lady cop thinking? Well here it is, in her own words, as reported by Insider. (Thanks for the tipoff, Bonnie Loewenstein.)

She claimed she needed to conduct the search because "you don't know what they have. I mean, they stick all kinds of stuff."

And because dumb, if not dumber-er, seems to be a a prerequisite for admission to everybody’s Police Academy these days, the police officer’s actions did not violate the department’s policies and were described as “exceeds expectations.” 

Ya think?

Trump shows us
how to do calculus

Then we have Donald Trump, Boy Electronics Genius, who is now trying to peddle the notion that that 75 year old man in Buffalo who got pushed over on the sidewalk and left unconscious and bleeding from his ears, by a platoon of cops on a mission to roust a couple of demonstrators, must be ANTIFA because…er, umm, uhhh…well, he just must have been. 

And furthermore, the old guy must be some kind of electronics whiz who was using a “scanner” (although it looks an awful lot like a cell phone to me) to black out police equipment. Trump knows this because umm, err, ahh, well, he just does. 

And furthermore, with his unerring ability  to do complex calculus problems in his head, Trump was able  conclude that the guy “fell harder than he was pushed…Could be a set up?”

Right, and the old guy deliberately fell on his head, gave himself a concussion, and deliberately bled from the ears, too. Don’t we all pull that trick when we want attention?

More post-Minneapolis cop mayhem here.

No wonder the cops think they can get away with murder.

No nincompoops wanted

As for what to do about the cops, I’m not sure. But I think I’d start all police academy admissions exams with an IQ test. Anyone scoring at "moron" or below would have to retake the exam.

The IQ test should be followed by a mandatory essay question, “What are cops for?” The long answer is in The New Republic.

And here’s a briefer, but far more digestible answer. Forgive the all-white cast. It's from another time, but the sentiment is still valid:

Police brutality, Donald Trump, and the shaming of America

It is too late to say, as I did only about a week ago, that Donald Trump is about to wreck this nation. He has already finished us off, bankrupting us socially, morally, and diplomatically. Our nation's actual financial bankruptcy is probably not far behind, but by the time it happens, it probably won’t even matter any more. We are already pariahs in the eyes of the civilized world.

Even a mere one hundred days ago, who could have an imagined a nation of Americans, trapped in their homes — by a pandemic that worsened while the White House chose for weeks to pretend wasn’t happening? And now we're also trapped by curfews that make us criminals for stepping out of our own homes in the evening. Or even for sitting on our own porches.

And who could have imagined us turning on television or our computers and telephones to see four policemen nonchalantly and brazenly murder someone, in full public view, with several cameras recording their crime? The murderous sadists took their victim's life by slow, torturous, strangulation, taunting him to get up if he didn’t want to be strangled, even as they pinned him to the street so that he couldn’t possibly get up.

This after arresting him because he may or may not have tried to spend a $20 bill that may or may not have been counterfeit.

The brutal evidence

For some reason blogger won't upload the video. But it's worth the detour and the time it takes to see it here in all its stark horror.

It was not surprising that the reaction went national. In recent years we have been exposed to waves of murders of Black people for “crimes” that ranged, essentially, from jogging while Black to selling loose cigarettes while Black, to sleeping at home while Black. Less expected was the counter-reaction of rampaging police wantonly attacking protesters, bystanders and the press, that followed in short order. The brutal police reaction has gravely compounded the problem

In Washington, D.C., police suddenly barraged with rubber bullets and tear gas, and then charged with swinging shields and batons into a park full of legally-assembled and peaceful protestors, wantonly injuring whomever stood in their way. This included an Australian news crew whose cameraman was slammed in the ribs and stomach and then the face by a policeman, while the woman who had already been struck by rubber bullets, got whacked with a police billy club. 

It turned out that the President's address, which boiled down to his authoritarian opinion, worthy of Benito Mussolini, that the people of the United States who protest lawfully must be "dominated," was only part of why he wanted the protesters cleared out. Trump also wanted to head to a church adjacent to the park for a photo op of himself waving a Bible, and he didn’t want the annoyance of protestors screwing up his concocted pious photo op. The Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C., as you've seen if you've watched the video above, was infuriated.

Worldwide disgust 
with the USA

And now the international level of loathing for Donald Trump’s America has exploded. Take the attack of the thug cops against the young Australian newswoman. Politico reports:

The Australian government has asked its embassy in Washington to investigate an incident of violence against an Australian news crew by U.S. law enforcement that transpired during efforts to disperse peaceful protesters and enable President Donald Trump’s photo opportunity in front of a church near the White House.
Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne confirmed the formal request for the probe in an interview Tuesday with ABC Radio National, saying she is seeking counsel from embassy officials “on how we would go about registering Australia’s strong concerns with the responsible local authorities” in the U.S. capital.

Meanwhile, also from one of our oldest and most loyal allies, comes an explosion of disgusted public opinion. “Strong concern” be damned. Our former allies are furious enough to be turning on us in rage. Said one Twitter commentator:

@brett_mcgurk

and

@eqtr8er

I watched this live. In a country like Australia without a gun culture & where we learn about the rest of the world & our place in it, this is truly frightening. We can call it as we see it. The USA is descending into martial law. Next stop: Dictatorship.

And this, which sums it all up:

Replying to 

@brett_mcgurk

This is what Australian troops dying in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan bought us hey.

Nor has the disgust with the United States been limited to just one ally. Robin Wright in The New Yorker reports: 

The outrage about the lack of decency and the American double standard has now gone global in everyday life, including sport. In Germany, where a soccer league recently became the first in Europe to resume play (albeit without fans), four players individually expressed their anger in matches over the weekend. After scoring his first career hat trick, Jadon Sancho, of Borussia Dortmund, pulled off his yellow shirt to reveal another shirt underneath, with a handwritten message in black letters: “Justice for George Floyd.” He was willing to take a yellow card for misconduct, for playing politics on the field. He later tweeted, about scoring, “A bittersweet moment personally as there are more important things going on in the world today that we must address and help make a change.” His teammate Achraf Hakimi followed suit after he scored, later in the game. In another match, a player took a knee after scoring, the same symbolic move made famous by the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. What is striking about the protest signs and the body language, whatever country they’re in, is that they are almost all in English or use symbols from the American experience. The message in so many lands—that America has failed its people—is meant for American ears.
The protests reflect a broader global despair about the failure of the American experiment—and what that means for the rest of the world. “People all over the world understand that their own fights for human rights, for equality and fairness, will become so much more difficult to win if we are going to lose America as the place where ‘I have a dream’ is a real and universal political program,” Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German Ambassador to Washington and the current chairman of the Munich Security Conference, told me. “Let’s hope the demonstrations all over the world will help remind Washington that U.S. soft power is a unique asset, setting America apart from other great powers—from China, Russia, and even from Europe. It would be tragic if the Trump Administration turned a huge opportunity for the U.S. into a moral abdication.”
In Africa, U.S. diplomats have scrambled to counter the damage to America’s image over the past week. A prominent media entrepreneur in the Democratic Republic of the Congo directed a scathing tweet to Mike Hammer, the U.S. Ambassador: “Dear ambassador, your country is shameful. Proud America, which went through everything from segregation to the election of Barack Obama, still hasn’t conquered the demons of racism. How many black people must be killed by white police officers before authorities react seriously?”

For that matter, Donald Trump’s destruction of the nation has not gone unnoticed by those who are not our friends. The New Yorker continues:

America’s rivals are exploiting the growing U.S. unrest for their own goals—and to justify their own policies. In China, the editor of the Global Times cynically tweeted, “I want to ask Speaker Pelosi and Secretary Pompeo: Should Beijing support protests in the U.S., like you glorified rioters in Hong Kong?” Over the past week, Trump and Pompeo have issued sharp public condemnations of China for its new security law allowing crackdowns on months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s Foreign Ministry lambasted “systemic problems in human rights” in the United States. “This incident is far from the first in a series of lawless conduct and unjustified violence from U.S. law enforcement,” the ministry said, in a statement. “American police commit such high-profile crimes all too often.” 

Already, some Americans I know are wondering if it isn’t time to let this ship sink under the weight of its own sudden turn toward authoritarianism and get the hell out. Some mention Canada. Others New Zealand. One friend talks about emigrating to Iceland. Iceland!

As for myself, I harbor the fantasy that Donald Trump and some of his closest aides will meet the same fate that another unconscionable dictator who brutalized his people and encouraged their brutalization by government forces met. 

You'll find it here.

Michael Bloomberg’s gamble with opprobrium

Michael Bloomberg's 6,000-or-so square foot beach shack in Bermuda.
He escapes there frequently via private jet, usually to play golf. Sound familiar?

In quite a few ways, Michael Bloomberg is simply Donald Trump Lite.

Trump has Mar e Lago. Bloomberg has a waterfront estate called Stokes Bay, in Bermuda.

Trump, when he’s not tweeting obsessively, plays golf obsessively. Ditto Bloomberg when he’s in Bermuda. In fact, “obsessively” is just the word the New York Times used to describe Bloomberg’s golfing behavior there.

Perhaps more pertinently, neither man has demonstrated much respect for established law. With Trump I wouldn’t know where to begin. With Bloomberg, I know where it all might end. After New York City’s voters approved mayoral term limits by referendum, Bloomberg overrode the referendum by a tricky political maneuver. He essentially bribed New York City Council members by granting them an extra term as well. 

Bloomberg's excuse for flipping his own city's inhabitants the bird was that he needed a third term to fix the city's financial crisis. He alone could do it! Does that sound familiar? 

The 120-year-old President?

So much for the will of the people, and possibly for presidential term limits. If Bloomberg, now 77 years old, lives to be 120, we could have a 120-year-old President of the United States.

Would Bloomberg be a better president than Trump? Absolutely yes, for the same reason that getting bitten on the ankle by a rabid pig would be better than getting crushed to death and then swallowed by a boa constrictor. 

Bloomberg has already placed “at least” $37 million worth of advertising, CNN reported recently. Even billionaires don’t throw that kind of money around just to hear the sound of money bags knocking network advertising sales managers off their feet.

That’s also why, just for starters, Los Angelinos who watch the local news on NBC in the afternoon or evening could be seeing nine ads for Michael Bloomberg every day, according a tweet from Shane Goldmacher, a New York Times political reporter.

Moreover, Bloomberg’s sudden apology to the African-American community, for 12 years of stop-and-frisking black people for the offense of being outdoors while black, rang loud with almost the same total lack of sincerity that marks Donald Trump when he reads a prepared speech written by some political consultant.

An apology of convenience

“I see now that I was wrong,” Bloomberg said to a black church congregation that he had chosen for his mea culpa. 

How come now rather than a dozen weeks ago, or when you were mayor for twelve years and could do something about it, Mike? You didn’t notice all the lives needlessly ruined, all the jobs lost, all the loss of civic comity created by needlessly harassing African-Americans for twelve years? Of course you didn't. Or perhaps you just didn't care.

For Mr. Bloomberg’s sake, if God forbid he wins the Democratic primary, I sincerely hope he also wins the Presidential election.  Because if he jumps in and spoils it for strong Democratic candidates, and then the election goes to Trump, the cloud of opprobrium that follows Bloomberg for the rest of his life will be so thick you’ll be able to cut it with a crowd of waving pitchforks. And my guess is, he'll want to spend even rainy weekends in Bermuda. Not to mention midweeks.

If he gains the Democratic nomination, Bloomberg will either make himself President … or the Democratic Party’s biggest pariah in history.

Winners of the October 2019 Crank Awards: given on highly sporadic occasions, during perilous times, to people who do or say something that’s either good, or bad, for whatever messes we’re all in at the moment

Best retro photograph of some advertising  guys pretending to rob a
Seattle bank (circa 1966)

Best putdown of Rudolph Giuliani by a newspaper columnist goes to Carl Hiaasen of the Miami Herald for this: “By his own actions, Giuliani has made himself the most visible stooge in the Donald Trump impeachment comedy. Rudy’s worse than a loose cannon. He’s a meandering cluster bomb.”

The Sneaky-Creepy Political Thuggery Award given only to the incredibly rich guy who most ham-handedly tries to interfere in an election: This time it goes to Mark Zuckerberg. The Zuck evidently managed to get his lips close enough to Pete Buttigieg’s ear, via an intermediary, to whisper sweet nothings about potential campaign hires. This act helped insert into the Buttigieg power structure two people likely to help prevent any harm to the Facebook Misinformation Empire, should Buttigieg somehow manage to become president.

The Cheap Piker Guhzillionaire Award. I almost surprised myself by not giving it to Donald Trump, despite his now-abandoned attempt to locate the G7 conference at one of his own failing resorts “at cost.” "At cost" means whatever you want it to mean. In a failing resort, it means, at the very least, some cash flow instead of no cash flow. The offer later got revised to “free” after it became clear to Trump he couldn’t get away with it. I'm guessing Trump figured that if he couldn't win the game he'd at least inflate the lie.
     However, after lengthy and agonized consideration, the Cheap Piker Guhzillionaire Award Committee, which consists of myself, has given the prize to Jeff Bezos. Bezos gets the award for offering Amazon users a $10 coupon to allow him to track those customers all around the web and sell the information for millions to the likes of McDonald’s GM, Danone, and Staples. And if you'll sell your tracking rights to Bezos for a $10 coupon, I'll give you three bucks for your house.

The WTF?! Award to Hillary Clinton, for claiming to be outing Tulsi Gabbard as a “Russian Asset.” Gimme a break! What Gabbard is, quite clearly, is a second-string presidential wannabe, who served honorably in the military but who had zero chance of winning the nomination. She still has no chance, but thanks to Hillary, she now might prove to be the kind of wedge issue that will help to divide Democrats and grease the skids for a second Trump term. And Hillary herself isn’t quite denying that she might — well, maybe, sorta, perhaps — throw her own hat back into the ring. Because she hasn’t done enough damage to the Democratic party. Yet.

The award for best and most grisly human self-immolation in front of the press and news cameras so far this year:

That’s all for today, folks. Come back for more in the near future — assuming there is a near future.

News about dogs, Donald Trump, more dogs, and some other stuff

Arf?

Dogs: So there was this guy in Oregon, Jeremy Taylor, and his dog Ally  a few Sundays ago. Alas, his SUV gets stuck in the snow on a woodsy road somewhere in the vicinity of Wake Butte, wherever the hell that is. 

He stays stuck there for five days.

Finally along comes a snowmobiler who saves poor Taylor, who’d been living on five — count ‘em five — packages of taco sauce.

I’ve got a good mind to fire my source, Time Magazine, for doing a fifth-rate job of reporting. Among the questions that, back in the day, any city editor worth his salt would have told a young reporter to "go the hell back there and ask" are:

• Did he share the taco sauce with Ally the dog?
• If not, did the dog eat any thing out there in the woods? Maybe he caught a squirrel or something?
• What kind of a dog is Ally? Big? Little? Poodle? Retriever? Another damn Labradoodle or Cockerpoo? There's a picture in the Time web story that shows a dog from the rear that might (or might not) be a collie. Is that Ally?
• Wasn’t Jeremy carrying a cell phone?
• What's with his SUV? Don't most of those things have four-wheel drive that's supposed to drive you out of snowbanks? If so, how come it was stuck?
• If Jeremy had all those packets of taco sauce in his car, what happened to the tacos? Or did he live on the tacos and forget to talk about that because he’d sound less heroic? 

I can keep going, but why bother?

Donald Trump: Remember the mortgage meltdown of 2009? Remember when the Senate and House slapped regulations on the banking industry so it wouldn’t happen again? Remember when Donald Trump's administration relaxed the banking regulations because, umm, Barak Obama?

Well, here we go again.

Reuters is now reporting that the trading of U.S. Government-backed mortgage securities increased five fold in the first half of 2019, making it, according to “industry sources,” “the fastest growing revenue source in investment banking.”

Reuters goes on

The shift this year to a more dovish interest rate policy by the U.S. Federal Reserve has sparked a surge in investor demand for packaged-up home loans issued by mortgage agencies Fannie Mae, Ginnie Mae and Freddie Mac. 

Banks that trade these securities, known as agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), have profited both from increased commissions on trading them as well as holding them on their books as they appreciated in value. 

The boom in trading comes just over a decade after the global financial crisis, caused in part by the collapse in value of much riskier bonds linked to U.S. home loans that banks packaged up and sold to unwitting investors.

How long do you want to give it before those “much riskier bonds linked to U.S. home loans” start getting packaged again, too? And after that, before the entire economy turns into a hot liquid slurry of molten wealth that dribbles out into Donald Trump's toilet? After which, Trump will fire Larry Kudlow but blame the economic crash on the Fed?

Personally, I give it another six minutes. Wall Streeters, don your crash helmets! (Just sayin’.)

More dogs (Kink department.) So here’s some West Hollywood dude who has shed his real name in favor of the handle “Sexy Vegan.”  He’s had his new name tattooed on his forehead and chest (a handy means of identification in case he ever gets decapitated without his wallet in his pants pocket). 

Does eating Vegan mess with your mind? 

I ask this question because, Sexy Vegan was recently reported by News of the Weird to be living rent free in an LA hoosegow after he was arrested for….here comes the dog….sexual abuse of his dog. How did the cops find out about it? Why, quite naturally, because Sexy posted it on social media. 

Evidently, he’s also been on Dr. Phil, where he revealed that “I do get judged a lot for being different.” Maybe The Trumpster can use that line if Russia ever releases the alleged pee tapes.

Other Stuff: I have nothing against Carly Simon, but I’m not a huge fan of hers, either, largely because I can only think of one really catchy song that I know for sure she wrote. And I don’t even know the title of that one, although I do remember the opening stanza, largely because it’s a near-tautology:

You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.

Which of course it is, because she directly addresses him (or her) in the song, and it's all about what he or she (probably) thinks. 

I also know that Carly is the daughter of a book publisher (as in Simon & Schuster)  and that she is one of three sisters, another of whom was a gorgeous opera star who once had a thing going with a TV newscaster of considerable fame, the third a Broadway show song writer. I felt pretty smug knowing that much. Hey, you know, inside New York  stuff.

Now Carly is evidently working on memoir articles instead of, or in addition to music. The current New Yorker has a memoir article revealing that she was a movie buddy of Jackie Kennedy's,                and that to avoid notice in movie theaters, Jackie would hide in the ladies room until it was time for the movies to start.

Makes sense to me. Who could blame her? On a trip to a racy X-rated movie with half-sister Lee Radzivil back in 1960-something (I’ll take a wild stab at ’67), Jackie and Lee were confronted by a paparazzo, one Ron Galella. The film, by the way, was a pornographic Scandinavian import named “I am curious (Yellow)” Legal porn was still a novelty in those days.

Anyway, Jackie decked Galella, which not only made the gossip pages, but also prompted the following entry in a New York Magazine jingle-writing contest in which the first line always had to be "Higgledy Piggledy." (I remember the jingle by heart because I wrote it, and because the bastards only gave me an honorable mention for it. I shoulda won first prize):

Hiddledy Piggledy

Jacqueline Kennedy

Flipped a photographer

Over her head

Changing his countenance

Melodramatically

Curious (Yellow)

To furious (Red).

That’s it until Donald Trump, or some dog, or paparazzo, or exceptional lunatic, inspires me to get off my duff and post again.

Donald Trump not only flunks civics and ethics, he also flunks Economics 101

“Trade wars are good, and easy to win.” — Donald Trump, on March 2, 2018

New York, Oct. 2, 2019 (Reuters): Wall Street's main indexes hit fresh one-month lows at the open on Wednesday, extending losses from the previous session, as a contraction in domestic factory activity pointed to impact from a prolonged U.S.-China trade war.

Of course, as J.P. Morgan once solemnly declared when asked by reporters what the stock market will do, "The market will fluctuate."

All the same, despite ridiculously low interest rates that Desperate Donald wants to see lowered to nil, if not negative, in the vain hope that will turn things around, the market is fluctuating more or less in a downward direction. The people on Wall Street, who know what's what, say it's his tariff war that's making it happen. And remember, these are Wall Streeters,  not lefty ideologues.

I make mention of this just as a reminder to my Republican friends, that in addition to Donald Trumps' total disregard for law, rules, and ethics, which has prompted the current impeachment investigation, Americans have more than one reason why we'd all be better off if he were out of the White House.

The rich aroma of flop sweat is reeking its way out of the White House. Is this finally, actually, really-and-truly the beginning of The Trumpster’s end?

It's possible that he's not just running scared, he's running terrified

I live in the middle of Manhattan and don’t open my windows much. Just lift them a crack and in comes a cacophony of blaring horns, wailing sirens, clanking garbage trucks, plus dust, carbon monoxide, and disagreeable weather that’s usually too hot, too cold, too damp, or too damn something.

But this evening is different. Google is telling me the temperature as I write this is 66 degrees — Goldilocks weather. And so, late this evening when the streets had quieted down a tad, I hefted open the window a couple of inches. 

And whammo!

The stink from 

Pennsylvania Avenue

Into my cramped living quarters, ten stories above ground, drifted the unmistakeable aroma of flop sweat. And I know where it’s coming from.

It has wafted its way here all the way from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC. You don’t have to see the stuff dripping down the President’s face and streaking his orange makeup to know this this time, at last, he really is in desperately deep doo-doo. Or at least probably.

I’m talking, of course, about the whole Ukraine thing. You know how badly Trump thinks he’s been hooked, harpooned, and netted by the frantically hysterical quality of his responses.

• He has accused Representative Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, of treason, for the treasonous crime of going about his Congressional duties.

• He has accused the New York Times of treason for reporting the news.

• He has demanded, in contravention of the law, to know the identity of the whistleblower who had the temerity — the treasonous temerity! — to blow the whistle from a place of safety, just as the law says whistleblowers should. (Well, Trump didn’t use the actual word “temerity,” probably because it’s not part of his limited vocabulary, but that’s the drift  of his furor.)

• Of course, Trump has also accused an FBI operative of treason, too, because of that agent’s involvement in the Russia probe. But that’s old-ish news.

Treason, treason, treason—

what does it all mean?

Notice that those accusations of treason are popping up quite a bit?

Inevitably, whenever Donald Trump accuses someone of a crime, you can scratch around a little and detect the distinct aroma of Trump’s own criminality. Evidently, he never outgrew the game that my generation and his played as six-year-olds. If somebody called you a name, or accused you of something naughty, you’d recite in a sing-song voice,

“I’m rubber, 

you’re glue, 

whatever you say bounces off me

and sticks on you.”

This, we all thought, would magically transfer our own guilt to the body of the accuser.

The thing is, the rest of us outgrew that kiddy stuff. Trump still uses it as a magic talisman. Whatever he thinks he’s in trouble for, he accuses somebody else of having done that exact thing. That, he appears to think, wards off the evil eye of justice. As a matter of fact, so far it has worked. 

But “so far” may finally be used up. Nevertheless, the word “treason” now hovers above the mess Trump created. And if he’s playing the rubber-and-glue game with it, it deserves some investigation.

Will the buzzing gnats

drop a dime on Trump?

It also turns out that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s civilian lawyer, and William Barr, domestic Attorney General, have been buzzing around like gnats on secret and likely improper or illegal “diplomatic” missions to futz with evidence.

Those are some mighty big names, with some powerful reservoirs of knowledge, who could turn on Donald Trump if it’s a matter of their hide in the hoosegow or Trump’s, a few cobblestones down the road.

Plus there’s the little matter of that Super-Duper-Extra-Double-Secret server in the White House, on which the Trumpster’s sycophantic minions have stored conversations with Vladimir Putin and others. Who knows what an airing of those conversations might reveal? Might it be the treason of which Trump has accused others? Just asking.

Of course, The Trumpster to date has led a charmed life. The spirit of Roy Cohn hovers over him, a malevolent guardian angel protecting Trump from truth, justice, and overdue bills from small and badly stiffed building contractors. He could, once again, get away with everything.

But this time, also maybe not.

Okay, time to shut the window.

A personal apology from The New York Crank to Mette Frederiksen, Prime Minister of Denmark

Maybe his diaper was wet

Dear Prime Minister Frederiksen,

Back in 1959, as a still-adolescent college student, I spent some time in Europe. The student bible for European travel in those days was called “Europe on $5 a Day,” and believe it or not, two students splitting hotel rooms really could travel around the Continent for five bucks a day — $35 a week — back then.

On the recommendation of the same guidebook, I signed up for a program called “Meet the Danes” when I got to Copenhagen. Just for showing up, a Danish family would invite you into their home for coffee, cake, and conversation. Free!

My traveling buddy and I ended up in a nice house on the outskirts of Copenhagen where what seemed like a terribly old couple (they must have been in their mid-thirties) sat us down at their dining table. I can still see them. She was wearing a Channel suit. He was wearing a double-breasted blue blazer and a striped rep tie and looked a bit like Prince Philip of England. 

The cake was delicious. Their home was inviting and of course furnished in Danish Modern. The conversation? Well, let’s just say the age gap between two dazed nineteen-year-olds and two fully adult 30-somethings was a bit too wide. I think they were relieved when we were finally gone, so that they didn’t have to keep trying to think of something to say that would get us talking.

All the same, I was, and to this day still am, impressed by the kindliness, hospitality, and warmth of the people I met in Denmark, exemplified by that lovely couple who invited a couple of bratty American kids into their home for some coffee and cake just to be nice.

Which brings me to Donald Trump.

One morning this week, Trump woke up and decided to buy Greenland. Never mind that it wasn’t on the market. Honestly, I checked the real estate ads. Couldn’t find Greenland anywhere.

Never mind that he forgot to ask the citizens of Greenland if they were up to getting sold like a blighted corner lot or a bankrupt Trump casino in Atlantic City. Or even whether Denmark has the authority to sell it, much less the interest. 

Never mind that if Denmark had come to Trump and asked to buy New York City, where I live (Oh, how I wish! I could have Danish medical care, retirement benefits, and terrific pastries....) Trump would have laughed them off his Twitter feed.

You, Madame Prime Minister the good sense to call an absurdity an absurdity. As Trump's followers would say, you told it like it is. Whereupon Trump had one of his infantile hissy fits, cancelled the visit to Denmark that he had invited himself to take, and called you “nasty.”

However, don’t regard his name calling too seriously. He called you nasty because he only knows two adjectives, okay maybe three, and none of the others was adequate to reflect his disappointment that you wouldn’t indulge his whim du jour. 

Not to worry. By today he was off Denmark and back onto crashing the American  stock market yet another time. Unlike purchasing Greenland, he actually was able to crash the market by tweeting a bunch of orders that he has no power to singlehandedly impose  under law — such as ordering U.S. manufacturers out of China, telling the Federal reserve again to cut the discount rate, and generally putting on his best impression ever of a six year old having a foaming-at-the-mouth temper tantrum. 

This means, Mme. Prime Minister, that you’re off the hook today. And tomorrow, too, since he’s undoubtedly going to spend tomorrow, and of course tonight, finding other people to blame for the stock market’s 623 point avalanche of losses.

He’ll no doubt blame Chairman Powell of the Fed. Maybe he’ll throw a rock at Apple Computer for making its IPhones in China. Maybe he’ll demand that Congress eliminate all taxes so that the economy can be more overstimulated and drive the market back up again  Maybe he’ll decide that somehow it’s Hillary Clinton’s fault, or Obama’s. I’m not sure how, but Donald is a very imaginative child — in fact, a "genius" according to him — so don’t put it past him.

With so many people he can target, it’s highly doubtful that he’ll blame you for the crash, although actually, with Trump you never know.

Anyway, as somebody who has experienced, just a tiny bit, the charm and goodwill of the Danes, I did want to apologize to you for our very, very, very badly behaved enfant terrible.

Oh, and at long last, thank you Denmark for the coffee and cake.