Obama trumps Trump, but Trump isn't stumped

Just when it looked like Donald Trump's idiotic ranting was going to be silenced, his private jet landed in New Hampshire Wednesday and hilarity ensued. Trump immediately upped the ante on weird political gibberish.

The White House had just released President Obama's long-form birth certificate and it looked like the matter was settled. Trump's most important political issue, that Obama was unable to produce a proper birth certificate because he was in fact a Kenyan-born Muslim out to destroy America, was nonsensical right-wing paranoia to begin with.

Trump was presumably on the plane to New Hampshire devising a few new sound bites about Obama's big birth certificate cover-up conspiracy. It seemed like Obama's big announcement to the media, that “We don't have time for this silliness. We've got better stuff to do,” was timed to silence Trump just as his plane was about to land. He would be walking, dumbfounded, into a sea of reporters.

What happened next should have been anticipated by anyone familiar with Trump's flair for pulling reality-show craziness out of the hat like a circus magician.

“I feel I've accomplished something really, really important, and I feel honored by it”, Trump boasted to reporters. He noted that it was “amazing” that this long-form certificate finally “materialized,” and he went on to portray the release as vindication. “I hope we've accomplished a lot by what I've been talking about the last few months,” he said as the group of reporters looked on stone-faced, acting as this was an actual news event.

So that left us to wonder what was next. Would Trump question Obama's marriage certificate? Could the Obama's dog be a secret Soviet spy? Or maybe Obama had a secret hair transplant, and his college Afro was really an elaborate comb-over.

No, the nation's most famous snake-oil salesman and closet racist now wants us to focus on Obama's questionable college degree. He demanded that Obama release his records from Occidental College, part of Trump's new effort to convince us that Obama only made it into the Ivy League, transferring from Occidental to Columbia, then going on to Harvard, because of affirmative action.

Trump wonders how Obama, a poor, “terrible student” can get into Ivy League schools? The fact that Trump didn't ask this question of George W. Bush, who had trouble putting coherent sentences together, could be one indication that Trump's remarks are racially motivated. Or maybe Trump is just plain stupid, and we should be questioning how he got into an Ivy League business school. I've been wondering myself how on earth Trump ever got into the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

Dan Golden's book, “The Price of Admission”, is a well-reported critique of what amounts to affirmative action for rich people. Did Trump's rich father help him out, perhaps? I'll have to send my investigators out to look into this matter.

Putting all this speculation about the Ivy League admission process aside, I am waiting breathlessly for Trump to release his tax returns. After all, the real-estate mogul turned reality TV show host had promised to release his tax returns if Obama produced his birth certificate.

In the category of 'what else is new', Trump continued the media laugh-a-thon by telling reporters outside a New Hampshire cigar store that he'll release his tax returns once he announces a presidential bid, further proof he's not actually running.

The media keeps buying what this fast-talking carnival huckster is selling. It makes great entertainment, but it's not news.

Father's Day News

The protests in Iran over the recent election results are taking over the airwaves on cable news. Although no foreign reporters are allowed in the Iran, social networking sites are allowing citizens to send information via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Images are being shown on the TV news from the cell phone cameras of ordinary citizens. It's disturbing and hard to watch, as Iranian anti-riot police use clubs, tear gas, water cannons and in some reports, guns, to combat protesters. In America, in order to balance the violent images coming out of Iran, we look for the lighter news that can give us something to laugh about as we celebrate Father's Day. The "cocaine-in-the-frozen-shark" story became old news when a man in Oklahoma was mugged for his bologna sandwich, with a street value of 76 cents. Now we find out that a city in Florida has a new dress code that requires city workers to wear underwear and use deodorant. The city council in Brooksville north of Tampa recently approved the "personal hygiene" code. Last week's report about a man who set off fireworks in a bathroom in an Arby's restaurant, blowing up a toilet, was upstaged by a story on Friday about two wayward cows in Massachusetts who went AWOL from their farm and walked over five miles into New Hampshire. Nashua authorities tracked down the cows with the help of concerned citizens, who called 911 with reports of the stray cows. Thursday's story about a Washington man who drove over three miles on I-5 in reverse is still being talked about around the water cooler. But the story last week about an Indiana lawyer who was found asleep headfirst in a neighbor's trash can after a night of drinking has been largely forgotten. Then there's the story of the New York woman who has been dead for six years who showed up at the DMV to get her driver's license. Actually, it was her son, Thomas Parkin, who dressed up in drag, reminiscent of the movie "Psycho". The incident happened in April, but the Associated Press has picked up the story and is running with it. It's spreading through all the major Internet news sites. As new information comes in, we're finding out that Parkin impersonated his mother for over six years and has collected over $100,000 in Social Security and housing benefits using her identity. Although he's been caught on the DMV security cameras dressed in drag, Parkin still professes his innocence. He is awaiting trial at Riker's Island on larceny and fraud charges, and he is giving interviews from prison. Parkin has reportedly hired a publicist, and this is one story that won't go away. That's OK. We need a little levity on Father's Day.