SUMMERTIME BLUES

Trump and his Orcs are burning America to the ground, while Democratic leadership search for a strongly worded response ...

Summertime used to be fun — relaxing even.

Kids were out of school driving the adults crazy, while the adults were giving it hell burning up their two weeks of hard-earned vacation, and doing their level best to ignore the kids, so that everybody could get some much-needed space and happiness.

People would collect around a grill for dinner, and report on their day, before separating again to find some good trouble chasing laughs, lightning bugs and pretty girls and boys. If you were lucky, there was time spent by a pool, and if you were luckier yet, toes were curled in the sand of a yawning beach where the waves yanked at us for a dip or better yet, a ride.

Mungo Jerry’s 1970’s hit In the Summertime will always frame the season for me. Have a drink, have a drive, and go off and give it a listen … I’ll be sure to ruin your mood when you return.

We're not grey people, we're not dirty, we're not mean
We love everybody, but we do as we please
When the weather's fine, we go fishing or go swimming in the sea
We're always happy, life's for living
Yeah, that's our philosophy

Politics were almost never discussed during the summer because there was fun to find back then. Yeah, that was America’s philosophy.

We trusted that barring the unforeseen, nobody would screw things up too badly in Washington while we were sheltering from the constant grind.

This summer, we are under brutal attack by a mad king who is intent on getting even for every awful thing that has made him miserable the past 79 years. Because he can’t escape his pathetic life, he is spending his summer making sure ours is as terrible as possible.

Young Trump spent his summers torturing everybody around him, until one day his parents decided even they’d had enough. After he returned home from yanking the ponytails of the girls who couldn’t run fast enough to escape his fat grip, they shipped him kicking and screaming off to a military boarding school so that he could become their problem instead.

Now he’s everybody’s problem.

This summer, 75 percent of America is worried our Democracy is under direct attack. The other 25 percent are doing the attacking, led by the burnt-orange architect of the most violent attack on our Capitol since 1812.

The yacht club bully has grown into the most dangerous person in the world.

America hasn’t been this divided since the Civil War, which is appropriate because we are back to fighting about the same things. Namely: the notion that all men and women are created equal.

People on the Left say they are.

People on the Right say they aren’t.

Hard as it is to believe, our first Civil War could have been even worse if we didn't have arguably our greatest president in office, Abraham Lincoln.

This Civil War promises to escalate because we have without question our most grotesque president in office, whose singular talent is to split families and vindictively go lower. He’s sees only upside in dividing us.

He’s a got a lifetime of grievances to settle, and a political party in tow that spends all its time on its knees kissing his two-ton backside to appease his grotesque cult, which is only too happy to hurt itself just as long as everybody else feels its pain.

All of this would be plenty bad enough to spoil any hazy, lazy day at the pool or the beach, except, of course, we know it’s even worse, because the political team that has assembled itself in Washington to battle this evil has to be a collection of some of sorriest-ass politicians on record.

Instead of bringing baseball bats to this war for our survival, they are bringing catcher’s mitts.

At a time we’ve never needed bare-knuckle, inspirational fighters more, the opposition party is doing everything it can to give us even less. So a warning: I will not stop typing this until things change: The Democratic Party cannot be taken seriously as long as Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are leading it.

THEY HAVE TO GO.

The only impressive thing about these two relentlessly boring men is their unyielding arrogance. Both act like low-energy robots who are plugged into some 1970 political algorithm that spits out talking points with all the gusto of a short-circuiting word processor.

Who is it these guys think they are connecting with? I mean, besides 86-year-old guys like Steny Hoyer?

It would embarrassing if it wasn’t so damn insulting, but we don’t have to put up this, people.

In the wake of perhaps the most catastrophic vote in American history on Tuesday, Schumer immediately ran off to post this on Elon Musk’s crooked social media platform. It might be the most 2025 Democratic thing I have ever seen:

Whoa! He got the name of the bill changed! You won’t see this kind of shrewd political maneuvering just anywhere, my friends.

I think Lyndon Johnson just tried to die again ...

And about this bizarre picture HE purposely chose to amplify after the Great Name Change …

Well, that’s the electrifying Schumer himself burying his face in the lectern, surrounded by Senator Patty Murray who is burying her face in her hands, Senator Jack Reed who is burying himself in sleep, and some dude on the lower-right with the thought-bubble over his head that reads: “Please, God, just bury me now …”

THIS is who is leading the Left while Trump and his Orcs drag us into hell.

So now yer asking me who would do better. Well, besides literally ANYBODY, a less vague answer:

In the Senate, up until six weeks ago, I would have advocated for New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. That’s when he balled up his fingers and punched himself in the face by being the lone Democrat to vote for Charles Kushner, a convicted felon and father-in-law to Ivanka Trump, as the new U.S. ambassador to France.

The things people will do for money …

So why not one of the Georgia’s senators, namely Raphael Warnock, who has more fight and passion than the entire New York delegation? Yes, I understand putting people in purple states in these positions is risky, but is there a better state than Georgia to dig in and hold the line?

(And don’t you dare hit me with some seniority argument, when it’s the seniors in the party that have in large part led to this catastrophic mess.)

As for the House? You got me. There are scores to choose from. The one thing I know for sure is that the miscalculating Jeffries ain’t it.

His refusal to back Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral race after his convincing victory over the reprehensible Andrew Cuomo was the last straw for me. The people want change, and Jeffries could care less.

Barbaric prisons are being opened in Florida, and millions of Americans are going to pay a terrible price thanks to a monstrous spending bill, so that affluent lowlifes like Trump can keep filling their bottomless pockets with our money.

This long, hot summer is only two weeks old, and promises to only heat up as Republicans eagerly clamor to burn more oil and coal, and leave our planet in worse shape than they found it.

We are in a war for our survival, and Democratic patriots are being led by guys like Schumer, who can’t even write a strongly worded tweet without making a damn fool of himself and his party.

It’s time to put some serious heat on these ineffective fools, and demand change and real fighters at the top, because as hot as this summer is, it well might be our last as a Democratic Republic.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)