Island Dweller could pretty well give the Czar a week off with his submissions! Here is one of three:

Your illustrious majesty:

A recent string-telephone conversation with Esteemed Associate, still in the bowels of the Federal beast, prompted me to set pen to blood, then parchment, for your consideration. A cable television movie network recently replayed one of your humble subject’s more fondly-remembered films, “Houdini,” starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. As anyone who has studied the magician’s trade knows, a key element in his or her success is the ability to distract the audience from the most critical part of the act and thereby confuse them on how the illusion was pulled off.

After the film concluded, your subject took time in this aquatic hinterland to devote some thought to what he had just seen. He was struck by the similarity between what Harry Houdini, an absolute master of his craft, had done in furtherance of his goals, and what our illustrious Immaculate One is doing in furtherance of his own goals. Where he differs from Houdini is in his ability, planned or otherwise, to create not just a few distractions, but more and different “acts” every day, in order to draw everyone’s attention away from key issues that deserve dissection to their uttermost level. It’s almost as if The Enlightened One is either on purpose or accidentally bombarding the American people, mouth-breathers and thinking citizens alike, with more and more scandals and outrages in an attempt to swamp them with sheer numbers of issues until they are numbed by the sheer size and reach of it all. He would hope this in turn dulls their sense of outrage and further gives them a sense of hopelessness and submission. There will never be a “smoking gun” found specifically tying The Enlightened One to any of this activity. This is because everyone behind each scandal thinks like him anyway, so would engage in this activity without being specifically told to do so by him. I would hope he didn’t plan for everything to unravel or be exposed in such a serio-comic fashion as it has – but he’s a keen-enough Chicago politician to take advantage of every Red Herring provided to further his agenda on a few specific items and distance himself from the rest, and so distract his enemies and keep his personal approval numbers pretty high. We need to stay on target, choose the issue that is potentially the most damaging to the fabric of our Constitution and society, and bear down on it, disregarding the others until we can handle them in their turn.

BTW your humber serf subject, while impressed by ‘Puter’s fondness for Cole Porter and his “drip, drip, drip of the raindrops,” can also enjoy Dion musically moaning about his own “Drip Drop” problems. His bride can still move across the dance floor pretty well to that one.

Island Dweller

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.