OK, I have to be fair here. Senator Blumenthal has smelled gunpowder before a few weeks ago. But I’m not sure that our war vets sitting in wheelchairs, adjusting prosthetic limbs, and walking the floors at night would put gunsmoke from basic training and gunsmoke from a firefight in the same category. Just saying.

Of course, Dick might want to count the gunsmoke wafting above D.C. and other major cities, but I think his Secret Service detail won’t let him get anywhere near enough to smell it; so, that smoke doesn’t count in anyone’s book. Dick apparently leaves negotiating through the haze up to the moms and dads trying to raise children between the gunshots. It seems as if that’s about the only time his party is willing to keep their noses out and leave the decision making up to the parents.

So, why do I say that Dick has finally smelled gunsmoke? Because after getting about five military deferments between 1965 and 1970 and spending six whole months at Parris Island (oh the suffering - it’s so hot there in the summer!) and six years in the reserves (that can screw up some weekend fun), he finally got to smell that smell. How? By visiting a refugee reception center near the border of Poland and Ukraine and speaking to women and children fleeing for their lives. Gunsmoke is a distinctive scent that clings to hands, hair, and clothes, so Dick must have smelled it on the terrified, hungry women and children when he sidled up for photo ops.

I said that I was going to be fair, so I admit that it can be somewhat dangerous to be near the border during a war. To give him his due, Blumenthal arrived just after Putin’s guys fired rockets into western Ukraine. The tremors could be felt in Poland, authorities told him, and he made sure to tell everyone who would listen. So, I guess he has now kinda/sorta been under rocket attack. That guy lives on the wild side.