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Playbook for all future hearings

TRAVERSE CITY — After Corey Lewandowski did everything short of mooning the House Judiciary Committee during his rancorous testimony, Democratic Chairman Jerrold Nadler said he was so gosh-darn mad he was “considering” holding him in contempt. Considering? Why are Dems always “considering” instead of doing? As Dark Helmet said in “Spaceballs” (a grossly underestimated comedy, btw): “Why are we always preparing. Just go!”

Weak is what Nadler came off as. Any parent knows, you don’t threaten. You say, “This is what’s going to happen if you disobey,” and if the kid disobeys anyway, boom, consequence. By not immediately throwing Lewandowski in jail, Nadler wrote the playbook for all future hearings. If there are any.

Democrats still don’t get it. Trump and his minions aren’t playing by the rules anymore – or even the laws. They’re writing their own, and Dems somehow seem to think it’s enough to clutch their pearls and cry “Outrageous!” It’s not. They’re always bringing “Robert’s Rules of Order” to a gun fight and, consequently, always losing. That’s no small thing. Democracy is hanging by a thread. We need heroes. What we get are Nadlers and Pelosies. God help us.

I just saw an ad for a massage parlor hyping its CBD oil lotion. That tells me we’re approaching the jump-the-shark moment that all fads reach. CBD oil is in everything and can fix everything. Back pain? CBD oil! Heartbreak of psoriasis? CBD oil! Tensions in the Middle East? CBD oil. I’m surprised we haven’t seen CBD oil pumpkin spice lattes yet.

Wait? Those already exist? It’s worse than I thought.

First Eddie Money. Then Ric Ocasek of the Cars. Bad things come in three. If I’m a rocker popular in the ’70s or ’80s, I’m going in for a check-up right about now.

Who lives in the public consciousness longer than music and movie stars? Really, no one. Their work remains a part of lives forever.

Why is Traverse City pronounced “trav-ers” and not “tra-verse”?

I’m to the point that I prefer plant-based burgers to regular hamburgers. Once you put cheese and condiments on, it’s hard to tell the difference, honestly. My newly vegan son approves.

Labrador retrievers were just named the top breed in America. Not in my book. Too much tongue, not enough sense. We had a lab once who ate the sofa cushions. Why, I’m not sure. My preferred breed is mutt. Maybe because I’m one, too. For the record, I’ve never eaten a sofa cushion.

Every year people tell me my flu shot won’t make me mildly ill for a few days, and every year it does. Maybe I need a shot for whatever my flu shot gives me.

I just had a disturbing thought: Someday, Trump will probably have a presidential library. But what would go in it, his tweets?

What astonishes me most about vaping is not that people do it but how far the plume of vapor flies. We’re all just breathing each other’s breath, basically. I know: eyew.

Someone said I had to try a White Claw hard seltzer. It tasted like seltzer, which doesn’t taste like anything at all. The dumbest things become popular.

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.” – Seneca.

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Andrew Heller, an award-winning newspaper columnist, appears weekly in the Daily Press. He graduated from Escanaba Area High School in 1979. Follow him at andrewheller.com and on Facebook and Twitter. Write to him via email at andrewhellercolumn@gmail.com.

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