Our fishing crew is enjoying a slight break from the water and waves since the processors are full of fish and need a day or two to catch up to the catch, so to speak. After a slow and sketchy start here in Bristol Bay, Alaska, the sockeye salmon have arrived in earnest.

And that’s putting it mildly.

We’ve never had back-to-back days of 30,000-pound catches as we have over the past few days.

You pull the boat up to the net and see tails and heads and you know pretty quickly there will be no rest for the weary until the tide recedes.

Full nets are a sight to behold. And then to have the net fill up behind you just as quick after you’ve picked through is another sight to behold and pretty soon you know you’re going to be round hauling those nets onto the deck, chock full of fish that have to picked, bled and iced.

Believe me, this 66 year-old wonders what I’m doing here when you’re grabbing net and straining with all your old man might with crew to pull clumps of fish, thousands of pounds of fish, over the roller into the boat.

The crew jumps into the fray to pick and stack the net while I get to aim the boat uneasily back toward the river mouth to deliver, waves spilling over the bow, slipping into the stern. All the boats are riding low, full of fish.

What the hell am I doing here? Oh yeah, those fish are my income, my retirement. No 401-K for me. No stocks and bonds, no annuities. No pension from years in the community newspaper business.

I’m one of those bozos without the proper financial planning gene. My retirement is fish.

At least all this activity keeps me from seeing the news. Most of the time.

Innocently I was over in the fish camp crew house to do laundry or get something to eat and I happened past the television, glowing there with the nightly news.

Lo and behold, my favorite reality show president, Mr. Donald V. (for vengeance) Rumpt was blabbing away, saying “The radical left will not destroy our great country. We will stop them.”

Now what, I was thinking. Now what’s the blabbermouth blabbing about.
The Great Divider is obviously ramping up his 2020 campaign themes about the radical left and socialists and a host of other evils that will actually free this country from his reign.

As I wrote last week, I can just see him holed up in the Oval Office after his landslide defeat in November, denying reality with a flag pin on his lapel, golf clubs at the ready and army helmet on, putting golf balls across the carpet toward a “Make America A Laughing Stock” coffee cup.

Seems as though bad people have been tearing down statues of oppression and this law and order fake president is putting his foot down. He’s one tough chicken tough guy, all blab and no substance. He’s so hollow you could hold him up to a light and see right through him.

Yep, I’m trying not to let this guy get to me (he is). I’m trying to live my life free of his baloney.

As a member of NUFA I’ve been banned from acts like peeing on the Rumpt Tower, which I really wanted to do when we were in New York a few years ago. Can’t be mean even with a meanie.

I get it but I’ve now decided that I’ll suspend my NUFA membership for a moment and pee on the Rumpt Tower, ask for forgiveness and hope to be reinstalled in NUFA.

In the meantime, I responded to an email asking me to rate the Rumpt presidency. An Obvious Rumpt campaign site that showed up on my email for some reason. I happily responded. I said, no, he wasn’t doing a good job. He was a boob.

This was the actual question:

Do you approve of President Rumpt’s recent job performance?

Yes. No. Other, please specify.

I said no and then I specified in the space allotted. Thought I could get in a wry comment or two.

He’s a liar and a blabber mouth, I said. A boob. Thank you.

Left my name and email (required) and zip code. I wanted to talk to someone. That’s when the problem began.

The site couldn’t be reached. My response was seen but wasn’t accepted. Saying the president is a boob wasn’t accepted. The site can’t be reached if you leave a wry comment. You can only say nice things.

If you say mean things, however true, they won’t be tabulated. Only good responses!
But now I’ve responded. I’m a mark, a potential donor and voter. A chump.     

The Rumpt campaign only wants to hear from the followers, the believers, the brainwashed. And then it asks those adherents for money to help defeat the radical left and keep a true minority government in power.

I found another Rumpt email site that I thought might get closer to the boob himself and I repeated my claim that he was a boob.

I also said he was a blabbermouth boob who is ruining the country just to elicit a response but none came. I guess my only recourse is to write the boob himself, again, at the White House and get a stupid letter back, again, saying “thank you for your interest in keeping our country great.”

And would I like to donate?

It feels like an answering machine is running the country.