Give 'Em Helsinki!

I am not going to say much of anything about the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki this past week other than to say that Trump gave Putin a pass for meddling in U.S. elections and offered what could be called an "American blank check" to Russian expansion in Crimea and Syria - and possibly the Baltic States - because there's not much more to say. 

You know we have a a loco-foco (to cop an old early-nineteenth-century expression) President when even Fox News commentators and Republican lawmakers like outgoing senator Jeff Flake and incoming senator Mitt Romney voice concern born of disgust.

This isn't détente, it's disaster!  Trump didn't compromise, he went right to surrender!

Ironically, his actions have vindicated previous Republican leaders scoffed at by the Democrats - the victims of Russian meddling in U.S. elections - for their Russophobia.  Ronald Reagan warned of a Russian evil-empire (in the days before Gorbachev) and Romney, as the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, called Putin our biggest geopolitical foe.  Ha ha, the Democratic Party responded.  They're not laughing now, even as Sean Hannity continues to push the Trump line and Robert Mueller continues to feel the heart from fellow Republicans for his investigation.  Trump tried to "clarify" his remarks by saying he wasn't really letting Russia off the hook, and Republicans carefully denounced Trump's earlier statement while avoiding the act of denouncing him, but in either case, it wasn't enough.         

And Trump surrendered American integrity in he very city where cooperative security accords setting standards for U.S.-Soviet relations that led to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. were signed in 1975 - as well as the capital of a country attacked by the Soviet Union in 1939 as a counterweight measure to the Axis alliance . . . which, in a sad irony, led to Finland allying itself with . . . the Axis Powers.

Trump also surrendered American security, a point acidly made by this New York Daily News cartoon.

And now Putin's coming here this fall?

All right, maybe I did have a lot to say about this . . .