Campaign Diaries 2014

           5/11 As we near the primary, many candidates are standing on Obama’s shoulders, trying to out-conservative each other. Their hench-PACs and C4 committees, buzzing like turbines in the bowels of a great dam, are laying on the dark money in an attempt to criminalize rational thought. If the governing these office seekers will provide is anything like the campaigning they’ve inflicted upon us, we don’t deserve most of them.

Wiley Stinks Assumes the Position

           Now that we have a butler, I interviewed several chefs to ease Ducky Bumps’ culinary burdens. I selected Wiley Stinks as our new gourmet slop slinger.

           Interviewing is messy—irrelevant questions from people who don’t understand the work, posed to those who do. Plus that nonsense about dress-for-success, body language, and poise. And legally sanitized stupidity like, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” or squirrel bait like, “If you were a salad, which part of yourself would you eat first?”!! Since the questions are silly, applicants’ responses are usually contrived. So I invented the walk-and-talk Interview. I don’t micro-scrutinize anybody, and you’ll never hear me ask, “Is there any reason why your criminal convictions would prevent you from doing this work?”!

           Being frugal, I did ask Wiley about water in cooking. He said you could use a paper or a cloth towel, or if needed, a wet/dry vac. I was expecting something about soup, you know, baptizing the gumbo? It was by a similar miscommunication that I glimpsed Wiley’s checkered past.

           To discover his salary needs, I asked as we walked and talked, “Assume the position—“ The words spun no faster through the air than he did, leaping to a leaning position against a nearby car, with his feet planted apart. “What are you doing,” I demanded? He apologized and I started over: “Assume the position is minimum wage minus meals, would that be OK?”

           He nodded, smiling, and proffered his card, which I read aloud: Wiley Stinks—His cooking is great!

Campaign Diaries 2014

          5/08 It is a testament to the plum that is election as a US Senator—the extremes to which candidates will go to puff themselves and smear their competitors. We are observing real down-and-dirty street fighting by the image peddling hopefuls and the scalawags who place attack ads on their behalf. And disconcerting to know that the elected winner will fight just as tenaciously for whoever paid the tab.

Tell Me I’m Wrong

           Listen to “social experts” on combat veteran suicides. In interviews they magically turn into drivel merchants overflowing with haute-speak and silly conjecture. The first thing out of today’s horrible example was the problem of Vets being reluctant to ask for help. The biggest problem was the stigma attached to needing help.

It’s just sad. The big problem is the abandonment of these Vets by the military and the failure of the VA to treat them effectively. I’m sorry, Chuck. The military is constrained by congressional budget issues, and it dishonorably discharges many problem Vets instead of diagnosing their mental issues and getting them help. This cuts costs because they are then denied expensive help to which honorably discharged Vets are entitled (and often don’t get). The VA is short-changed and understaffed and can’t properly treat the Vets needing help.

           Veterans deserve better than wet-eared retail pop psych from the denizens of public media. Last month, no combat deaths in Afghanistan; 700 Vet suicides. Congress and the military are failing by omission and commission to deal with the new realities of combat, and to adequately train soldiers to spot symptoms, and to motivate soldiers to follow up, and to train, motivate, and staff the hierarchy to assess and comprehensively treat causes. And then follow up to make damn sure the treatment is done. We can't just cut people loose.         

          Sure the stigma is part of it—the retail part of it, out in front of a systemic wholesale problem.

Campaign Diaries 2014

           5/06 Imagery, iconic visions of an exceptional America, and lampooner after lampooner assuring us that only he really cares. Parades of others who love the way they care, and know their candidate’s plan will make the world a better place. Wow. If there was any actual substance there, I’d be wetting my pants with excitement. Oh well, at least one thing is clear—the reason why so few people bother to vote.

The Butler Takes A Break

           Bainwarble and I were sitting on the terrace, obtrusively rendering a few choruses of “..I wanna go home with the armadillo, the music of Amarillo and Abilene..” when an apparently annoyed raccoon tipped over the Sanitation Nation outhouse in the alley. You laugh, but an angry forty pound raccoon, using the fence for leverage, and having his way with a hundred and eight pound plastic pooper…well that’s something you just can’t unsmell.

           Bainwarble was upset. He threw a tumbler of good scotch at the beast, and chased his offering with a steamy stream of Welsh word work that I never want to learn. The tumbler bounced off of his camper and rattled to the ground unbroken. (All our stuff is plastic. Fortune smiled on us when we learned that good libations are unspoiled by humble surroundings.) Meanwhile I called the cops for animal control.

           They said they already knew about the problem—the neighbors had called—and then gave me some nonsense about it being 3:30 in the morning and a disturbing time of day even for Gary P. Nunn. I’m sure Ducky Bumps would have told me, but she was sound asleep on the next chaise with a Gloc a few inches from her fingertips, darkening her pretty summer dress.

          I noticed the neighbors gathering by the gate with flashlights, probably concerned about what must have seemed a highly toxic spill. Heartwarming thing, I thought, for a butler who speaks little English to see—neighbors coming together like that.

Campaign Diaries 2014

           5/02 It’s pretty convincing that most of the candidates will adhere to a national agenda prescribed by others. Not so clear, despite the finely spun discourse, how they will actually add value for voters. Less government? What government work will no longer be done? We learned the hard way that just farming it out doesn’t save anything and can cause significant harm. We all remember the Health and Human Services fiasco. Government that shirks is not the answer.