18 April—Sixty-eight years ago today, as the beauteous buxom bottle blonde mother of a schoolmate was driving us captive kids to Hebrew school, we heard over the Fleetwood’s radio that Albert Einstein had died. But Sylvia made us go to the miserable class anyway. She obviously had no respect for the late genius.

So you’ve really got to hand it to Long Island freshman Republican Congressman George Santos. The admitted liar, fraudster, thoroughgoing, and evidently unrepentant con man has announced his intention to run again. George has disgraced himself and has even been effectively disowned by this own self-disgraced party—for their own self-righteous reasons, of course. But he’s got big ones.

(The admitted liar, fraudster, thoroughgoing, and evidently unrepentant con man has announced his intention to run again. Delete “admitted” and whom does that bring to mind? In fact, replace “Congressman George Santos” with “former President Donald Trump” and that whole paragraph is still right on the mark.)

Anyway, best of luck to George. Without a doubt, he’ll have a Herculean time trying to get the Republican nomination and even trying to attend a Republican caucus. But I have confidence in George.

Herculean is a particularly appropriate adjective because one of Hercules’ dozen labors—impossible challenges—to repent killing his wife and kids was to clean out the Augean Stables. (His mother, Hera, drove him to the gruesome murders, by the way.) The clean-up was Herc’s fifth labor. King Augeas had what today would be a factory-farm stable that housed over a thousand cattle. So you can imagine all the bullshit in it. Well, Herc offered to clean it out in just a day and asked for only a tenth of Augie’s cattle as payment. Eminently reasonable in the circumstance.

It was an offer HM Augie couldn’t refuse and of course Herc did it as contracted. How he did it isn’t important, but rerouting two rivers in less than a day without excavators or union labor is pretty damn impressive itself.

No surprise that Augeas reneged, as kings, among others, once could do with impunity (and still can in too many places), but an honest, unbiased, unintimidated judge ruled for Hercules.

But when Herc got home, his own king (and cousin and—long story) Eurystheus—who had pretty well forced the dozen labors on him in the first place—decided that because he had used rivers to wash out the stables and accepted payment, the magnificent mammoth muck-out didn’t count toward his penance. But Hercules won in the end anyway.

(If you’re wondering how Hercules was supposed to clean the Augean Stable, join the club. But evidently a Herculean pissing contest was out of the question.)

So how is Hercules relevant to George (and Donald)? Of course, there’s all the bullshit. Then, getting rid of it (draining the swamp?), which itself is bullshit. Then, trusting anyone with any power, including your own mother. Then, it’s not what you do but whom you know. Then, politics as usual. And last, you don’t need guns to kill . . .