Hummingbirds bathing…

• I get Trump's plan now. His wall will get built and Mexico will pay for it. That's because they'll erect it to keep American Nazis out.

So…Donald Trump finally spoke out against White Supremacists this morning. I read the text of it online and then watched him delivering those words. They were more impressive in print than they were coming out of his mouth because he sure didn't look like he wanted to say those words and they were clearly not his. I'd have been a lot more impressed if he'd said them on Saturday and even more impressed if I thought he meant them.

I wonder how much difference any of this makes. The people who didn't like him before don't like him now. The people who liked him before are probably fine with whatever he says but disappointed that he didn't handle it better. Too many of them didn't know what to say when their Trump-bashing acquaintances said, "So how do you feel about backing a president who's spent more time attacking Rosie O'Donnell than the Hitler Youth Corps?" The ones who side with the so-called Neo-Nazis probably all believe he had to say what he said today for political reasons but he's still on their side.

We forgive our leaders a certain amount of that because while we want them to side with us on everything, we also want them to get things done and to grant us items on our wishlist. It's not a direct analogy but a lot of us were frustrated that Barack Obama wouldn't come out forcefully for Gay Marriage until, finally, he did. We understood that, as the saying goes, "Politics is the art of the Possible," and that leaders sometimes need to sneak up on these issues to be effective for them.

I still doubt Donald Trump is a racist in the classic sense. I don't think he divides the world into White and Non-White. I think he divides it into Pro-Trump and Not-Pro-Trump. The man believes in wealth and winning and he doesn't care how he makes the money and how — or even what — he wins.

What a fine actor that man was…great in everything he ever did. I'm talking about Joe Bologna, who has left us at the age of 82. I wish I'd met him and that I had a great anecdote about him. Well, I do have a story about him. He just isn't really in it but I'll tell it anyway…

In 2015, I had my right knee replaced. I spent a few days in the hospital and then they moved me to what they call a Skilled Nursing Facility for a few more days. I was wheeled into a room and in this place, they put each patients' name on his or her door. The name of the patient who had just vacated that room a few hours before was still there. It was Joseph Bologna. So for the first day or so, I was laying there in the bed, feeling a great urge to go do the Boss Hijack sketch.

The facility's Social Director came around…a nice lady whose job involved arranging events, mostly in the dining room, to entertain the patients. One source of such events was that she interviewed each patient who was admitted and find out what they did. If it seemed like it would be of interest to other patients, she'd ask them to give a talk some evening and others could come hear them. I told her what I did and she was interested but since I was only going to be in the place for two or three more days, it wouldn't be possible for me to give one of those lectures.

I asked her if she prevailed on the man who was previously in the bed I was occupying. She said, "He was an actor, he told me — but he was evasive. He wouldn't tell me what he had done. I meant to go Google him and find out but I never got around to it before he was discharged. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay with us. You might want to join us for movie night. Actually, every night is movie night here. Every evening at 7 PM, we run a movie in the dining room."

"What do you have for tonight?" I asked.

She said, "I forget. I'll have to go look it up…but I can tell you what we ran last night. Last night, we showed My Favorite Year!"

Sorry that's as close as I can come to a Joe Bologna anecdote. I wish I'd met him because then I might have a much better one and at least, I could have told him how I've always admired his work.

I posted earlier that I expected Alex Jones would denounce the whole tragedy in Charlottesville a "false flag" operation that was set up to make his people look bad. And sure enough, he has. I also expected people to start trashing the victim, Heather Heyer. And sure enough, some sites have. So many people these days are incapable of accepting bad news for what it is.

And as usual, we have lots of calls for "unity" and to "bring us together" from folks whose idea of unity is that the other side surrenders to theirs while they don't give an inch or admit having done anything wrong. This is why we can't have nice things.

I'm going to try to stop thinking about all this for the rest of the day. You might like to see if you can do that.

Erick-Woods Erickson is a religious Conservative talk show host who is really, really disappointed in Donald J. Trump. I do not for a minute buy his premise that "the social justice warrior alt-left and the white supremacist alt-right [are] two sides of the same coin" but I nod in agreement to much else that he says. To just cite one huge difference, the alt-left is smaller, far less prone to encourage violence, and it's all about helping the poor and downtrodden. The alt-right is about about helping themselves and way too often about guns and threats.

It's kinda nice that David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, is so outspoken about how his crowd is sure Donald Trump is on their team. None of us who dislike Trump will do him as much damage.

Here, from Julia Azari, is a history of presidential responses to racial violence. It isn't that impressive a history but Trump still manages to look bad in comparison to his predecessors.

Former White House communications director (for about twenty minutes) Anthony Scaramucci on Sunday says Trump should have been "much harsher" speaking out against white supremacists. Having "The Mooch" say you should have been much harsher is like Hannibal Lecter telling you to grab a snack. Scaramucci is supposed to guest with Stephen Colbert tomorrow night. Wonder if they'll mention Donald.

Hey, this'll get your mind off Nazis for a while. The other day in Colton, which is a city in California, there was a minor traffic accident involving a black Mercedes. The driver of that Mercedes decided to flee the scene and a motorcyclist who witnessed the whole thing decided to give chase. The biker, who calls himself "Dick Danger," had a body camera on and he followed the Mercedes for some 57 miles until the law could take care of the guy. Here's the video…

So this morning, you have all these headlines saying things like "Trump steadfastly refuses to condemn White Supremacists." I have a feeling he will. I have a feeling that he has advisors working to come up with some stronger but equally ambiguous language for a statement that will simultaneously spank the Nazis while winking to them, "Hey, I have to do this to stay in power where I can do you guys some good."

His supporters have to be getting weary of this have-it-both-ways governing. He was going to quickly institute a health care system that would give everyone better coverage for less money but he was also fully behind the Republican bills that would have done the opposite. He was even behind the one he called "mean." They're not going to leave him because they have nowhere else to go but they've got to be wondering what he stands for except the glory and bank account of Donald Trump.

Me? I don't think he ever stood for anything but that. I do have friends who back him, though with increasing discomfort. I've been telling them, "He's not on your side. He is only emotionally capable of being on his side."

So I'm waiting for Trump's faux condemnation of that which so many are insisting he condemn. And I'm waiting for Alex Jones or someone like him to start advancing the theory that no one was injured or died in Charlottesville. It was all a "false flag" operation to make Nazis look bad. And have we had the smearing yet of Heather Heyer, the young woman who was killed? We will.

Hey, at least it's getting our minds off North Korea.

• The people who have to fill Trump's twice-daily "folder of praise" have it easy this morning. They just have to print out Nazi chat sites.

If you're recording tonight's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, you might want to pad the running time a bit. The show just announced on Twitter that it will run five minutes longer than usual. Not all TiVos or DVRs will get the message.

Here's a clip from The Dinah Shore Chevy Show for 1/13/1957. Dinah and her guest Art Carney wander over to the St. James Theater where the Broadway show Li'l Abner was then running. Well, actually, they wander onto a set on her stage that was supposed to pass for backstage at the St. James but that doesn't matter. What matters is that Stubby Kaye is there and they perform "Jubilation T. Cornpone" from Abner, which had then been running for about two months…

And as Matt Yglesias just pointed out on Twitter, there are state legislators who want to make it legal to run down protestors if you can convince someone it was an accident.

Just reading about the violence in Charlottesville and, like any decent and sane person, I'm horrified. Trump's tweet about it called for unity (behind him, no doubt) and was so vague that it sounds like he thought, "Hmm…how can I condemn this without losing the support of white nationalists?" Some people on the 'net aren't altogether clear who he believes are the victims and who are the victimizers.

He used to get hysterical that Obama wouldn't identify certain terrorists as "Radical Islamic Muslims." Let's see how he describes the kind of person who would try to kill people like this. Betcha he focuses on the "one lone nut" aspect of it, saying darn near nothing to upset the kind of beings who smiled at the news, wish there would be more of it and, like David Duke, see the Trump presidency as a giant step towards white people taking "their" country back.

And just so we're clear: I don't think Trump is a racist. If anything, I think he discriminates against everyone, white or black, who isn't working to the betterment of Donald Trump. The problem is that he won't say or do anything to lose the people who turn out to cheer him.

I just got an e-mail from Cirque Du Soleil telling me that one of their shows, Luzia, will be in Los Angeles in December and telling me that "pre-sale tickets are now available." Apparently, these are tickets that are now on sale before tickets are on sale. The performers in the show perform incredible acrobatics and so do the copy writers.

So I'm wondering if there were pre-pre-sale tickets on sale before the pre-sale tickets. Those would be tickets that were on sale before the tickets that were on sale before the tickets were on sale. And knowing them, they might even have had pre-pre-pre-sale tickets…and at this rate, by the time the tickets go on sale, there won't be any seats left.

From 1949: It's Herbi Hardt and His Jesters with the timeless song, "16 Old Ladies Locked In The Lavatory." You all know the words so sing along!