This is the Congressional oath of office:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
I think the Dems should propose abolishing it. It no longer has the slightest application. Why continue the charade?
Can you square it with the Senate’s recent approval of Trump and his older sons (!) receiving immunity from IRS examination of their returns? I’m sure the returns were already oozing tax fraud. Can you imagine what they’ll look like now?
It makes perfect sense, though. Trump must have been worried about the zillions of dollars he’s raping the country (and other countries) for. That’s how they caught Capone.
“Are the billions I’m stealing taxable income? Blanche! Fix it!”
“Yessir. On it Sir.”
Done!
This sweet story was in yesterday’s Met Diary. It’s by Kathleen Brady.
Dear Diary:
It was a beautiful April day, and I hoped to find tulips in full bloom at Conservatory Garden in Central Park.
Only the yellow ones obliged, but in front of them and all the green stalks stood a tall young woman in a floor-length, lemon-colored dress. She was posing with a young man who had set up his smartphone on the ground to take a picture of them together.
I asked if they wanted me to take the photo. I took several and was about to leave when the young man asked me to take one more. He took something from his bag and dropped to one knee.
As he proposed and gave the young woman the ring, I snapped away with moistening eyes.
From today’s puzzle:
POPUP: Alpo’s version of the Po’boy for dogs.
When you’re as good, and big, and well-respected as Aaron Judge, a pep talk can be pretty terse. “Let’s fucking go, boys,” he said before the third inning against Oakland two Sundays ago (5/31). It worked. The Yanks batted around twice (i.e., sent 18 men to the plate) in the inning, and scored 13 runs. They had not scored more in an inning since scoring 14 in 1920: 106 years ago. And since that happened, they only did in twice before the 31st, oddly, both times in 2005. But the weird thing about this time is they went completely runless and hitless in the eight other innings. Yeah, you heard me. Aside from scoring 13 runs on eleven hits in the third, they did not have a single hit the whole rest of the game.
Here’s Aaron and his pretty wife Samantha. You can find her in the photo by looking way down: she’s just below his left shoulder. There she is! They met in high school and went to Fresno State together. They have a one-year-old daughter, Nora.
Sticking with baseball for the moment, in the puzzle today, IRAN at 55A, next to BASIS, at 56A, reminded me of a story about the great Oriole center-fielder, Paul Blair. He hit an inside-the-park home run but some members of the press thought the opposing team’s center-fielder should have caught it. This was mentioned to Blair after the game, and he said: “There’s only one man who could’ve caught that ball, — and he was running the bases.”
If I’m not mistaken, he may have won a couple of Gold Gloves.
I was a little bored yesterday so, for fun, I switched around some of the labels on Linda’s spices. She hasn’t noticed anything yet, but, believe me, her thyme is cumin.
Jan Bee of the Dull Men’s Club (UK) posted the following: “Knot Nerds! What knot would you recommend using to secure these hanging pots to the upper bar?”
My helpful reply:
It’s knot my area of expertise, but you might have more luck hanging it from a knotty pine? That should have the knots already built in. Or perhaps, instead of hanging, go with a firing squad or lethal injection? What was their crime anyway?
I have a Pushkin joke. I am not going to tell it. I am not going to because I am pretty sure I already told it in these pages. The family name was originally Pushpin but it was changed for obvious reasons. That’s not the joke. That one I just made up. You can tell, right?
Anyway, it’s Pushpin’s birthday today. He was born in Moscow in 1799. He was only 37 when he died: killed in a duel. I guess people were stupid back then too. When word of his death got out, people all over the country went into mourning. Some even went into afternoon. One man, weeping openly in the street, was asked by a reporter if he had known Pushkin personally. He replied, “No, but I am a Russian.”
Here are shots (poor choice of words, sorry) of AP and his pretty wife Natalia. They had four children together.
In yesterday’s puzzle, for the clue “Initially offered lesser charge” the answer was TEASER RATE. It brought to mind the Cat Stevens album “Teaser and the Firecat” for Son Volt. This song is on it:
Do you listen to the wind of your soul?
Do you let your music take you where your heart wants to go?
Have you swum upon the Devil’s lake?
Would you ever ever ever ever make the same mistake?
See you next time! Thanks for dropping in.
The Wellington Files 