Red Wave:  Speaking in Arizona in his first speech to influence the mid-term elections, former President Donald Trump predicted on Saturday that “a great red wave is going to begin right here in Arizona” and vowed that “this is the year we take back the House, this is the year we take back the Senate.” 

  Part of Trump’s stump is that the 2020 election was “rigged” and that “I ran twice and we won twice.” He has produced no evidence. 

  Again with no backup in fact. Trump fed the suspicion that undercover FBI agents incited the January 6^th crowd. Using the demagogue technique of planting doubt rather than stating fact, Trump asked, “Exactly how many of those present at the Capitol complex on January 6 were FBI confidential informants, agents or otherwise, working directly or indirectly with an agency of the United States government? People want to hear this.”

  Of course, as president at the time he was in charge.

  Trump also attacked President Joe Biden, calling him “incompetent,” but also said his party needs to get rid of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who infuriated Trump by admitting that the election was legitimate.

  Trump also has friction with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s polling as the #2 Republican choice for president in 2024 and has made public statements about differing with Trump on handling the pandemic. The former president has attacked Republican politicians, DeSantis among them, who refuse to reveal whether they’ve had a Covid booster shot.

The Russia Mess: Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be threatening to take measures, including moving nuclear weapons closer to US borders, if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization continues to insist on expanding into Ukraine.

  Putting missiles closer could reduce warning times to five minutes, but really, what’s the difference ….

  “Russia’s response will be asymmetrical, fast and tough,” Putin said last April, referring to unconventional military actions that Russia could take if adversaries threaten “our fundamental security interests.”

  The current crisis was touched off by Kremlin demands that would effectively restore Russia’s sphere of influence closer to its Soviet-era lines before NATO expanded into Eastern Europe. They also demand the removal all US nuclear weapons from Europe. And the Russians want an end to all Western troop rotations through former Warsaw Pact states that are now part of NATO.

Foot Fault: Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia yesterday after failing to win a legal exception to the country’s pandemic vaccination rules. Because he had to be kicked out, he could be barred from returning to Australia for the next three years under its visa cancellation laws.  

  Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement “Australians have made many sacrifices during this pandemic, and they rightly expect the result of those sacrifices to be protected.”

  Djokovic had hoped to play in the Australian Open, which starts today, and win it for the 10^th time. But he’s an anti-vaxxer with some woo-woo beliefs, for instance that that positive emotions can purify toxic water or food. He applied for an exemption to Australia’s vaccination rules because he’s already been infected with the coronavirus. 

Failing Grade: University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel was abruptly fired for having a relationship with a female subordinate. The Board of Regents said they had received an anonymous complaint about the affair.

  The Regents letter said, “There can be no question that you were acutely aware that any inappropriate conduct or communication between you and a subordinate would cause substantial harm to the dignity and reputation of the University of Michigan.” That seems a little extreme, but that’s their call.

  Schlissel, who’s married with four grown children, was paid $927,000. 

  This is a somewhat unusual case because most university affairs are between professors and students. In what appears to be an unusual act of bureaucratic cruelty, the university posted 118 pages of emails between the two lovers “in the interest of full disclosure,” thereby telling the world something virtually no one knew.

The Obit Page: Charles McGee, one of the last of the World War II fighter pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen, who flew 409 fighter combat missions in Europe, Korea, and Vietnam, has died at 102.

  The Tuskegee Airmen were a segregated all-black unit that led to integration of the Air Force.

  McGee told The Associated Press in a 1995 interview, “You could say that one of the things we were fighting for was equality. Equality of opportunity. We knew we had the same skills, or better.″  

The Spin Rack: A hostage-taking at a Dallas-area synagogue on Saturday night ended with the rescue of the four people and death of the gunman. The motive appears to have been anger over the imprisonment of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman held in federal prison in Fort Worth for trying to kill US soldiers. — American tennis great Chris Evert, an 18-time Grand Slam champion, announced that she has stage one ovarian cancer. The 67-year-old posted on Twitter that “I feel very lucky that they caught it early and expect positive results from my chemo plan.” — DirectTV announced that it is dropping the right wing One America News. The company gave a vague reason having to do with programming, but AT&T, a majority owner of DirecTV, has been under pressure to dump OAN because it spreads the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. 

Pennywise: Fans of the Dollar Tree discount chain of stores, where everything has sold for a dollar, are outraged because the price has been hiked to $1.25. Dollar Tree’s green and yellow “Everything’s $1” circles have been replaced with $1.25 signs.

  They have yet to re-name it the “Dollar Twenty-Five Tree.”

  The chain is in denial. “We have had a very positive response from the overwhelming majority of our customers around the $1.25 price point” a Dollar Tree spokesperson told CNN in an email.

  Sure, we believe that.