We are on the eve of nuclear destruction, which is very nice to know.

The news that we may all be dead soon leaked out of a Joe Biden fundraiser for big political donors in New York.

I don’t know about you, fellow mushrooms, but if we are, indeed, on the brink of a nuclear winter, I’d kinda like to hear it directly from the president, and not through the grapevine after a political shindig.

But, alas, that’s life with a 79-year-old president who is in some state of cognitive decline. Our president blurts out top secret concerns like an old man complaining about the air conditioning in a movie theater.

This is not a comedy skit. The president actually told Democratic donors – not us unwashed masses – that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not joking” about using nuclear weapons in his war on Ukraine.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon,” he told donors, “since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

The revelation that right now we are living in a situation comparable to the Cuban Missile Crisis put the once-again stunned White House in clean-up mode last weekend.

This time they brought out the big gun in the form of White House national security spokesman John Kirby who told ABC’s “This Week” that President Biden’s remark regarding the “prospect of Armageddon” reflects “the very high stakes that are in play” in the wake of Putin’s nuclear threats.

Wow. If only we were big Biden donors so we could have heard about the coming Armageddon directly from the president.

Damn, there’s gotta be a better way to run a country.

EYES ON NEVADA

Nate Silver of the website FiveThirtyEight raises the prospect that Nevada is a big key to the GOP taking the U.S. Senate.

No big surprise. And, of course as Yogi said, it ain’t over till it’s over. That should be said anytime we’re talking about polls. But, Nate Silver swings a big bat in the poll-watching arena. He writes:

“So, Nevada is usually a pretty reliable state for Democrats, right? Well, not so fast. (Incumbent Sen.) Cortez Masto, up for reelection this year, is narrowly trailing in the polling average against her Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, the state’s former attorney general. Our forecast has this race at about as close to 50/50 odds as it gets.”

Here’s the kicker, according to Silver: “Republicans’ chances of flipping the Senate shoot up to 56 percent if they win Nevada but are just 11 percent if they don’t.”

So, allow me to firmly grasp the obvious: Stand by for a freakin’ barn burner this November.

THE POT VOTE

President Joe Biden is trying to fire up the mariuana smoker vote for the midterms by pardoning folks convicted of certain federal drug crimes.

All good, I guess. In our sometimes over the top war on drugs, we have without doubt criminalized behavior that today would be legal and socially acceptable. Bloomberg reports that when the president walked into a bookstore on the University of Pennsylvania campus with his granddaughter, a voice in the crowd shouted: “Yo Joe, legalize that weed.”

The Associated Press last weekend reported the reality of it all in a story out of Utah.

“While Biden’s executive action will benefit thousands of people by making it easier for them to find housing, get a job or apply to college, it does nothing to help the hundreds of thousands of mostly Black and Hispanic Americans still burdened by state convictions for marijuana-related offenses, not to mention the millions more with other drug offenses on their records.”

WINCE OF THE WEEK

“Let me start off with two words: Made In America” — Joe Biden

ONE MORE THING

– My wife is so boring in bed that even if she murdered me in my sleep police would not consider her a person of interest.

– People doing keto will put mayonnaise on bacon and then sprinkle cheese over it and say: “Finally, I’m taking charge of my health.”

– You might be a Las Vegan if you let your daughter smoke at the dinner table in front of her children.

– A flock of sheep tumbling down a hill is a “lambslide.”

Sorry about “lambslide,” but it tickles me every time I run across it. I’ll work harder next week. Until then avoid soreheads, laugh a little and always question authority.

(“Properly Subversive” is commentary written by Sherman R. Frederick, a Nevada Hall of Fame journalist and co-founder of Battle Born Media, a news organization dedicated to the preservation of community newspapers. You can reach him by email at shermfrederick@ gmail. com.)