1971 The Battle of Helsinki

1971 The Battle of Helsinki

The two vaudevillians got up on the stage of the famed Helsinki Palace Theater and began their duet and soft shoe.

“Oh we ain’t got a barrel of money

Maybe we’re ragged and funny.

But we’ll travel along singing this song

Side by Side.”

Okay, take a deep breath and let’s sort this out.  The reaction to the trump-Putin news conference has yet to sink all the way in, though the instant analysis when the song and dance ended came together faster than either your cup of instant coffee or your bowl of instant oats.

In summary:  trump is a Putin lap dog unwilling to defend the country against “enemies, foreign and domestic” and takes the Russian’s word over US intelligence agencies’ assessment that Putin’s henchmen tried to influence the 2016 election result in trump’s favor.

The word of a tyrant over the word of the most advanced law enforcement agency on the planet?

“Don’t know what’s comin’ tomorrow.

Maybe it’s trouble and sorrow.

But we’ll travel the road, sharin’ our load

Side by Side.

Asked whether he believed his intelligence men and women or the Russian tyrant, trump launched into his standard prefab yammer about Hillary Clinton’s emails, missing servers, and finally something about “the legitimacy of my electoral college win.” All false equivalents.

Putin was smirking.  

Maybe in the back of his mind was Khrushchev's “we will bury you.”  In this round of this heavyweight fight, Nikita was right.  When you enter the ring with a heavyweight, it pays to have a heavyweight to oppose him.  The United States threw a fat adolescent into the ring with Muhammad Ali. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is our fault. And, by the way heavy weight is not the same as heavyweight.

“Through all kinds of weather

What if the sky should fall?

Just as long as we’re together

It doesn’t matter at all.

trump’s closest friends in the House, the Senate and practically the entirety of the right wing media hammered him.  Of the Alt-Right press only Worldnet Daily seemed to offer support.  Cavuto and others on Fox, the National Review, Newsmax, Drudge.  Even what remains of Breitbart.

It’s the kind of criticism you’d expect from The Nation or Mother Jones, from MSNBC or the Young Turks website, not from the National Review or the Weekly Standard.

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell each with verbal brickbats.  

Our former allies… England, France, Germany, all maligned us, though with great restraint of diplomats’ doubletalk.

Covering trump is a guaranteed headspin.  This event drove the tachometer needle into red territory but the rpms slowed a bit yesterday when trump admitted he had “misspoken” during the vaudeville act.

“When they’ve all had their troubles and parted

We’ll be the same as we started.

Just travelin’ along singing our song

Side by Side.”

SHRAPNEL:

--trump’s little retraction about who’s doing the cyber invading changed nothing. He’s still a traitor.  And he’s still so unstable there’s no telling how long it’ll be before he says “I never said that” even when you heard him say it.

--John A. Stormer, author of the big- selling self published 1964 book, “None Dare Call it Treason,” one of the intellectual must reads of what eventually became the tea party, has died at the age of 90 of an unspecified “long illness.” Stormer -- or whatever his real name was -- told me in a 1965 interview that he lived in fear of becoming enslaved by the Soviets. Fortunately, almost no one remembers him.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

“Side By Side” written by Harry M. Woods © 1927 Shapiro & Bernstein, publisher.

The rest of the page © WJR 2018