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Congressional Republicans don't get it. They rush, race, hurry, pitch, hurl, speed, and drive themselves like maniacs to reach the finish line on a health care bill, .only to find out today that all their like-crazy efforts to get the bill passed have merely gotten them nowhere fast.  This they learned with Mitch McConnell's announcement a few hours ago that, for all the huffing and puffing to get the dang bill finished by this week, the much-ballyhooed Senate vote on the bill had to be postponed, 
 But it's probably all for the better, anyway. For the Congressional Republicans, that is. Because the real reason the Senate's health care bill plotzed on its elbow today, the real reason this bill makes even Republican Senators want to gag, is not so much the fact that it's just an awful bill - which it is - but that the American public knows it's an awful bill and the Senate knows that the public knows. And yet what Congressional Republicans seem not to grasp, what they just don't get, is that the basic flaw with their health care plan, the fundamental reason why it will never, in its present form, go over with the American public, is this: The Republican health care plan is built around the principle of Americans choosing their health insurance plans. But the fact is that Americans don't want to have to chose their health insurance plans. We don't want to have to make a choice between a cheap, crappy plan that we can afford and a good, expensive plan that we can't; we really don't want to be bothered having to shop around here, there, and everywhere among the fifty states for a decent, affordable insurance plan, trying to figure out all the ifs, ands, buts, and what-have-yous of dozens of different options with different degrees of coverage - who's got time for that? How many people won't even be able to make any sense of the whole jumbled mishmash of choices? Look, for all our cosmetic and hard-wiring variations, we human beings are all basically the same make and model, made of the same parts and prone to the same occasional malfunctions and break-downs. Sickness and health are fluid states that we all move in and out of. For most of us medical conditions come and go. Today I'm healthy, tomorrow I'm in a car accident. Or I hurt my ACL playing a pick-up soccer game. Or I catch a retrovirus. Or I'm diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma. Or I get pregnant, which under the Republican plan is considered a medical condition not required to be covered by an economy insurance plan. But then I get better and I'm healthy again. The point is, nobody wants to have to choose an insurance plan that won't cover their health care when they need it. And nobody goes without health insurance by choice. And certainly no health care provider wants to have to choose to turn down a patient whose insurance - or lack thereof - won't cover their treatment. We all - young, old, rich, poor, healthy, not-so-healthy - just want to be able to afford to get the care we need when we're sick or injured, then we want to get better and go on about our lives. Every other developed country in the world gets this concept and has incorporated into their social fabric a single payer, universal health plan covering all citizens. Does our Republican Congress really not get this? Or have their thought processes been short-circuited by an over-load of campaign contributions by the health insurance industry?  References: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/22/gop-health-care-bill-poll-disapproval-239873 http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/27/politics/republican-health-care-bill-vote-delayed/index.html
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 I've never seen "Rubber," however on Friday afternoon Tom and I had had a run-in ― literally ― with a tire that could well have been the incarnation of Robert. We were driving from Columbus to Chicago for a family reunion. All our children were likewise traveling from their respective four corners to Chicago, where my daughter Claire and her husband Miguel live, for a visit, a family cookout, 
 This was to be one of the rare occasions when all our children, their spouses, and their children would be together, and we were all greatly anticipating this weekend. Around 1 pm Tom and I were driving west through Indiana on Interstate 70, about fifteen miles east of Indianapolis, enjoying the bright blue skies and the pastoral scenery of the Midwestern heartland,    ...when, from out of nowhere that we could perceive, bounced onto the road a larger-than-average tire, maybe the tire of a jeep or van. Moving at high speed, this tire first bounced into the car in front of us, taking out the car's right front tire; then it bounced off that car and sped straight for us. My initial thought, in the second or two I watched this tire speed-bouncing towards our car then lunging at us like some live wild thing, was, This isn't happening. But happening it was. At the moment of impact ― the tire bouncing beneath the front end rather than onto the hood, for which we'd later be thanking God ― our car was thrown several feet into the air; but, rather than flipping over as it apparently should have, our car landed flat on its four tires and, miraculously - and unlike the unfortunate car in front of us that was hit in the front tire - we were able to drive away, shaken but unharmed. But not too far. We could smell what we thought was gasoline - turned out to be antifreeze - but in a second instance of good fortune following bad, our tire-attack occurred about 1000 feet from the exit ramp to a truck stop.  As we pulled into the parking area another car pulled up next to us. A Good Samaritan who'd witnessed the event had followed us, concerned that we might have been hurt. "You know your car flew four feet into the air?" he asked, recounting the exact details of what he'd seen. In truth at that moment I was drawing a blank on exactly what had happened. Tom was breathing a little hard. I think we were both in a little shock. But we now faced the task at hand of getting our car repaired and/or making our way to Chicago. Our Good Samaritan told us there was an auto repair shop a few miles down the road and suggested that if a small leak in the antifreeze line were all we'd suffered we might be able to refill the antifreeze unit then make it to that shop. "You know you need to be thanking God and all His angels," he told us. I assured him that we were and gave him a long hug.
 ...Tom was able to buy a gallon of antifreeze with which he attempted to fill the unit,  ...but for naught.   So Tom called AAA and spoke to a friendly and very sympathetic agent who also offered her gratitude that we were alive and well. The agent apologized that it would be at least 90 minutes before a tow truck would arrive for us, but suggested that in the meantime he call Jenkins Auto Repair, in the nearby town of Greenfield.  Tom called Jenkins and was told by the owner - who, like his predecessors, marveled that we were still alive and uninjured - that we could bring the car in but that no one could look at it until Monday. He suggested that we leave our car with him and rent a car for the weekend from the Enterprise Rental down the block from his garage. And so that became our battle plan. Now that the necessary business was taken care of Tom and I had an hour or so to wait around at the truck stop store. grab some Subways,  ...and reflect. After replaying the utter random bizarreness of the catastrophe we'd just escaped, the split second that could have caused the tire to bounce through the windshield instead of under the carriage, or could have flipped the car or just as likely have missed us altogether, we concluded that suffering a mishap can leave one feeling more lucky to be unharmed than unlucky for what happened in the first place; and that even an ensuing set-back can seem like not much in view of how terrible the outcome could have been.
 Anyway, Tom and I both decided it was best not to to talk or think about the "What could have beens" and just carry on. We were eventually picked up by a nice AAA tow-truck driver,  ...who reminded us how lucky we were to be alive, and who towed us 15 miles to Jenkins Auto Repair in Greenfield, Indiana, 
 For being located in a small town this Enterprise was surprisingly busy. The manager, who also expressed relief that we were alive and well, told us that it would likely be a couple of hours ―- around 6 pm ― before a car would be available for us. So we spent the hours strolling around the (mostly) pleasant little town of Greenfield, Indiana.      
 ...and mused upon the fact that a Dairy Queen cone is an entity wonderful and unique unto itself. 
 And so we picked up from where we'd left off 4 hours earlier, not sure what the diagnosis would be come Monday for our poor traumatized car, or when or how we'd get back to Columbus, but determined to forget about all that for now and head for Chicago, which we reached around 10 pm, ready to enjoy our weekend and happy to be alive.  To be continued... "Equal And Opposite Reactions" is available for a 10% discount at http://www.blackrosewriting.com/romance/equalandoppositereactions It is also available at Amazon and Barnes &Noble.com.  ...Continued from yesterday: Though there's been much controversy and some protest over the Public Theater's production of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" in which Caesar is portrayed to resemble Donald Trump, we all know that in truth this production is only a great flight of a director's imagination; Donald Trump is no Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was, after all, a great military general and war hero as well as a prolific writer of military histories, including his commentaries of the Gallic wars (which I had to study in my junior year of high school Latin class and the opening line of which I remember to this day: "Omes Gallia in tres partes divisa est").  Caesar spent most of his career in public office, and though he eventually grabbed power from his political opponents whereby he set himself up as Dictator for Life, facilitating the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire, his rule was beneficial to his country. According to biography.com/julius caesar: For Caesar and his countrymen, his rule proved instrumental in reforming Rome. He would serve just a year's term before his assassination, but in that short period Caesar greatly transformed the empire. He relieved debt and reformed the Senate by increasing its size and opening it up so that it better represented Romans as a whole. He reformed the Roman calendar and reorganized how local government was constructed. In addition he resurrected two city-states, Carthage and Corinth, which had been destroyed by his predecessors, and he granted citizenship to a number of foreigners. He also proved to be a benevolent victor by inviting some of his defeated rivals to join him in the government. Donald Trump, on the other hand, got out of military service because he hurt his foot playing tennis, wrote books about himself in which he bragged about seducing other men's wives, has spent most of his career amassing wealth, often at the expense of and detriment to others, and has squandered his first half-year as leader of our country by staying focused on himself and the enrichment of his family, stirring public dissent and outrage, and spinning his wheels in scandal. Donald Trump never forgives a slight, great or small.  Donald Trump more resembles a different Caesar, Caesar Augustus Germanicus, who became the Roman Emperor known as Caligula. Caligula was a spoiled child who grew up pampered with wealth and status and into the psychotic Roman Emperor who kept his subjects alternately entertained by his hijinks and terrified by his tantrums.  While Caligula's supporters thrived on his outrageous and shocking behavior, the rest of Rome, its citizens' sensibilities over-exposed to to the glut of scandal and drama he churned out on a daily basis, came to accept Caligula's misconduct and misgovernance as the norm. During his four years as Emperor Caligula aggravated most of the populace, launched an expensive war, drained the Roman treasury and, by his ineptitude as a leader, ran the Roman Empire into the ground. After four years Caligula's term as Emperor ended when he was assassinated by the Pretorian Guard, the elite military officers who were the Roman equivalent of the Secret Service. Thank God we live in a democracy. And if Donald Trump is miffed at being portrayed in "Julius Caesar," he should be thankful that Shakespeare never wrote a "Caligula." References https://www.biography.com/people/julius-caesar-9192504?_escaped_fragment_= My novel "Equal And Opposite Reactions" is available for a 10% discount at blackrosewriting.com. It is also available at Amazon and Barnes &Noble.com. There's been a passel of public outrage - most of it from the right-wing media - over the current production at New York's Public Theater of William Shakespeare's play, "Julius Caesar" in which Julius Caesar resembles Donald Trump, too-long red tie and all,  ...and the Roman Senate resembles Congress.  The controversy arises over the scene in Act 3 when Julius Caesar is assassinated by the senators, which Donald Trump's supporters interpret as an effigial knocking off of the President by the artistic community which, by the way, will lose its funding when Trump takes an ax to the National Endowment for the Arts as he's promised to do in his 2018 budget, so maybe this "Julius Caesar" is just sort of a tit-for-tat thing. Now, it so happens that in 2012 the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis did a production of "Julius Caesar" in which Julius Caesar was portrayed to resemble Barack Obama, but nobody complained then, probably because everybody knew that nobody really disliked Obama all that much, and so the play was allowed to be just a Shakespearean play done up with a contemporary imaginative twist.  As for me, all right, I'll admit I'd like to see the Public Theater's production of "Julius Caesar" as well as the Obama-as-Caesar production, though I'll also admit that it's not because I've ever had a thing for "Julius Caesar" - in truth all I can recall about that play from when I studied it in college is thinking at the time of the reluctant assassin Brutus, man, that poor schmoe got used big time! No, I'd like to see the two productions just to be able to witness the brilliance of a play written over 400 years ago that can still be made relevant to almost any era and political climate, as Shakepeare himself must have understood about his work when he had one of the characters in "Julius Caesar" proclaim: "How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over in states unborn and accents yet unknown?" So amazing that it's eerie, isn't it?  References http://www.startribune.com/trump-themed-julius-caesar-is-talk-of-theater-world-unlike-2012-obama-version-in-twin-cities/427990033/ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/12/theater/julius-caesar-shakespeare-donald-trump.html?_r=0 "Equal And Opposite Reactions" is available now for preorder at from Black Rose Writing at: http://www.blackrosewriting.com/romance/equalandoppositereactions. Order before June 15 and use promo code PREORDER2017 for a 10% discount!  Sigh. So I guess I'm the only person on the planet who wasn't wowed by the record-breaking blockbuster movie that has critics swooning and has knocked the socks off theater ticket sales world-wide. I saw "Wonder Woman" last Friday evening and, for the almost two-and-a-half hours I sat watching, I kept waiting for this movie that was supposed to be The Movie To End All Movies to engage me, pull me in, take me away, but it just didn't. Too often the characters' motivations for their actions were unclear to me. And for all the action and special effects, I thought there was a lack of dramatic tension. Somehow it just didn't pop. Not that I didn't appreciate some of "Wonder Woman's" principle motifs. I liked the mythological references, in theory, except that the whole mythological origins thing never did quite coalesce for me - how exactly was Wonder Woman created? Why exactly was her mother opposed to her becoming what she was created for? Why didn't any of the Amazons let her know what she was created for? In fact, what exactly were all the Amazons doing on that island, anyway? None of the half-explanations of things were ever really clear to me, including the Ares, God of War thing. Though, again, I did in theory like the Ares, God of War thing, as well as the World War I backdrop; I just found the connection between the two a bit confusing and not fully formed, like everything else in the movie. Except, of course, Wonder Woman decked out in her battle fatigues.  But the movie's subplot of the God of War (maybe) being behind The War to End All Wars, as World War I was thought to be at the time,    ...did make me think of the connection that musicologists have made between the the musical composition, "Mars, The Bringer of War," by Gustav Holst, written sometime between 1914 and 1916, and the terror of mechanized warfare that was unleashed on the world during World War I and evoked by Holst's music. In fact if you've never heard it, here's a link to a Youtube recording of Holst's "Mars, The Bringer of War."  Does "Mars, The Bringer of War" not sound like World War I? Can't you just see the invading troops, looking like an army of monsters in their gas masks with their bayonets and flame throwers?  Too bad the director of "Wonder Woman" didn't use "Mars, The Bringer Of War," for the movie's soundtrack, it's such great war music. But I guess "Wonder Woman" didn't need Gustav Holst's music to break all theater attendance records its opening weekend when it had a gorgeous, sexy, scantily-clad woman kicking butt,  ...while wearing kinky boots,  ...which they're telling us is making women everywhere feel empowered. I don't know. Watching "Wonder Woman" didn't make me feel particularly empowered. Just a little bored.
 Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. - William Shakespeare History has its eyes on you. - Lin-Manuel Miranda Whether what former FBI director James Comey has had thrust upon him - or perhaps achieved by the hand he himself has chosen to play - should be called greatness or infamy depends upon where one's political persuasions fall as well as which of Comey's public actions one is judging. But there can be no doubt that on Thursday, June 8, 2017 from mid-morning through early afternoon history, and much of our country,  ...had its eyes on James Comey as he testified before Congress in the investigation of collusion between the Trump administration and Russia.  The compelling moments were many, such as Comey's passionate, heart-stirring oration reminding us that we Americans “have this big, messy, wonderful country where we fight with each other all the time. But nobody tells us what to think, what to fight about, what to vote for except other Americans, and that's wonderful and often painful." And then, sounding like a voice crying out in the wilderness, he warned us with chilling words of Russia's designs on the United States and again appealed to our patriotism and love of our country:  "But we're talking about a foreign government that, using technical intrusion, lots of other methods, tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act. That is a big deal. And people need to recognize it. It's not about Republicans or Democrats. They're coming after America, which I hope we all love equally. They want to undermine our credibility in the face the world. They think that this great experiment of ours is a threat to them. So they're going to try to run it down and dirty it up as much as possible. That's what this is about and they will be back. Because we remain — as difficult as we can be with each other, we remain that shining city on the hill. And they don't like it. "
 ...as well as John McCain's questioning during which Senator McCain, sounding doddering, befuddled, and very old, struggled to follow a train of thought and express a coherent sentence.  And then immediately after the hearing there was the painfully mortifying image of poor Paul Ryan falling on his sword yet again for Donald Trump, 
But from among all the captivating moments of James Comey's hearing, in truth there was one revelation above all the rest that hit me like an epiphany. This epiphany came to me when James Comey, when asked why he did not tell Donald Trump that the President asking the head of the FBI to drop an investigation was wrong, admitted, "Maybe if I were stronger, I would have. I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took in....Maybe if I did it again, I'd do better...I didn't have the presence of mind... I don't know if I would have said to the president with the presence of mind, sir, that's wrong. In the moment, it didn't come to my mind. What came to my mind is be careful what you say. " And I thought, Oh, my goodness! James Comey is kicking himself over what he should've, could've, would've said - just like I do all the time! In that sweaty, awkward, intimidating but critical moment James Comey choked - Just like I would've! I actually felt quite a bit of empathy for James Comey in his admission of his human frailty at that moment, even as I wished that he would have been braver, more heroic, more in possession of the courage of his convictions than I or most people for that matter would have been in his shoes. Eric Zorn, a writer for the Chicago Tribune, evidently also understood what happened to James Comey in that decisive moment and has coined the term "Comey Moments" for those times "when you find yourself facing the choice of taking a risk, sticking by your principles and speaking out at a critical time, or going along to get along." I think having such a term in one's psychological lexicon could be empowering the next time one faces such a moment. So maybe James Comey can take some consolation that in his moment of weakness he may have helped the rest of us be a little stronger in our future "Comey Moments." References: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/08/full-text-james-comey-trump-russia-testimony-239295 http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/06/08/john-mccain-questions-james-comey-sot.cnn http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/08/politics/paul-ryan-donald-trump-new-to-this/index.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-zorn-comey-coward-trump-perspec-jm-20170608-column.html
 For years people have been telling me, "You really ought to write a book." And my response used to be, "I have written a book, I just haven't found anyone who wants to publish it." But that changed last January when I was offered a contract by a small independent publishing house called Black Rose Writing,  ...whose motto I really liked: “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” –Haruki Murakami And so, after months of editing, editing and more editing, my first book, a novel entitled "Equal And Opposite Reactions" will have its official release next week, on June 15. Here's the story line, as described on the back cover of the book:  Though it is just now about to see the light of day as a novel, "Equal And Opposite Reactions" actually started out as a short story,  ...published many moons ago in the July, 11, 1994 issue of First For Women. (Before I took up novel-writing and blogging I used to write short stories for magazines back in the day when magazines used to publish short stories...  ...and still carried cigarette ads).  Anyway, I was sometimes asked by people who read "He Looked Nothing Like Prince Charming" what happened next in the story. Well, of course I didn't know what happened next any more than anyone else did, but then I thought about it and after a while I figured out what happened next in the story, as well as what happened before.
And so I expanded the story, added more characters and wrote it into a play entitled "Equal And Opposite Reactions." As it turned out no one was interested in producing my play, however several of the directors I sent it to commented that they enjoyed reading it or that they liked the characters. One director mentioned that though he liked my play the sets involved and all the children's roles would make staging it too difficult. And so I re-wrote "Equal And Opposite Reactions" into a novel. Which, wonder of wonders, will soon be a real live book. I'm giving out a little sneak preview below - this is not a book for the kids, by the way - in case anybody's interested. This is a scene between the main character, Sally and her boss, Joanne: “Well, at least you waited until you were married to get pregnant,” Joanne had huffed when Sally tearfully broke the news that Darren was leaving her for a pregnant telephone receptionist. And Sally’d had to laugh through her tears at Joanne’s heavy-handed sympathy. Because Sally had in fact been married to Darren when she’d gotten pregnant. But just barely. She and Darren figured it happened on their wedding night, geez, how had they managed that? Of course, it was her first time using the pill, so maybe she did screw it up, as Darren had accused her. But she’d been twenty years old and the wedding night of their off-season weekend-special honeymoon at a cabin in the Pocono Mountains had been her first time ever, and was that such a crime, waiting ‘til your wedding night? After all, she was a Catholic girl from Little Flower High school. Well, Catholic on her mother’s side, Jewish on her father’s. But mostly Catholic. Not that her Jewish side had injected any more sexual liberation into her psyche than had her Catholic side. And once, in one of those dark moments when she was turning over and over in her mind the endless possibilities of why, how, why, how, why, how could Darren have left her, she scraped up the possibility that he left her because of some long-held resentment over her having been too stingy with the put-out years ago at the front end of the relationship. “Oh, sure,” Joanne observed one day after joining Sally in the vending area where Sally was taking a crying break, “he’d of been a whole lot happier if you’d have slept with him and gotten knocked up before he married you, while he was still in college.” She took a sip of her Styrofoam-cup coffee. “Deep-six that one, Hon.” “Well, then why did Darren leave me?” Sally sobbed. “Um…how about because he’s a regular size-11 shit-heel?” Joanne’s advice was somehow always a lot better than her mother’s. Anyway, if anyone would happen to like to read more, "Equal And Opposite Reactions" is available now for preorder from Black Rose Writing at: http://www.blackrosewriting.com/romance/equalandoppositereactions. And: if you make your purchase prior to the publication date of June 15, 2017, they you may use the promo code: PREORDER2017 to receive a 10% discount. After the release date "Equal And Opposite Reactions" will still be available direct from the publisher, at blackrosewriting.com/books, and also from Amazon.com and Barnes and Nobel.com. A week after publication it will also be available on Kindle. And if my novel doesn't sell I figure I can at least put it on my resumé.  This past Saturday night Tom and I, and our friends Kevin and Barb,  ...headed over to scenic downtown Westerville, Ohio, 
 ...for a folk music sing-along with Columbus's wonderful folk duo, Carl Yaffey and Bill Cohen, The Folk Ramblers.  As everyone knows, Tom and I are Bill Cohen and Folk Ramblers sing-along super-fans, so if there's a Folk Ramblers or Bill Cohen concert happening in town, as there is several times a year, we'll be there, often with some friends who we've brought into the fold of the folk song sing-along faithful. We started off the evening with dinner at a cute little restaurant down the block from Java Central, the Westerville Grill,  ...that had a pretty outdoor patio,   ...where, the weather being nice, we opted to sit. 
 ...especially good-looking- and tasty - was the chicken pesto sandwich with home fries that Barb ordered. 
 ...and the turkey Reuben, which both Kevin and I ordered. 
 
   
 ...past a cute little over-flow room which would be filled by the time the concert started, 
 ...which doubles as an art gallery where local artists can display and sell their work.     As the time for the concert approached the music room filled up,  ...and the patio, where the music was shared via speaker. 
 ...the grown-up Flower Children. 
 ...and their sound engineer, Randy Cohen, Bill's wife. 
 Then began the sing-along, with The Folk Ramblers leading us in the folk songs and ballads from the 1950's and 1960's, the golden age of the American Folk Music Revival:  Songs on the subjects of peace, justice, freedom, civil rights, anti-war protest, the human struggle and the human experience;  ...songs that were born in our country as well as songs that came from all over the world;  ... songs that brought us back to the days when it seemed that everyone had a guitar and could play the two or three or four strummed chords required by most folk tunes; back to when young people did sit around on a Saturday evening singing together those simple, beautiful songs while we dreamed of changing the world into a better place; back to when we really believed we could. "Come and go with me to that land," beckoned the words of one of those old songs. And for three lovely hours, we did. 
 ...but that's not why he pulled our country out of the Paris Agreement. And he didn't pull us out because, as he declared in his pull-out speech, he cares about the people of Pittsburgh, whose mayor Bill Peduto immediately shot back that the people of Pittsburgh care little for Donald Trump,  ...and that Pittsburgh would continue to follow the carbon emission guidelines of the Paris Agreement with or without Donald Trump's by-your-leave. It always slays me when Donald Trump proclaims that he cares about American workers - as he implied by invoking the welfare of Pittsburgh as his reason for abandoning the Paris Agreement - since these are the very people upon whose backs he made his billions and who he is notorious for cheating out of their pay after they've done work for him. Construction workers, contractors, electricians, hotel workers, even cooks, bakers and once a piano mover, hundreds of hard-working American laborers have been swindled by Donald Trump. Nor did Trump pull the United States out of the climate accord because he cares about creating jobs and new industry; he's just handed off clean energy technology, along with all the jobs that will be created in that field, to the rest of the world while he's pledged his allegiance to coal, a dying industry that the rest of the world has for the most part lost interest in buying. No, I am convinced that Donald Trump caused this cataclysmic reversal, this major downgrading of the United States' standing and leadership in the world for one reason: he adores what the French call "faire chier," a vulgar expression (appropriate in this case) that means to irritate, infuriate, exasperate, frustrate, bother, upset, provoke, and rile people just for the fun of it. For the excitement and enjoyment that the perpetrator gets out of it, for the sake of making himself the center of attention.  Like the perennial trouble-making middle schooler he continues to resemble in his behavior,  ...Donald Trump loves to keep things stirred up to make sure it's always about him, him, him. But then why shouldn't Donald Trump continue to faire chier? That's the behavior that got him elected President of the united States and that enables him to continue causing disruption and to make sure that he's always front and center, now on a global scale.  What does it matter to Donald Trump if American workers lose out on the jobs and benefits of the climate technology revolution? What does it matter to him if the planet heats up to the point where our coastal cities are flooded, where we - especially the poorest among us - lack sufficient clean air, food and water, where animal and plant life populations are decimated and parts of our lovely planet are reduced to "a sterile promontory...a a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours?"*  What will any of that matter to Donald Trump? People as rich, powerful, and self-centered as himself will always somehow manage to have theirs.  *As perhaps unwittingly prophesied in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." References:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/01/politics/pittsburgh-mayor-donald-trump/index.html https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-05/trump-s-dc-hotel-tagged-with-5-million-in-unpaid-worker-liens http://fortune.com/2016/09/30/donald-trump-stiff-contractors/ |
"Tropical Depression"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY 
"Equal And Opposite Reactions"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa or from The Book Loft of German Village, Columbus, Ohio 
Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
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