(1) Question: What are two promises that are impossible to believe? First, Putin saying, “Just give me part of the Ukrainian land I have been demanding, and I promise I will never try to get more.” Second, Trump saying, “Don’t worry. If Ukraine gives Putin that part of its land he now wants and Putin later tries to take more, we will defend Ukraine as if it were a part of NATO”.

So, today is a big day. Zelenskyy and Trump meeting. What will happen? Will Trump want to say, “Vlod, take this deal or not one more penny from the US.”? Maybe. And that is why, to make sure he doesn’t, the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, NATO, and the EU are interrupting their August and coming to town.

(2) I read that the addition of federal DEA and FBI and ICE agents, along with the DC National Guard, when added to the 40+ police forces already in the city, are not enough to bring down DC’s already falling crime rate. So we are adding Guard members from West Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio. It is like a big party filled with people you would never want to invite to a party. Other than innocent people being swept up off the streets, and maybe some injuries and deaths, nothing will come of this, I am sure.

(3) Let’s go on to something more interesting and, only because of the passage of time, less depressing.

You remember the French novelist Emile Zola, who stood up for the innocence of French-Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus, who was accused of treason. Do you know how Zola died? Zola died in his early 60s of carbon monoxide poisoning due to a clogged chimney. Did you know that?

Did you know that it was ruled an accident, but that Zola’s great granddaughter reported that her grandfather (Zola’s son) told her when she was young that a man came to see him some time after the incident and told him that someone the man knew, a chimney sweep who just passed away, told him before he died that he had been paid to block Zola’s chimney so air could not escape?

Do you know also that the French government interred Zola in the Pantheon and that Alfred Dreyfus was at the ceremony? Did you know that someone shot Dreyfus at the ceremony and wounded him? Did you know that it was Zionist leader and writer Max Nordau, Herzl’s associate, who tackled the would be assassin, and turned him over to the police? And did you know that the shooter was tried, but found not guilty of attempted murder on the basis of his testimony that he did not intend to kill Dreyfus, but just to injure him?

(4) It is August in Washington DC and my phone tells me it won’t get higher than the low 80s all week. My phone is very optimistic.