Suppose it were Friday clxviii: Tipping points for ransom

Our ain't we got fun series has

come to a veritable revival meet-

ing of tipping points this week-

end, in the manic panting tent 

of the American President. Just

as yet another campaign contract-

or of (we have to suppose) Jared

or Junior has been welcomed into

the waiting arms of the FBI, and

the Russians have so charitably

synthesized a stern ukase against 

tinkering with Venezuelans, his

severed administrative tentacles 

flop gloomily about on the shelf

with only his daughter-in-law to

give them a pep rally. Now, let's

see, then, which of our feints we

can work to steal from these vic-

tims this time, their complaints,

by what heroic re-distribution.

Now, voyager

     Brussels after the Crash. Tintin

     is off in the Land of the Soviets,

     driving an Amilcar C6 (of course).

     And yet they said, there would be

     better days. 

     

Hergé
1930

Am I grateful enough for Kamala Harris?

     I’m not able to be rushed this
     fast. It makes me nervous.

Word has it, that when pressed by Senator Harris to respond to a simple question of fact in his confirmation hearing to be anointed Attorney General of the United States, our own Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III answered in precisely these terms. And to think, one could ever have questioned his caution, upon such glittering proof.

How readily we do sometimes squander our (forgive the resort to convention) natural born Solons on positions unfitted to their nature. A pillar of deliberative temperament and acumen in the Senate, Sessions was transformed into a default whipping boy for a wondrously disparate caucus, from the learnèd to the loutish in our leadership, upon being placed in the driver's seat of our laws. Now, history threatens to avenge itself in placing on such a precarious pedestal, a veteran of such work whose credential is essentially bare of Senatorial activity, to cite a plain fact. 

As if to dispose of this condition as a taint to be held against her, the inexpressibly junior Senator from California has, with the most audacious daring, positioned herself as a candidate for the daunted, the tried, indeed the intimidated. 

Infinitely stranger gambits, having prospered in our politics, we shall be the last to bet against this one. On the contrary; if prosody is prelude, there may be much cause to entertain a candidacy commencing upon such temerity as to harbor almost a universal anchorage:

               When people wake up in the middle of the

               night, whether it be a mom in Compton or 
               a mom in Kentucky, she’s waking up having 
               the same concerns, about how she’s going 
               to be able to raise those babies, how 
               she’s going to be able to pay the rent at 
               the end of the month, how she’s going to 
               be able to retire with dignity.

Matt Viser
Chelsea Janes
Kamala Harris Enters
  2020 Presidential Race
The Washington Post©
January 21, 2019

iv  Matthew Bell
        x Lachlan Bailey