Haven’t been around as much as I’d like lately, and I apologize.  Family health stuff, much more pressing job, yadda yadda – the exigencies of life.  But what with learning that Puerto Rico is in the midst of an ocean that, apparently, our navy can’t navigate past Gitmo, I reflected on what else is true about Puerto Rico, and came to the realization that everything Trump knows about it, he learned on Broadway in the 50s.  So I’ll just leave the stage version of these lyrics, from West Side Story, right here:

Chita Rivera as Anita (Broadway)She’s STILL hot, BTW

 

ANITA
Puerto Rico . . .
You ugly island . . .
Island of tropic diseases.
Always the hurricanes blowing,
Always the population growing . . .
And the money owing,
And the babies crying,
And the bullets flying.
I like the island Manhattan.
Smoke on your pipe and put that in!

Rita Moreno as Anita (Movie) and lately
Also, still caliente!

ROSALIA
I’ll drive a Buick through San Juan.
ANITA
If there’s a road you can drive on.
ROSALIA
I’ll give my cousins a free ride.
ANITA
How you get all of them inside?

According to the Washington Post, North Korea is reaching out to Republicans for help in understanding Trump.

North Korean government officials have been quietly trying to arrange talks with Republican-linked analysts in Washington, in an apparent attempt to make sense of President Trump and his confusing messages to Kim Jong Un’s regime.

…

“The outreach began before the current eruption of threats between the two leaders but will probably become only more urgent as Trump and Kim have descended into name-calling that, many analysts worry, sharply increases the chances of potentially catastrophic misunderstandings.”

Said one Republican: “Their number one concern is Trump. They can’t figure him out.”

So, they are sending The Heritage Foundation’s “expert on North Korea” to help.  Wanna talking about the blind leading the blind? You want a man from a butt crazy organization to explain a butt crazy man to somebody who speaks Korean? Okay, I admit maybe that will work because nothing else has.

The last meeting in Geneva, without anyone “official” from the US there, was interesting.

The North Koreans at the meeting displayed an “encyclopedic” knowledge of Trump’s tweets, to the extent that they were able to quote them back to the Americans present.

Oh goodness, that’s not gonna help diddle squat.  He was erasing tweets about Luther Strange this morning, like he can erase the collective memory of a confused people.

Okay, on our bet about the point spread in Alabama.  Here’s my math.

That means a point spread of 9.2 according to my jeweled solar powered pocket calculator.

We have a winner.

Close but no cigar honors: Marc Davis and Rebecca at 9.3, and John Jasynes at 9.1

But Annabell Lee hit it right on the nose at 9.2

Congratulations Annabell.  Your book will be right on the way as soon as I get your address.

Thank you all for playing and we should do this more often.

Okay, who’s good at math? When the final results are in, help me pick a winner or winners.

Hey, Trump, I was told there would be winning involved.  So much winning.

So now that we know Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke speaks in some sort of code language that only pelicans and sheep herders understand, let’s mosey on over to Scott Pruitt at the EPA.

Pruitt just made headlines again.

Yeah, he needs his own private phone booth in his office because … he’s Superman and needs a cool place to change clothes?  The other booths like this one bought by the government are at Veteran’s Affairs and are being used exclusively for hearing tests.

Hey, couldn’t he have used Dick Cheney’s man-sized safe?  Surely that’s laying around somewhere.

He also takes people’s phones away before they enter his office and …

Pruitt, who has become a polarizing and high-profile figure as he seeks to roll back Obama-era policies and shrink the EPA’s footprint, has essentially tripled the personal security detail that served past administrators. The detail now includes about 18 people to cover round-the-clock needs and his frequent travel schedule. Such 24/7 coverage has prompted officials to rotate in special agents from around the country who otherwise would be investigating environmental crimes.

… he needs his own army to protect him.

Good Lord, dude, are you plotting to release chemical weapons in Democratic strongholds?

And no, no one else in the history of the United States government has ever made demands like these, but then again, there probably weren’t as many nuts at any given time.

Thanks to AlaninAustin for the heads up.

Y’all, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke is head clown at a goat rodeo.

Listen to this stuff.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Monday that nearly one-third of employees at his department are not loyal to him and President Donald Trump, adding that he is working to change the department’s regulatory culture to be more business friendly.

Uh, goofy me.  I thought they were supposed to be loyal to the United States of Damn America.  You know, unlike Zinke and Trump.

And then you’d think they were a damn football team.

Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, said he knew when he took over the 70,000-employee department in March that, “I got 30 percent of the crew that’s not loyal to the flag.”

Loyal to the flag? Well hell’s bells, I certainly want people loyal to a piece of cloth running my government.  I dunno, I think that if you put a flag on Trump’s ample rump, they might salute that.

Zinke’s comments echo complaints by some White House allies that a permanent, “deep state” in Washington has sabotaged Trump’s efforts to remake the government.

Well, thank God, because Zinke wants to make “huge” changes to the Interior Department that include the endangered species act, drilling permits, and the national park system.  In short, he wants a government run by the petrochemical industry.

And then ….

Zinke also offered a quirky defense of hydraulic fracturing, a drilling technique also known as fracking that has led to a years-long energy boom in the U.S., with sharply increased production of oil and natural gas.

“Fracking is proof that God’s got a good sense of humor and he loves us,” Zinke said without explanation.

Because there ain’t no explaining crap like that.