Hammer Mill Days

Okay, we didn't go on the boat trip up the Erie Canal. It was a stupid idea, I admit. Sounds like one of mine. I should remember where it came from, but I often forget the provenance of my worst ideas. Call it a self-defense mechanism ... or call it "Lenny," if you like. Whatever floats your boat. As is always the case, life intrudes on the best-laid plans. We were all ready to load up our non-existent gondola with pick-a-nick baskets, life jackets, and a bunch of other stuff we don't own, and then the news broke: Astronomers had discovered a small, Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star system to our own. As the story worked its way into newspapers, television and radio broadcasts, and web sites, it quickly reached the attention of our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee. His reaction? Let's just say that there was a little mushroom cloud where his head used to be. I thought he was experimenting with some new anti-personnel weapon - a per...

The thing called Trump is attempting a new strategy this week: slap some lipstick on the race-baiting pig and hope that that's enough to convince wealthier, suburban G.O.P. voters that they are not, in fact, racists themselves. How do you do that without abandoning the psychotic core of the party of Lincoln? Well, you hire Kelly Anne Conway AND Steve Bannon. Bannon will cavort with alt-right neo-nazis and Kelly Anne will deftly smooth it all over. It's like that guy-with-two-heads movie - one head is a racist Ray Milland and the other is 1970s Rosy Greer. That's the Trump campaign in a nutshell. Conway is a good con artist. I suppose you could find her convincing if you choose to forget that in 2012, Trump was birther-in-chief, claiming that his operatives were turning up "unbelievable" stuff on Obama's birth certificate - a campaign that was always about race, about being the "other", about legitimacy. I suppose you could buy what she's sell...