Please answer these two questions or else go away

The Fairmont (W.Va.) City Council voted on September 12 to “repeal and replace” its Human Rights Commission ordinance. The council abolished the city’s old rule and created a new one that protects individuals from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, adding these two groups to those already protected based on race, religion, color, national origin, handicap…you know the drill.

They took this action even though a large crowd of disenchanted, misinformed or otherwise bigoted protesters showed up to oppose the ordinance. Now there are eight separate petition drives under way to either revisit the Human Rights ordinance or to “recall and replace” the seven council members who voted in favor of it.

According to the Times West Virginian newspaper, a group called Keep Fairmont Safe is behind the petition drives. It describes itself as “a committee of concerned citizens working to repeal an ordinance that forces some businesses to allow males access to women’s spaces.” Facebook posts say that the ordinance “will allow men into women’s bathrooms” and is “a dangerous ordinance” that will make the community “less safe.”

Really?

If any of that were true, then this group should be able to answer two basic questions. Failure to answer these questions with a reasonable, rational response should disqualify their arguments in total and they should be asked – respectfully – to please go away. The two questions are:

(1) How many times have you shared a public rest room with a transgender person? (If you answered “I don’t know” then you have lost the argument and must leave the room.)

(2) Ordinance or no ordinance, what is stopping perverted men from dressing up like women and entering women’s spaces right now? (If you answered that “nothing is stopping them” then you have lost the argument and you must go away. Do not pass GO and do not collect $200.)

Do you see why these arguments don’t make any sense?

To the first point, I’m willing to bet that every individual who has ever been to a concert, an airport, a mega-church, a sporting event, a theater or even a crowded restaurant has, at one time or another, shared a rest room with a transgender person…and didn’t even know it. So where was the harm?   

Second, I could dress up this afternoon in some of my wife’s clothing and walk into the women’s locker room at the HealthPlex or the swimming pool at Fairmont State University or a rest room at [insert name of business here] and try to sneak a peek at women without their clothes. Who’s going to stop me? Of course, I’d probably want to shave off my goatee first, but otherwise I’ve got fairly long hair and my legs aren’t too bad. I think I could pull it off.

My wife informs me that this has never, ever happened to her and she’s, well, of a certain age. I can pretty much guarantee that it’s never happened to most if not all of the women who are out campaigning to legalize discrimination in Fairmont.

As I wrote in an earlier essay, transgender people have always existed, or should I say “co-existed,” with the rest of us who started and finished our lives in the same gender. This is not a new phenomenon that started with Bruce Jenner. They have always had access to public rest rooms and civilization did not come crashing down.

If I were to ask one more question, it would be this: “How many times have you (or your children) been molested by someone in a public toilet?” The idea that someone wants to molest your children in a public rest room with other people around just doesn’t make sense. I’d be more concerned about my child walking home from school alone, or playing in a playground where adults can watch, or even inside your own home with a babysitter…or your weird uncle Bud.

*    *    *

For the record, the ordinance as revised now states:

“It is the public policy of the city to safeguard the right and opportunity of all persons to be free from all forms of discrimination, whether as a result of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, blindness or handicap, and to provide for an inclusive community for all residents, businesses and visitors. The denial of these rights (to those groups) is contrary to the principles of freedom and equality of opportunity and is destructive to a free and democratic society.”

I don’t know why anyone would knowingly choose a side that opposes freedom and equality.

Oh, wait. Yes I do.

I stand. You stand. He, she or it stands.

If you can’t see a problem, you sure as hell can’t fix it

Some of you are just not getting it.

You see a black football player kneeling during the national anthem and immediately jump up and down to defend the flag against such blatant disrespect. Do you even know why he’s doing it, or do you just see what you see?

What I see are professional athletes who take a knee during the national anthem not to protest against the flag or the anthem, but for a much greater reason. Their grievances have less to do with these symbols of America and more to do with America itself. One hundred and fifty-two years after the end of the Civil War, people of color are still fighting discrimination in virtually every facet of life – the workplace, educational opportunities, housing, health and worst of all, in the administration of justice in this country.

They are protesting to make people see, but too many of us still aren’t looking.

Now obviously I am not an African American or a person of color and I can never really know what it’s like to be one. That’s why I tend to trust the word of people who are members of these minority groups and are living the life of an aggrieved minority over people who are not. I can empathize out of principal and out of belief…but not out of actual experience.

Also, I’m able to read.

Here are some things I have learned:

(1) The ratio of African American and Hispanic prisoners to whites in our penal institutions is way out of balance. It was already off the charts before the Fascist regime of Donald J. Trump came to power, and it certainly hasn’t gotten any better since then. Laws are not applied evenly to all races.

(2) People of color continue to be victims of racial profiling. A friend of mine told me recently he had to march with his parents as a third grader in order to keep attending a decent elementary school in his hometown. He had a gun pulled on him by a police officer simply for walking down a public street at night and fitting a certain description…a situation known to people of color as "walking while black."

(3) Colin Kaepernick started his kneeling protest to call attention to police brutality and the killing of unarmed black men by white police, which had become all too common over the past couple of years. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said at the time. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

By taking a stand – or rather by not standing – for civil rights, a growing number of professional athletes are using their platform and status to raise awareness of issues affecting minorities in the U.S. We could make a pretty long list, but let’s start with these issues:

* Voting rights: States governed by Republican politicians continue to press voter suppression legislation and other efforts to withhold voting rights from people of color. These traditionally Democratic voting blocs helped put Barack Obama in the White House twice, and eliminating them greases the skids for Republicans to hold their ground.

* Jobs: The employment rate for African American men has been 11 to 15 percentage points lower than whites in every month since January 2000.

* Health: There are profound racial disparities in illness and death. For example, blacks are two to three times more likely than whites to suffer from hypertension and diabetes, leading in turn to higher rates of cardiovascular disease.

* Wealth: For every $1 of wealth held by the median white family, the median African American family has less than 8 cents in wealth, and the median Hispanic family has less than 10 cents.

* Housing: Less than half of black and Hispanic families live in owner-occupied housing, as of 2014. For white families, that figure is 71 percent. Home ownership helps families accumulate wealth and take advantage of sizable tax savings. By contrast, being forced into the rental market can set off a domino effect of events that then make it more difficult to exit from poverty, according to the annual “State of the Union” report from Stanford University’s Center on Poverty and Inequality.

Here’s something else that I bet no one thought about:

White Christian groups are less likely to recognize discrimination against people of color, choosing instead to believe that they are the ones being discriminated against, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute. Only 36 percent of white evangelicals, 50 percent of white mainline Protestants and 47 percent of white Catholics reported perceiving discrimination against black people, while 86 percent of black Protestants reported perceiving “a lot” of discrimination against black people in America, as did 67 percent of the religiously unaffiliated.

In a previous study about discrimination, white evangelicals were “overwhelmingly more likely to see discrimination against themselves than against minority groups,” believing that they have lost their power, their influence, the cultural center and the demographic dominance they once had. Considering the influence this bloc of voters has over the current administration, it’s not hard to understand why Colin Kaepernick and other black athletes might have a complaint, and why they’re trying to get our attention.

In simpler terms, if people can’t see the problems, they’re damn sure not likely to try and do something about them. So if Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem, I don’t see it as a protest against the flag or the national anthem. It’s about issues that only people of color truly understand, and by protesting, he’s trying to make the disbelievers see. 

*   *   *

For the record, I stand and take off my hat when the anthem plays at sporting events. That’s my choice. In America, Colin Kaepernick can choose to do it his way. We should all accept that he has that right and respect his decision to exercise it. If we don’t, then we are the ones disrespecting our anthem and our flag.

An evening at home with a hypothetical American family

Picture, if you will, a hypothetical guy with a hypothetical government job. Let’s say his name is, oh, I don’t know…let’s call him “Mitch.”

The Mitch in this story is a straight white man over the age of 62 who has worked for the government for more than five years in a job that comes with a great salary and lots and lots of benefits. For example, we’ll say that Mitch earns $193,400 a year, gets 228 days of vacation annually, has access to a Cadillac health insurance plan at very low cost and will be able to retire with a full pension thanks to his age and years of service.

Mitch is doing quite well for himself, thank you very much.

Next, we’ll give Mitch a hypothetical wife who also works for the federal government, although she has only been in her job for a few months. We’ll call her “Elaine” and make her, say, Asian-American, just for diversity’s sake. Remarkably, Elaine is doing slightly better than Mitch, bringing in an annual salary of $199,700, meaning the two of them together earn a total salary of $393,100 a year.

Elaine could qualify for a pension when she leaves her job if she has worked in government service for at least 10 years. She also is eligible for top shelf health care coverage and, like Mitch, will still collect a whole bunch of other freebies and perks while she stays in her job.

To round out this hypothetical, we’ll say that both Mitch and Elaine have healthy bank accounts, retirement funds and investment portfolios thanks to their present and former jobs. In short, they are both wealthy Americans living the life that many of us can only dream about.

Now let’s picture Mitch and Elaine at the end of a typical day.

They both probably work pretty long hours so they might eat dinner out or bring home something from a nearby deli. Or maybe they just call home and have the French housekeeper whip up some duck à l'orange and have it waiting for them when they roll in. I can visualize Mitch loosening his tie and Elaine kicking off her shoes while they both plop down in a matched pair of really comfortable overstuffed chairs and sip on two fingers of 18-year-old Macallan Fine Oak single malt Scotch, imported direct from the United Kingdom.

“You know Elaine,” I can hear Mitch saying over the tinkle of ice cubes, “we’ve got it pretty good. We’ll never have to worry about having enough money for our basic needs or whether we can afford health care or whether we can enjoy a comfortable retirement.”

“I know, Mitch,” Elaine purrs. “Is this a great country or what?”

“It is, Elaine, but you know, I can’t stop thinking that there are millions of people out there who don’t have it nearly as good as we do,” Mitch retorts. “Many of them are really struggling to make ends meet and some don’t even have enough food to eat. There are people who are poor and others who are sick and elderly who have to choose between food and medicine just to keep themselves alive.”

“It’s so sad, Mitch,” Elaine says, “but think about this for a minute. We both work for the federal government, so isn’t there something we can do?”

“There is,” Mitch says, jumping to his feet, “and by golly, I’m going to do it! Starting tomorrow, I’m going to encourage my co-workers to do everything in their power to take away their access to affordable health insurance so that you and I – and most of our friends – can use the savings to lower our own taxes. Think about it, Elaine. We’ll have more money to spend on this house, our summer house, our winter house, our private planes and yachts, our servants, the duck we’re having for dinner and this damn fine Scotch we’ve been drinking.”

“Oh, Mitch, I knew you’d have a plan,” Elaine says. “I love you, honey. You’re the best.”

"I love you too, Elaine. Care for another drink?"

Thank heavens this story is only a hypothetical.

Right?

When Republicans intend to screw you, they’ll continue to drop their pants

It’s déjà vu all over again…and again…and again…

Against all expert advice and with no conscience whatsoever, the Republican Party is trying one more time to take away health insurance from millions of American citizens so it can cut taxes on the wealthiest among us.

If it seems as if I’ve written these words before, it’s because I have. If it seems as if you’ve read these words before, it’s because you have. Sadly, in no civilized country would anybody have to use these words once, let alone four or five times, but with our current Congress and our faux president in office, the words “civilized country” don’t necessarily apply to the United States of Trump.

Word oozed out of the Washington swamp this week that the Republican-controlled Senate is very close to passing yet another attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with a bill so bad it could only – accurately – be named the “Tax Breaks for the Rich While Screwing the Poor, the Sick and the Elderly So We Can Give Trump His Goddamned Win and Maybe Shut Him Up For a While Authorization Bill.”

Just when you thought it was safe to go to the doctor again, along comes Lindsay Graham and three other assholes with a plan to take away our subsidized health insurance (including Medicaid) and dump the whole thing into the laps of states who don’t want it and whose governors oppose it…but don’t worry about that now, right Lindsay?

Just when you thought cancer patient John McCain saved our bacon with his famous thumbs down, Senate President Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Old White Wealthy Women Haters come back with a plan that, like all of its predecessors, is even worse than the one that was just voted down, which was worse than the one before it which was worse than the ones before that.

For his part, House Speaker Paul Ryan, that bastion of empathy and humanity, says he’ll send it straight to Trump’s desk if the Senate can squeeze out the 50 votes it needs, and Trump, who most likely hasn’t read the bill and isn’t ever going to read it, will sign anything put in front of him that’s not a check to pay one of the vendors who helped build his hotels.

Like all of the others, this bill is opposed by the American Medical Association, the AARP, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, the insurance industry in general and every other organization that actually understands how health care works in this country and has a hand in providing it, administering it or paying for it.

Of course, no one in Congress would be expected to know that, because no hearings have been held on this bill, no witnesses have been asked to testify, no amendments have been offered and no cost figures have been assigned. As far as I know, no one has even seen the damn thing except the four old white men who sponsored it and are out there pushing for its passage.

This scenario is not only off the charts, it’s a few light years beyond unbelievable. Things like this don’t happen in the good old USA…until they do.

Consider this:

If someone introduced a military spending bill that was opposed by the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, National Guard, VFW, American Legion and the Wounded Warriors Project, do you think Congress would pass it without a hearing?

If someone introduced a tax code revision that was opposed by small businesses; large businesses; state treasurers; local, state and federal Chambers of Commerce; the IRS; the Congressional Budget Office; individual taxpayers and H&R Block, would Congress pass it without a hearing?

Why, then, is it even possible to pass a health care bill that is opposed by every stakeholder in the health care industry without so much as a single effort to take comments in any form? What is wrong with this picture? (Answer: everything.)

There is still hope, of course, if you believe what certain members of the Senate have been saying. That’s because all Democrats and Independents are expected to vote against this bill, meaning if only three Republicans join them, the bill is dead.  The scoreboard looks like this:

* Rand Paul of Kentucky says the bill is so bad it can’t be fixed, so he’s a “no” (unless he changes his mind).

* Susan Collins of Maine has voted against previous bills and is backing her own bi-partisan bill, so she’s a “no” (unless she changes her mind).

* Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against all of the other attempts and her governor opposes this one, too, so she looks like a “no” (unless she’s a “yes” or changes her mind).

* John McCain of Arizona says “nothing has changed” since he killed the last bill with his famous thumbs down, so he seems like a “no” (unless he’s not, or changes his mind).

* And then there’s Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who has said she didn’t go to Washington to “hurt people,” and who has promised her constituents she wouldn’t vote for a bill that drastically cut Medicaid or black lung benefits or treatment for opiod abuse in her state, all of which this bill seems to do. She could be a “no,” but she voted “yes” the last time out, so who really knows?

Meanwhile, people who depend on the ACA for their health insurance find themselves in the same place they’ve been all spring and summer long…waiting anxiously here in the shadows while the Republican Sword of Damocles continues to hang over their heads. I know what I’d like to do with that sword (hint: Ned Stark), but I’d better not say it out loud. These days, you never know who might be listening.

That time we intercepted a Tumbleweed Connection

Breaking news!

With tension continuing to mount between the crazy president of the United States and the crazy leader of North Korea, the shieldWALL has managed to intercept a private Twitter exchange between the two leaders. These tweets were not seen by the public at-large but were posted on the dark web.

Trump started the exchange by communicating with the president of South Korea. After that, it went something like this:

DONALD TRUMP: I spoke with President Moon of South Korea last night. Asked him how Rocket Man is doing.

KIM JONG-UN: The American president is a Madman Across the Water.

DONALD TRUMP: Be careful, little man. I will bomb you with Bennie and the Jets.

KIM JONG-UN: Oh yeah? It looks like I'm Still Standing.

DONALD TRUMP: You’re on the Bad Side of the Moon. I’ll extinguish you like A Candle in the Wind.

KIM JONG-UN: I’m not afraid of you, Tiny Dancer. I’ll still be here Sixty Years On.

DONALD TRUMP: Are you busy this weekend? Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting.

KIM JONG-UN: I’ll be Watching the Planes Go By.

DONALD TRUMP: Not when I Burn Down the Mission. It’ll be Goodbye Yellow Brick Road for you.

KIM JONG-UN: That would be an Act of War. You’d be Better Off Dead.

DONALD TRUMP: I’m sending troops up from the south. When they cross the DMZ you’ll hear them singing a Border Song.

KIM JONG-UN: That’s just Your Song, but I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me.

DONALD TRUMP: You don’t scare me, because Someone Saved My Life Tonight.

*     *     *

There was a pause while Trump shot golf balls at Hillary Clinton. The Twitter war resumed a  few hours later:

*     *     *

KIM JONG-UN: I’m ready for some Crocodile Rock. Pretty soon you’ll have to attend a Funeral for a Friend when your Love Lies Bleeding in your hand.

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, look, Melania, The Bitch Is Back.

KIM JONG-UN: You should apologize to me for that, but Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word.

DONALD TRUMP: I can’t tweet now. I’m going to a rally in Pennsylvania so I have to Levon Air Force One.

KIM JONG-UN: If There’s a God in Heaven, I’ll deny you your Philadelphia Freedom.

DONALD TRUMP: That’s enough for now. I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That.

KIM JONG-UN: I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues.

Addendum: The Garfunkel story as I remember it

I was City Editor and Bob LaMendola was a reporter for the Hagerstown Morning Herald in 1984. Early one afternoon, Bob got a tip from a friend at the Waynesboro, Pa., newspaper (it might have been Greencastle) that Art Garfunkel had just walked through that town on his way to Hagerstown. Bob and I got in my car, a little yellow Subaru, and drove out Route 60-something-or-other  and sure enough, there was Art Garfunkel walking down the road, alone, wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap and carrying a backpack of some kind.

We pulled over to the side of the road, got out and ran to catch up with him. We asked if we could walk with him and he said we could. We walked about a mile or more, but as I recall, he wouldn’t say what he was doing. He said he’d talk about anything else, so we talked about families and dogs and some mundane stuff. At one point, he commented that Bob and I tended to “speed up” when we walked up hills, unlike people in New York where everything is flat.

After a while, we turned and walked back to the car, and as we passed him driving back into town, Bob invited him to go somewhere for coffee, but he declined.

We went back to the office and told the story to our our editor, Dave Elliott. When Dave asked if we were sure it was Art Garfunkel, Bob said he was sure and everything was fine, but some stupid person (it was me) said, “I just thought he’d be taller. Paul Simon must really be short.”

That sent up red flags like a May Day parade. Elliott said he wasn’t running any story unless we were sure this guy wasn’t an imposter, so poor Bob had to start calling Columbia Records, talent agents, other musicians, anybody he could find who would verify that Art Garfunkel was in town. He found no one.

Finally, he started calling hotels and asking, “Do you have an Art Garfunkel registered there?” Everyone said “no” until he hit the Sheraton, where the desk clerk said, “Well, we do, kind of.” He explained that there was a man who had registered as Felix Krull, but he paid with Art Garfunkel’s American Express card.

Bob had him ring the room and when Garfunkel answered and Bob explained his dilemma, he asked Bob not to write a story about his walk. He told Bob the New York Knicks were on TV, adding, “I’m just a guy watching a basketball game.”

Of course, Bob did write the story, and a few years later, Garfunkel released an album and a VHS documentary film entitled “Walk Across America,” detailing his walk from the east coast to the west coast of the United States. I proudly bought a copy, and even though he didn’t mention Bob or me in his movie, we both know that for a little while back in 1984, we were part of that walk.

My back pages: Reflections of a former journalist

Back in my newspaper days, I spent some time as City Editor of the Hagerstown Morning Herald. Part of my job was reading and editing stories written by the staff of five “city side” reporters. It was a job that yielded lots of good stories, and I don’t mean just the ones that actually made it into the paper.

Thinking back on those days, I remember headlines I wrote, paragraphs I edited and stories I shepherded into print. I thought I might share a few in this space, at least the way I remember them. Maybe some of my Herald-Mail friends will have different recollections, but these are my stories and I’m sticking to them.

First up, Jim’s what?

Jim’s Always was a Hagerstown landmark. It was an all-night restaurant/diner out on the Dual Highway that was open around the clock. Lots of shift workers, interstate travelers, late night revelers and, yes, night shift newspaper reporters would show up there for breakfast at really odd times of the morning.

One day, we learned that Jim’s Always had been sold to a new owner whose name wasn’t Jim. He was keeping the name “Always Restaurant,” but planned to close the establishment for a few hours every day. The lead on the story in the next day’s paper read as follows:

Jim’s Always isn’t Jim’s any more, it’s just Always. And it isn’t even always, it’s just sometimes.

Wings and breasts and thighs, oh my!

I can’t claim this one, but it’s one my favorite headlines of all time. In the early 1980s, Colonel Sanders opened a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Hagerstown that featured eat-in service and a drive-up window. On its grand opening, the establishment broke KFC’s all-time record for most chicken sold in a single day.

Jim Thomas, my predecessor as City Editor, wrote the classic headline, Poultry in Motion. Headline writing doesn’t get any better than that.

Rolling thunder

During my tenure at the Herald, the Baltimore Colts football team famously (or infamously) pulled up stakes in Baltimore and moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, in the dead of night. As told by Wikipedia, “The Colts' move was completely unannounced [by team owner Robert Irsay] and occurred in the early hours of March 29, 1984. Irsay made the move after years of lobbying for a new stadium to replace Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, which he called ‘inadequate.’ ”

One of my reporters got a tip (which proved to be accurate) that the caravan carrying the Colts' equipment had stopped at a Hagerstown hotel for a few hours before moving on. My headline, placed inside an elongated graphic of a tractor-trailer, read, “The truck stops here.”

Well, duh…

One time a small-town policeman got in trouble for shooting a gun in a public park where small children were playing. A reporter wrote the story but failed to get a comment from the policeman himself. We couldn’t run the story without giving him a chance to respond, but the reporter swore he couldn’t find him. “He won’t answer his phone,” he told me.

It seemed obvious that he wasn’t home, so I wondered where he was likely to go. I called the police station in his home town and asked the cop who answered if he could help me find the guy. “He’s sitting right here beside me,” the policeman said. “Would you like to speak with him?”

I did...and I did.

And finally…the storm went where?

This one was on me. One of the first rules for journalists who move to a new town is to familiarize themselves with the area. What are the names of the towns? How do you spell them? How do you pronounce them? Where are they located and what do people do there? I call it the “Where Am I?” rule. You get the idea.

On one occasion, a severe thunderstorm rolled through the area and an intern was assigned to make the myriad phone calls and write the dreaded “weather story” that all reporters hate. Not being familiar with the area, the intern reported on the path of the storm as something along the lines of "Boonsboro through Clear Spring to Funkstown, then around Williamsport and Waynesboro and down to Frederick and Hancock before moving on to Thurmont..." or something equally (and geographically) ridiculous.

As editor, what did I do to fix the story? Nothing.

Afterward, I was unceremoniously informed by a meteorologist that such a storm track was impossible and that the local newspaper should be ashamed of itself for not knowing better...and that was nothing compared to the ass-kicking I took from my boss, the editor-in-chief, who reminded me in no uncertain terms about that “Where Am I?” rule.

This was the same editor-in-chief, by the way, who became a legend for throwing the advertising manager out of the newsroom. The ad guy had made the mistake of demanding that a story be written to promote one of his advertisers – an absolute no-no back in the day. The editor told him, basically, to GTFO, and said he’d kick his ass if he ever came back to our side of the building.

I never saw the guy over there again.

Scripture for Trump supporters

How to save America, revisited

(Adapted from a shieldWALL essay originally published on December 5, 2016)

Eight months into his administration, faux-president Donald Trump seems to be going balls-to-the-wall to divide America into its religious, ethnic and cultural segments and then stomp on the ones he doesn't like. In the past month or so he essentially endorsed white supremacists, failed to support the victims of racism and pardoned a convicted racist sheriff. Now, he has sent out his pet dog Beauregard to announce plans to deport 800,000 children of immigrants, many of whom are productive, tax-paying citizens who have never really lived anywhere else.

There’s no question that under the Trump administration, America is broken, and I can see only one way to fix it. We have to divide the United States into five new countries, give other parts of it away and leave the rest for Trump and his Storm Troopers to try and rule. We’ll let them see if they can survive on their own without the northeast and west coasts, most major cities and our most highly educated citizenry, because frankly, I don’t think they can do it.

Here's my plan:

Click to enlarge

Step 1. We’ve known for some time that Texas wants to secede from the union, so I say we let them do it. They can become independent or go back to Mexico or become Greater Guatemala for all I care. Of course, they’ll want to collect their flood relief money first, even though their legislators voted against funds for Hurricane Sandy victims, but I have friends in Texas so I say let them have the money. Then go.

Step 2. People in California have suggested they might want to stage a “Calexit” to break away like Britain did with its Brexit from the European Union, so I say we add in the contiguous blue states of Nevada, Washington and Oregon and create a new country called West Coastlandia, with San Francisco as the capital. I'd put the government buildings right next to Ben and Jerry’s at the corner of Haight and Ashbury.

Step 3. We should enjoin New England with blue states New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia to create “The Thirteen Colonies Minus a Few But Much Better Than the Original 2.0.” We make Annapolis the capital so the Navy can defend it against any Trump supporters who might be lurking in the surrounding boondocks. (Note that I’m cutting Pennsylvania a break here. I know they went red last time but Trump lied to them so they didn’t really mean it.)

Of course, Trump will have to move out of New York because the president can’t live in a foreign country. Trump Tower will be demolished and a statue of President Obama holding his birth certificate will be erected in its place. It will be one foot taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Step 4. That leaves the blue states of Illinois, which has enough weapons in Chicago alone to defend itself as a separate country; Minnesota, which we’ll give to Canada where it has always belonged; and the Colorado/New Mexico Rectangle, which we’ll rename “New Colomexi Radoco." Kinda rolls off the tongue, don’t you think? This new country will be given back to the Native Americans who we stole it from.

Step 5. We'll sell Alaska back to Russia for $800 trillion dollars and divide the money equally among everybody who voted for Hillary Clinton. That’s a shade over $12 million each, I think, which ought to hold us for a while. Sarah Palin will become a Cossack and be able to see West Coastlandia from her house.

Step 6. We rename Hawaii “Obamaland.” It’s only fair after all of that birther nonsense.

Step 7. We allow Trump and the Republicans to govern all of the remaining red states, which will be renamed “Golden Basket of Poorly Educated Low Information Deplorables.” I’d put the capitol somewhere in a Mississippi swamp and make Trump and his ceramic family live there among the stupid, uninformed, Confederate flag-waving, redneck racists who elected him president.

I’m sure when this happens, Trump’s government will immediately want to deport all red state liberals to the new blue country of their choice, and that will be fine with me. It means we can all live happily ever after without having to hear his whiny voice or see his shiny orange face again.

About that happy, beautiful flood...