Ours is not an age for reflection, patience and slow-dancing. Our age demands instant gratification. Sooner than that, if possible. Thus the slow-dancing in the latest exchange since the famous Singapore handshake, originating in a hand-carried letter to Pyongyang. The response came back in another hand-carried letter, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continuing as postman.
Baseball is the reason God made summer. Summer stretches out with the solace and symmetry of a long fly ball to deep center field, climbing ever higher and hanging in the sky as if the afternoon could go on forever. Whether watching a ball game from a box seat on the third-base line or through a hole in the right-field fence, we could only wish it would.
Talking the talk is easy. Walking the walk is not so easy. Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, thought he could take an easy shot at the United States, and Donald Trump in particular, for American determination to get out-of-control immigration under something resembling control. Lesson apparently learned.
It's in the DNA of the human family to hear to the cry of a helpless child. Democrats and their media partners know it, and have weaponized the migrant child in their obsession to destroy Donald Trump and his administration, and by any means necessary.
The mamas are happy. The papas are happy. Best of all, the little children (and some big ones) are happy. Most of the rest of us are happy. Only Sen. Chuck Schumer and Democratic congressional candidates have mixed feelings about President Trump's executive order prohibiting the separation of children from their parents arrested for illegally crossing the border from points south.
Several months ago President Donald Trump "went postal" on Amazon, continuing his feud with Jeff Bezos, who is said to be the world's richest man, and owner of The Washington Post, which the president frequently denounces as a fountain of fake news.
A crying child on the border, hugging his mother's legs and begging not to be separated from her, breaks everybody's heart (except those with a heart of stone). Such a child, in a newspaper photograph, or 30-second video on television or online, sweeps explanations, discussion and all else away.
Not everyone has the chops to be a leader of nations. Appealing to the better angels of human nature is a lofty approach to leadership, but the unforgiving streets of New York City have taught President Trump another way to get results. After more than a year of watching the president in action, some people still don't appreciate what a little fear can accomplish. Mr. Trump doesn't want a trade war — he just wants his trade partners to have dread of one. Dread can change behavior.
The Group of 7 economic summit in Quebec last week was not quite a family feud, but it didn't bore anyone. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau got in a few licks on each other, Mr. Trump's "bromance" with French President Emmanuel Macron appeared to be on the rocks, and his relations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May, never particularly warm, continued to be strained if not frosty. But Mr. Trump struck up a good relationship with newly installed Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. Their relations showed a little bonhomie rather than bashing.
There are two sides to every coin and maybe that goes for the Russian collusion epic, too. So far we've seen only one side of that coin. The Mueller investigation goes merrily along trying to find evidence that Donald Trump conspired with Moscow malefactors to put the 2016 presidential election on ice.
No one at the White House or in Foggy Bottom envies the job at hand for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or John Bolton, the president's national-security adviser. Someone has to peel President Trump off the ceiling and bring his feet closer to earth, and they have to do it.
The happy talk coming out of Singapore will mislead the rest of the world, which hankers for something, anything, that can eliminate the nuclear sword hanging over everybody. "Jaw, jaw," in Winston Churchill's famous formulation, is better than "war, war," but happy talk, whether by Donald Trump or Kim Jong-un, can be dangerous for the unwary.
No politician owns the exclusive rights to "hope and change." As a campaign slogan, it worked well for a moment for Barack Obama, but in hindsight it was little more than an attractive but empty phrase. He wowed the world by signing the Iran Nuclear Deal, but left the terror-friendly regime in Tehran on course to complete a doomsday arsenal. President Trump, girding himself for a nuclear summit with North Korea, promises to deal only in the hard currency of reality.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is not the most charismatic, telegenic, or gripping figure to have graced the politics of the republic. His soft-spoken Southern manners tend more toward the soporific than the stimulating, and they sometimes lead his critics to underestimate him.
It's difficult to imagine that the U.S. Government has more money than it has figured out how to spend, but President Trump wants to give back $15.4 billion of such money and Congress is unhappy about it. This money is in appropriated, but unspent, funding from earlier years.
A half-baked cake may be better than no cake at all, but not much better. The Supreme Court's decision that a baker with religious convictions against it doesn't have to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding was the work of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who seems to have a schoolgirl crush on anything gay.
"A pretty girl is like a melody/ that haunts you night and day/You can't escape, she's in your memory/by morning, night and noon/She will leave you and then come back again/a pretty girl is just like a pretty tune."
A lot of people don't like their names, even good, solid, substantial names like Woodrow, Arthur or Gertrude. Particularly, apparently, "Arthur." Names can predict fortune. June brides, dreaming of making children, might one day regret choosing something cute, such as naming a daughter "Chastity," or a son "Shirley." They could keep this in mind.
Enemies of Donald Trump made a big mistake when they sent a spy into the midst of the Republican candidate's campaign. Their secret agent was no debonair figure in the mold of "Bond, James Bond," but a rotund and affable academic with no trailing retinue of femmes fatale. There will be no winning over of American public opinion on fashion points, and so the legitimacy of shadowy enterprise will rise or fall on its own merit, which appears to be not much.
Green is good. It's the favorite color of the environmentalists, and everything green is the craze of the politically correct. Many a clever shopkeeper, taxicab operator and entrepreneur has set out to "go green," joining the craze with little more than a brush and a can of paint. If green is good, it nevertheless needs a little marketing genius.
Only yesterday, Turkey was considered a candidate for membership in the European Union, a reliable friend of the West. Turkey was reasonably modern, forward looking, and Western oriented. Turkey was already a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and membership in the EU would only cement its alliance with the West.
Summer signals the arrival of happier days -- more sun, more fun and more all-around good vibes. It isn't officially summer yet, but it's close enough to taste. Memorial Day is behind us and that means it's a good time to measure "the mood of America."
