The distance between Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, and St Thomas, the capital of the US Virgin Islands, is 314 nautical miles. 

Martinique is an integral part of France. Famed poet Aime Cesaire (1913-2008), one of the founders of the Negritude literary movement, was born there, where he composed his epic Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal (“Notes on my Return to My Native Land”), between 1936 and 1939. 

Donald Trump has never heard of Aime Cesaire, but he has heard of Julius Caesar (100 BCE-44 BCE), though it was only yesterday that Melania told him about William Shakespeare. Not only that, Trump hasn’t the faintest idea what BCE stands for.

Our Chief International Correspondent, associate solitary reporter Larry Theis, a longtime resident of southern France, knocked on French President Emmanuel Macron’s door in the Elysee Palace a few minutes ago.

Speaking through a translator (associate solitary reporter and longtime Parisienne Charlize Meursault), Theis asked Macron why he has chosen to destroy St Thomas with one of his nukes.

“C’est tres facile, ma douce petite” ("That’s easy, my little one”) Macron said. “In their infuriating, and extremely awkward, AUKUS agreement between Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison down under in Australia, Joe Biden stabbed me in the back on my little arrangement with Scott, where I had agreed to make a few nuclear-powered submarines for him. That’s costing me twenty-four billion US dollars — all because Biden, having been humiliated by the Taliban, wants to confront Xi Jinping in the Pacific, where he keeps building artificial islands in the South China Sea."

“As a result, Philippe Etienne, my Ambassador to Washingto, will not be returning to the District of Columbia for many years now.”

“In fact, I’m thinking of sending him to Fort-de-France in Guadeloupe for a little R &R."

“If Biden wants to kiss up and be friends with me again, I will be happy to drop trow and tell him what to do.”

All this prevented Theis from asking Macron in detail why he plans to launch one of his 300 nukes to the densely populated St Thomas, the capital of the US Virgin Islands, which, on a daily basis, receives numerous floating cities known as cruise ships, several of which are owned by Tom Cruise. The floating cities consume billions of dollars of petroleum, thus catastrophically increasing global warming.

Several of Donald Trump’s handlers got together for a supposed rally today outside the Capitol, to support many of the Trumpians who assaulted the symbol of our democracy on January 6, but only a paltry few turned up. Turned out that there were many more reporters there from all over the world (including from Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s highly dictatorial Turkey) with massive security to protect the Capitol (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/18/dc-braces-rally-jan-6-512659) and https://www.npr.org/2021/09/18/1038551992/us-capitol-january-6-j6-rally-washington.

So as usual, we tapped associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones and made her travel with Trump to DC today so that she, and she alone, could tell AP fans of what Trump did today as he addressed the crowd of ralliers, all of whom participate in The Big Lie, which a majority of Republican voters apparently adheres to.

Also in attendance was the Denver-based Moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association, associate solitary reporter Lewis Thompson III. Thompson attended President Biden’s visit to Denver the other day in his capacity as one of Biden’s advance men. While in Arvada, at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, he reminded Americans, preoccupied as they are with Covid fatigue, poverty among way too many, too much water in the wake of Ida, etc., too many wildfires in the devastated forests in the West, that the time to take action to deal with climate change was thirty years ago, just as Al Gore told us, as Americans continue to buy big big vehicles that spew way too many pollutants into the atmosphere.

As soon as his acolytes saw their idol, they bowed down before him, so overawed by his presence that they did what the common people in Peking did on those very rare occasions when the Emperor appeared in public, such as when the Emperor went to the Temple of Heaven to pray for a good harvest. In fact, they were not allowed to see the Imperial Presence at all — they had to kowtow, which means “knock heads,” meaning they had to abase themselves by placing their foreheads on the pavement. We here at AP know that that is not the American way, but Jones told us what didn’t happen, that’s what we pay her for, and that’s when the very rational Thompson chimed in, saying, “SR, as soon as those dimwits saw they their idol, they were of course overjoyed as he said, “All my supporters on January 6 are peaceful patriots and they went here to the Capitol to correct the steal. None of them committed any violence. Anybody who says otherwise is just fake news.”

Then Trump took with him several of his hatchet men, such as former Xenophone-in-Chief Stephen Miller, and, with Trump and Trump Jr in the lead, they momentarily broke through the police lines brandishing their hatchets, but they were immediately arrested and are now languishing in the DC Jail with the numerous incarcerated (on a pretrial basis) January 6 defendants, but all three of them are in solitary confinement. Even RNC Chairlady Ronna Romney McDaniel wouldn’t put up bail.

Attorney General Merrick Garland and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell visited Trump at the Jail and handed Trump a grand jury indictment charging him with being a Horse's Ass and a Danger to the Nation. His trial has been set for November 5, 2024.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the wealthy like to throw their weight around when it comes to politics, especially when they want pols to do their bidding.

This truth applies both to wealthy Republicans and also to wealthy Democrats. (For example, in Colorado, our Governor is Democrat Jared Polis, who is very wealthy, and, not only that, he does a great job here and will be easily re-elected in 2022, along with Attorney General Phil Weiser, Secretary of State Jena Griswold, and Treasurer Dave Young, all of whom are friends of your solitary reporter).

Yesterday, after months and months of high political anxiety, California voters did the essential thing by voting overwhelmingly to let Gov. Gavin Newsom keep his job.

It was conservative Republicans who used the recall provisions of California law to try to oust the Democratic Governor, who carried considerable baggage into the very expensive recall campaign.

Recall campaigns were put into various state laws in the early 20th century on the theory that the voters should make decisions rather than officials elected by the states (“direct democracy”). Sounds good in theory. , but the amount of money spent by the various parties in the Newsom recall effort is outrageous: $292 million!

And, paying no regard to the critical public health issues involving Masks (and vaccinations), in the irresponsible mode of Americans Who Believe They Can Do Whatever They Want when the government tells them to do something, they hated and still hate Newsom’s Mask Mandates.

And Newsom’s participation, unmasked, in a dinner in an ultra-pricey Napa Valley restaurant called French Laundry, after he required all Californians to mask up, subjected him to appropriate backlash from his enemies. The backlash he endured reminded us here in Denver of what happened when Denver Mayor Michael Hancock flew to the Southeast for Thanksgiving last year at the same time he was telling his constitutents in the Mile High City not to travel because of The Virus.

But California, which has no less than fifty-three Members of the U S House of Representatives, is an overwhelmingly blue state, with House Minority Leader and Trump acolyte Kevin McCarthy the aberration, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a lifelong Democrat, presiding over the House with a very thin majority.

When the recall effort against Newsom began last year, initially it was regarded as a mere nuisance for the Democrats, but then a judge in Sacramento relaxed the requirements for signature-gathering because of The Virus, and the longer Newsom’s Mask Mandates continued, the proponents of the recall were then able to get the anti-Newsom recall on the ballot, which meant that California voters of whatever political bent are stuck with the huge cost of the recall.

Enter toxically right-wing conservative radio talk show host Larry Elder, an African American misogynist and pro-gun and anti-Black candidate who promptly became the leading Republiclan candidate who, if the recall succeeded, would have swept him into office just as Arnold Schwarzeneggar did in 2003.

So we reached out to our San Francisco-based associate solitary reporter, Susanna Sherman, and tasked her with reaching out to Scott Wilk, the Republican leader in the California Senate, to ask him for his thoughts on whether it was worthwhile to run Trump acolyte Larry Elder against Newsom, and whether the recall system in his state should be abolished.

Wilk’s response was concise: "Susanna, we ran Larry Elder against Newsom because he and Donald Trump are joined at the hip and because Elder is Black. As for the Recall procedures, we oppose any changes to that because we are rolling in extra cash and, let's face it, Mr. Trump is the heart and soul of our Party and we knew that he’s so popular with his base in our state that we knew we did the Right Thing."

When Sherman pointed out to Wilks that his party’s overwhelming loss is being viewed as a colossal mistake because of the rapidly approaching midterms, and also given that Trump is clearly running for re-election and counting on major GOP victories in the midterms, Wilk dismissed her from his office and instructed her to tell the solitary reporter to keep his hands out of California because California is a separate nation with its own notable peculiarities.

The only Republican among our stellar cast of associate solitary reporters is the fabled Eddie Cook, an evangelical pastor who serves as the Chairman of the Denver Republican Party, holding forth over its two hundred members. Cook told us that he attended Elder’s Defeat Party where he privately told everybody in attendance that if Trump decides not to run against President Biden in 2024, he will, unless he runs against Newsom next year, which seems to be what Wilks wants.

According to our ever-increasing cadre of associate solitary reporters, women are better than men.

Especially when Judge Karin Crump in Travis County, Texas, issued an injunction against Texas Right to Life, the people who in their triumphalist miasma have deprived women in Texas of their right to make their own decisions about what happens to their bodies: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/13/politics/texas-sb8-planned-parenthood-right-to-life/index.html.

Not only that, The Guardian has documented at some necessary length the concept of female superiority: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/06/obama-women-superior-men-washing-up-driving-patriarchy.

All this is very pleasing to associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones down at Mar-a-Lago, and to associate solitary reporter Sylvania Juguete in the White House. 

Jones is in the extremely unenviable position of having to camp out on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago whle enduring countless taunts from Melania.

By contrast, Juguete is very pleased with her constant and immediate access to President Biden in the White House. 

Rocket Man has done it again.

Some years ago, former President Bill Clinton was on "Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me," the NPR News Quiz, with host Peter Sagal.

He was on so he could take The Quiz on behalf of somebody else.

Sagal asked him if he was familiar with the show, which he wasn’t.

The quiz questions were about North Korea.

Bill, no slouch in the intellectual smarts department — bearing in mind of course that Donald Trump, our former Liar-in-Chief, sat on his morbidly obese butt in the White House in a job that he was never ever qualified for — anyway, Bill promptly said that whenever Kim Jongun feels like he’s being ignored, he sends out something dangerous.

Which he claims he just did, as in missiles, in order to terrorize all the good folks in Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan (https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/12/asia/north-korea-missile-launch-new-intl/index.html).

So, naturally, we sent our Seoul-based associate solitary reporter, Ko-Ilsun, to Pyongyang to find out what’s going on.

That’s when Rocket Man strapped Ko onto one of his top-secret missiles, sending Ko straight to Beijing.