Trump Appoints Santa Barbarans to Cabinet

MEA CULPA BLUES: Every now and then, I screw up some basic fact and get it flat out wrong. Like last week, for example, when I took the Santa Barbara City Council to task for being a day late and dollar short in finally enacting a lawn watering ban. My report was accurate as far it went, but I opted to take it further, erroneously writing that the ban also included any non-hand-held watering of all outdoor landscaping, such as trees, bushes, and assorted shrubbery. Unlike lawns, trees cannot really be replaced, which is why city arborists are performing mouth-to-mouth on anything with roots in the ground and crackly branches bigger than a five-gallon specimen. I also stated that the city had increased its conservation target from 25 to 40 percent. The actual increase will be from 35 percent to 40 percent. For all six people who rely upon on information derived from a column written under a transgender, trans-species pseudonym to guide their irrigation habits, I heartily apologize. Accuracy matters. Even if the column’s persona is utterly concocted, the facts contained herein are absolutely real, or they absolutely try to be.

Oh, and I seem to have gotten it wrong about there being no way Donald Trump could ever get elected president. Sorry about that one. Hope none of you set the timers of your drip irrigation system based on my assurances to the contrary.

I have to hedge this apology with the qualifier “seem” because the Electoral College has until Monday to proclaim Trump emperor even though he still trails Hillary Clinton by about 2.8 million votes. Only in America would this not matter, but if it were dollars instead of votes, we’d be talking real money. Admittedly, the chances of an Electoral College revolt is less likely than the Virgin of Guadalupe making a repeat appearance just for me, but at last count, 40 electors have demanded access to intelligence reports on how the Russian government hacked the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign guru John Podesta, thus precipitating the tsunami of timed releases by Wikileaks. While there was no smoking gun, per se, there was plenty to frazzle and distract the Clinton campaign. But that’s not really the point; the point is that Trump’s global man crush Vlad “The Impaler” Putin sought to exert a little double-triple-reverse body-English mojo on our sacrosanct election results. In an allegedly unipolar world, only the United States is allowed to do such things. Once Trump ascends the throne of the Oval Office, we will all be living in a bipolar world and no amount of Abilify can take the edge off that fact.