The Fiscal Cliff, and How Weed Could Help Our Assault Rifle Worries

Life is full of surprises, and yet ... not so much when it comes to the news. Y2K, for instance. How long was that potential catastrophe discussed and speculated on before it turned out to be the obvious fizzle it turned out to be? Contrary, at times belligerent sort that I am, I waited until New Year's Day, 2000, before I went out to fill my tank with gas, to get cash from the ATM. There was no one at either the gas station or the bank drive-through. At the grocery store, where, to be even more perverse, I went to buy a single bottle of water, there were people—this is true—trying to return large previously purchased flats of bottled water. I didn't stop by the rental store, but I understand there was a similar line of people returning generators it turned out they wouldn't need.

The stock market wouldn't crater until March of that year, and its cratering would have nothing to do with Y2K. If anything, the crash following the parabolic rise in tech stocks the previous year was put off by the spending put toward the correcting of systems that might otherwise have been affected by Y2K, but weren't, because it was a problem that needed addressing, for the sake of profits, and was thus addressed.

Similarly, and despite the news, the endless coverage and punditry, the presidential election was over as soon as it became clear that Mitt Romney was going to be the Republican presidential nominee. Anyone with half a brain (not just me and Nate Silver) should have been able to figure that out, and yet, if you listened to the news, or got scared, as I did, watching Obama all but throw the first debate (probably high as a kite, at altitude, on that close-to-being-legal-before-it-became-legal weed that we now have in this state—notice we haven't had anyone shot up by crazy motherfuckers wielding assault rifles with big-assed magazines since; coincidence? I don't think so), you ended up getting nervous over nothing, convincing yourself that the obvious wasn't so obvious.

And now comes that dreaded Bernanke creation, The Fiscal Cliff.

As I write this, the awful clock is ticking. Frankly, I'm so frightened I could just poop my pants.

Count me among the camp (Krugman, Buffett, Howard Dean, not to mention a long list of true small government types) that thinks—hopes—we go over.

Unlike many in that camp, however, I thought the original "temporary" tax cuts were a very bad idea—all of them, including the ones for the middle-class. It seemed to me obvious at the time that we would need some reserves (now that we had finally balanced our budget after Reagan and his ilk had taken the debt to levels previously unheard of) ahead of retiring that big demographic of Baby-Boomers that had done so much to expand our growing consumer economy, a process, their transitioning from taxpayers and spenders to tax-takers and hobbyists, that would begin more or less in earnest in 2011.

But no. Instead we cut taxes, got into two fruitless wars, made sure military contractors and the VA would be busy for years to come, while also throwing in an unfunded drug plan for seniors that by law disallowed the government that was paying for it to negotiate lower prices on the drugs, as, say, the government of Canada does for its citizenry, to keep Big Pharma's coffers flush, and to further assure that medications in the United States are not only the best (they say), but the most expensive in the world.

That's what we did instead of shoring up our finances, ahead of everything blowing up again in 2008.

As I predicted in one of my blogs back then, when the whole house of cards was coming down, and, during an election year, we were being asked to free up nearly a trillion dollars, right away, to save some banks and insurance companies and possibly even Western Civilization as we knew it, from ruin, after highly-levered risks went bad, risks that likely wouldn't have been taken had the principal players not felt with reasonable certainty that American taxes would be there (over a trillion dollars, ultimately) to cushion the brutal free market blow if things went the other way of where they needed to, that arguments would be made before long that we simply couldn't afford our "entitlements"anymore, and that we would have to do something: cut them, limit them, end them, or else we'd be screwed.

The fact that many (though not all) of those who say we must do something about "entitlements" don't also say we should do something about military spending, or the gap between rich and poor brought on largely by the tax policies of the last thirty years, tells you that the budget battle we hear about endlessly on the news has more to do with whose people get the tax dollars and whose don't than it does with addressing the real fiscal problems we and most other western nations—particularly the ones who trusted the banking system to make their lives richer—face at the moment.

To wit: we are currently spending roughly 1.9 dollars for every dollar we take in. Thus, to merely balance the budget, and hold the burgeoning debt where it is, excepting the interest on it (currently held artificially low by our Federal Reserve's buying of Treasury Bonds), we would have to raise tax revenue by roughly 90%. This, as many have pointed out, would crush the economy, and with it tax receipts.

By contrast, we could cut spending by half. To give you an idea what that would look like, if we cut the entire military budget—all of it: the VA, the armed forces, contractor cash, the whole shebang—it wouldn't be enough.

Even a combination of the two: cut spending by 25%, and raise taxes by 45%, would put a strain on our economy the likes of which would make the Great Depression look like a slow afternoon at the deli, if for no other reason—and there would be other reasons, plenty of them—than the general run of human being was much less dependent on The System in those days. Our current anemic 2% growth, helped along by zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), as well as an unprecedented rise in the money supply thanks to our backstop of last resort, the Federal Reserve (QE1, QE2, QE3 ... ) would get squeezed even more, thus producing fewer tax receipts, a deep recession if not a full-on, intractable depression.

Moreover, if we cut "entitlements" across the board, many of those people would have less money to spend, in our economy that is currently 70% driven by consumer spending. If we cut military spending, the one manufacturing base that is still undeniably strong, uniquely American—weapons making—will suffer; and those who make their living at Lockheed or someplace similar will have to do with less.

Soldiers, many of whom ended up becoming soldiers because they couldn't find suitable work in the venerable private sector, would suddenly be doing with less money and medical benefits, with less VA care to follow.

Anyone with means who had old relatives, poor relatives, disabled relatives, would be stuck caring for them, just like the good old days, when only the rich traveled and went to restaurants, got their nails done and had all kinds of servants.

Many of the outposts of our economy that we now take for granted, that have been made possible, and broadly available, due in part to progressive taxation and the oft-disparaged spreading of the wealth, would suffer greatly, or simply disappear.

Many of us might imagine that would be a good thing; I don't see how.

So what do we do? Is there any way out? Realistically, no, there isn't. Certainly not if we limit our tools to taxation and spending cuts. Which is why the current political debate, that presupposes a realistic fiscal solution short of radically devaluing the currency, is absurd. What we are arguing about now is over who keeps what, not over what gets fixed and when.

One could argue—I would—that the real fiscal cliff, the point of no return, happened with the temporary tax cuts that squandered our surplus and are now set to expire, short of some last minute gimmick, in a few hours, and was further sealed by our invasion of Iraq, and our subsequent dithering about in Afghanistan. Whatever we do now is going to involve printing money, lots of it, and probably for a long time. Normally, were we not the world's de facto reserve currency, and Europe and Japan weren't in worse shape than us, this would lead to a flight from our debt, and thus our currency, by "vigilante" bondholders, causing interest rates to rise ... hyperinflation, followed by a long depression. But Europe and Japan are in worse shape than us. The dollar is still the world's reserve currency—the least dirty of all the dirty shirts, as Bill Gross of PIMCO would say—and besides, it happened to Germany in the early twenties, and look where, after two losses in two world wars, they are now? And Argentina—hyperinflation is to Argentina what guns are to the United States: a kind of unique craziness—and do people still tango in Buenos Aires? Yes they do.

So what's all the fuss? Why, after twenty first-graders were slaughtered in a classroom by the mentally challenged son of a survivalist mother who taught him to shoot, with an M-16 with a magazine that held thirty shells (the number one new buyer of guns: women), that apparently didn't jam, as a similar, possibly foreign-made, model did for our local well-armed lunatic down in Aurora in July, isn't gun control among the top four things Barack Obama is going to focus on during the first year of his new administration?

Obviously ... it's because, in this country, it would be, in the president's estimation, a waste of time. Because the people of the country, this country—most of them, it seems—just aren't that outraged. Not like they'd be if they had to pay more in taxes.

So here's my idea for dealing with both taxes and guns: What if, for starters, we get Humbolt County in California to go straight, and tax them. Then, before long, legalize weed everywhere! (Seriously, isn't it about goddamned time those potheads started giving back to their country instead of to the Mexican and Columbian cartels?)

And to boost sales, and thus boost our still anemic economy, and tax revenue with it, what if we decided to make it MANDATORY that anyone who owned an assault rifle, regardless what size the magazine(s), had to be stoned AT ALL TIMES.

That's right. All fucking day. If he wanted to own an assault rifle and keep it in his house. You buy the gun, in lieu of a background check, you'd have to sign a weed agreement.

We could come up with a simple blood test (that, think about it, would employ more lab techs, scientists, couriers) that could measure the amount of THC in the blood, and if that person who owned the weapon fell below that level, he'd have to hand over his assault rifle (the process of which could be interesting, not to mention newsworthy—exciting—but never mind).

Frankly, I'd be in favor of having the same law apply to owners of, say, handguns, but ... I'd be willing, in the spirit of democracy and all its inherent messiness, to start small. With assault rifles. That way we keep certain elements good and mellow without pinching the still thriving arms industry in this country, which, as noted, continues to struggle with anemic economic growth despite unprecedented boosts and supports. That and we'd be growing a new economic engine: the weed industry. Growing it, and taxing it. It might not seem brilliant at first, maybe even a little cock-eyed, I'll admit, but it beats the trouble of having to decide what sort of sidearm the music teacher is going to carry come next fall. AND we wouldn't have to raise taxes too terribly much on the rich, and upset them, and have them move to some other country like a certain French actor whose name I can't spell.

OR take away too much from  old people, poor people, disabled people, soldiers, military contractors, space explorers, the home-ownership industry ... the list goes on; in short, lots of people who might otherwise be buying something from you, rather than wanting to stay for free in your basement.

Something to keep in mind as we edge into the new year, and decide which things, which sorts of people, we most want to complain about.

Until then, until we get a law passed, if you got guns laying around the house, especially those big goddamned ones that shoot thirty rounds faster than you can say Jack Splatt, stay mellow. Get down to your corner, maybe it's the former small-town hardware store, and talk to your man. Head to the Weed Store. Set a good example. For the welfare of the country. For our young people. Our babies.

Lincoln

I saw the movie yesterday with my soon to be eleven-year-old and his friend, having heard that the beginning was a little violent, Janusz Kaminsky, the same cinematographer as shot Saving Private Ryan, having shot this one in similar grays (though without the blood, it turns out), that James Spader, who is great in the film, and bit more portly than when we last saw him, at one point remarks as the president, near the climax, pops in on him and his fellow Falstaffian arm-twisting operatives, in their ramshackle pre-Carville/Rove War Room: "Well I'll be fucked," he says, standing up to shake the president's hand.

But the opening battle scene is less violent than I expected given the times, and when the rhetoric of the film turns coarse, it is more often than not a coarseness as linguistically elegant as it is amusing and sharp, the best examples of which, not surprisingly, come from Tommy Lee Jones, who plays Senator Thaddeus Stevens, whose motivation to see the 13th Amendment to the Constitution passed is underscored by a scene later on, in the movie's denouement, with (to leave you wondering) a long-time cast member from "Law and Order."

Having worried the movie, with its PG-13 rating, might be too violent in its battle scenes, I was now worried that it wouldn't be violent enough, that linguistic elegance wasn't enough to overcome the lack of cool special effects and young hotties, that the children, thus, might get bored.

But they were never bored.

In fact they were more entertained by Lincoln's cleverly measured stories than many of his staff (one close to my heart, and that my son seemed to get especially well, involved Lincoln's remarking that he really ought to be more concise, yet he often found that when he got going he became lazy and couldn't stop himself); they laughed harder than most at the many mellifluous zingers. Which is to say that for two and a half hours these children of YouTube and "Gangnam Style" were entertained by a smart, surprisingly witty and trenchant movie driven almost entirely by stylized dialogue unfamiliar to their ears, around an argument that by now—let us be thankful—must seem to them preposterous.

I left the theater feeling not only exalted by the movie but by the hope that our children's sensibilities remain not entirely corrupted, this despite my soon to be eleven-year-old's remarking, as we walked out the theater, that it might have been cooler if they'd actually shown Lincoln getting shot (this, in all fairness, after he had nudged me to take off my cap, as he himself had, solemn, reverent soul that he is, when we learned of Lincoln's assassination late in the movie, in a coda that Anthony Lane, in The New Yorker, insisted was unnecessary to the otherwise tight construction of the plot, but nonetheless).

All to say, before Nick Silver tells you with diagrams and odds and various models, Lincoln will run away with this year's Best Picture Oscar, and quite a few more, come Academy Award time, not because it is so obviously the best movie of the year but because it is the kind of smart, crowd-pleasing movie the Academy hasn't had to consider in a while, and is eager to, for the sake of the public if nothing else, and it will win, big, and deservingly so.

Daniel Day-Lewis—can one say enough about this actor's gifts? Are we to once more pity Joaquin Phoenix for showing up with a brilliant performance—in The Master, this time, in Ring of Fire last—that unfortunately falls short of the best—to Philip Seymour Hoffman's last time (in Capote), Day-Lewis's this time? Or will the Academy, not wanting to drive Phoenix over the bend a second time, give Phoenix the nod?

Don't count on it. Daniel Day-Lewis inhabits Lincoln down to the shrug and understated syllable. None of which any of us, for comparison's sake, ever saw or heard in the original man; yet we get from Day-Lewis something that feels true, even as it isn't obvious, even as it surprises—the slouch, the man who doesn't take over the room with his prescence, but rather, can actually disappear into it—and is utterly contrary to any contemporary notion of greatness.

Like Lincoln, one could say.

A film with all manner of good support, by Tommy Lee Jones, James Spader, and others—including Sally Field as Lincoln's much beset wife Mary, whose connubial quarreling fit with the president I found especially moving, as it reminded me in its timbre, if not detail, of my wife and me when we get going. And also sets up the turn of heartbreak we feel at the end, if perhaps less than we should, in a coda that Lane, in his review, felt was dispensible (rather than over-keyed, in a way typical of Spielberg).

Friends of the Denver Center Theater will keep an eye open for both John Hutton (Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts) and Jamie Horton (New York Congressman Giles Stuart), the former being the more obvious on the screen.

Finally, let us not forget Tony Kushner, who wrote the great two-part play, Angels in America, before writing the screenplay for Spielberg's movie—for which he, too, will win an Academy Award.

A focused, fascinating movie destined to run away with awards come award time. One can already imagine our current president, supposedly a great admirer of Lincoln, watching it over and over in the White House Screening Room, as he and Congress finagle their way, less mellifluously, toward the Fiscal Cliff we're told is coming.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Now that the presidential election is over—having turned out pretty much exactly as I predicted it would back in January—we move on now to what Ben Bernanke sometime back referred to as "The Fiscal Cliff," an unpleasantness up ahead that is currently being offset by a scandal no one quite understands. At least they don't understand why what has ostensibly happened is the occasion for a scandal. Anyway, it's not nearly as exciting as Sandy. The Fiscal Cliff should be exciting enough, trust me, but it isn't, because hardly anyone understands just exactly what it entails.

Unlike a guy banging someone who isn't his wife. Still, it's not like he killed his wife and put her body in the freezer and then screwed the mistress, the biographer, in this case, on top the freezer, in front of security cameras he'd installed himself but, in his lust, forgot about.

Now, to me, that would be a better set up for a good scandal, especially one involving a CIA Director. Certainly better than what we have.

Let me just say at the outset that I—like many, apparently—couldn't care less who former 4-Star General and CIA Director David Petraeus is fucking—or did fuck, or even who he plans to fuck down the line once the smoke clears. For my money, he was the best military mind going at a time when our civilian leaders, many of whom ought to be up on charges for war crimes, had got us into two stunningly ill-advised conflicts. That he got us out of the stupider of two in a way that allows the delusional to imagine we actually won something in that ten-year fiasco—I'm speaking of Iraq—deserves as much praise as any general is likely to deserve. He literally wrote the book on counter-revolutionary tactics, and had our brilliant minds in Washington listened to him a little more, a little sooner, things might have gone better. Possibly. Or we could have just stayed out of the place altogether and maybe got out of Afghanistan a lot sooner ...

I know. Spilt milk. Money and lives. Get over it already.

Anyway, Petraeus is getting thrown to the dogs because he had an affair with his biographer, an affair he rather quickly admitted to, rather than, say, dragging out the situation endlessly in the way that, say, Lance Armstrong did. Perhaps it isn't the right point of view to have, but I find ambitious, cheating, win-at-all-costs, lying motherfuckers like Armstrong to be particularly risible, if for no other reason than they lie to the bitter end as though that game, too, is a contest to be won at all costs. I know all about what he did for people with cancer, the bracelets, the attention, and that was a big reason no one could touch him all these years—while his former teammates, and others, other cheaters, had their lives ruined. But the way I look at it, my son got better because of good medicine and good doctors and nurses, and possibly because he got a lot of love while he was dealing with it all, and because he was fortunate.

It didn't have anything to do with Lance Armstrong and his ego.

So fuck Lance Armstrong and the seedy culture of doping he perhaps more than anyone else helped to create and feed in cycling.

As to Petraeus, as best I can tell, he got in with a bad crowd. Tampa socialites. Some would say that when you're the most famous military officer of the century thus far, and your wife looks like the head librarian in a small town and your biographer looks like a thirty-something chick with a thong collection doing fitness videos on TV at two in morning, something is bound to happen. But I'm not that harsh. I would simply say, to paraphrase John Donne, that our military and intelligence services are the less for having a man like Petraeus gone from them.

But we're a country that has a habit of dispatching real talent for trivial sins.

Not that cheating on your wife with your biographer is trivial. But, in my estimation, it doesn't rank with killing and maiming tens of thousands in two fruitless wars.

Still, it's all how you handle your mistakes, I suppose. And a picture tells a thousand words. And I saw a picture of Petraeus and the biographer on Bloomberg this morning while I was having my oatmeal, and, well, I don't know how else to put it other than to say he looked like a guy who'd just gotten a blow job and wasn't used it and thus had that funny grin on his face, and I thought, A real weasal would have covered that up better. A first-rate lying son of a bitch would have looked a little more earnest, more professional, as they say, and less like a teen-ager after his or her first piece of ass.

The media, of course, is used to dealing with the game faces of weasals and cheats and so what are they to do with a CIA Director who just comes out and admits to something—resigns his post!—after a few emails get exposed? A brilliant general who screwed up and then, when caught, owns up to it. WTF?

It's a mystery we're likely to hear about for a few more weeks at least. As we dance around the cliff.

More on that another time.

The Next Novel ...

Working title: Term Life

On the night before his sixty-first birthday, Corson Graves sat down at his desk and counted his money—gold coins; other than the equity in his house and the signed 1^st editions in the locked glass case to the right of his desk, it was all in gold now—and when he was done, concluded, as he had the previous night, and the one before that one, that if he wasn’t dead in three years he was fucked.

With Two Weeks to Go ...

As many of you know, I predicted back in January that Mitt Romney would be the nominee for the Republicans, and that he would get beat—trounced, I believe I said—on Election Day, now only two weeks away.

Alas, there are always factors we can't account for when we go out on a limb. One of the factors I hadn't counted on (and that no one else had counted on so far as I know) was that Barack Obama would throw the first debate ...

And that Romney, of all people, would show finesse, and actually appear to care about that 47% of the population that was left strangely unmentioned by the president. And that, moreover, Romney had every intention of keeping not just these freeloaders but his own freeloaders—military contractors, Big Pharma, insurance companies, private equity types, hedge funders—everyone, pretty much, but PBS and Big Bird, flush with taxpayer dollars, this while lowering the revenues from which these payments come.

If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought he had a sensible plan to clean up the spectacular mess Obama inherited and have our economy cranking again like it was after we'd won the Second World War. Back when we had industrial power second to none, and the world, in rubble, mostly, needed it, badly. Before we were importing more than we were exporting, and the Dollar began giving way to the Chinese Yuan—at least it would, or should, if the Chinese weren't "cheating."

Back then, after the war, we had a deficit relative to GDP that was larger than now, if just barely, and yet the circumstances, as anyone, especially Mitt Romney, ought to know, were quite a lot different. Radically different. We'd emerged from a depression as a country of savers. The Defense Department was still called the War Department, and amid the crisis of war, we'd been forced to ration rather than told to shop.

Why do I mention this? Because no one in his right mind would suggest rationing to support a war or anything else these days. Not if he wanted to get elected president. Not even if you're a supposed born again fiscal conservative running on a ticket purporting to swing a meat axe at the deficit.

Thus, I hadn't counted on Moderate Mitt, Conservative Mitt, Equivocal Mitt (who was for so much before he was against so much, only to be for most of it all over again), Whatever Mitt, to so enamor "the base" by promising even more, with less revenue, than his challenger.

But no. Not only were we going to get our Cold War military back, but the farmers and Big Ag would keep getting their subsidies. Patients and bilkers alike would keep getting their full share of Medicare. And all the cost savings in Obamacare/Romneycare—eliminated (saving, once you start it, is practically as bad as rationing, and means less money going to someone who might otherwise vote for you), and yet we'd get to keep the nice parts—for, say, those with pre-existing conditions. Big bills mean big money, for someone who might vote for you. We're a country where a lot of folks make good bank on the backs of the sick, and what lunatic running for office would want to change that?

Aside from a little trimming in "discretionary" spending, we'd get to keep all the stuff paid for by the supposedly wild spending he'd been railing against for months AND we'd get a tax cut! After which, in four short years, he'd balance the budget just like Reagan and Dubya did.

Or did they quadruple and more or less double the debt, respectively?

But has it mattered, really? Dick Cheney—and what fiscal conservative other than Ron Paul doesn't love Dick Cheney?—said Reagan proved that it didn't matter. So if it doesn't matter, what's everyone worried about? And wouldn't it be nice to have everything and more, and pay less for it?

If you watched that first debate, and took Mitt seriously, that was pretty much Mitt's plan.

I hadn't counted on it ... Mitt running, at the last minute, as a spendthrift. As a guy that not only the rich could count on for charity from the taxpayers, but the old, the poor, the sick, the 47%, everyone—everyone!—would keep getting and then some, if we just voted for the conservative guy. For Mitt.

And here's another thing. I hadn't counted on a significant portion of women not thinking through the implications of having Roe versus Wade overturned, of having abortion only legal in cases of rape and incest and the health of the mother, which seems so reasonable just as long as you don't think about it at all. I hadn't counted on women, a significant number of them, apparently, not caring about what two guys named Mitt and Paul had in mind with regard to their right to make their own decisions about what happens inside their bodies and not have to stand and make their case in front of a tribunal just so they could terminate a pregnancy if they happened to get impregnated by, say, an uncle or a rapist.

I thought: if just all the women who can vote in this country said, "Are you out of your fucking mind?" and voted for the other guy, while all the men who supposedly want to take rights away from women voted for the guy who wanted to take rights away from women, the other guy—not Romney—would still win, because women have the numbers.

At this point in our history, I figured that was a pretty safe bet, that at least a strong majority would vote for the other guy, and yet ... we'll have to see.

I had counted on even the dumbest fool on the planet understanding that neither candidate is going to balance the budget in the next four years. Not even close. I had counted on most people, particularly the ones getting older, with little in the way of personal savings, not again buying into the tax-cutting to a balanced budget and more for everyone bullshit.

I used to be certain. I'm not anymore. You might say I have a bad feeling ...

Still, here's my prediction: Obama wins in a squeaker (that should have been a blow-out, but everyone loves a game 7, which I, of course, didn't count on), on the kind of strong end-game/ground-game/door-to-door fighting and all out nastiness that got Bush re-elected in 2004. It's a dirty business, for a thankless job. There will be those ironies and more for the pundits and all the rest of us to talk about as we run up our cards trying again to spend our economy into health during the holiday season.

Or ... maybe Carville was right, and Obama, for one night in Denver, saw his way out of his predicament but couldn't quite bring himself to follow through.

The writer, once again, losing out to life.

In two weeks we'll know for certain.

The Next Debate's Moderator: Samuel L. Jackson

Word had it that Sam was going to run a tight ship, and there for a while, when the candidates walked onto the stage and shook hands, smiling, trying to look taller than the other, Romney whispering to Obama that he liked the shine on his shoes, that he could see up his pant leg, and Obama retorting that Romney's fly was open, chucking him on the arm then, grinning big, waving to the crowd, "Made you look," there was hope.

They went to their podiums and Jackson leveled a hard, bad-assed expression at them both. "Listen up, Motherfuckers, cuz I'm only gonna say this once," he began. "When I say you're done talking, you're done fucking talking. Are we clear? Cuz if I gotta tell ya twice, I'll be gettin up there, Secret Service or no Secret Service, and getting goddam Yosemite Fucking Sam on your asses ..."

Hearing this, Romney's eyes got wide with excitement, an excitement he hadn't felt since he hazed that sissy with the lavender hair back in prep school. He had to admit this was more fun than Old Man Lehrer, that PBS pussy, moderating. Obama, meanwhile, simply grinned in his cool, good-natured way. It was good to have a brother up there asking the questions, keeping it fair, after the other night in Denver.

"All right, then," Jackson said when he had their attention. "First question ... How do y'all feel about two mouthy, in-your-fucking-face gay brothers from the Castro, say, gettin married and adopting some Mormon kids? Not the pretty ones, mind you—I can see you're freakin out over there, Governor—but no, we're not talking about the smart motherfuckers who when they get older we'll all be so proud of and take all the credit ... no, not them, I'm talking about the more fucked up ones, the ones nobody wants, back of the 47% corral kinda kids, you might say. What are your fucking thoughts? Governor, you getta go first."

Romney looked around, not sure whether to laugh or tell this guy to go fuck himself. He'd never told someone to go fuck himself before. He wondered if it would be exciting. "Why me? I thought we were going to talk about the economy ..."

"We'll talk about the fucking economy when I decide to, Motherfucker.  Right now, however, we're talking about two brothers—hell, since I see you're wincing, that both you motherfuckers have your assholes in a pucker, let's make it two sisters. Two hot-looking dikes—I've got a couple in mind—wanna get married and adopt some Mormon kid that no one, not even the Mormons, want—"

"Why do I have to go first?" Romney asked again, a little louder than before.

"Because you always wanna go last," Jackson replied—he'd watched the last debate. "And because I'm the moderator and I fucking said so."

Obama, who'd been cool up till now, felt it was time to speak up. He was the president after all. "Sam, come on. This isn't quiz night at some dance club in West Oakland. This is a Presidential Debate."

Jackson leaned back and folded his arms. "Answer the question."

"What if I just took the kid," Romney offered after four or five seconds of silence. "And then hired someone. What if I created a job for someone, an opportunity, of the sort one can have in this country if one works hard, if my opponent isn't raising taxes on him or her at every turn ..."

"Now there's a novel idea," Obama cut in. "I'd have figured you'd buy the orphanage and let your buddy Sheldon turn it into a casino. Have the kids work the tables. Dress the place up in neon—"

"You laugh, Mr. President, but that kind of hard scrapping ingenuity worked wonders for the Indians—I mean, of course, the Native American population that had prior to that time been beaten down with government handouts—"

"And the fucking cavalry," Jackson put in.

Romney turned to Obama. "He can't say that. He's the moderator."

Obama turned to Jackson. "Sam, you aren't the peanut gallery. You're the moderator—"

"Fine, I'm the moderator. I ask a question about homosexuals getting married and adopting undesirable little Mormons and you start talking about casinos and Indians. What's a brother to think, other than, apparently, you're both cool with it—"

"Cool with what?" Romney wondered aloud. He'd never used the word cool in that particular context before. It gave him a strange tingle.

Jackson answered, "The sisters ... gettin married ... and giving the little 47% percenter Mormon boy a home."

"No! Of course not—" Romney shot back. Was this man insane?

"So what about you?" Jackson asked Obama, who had thus far kept cool on the question.

He stammered a bit, then said, "Well, I think ... yes ... possibly. As you know, I'm the president of everyone, the president to all of America, from the richest of the rich to the dirtiest, sneakiest little weasal—" He stopped himself "But I think reasonable folks would agree, that even Governor Romney would agree, that we need to consider some of the potential complications that could arise—"

Jackson leaned back in his chair, looked up and ran his hand over his scalp. "Mr. President, I am not asking you if the sisters I have in mind can be allowed to change this little Mormon motherfucker's name to some shit like Elijah, or some goofy-assed one like yours. I'm just saying, Can These Sisters get married? Like all the rest of us poor motherfuckers, right? And by the way—" He eyed Obama knowingly "—I bet that was some anniversary you had the other night, some real joyous shit to be sure after the way you let that lyin motherfucker run all over your ass the other night—"

"Excuse me," Romney remarked indignantly. "What did he just call me? He can't say that. He can't be calling everyone a—"

"He's right," said Obama, raising his eyebrows at Jackson. That no nonsense, worn-out-being-the-president-and-having-to-listen-to-assholes-go-on-all-day-long look. "Sam ... I think we need to talk about the economy. Right now. I really do. We need to talk about jobs, and giving hope to the middle class, to the whole country and not just the sisters who want to get married and the Mormon orphans and those of us who have done well and should pay a little more. And one more thing ... if you say one more word about my anniversary, I'll be turning my wife loose on you, and she'll be putting a whup ass on yours that'll make the one she put on me the other night look like a—"

"Can we talk about the economy now?" Romney interjected petulantly. "For instance, Mr. President, tell me why, if I, or someone even richer than me, someone like Sheldon, for instance, is willing to create a job for someone, to take care of this young child you spoke of, to give just one example, so that he doesn't end up in a parade some day wearing chaps—"

Obama, ever presidential, nonetheless cut in, "Now hold on, Governor, I think we can all agree there are worse things, far worse fates that any of us could end up with, particularly if you and your running mate get elected, than going to a parade wearing chaps—"

But Romney wasn't so sure. In fact he disagreed. No, you wouldn't see his children going to a parade in chaps. If anyone he hired in the private workforce to raise a child (rather than let a couple of lesbians get their hands on him) let that child go off to a parade in chaps, well, let's just say someone's head would roll. There'd be some firing going on.

Jackson, incredulous, was heard to say, with relative calm at first, "Did I say that either of you motherfuckers could talk?"

Perhaps he said it too softly, because both Romney and Obama ignored him. As they did, repeatedly, with Jim Lehrer during the first debate. They continued on, bickering, talking over the top of each other.

"Tell me this, Mr. President, what if your girls—"

"My girls? My girls are on a tighter leash than I am. They're doing calculus right now. Either that or they're in bed—"

"Gentlemen—" Jackson tried once.

"Assuming they've finished reading their Zora Neale Hurston for the night," Obama added.

"Who?" Romney had never heard of no Zora Neale Hurston. Figured she was probably one of his aunts from Kenya.

"Gentlemen, please—" Jackson tried twice, his tone betraying annoyance. He was not in the habit of being ignored, not even by motherfuckers with armed guards.

"I have to say I'm not at all surprised," Obama said to Romney, squaring off with him, looking, to the close observer, like he might throw down with the Mitt if he kept on. After the anniversary he'd had—or rather, didn't—with Michelle after the first debate, he really wasn't in the mood for any shit tonight. "Then again, you probably had your hands full with Horatio Alger and Dale Carnegie, reading up on how Jesus hauled ass from Nazareth to Missouri just ahead of Lewis and Clark—"

Now, Romney thought, he didn't need to say that. There was no need of that. It wasn't like he was Dan Quayle going on about Jack Kennedy. "I'll have you know, Mr. President, that while you were smoking your grass and doing your blow and dreaming about your father, I was out in the business world, stealing money fair and square and without caffeine or any other dangerous drugs—"

Obama squared his jaw, stuck out his not so intimidating chest. "What say you and I go play a little basketball?"

Romney smiled and kept on. "I was pursuing the American Dream. Paying way too much in capital gains before Ronald Reagan, and the president whose name we don't speak—"

"Would you both SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Jackson shouted.

Both candidates stopped talking. Romney looked at Jackson. "Whoa." It was the first time he'd ever said the word Whoa, anywhere.

Obama, seeing one of the Secret Service snipers aiming at Jackson's head now, waved him off. "Sam," he said with all the reasonableness he could muster, "This isn't the set for "Pulp Fiction." You aren't sitting in the front seat of a car with John talking about cheeseburgers at a Paris McDonalds. This is serious. This is a Presidential Debate. And, by the way, if I don't do better at this one, something of mine is going to be in the ringer afterwards, so I'd appreciate it if—"

"You know what I think?" Romney remarked, his eyes sparkling in the lights. "I think we're going to win this election!" He remembered Walter Mondale saying the same thing at a debate with Reagan back in 1984, after he'd imagined he'd wiped the floor with the president, who was probably in the early stages of Alzeimer's at the time. At least he acted like he was. Then and after he beat Mondale in a landslide—it was a memory Romney only wanted to see out so far.

Jackson, hearing him, turned to Romney and said, "I'll bet you a hundred fucking dollars that you don't."

 Romney thought a moment, and wanting so much to be cool like the president, stepped out from behind the podium now and walked toward the front of the stage, toward the moderator's desk. He held out his hand. "Brother, you're on."

Jackson stood up. "Who the fuck you calling brother, Motherfucker?"

There was the sound of guns cocking. Lots of them. Obama, once again, made the kind of gesture he did with his girls when they started back-talking Michelle at dinner; the Secret Service stood down. "Guys," he said, "you can't be placing bets on the election. This isn't Las Vegas—" He frowned and looked to his handlers, to the sniper with the rifle. "We're not in Las Vegas, are we?"

"We're in an Alternate Universe!" someone from the crowd yelled.

Obama looked into the audience, dead into the camera as it turned out, and offered his best smile of the night. The pundits later on would say it was his best moment of the debate. "So what about gambling?" he asked—to crowd, anyone. "Can folks gamble out here, in this Alternate Universe?"

No one was sure whether they could or not. Apparently a lot of things were still getting ironed out. Laws and regulations, just how much a citizen could get by with in this Alternate Universe before it became a problem for the others. Obama looked to Romney, fearing that Mitt might try to shake hands with Jackson soul man style to seal their bet (he tried so hard—it was touching, really, as he'd told Michelle the other night, after which Michelle told him that if he ever wanted to get touched again he'd better wipe the floor with this equivocating clown tonight) and having already called the Secret Service off twice, put his arm around him, his less hapless than before challenger, and said, "Come on, Governor, time for you and me to clock out. You don't want to end up like Pete Rose, do you?"

"I can't have lesbians raising one our children," Romney confided. "The base would shackle me in a dungeon somewhere."

"It'll be fine," Obama assured him. "Sam got a little too far over his skis on that one."

"Let's make it a thousand!" Jackson shouted menacingly as the two candidates headed arm in arm into the wings.

"Are we going to have him again next time?" Romney wondered, mortified at the possibility.

"I don't think so. I heard we got Rachel Maddow next time."

Romney gasped—even while he was secretly excited. He had a thing for Rachel Maddow. It was something he'd never shared with anyone. He'd see her on the television and want to reach inside the thing and kiss her. It made no sense at all.

"Really?" he said.

"No—" Obama gave him a light elbow to the ribs and shook his head. "It's a presidential debate, Mitt. We can't be having lesbians moderating a presidential debate. Not even in an alternate universe does that happen ... yet." He watched Romney's expression and swatted him on the arm. "I'm just messing with you."

Romney chuckled nervously. It was hard to tell sometimes.

Just then two African-American knockouts, legs as long and beautiful as the dancer Stephanie Pope's, walked up, handed each of them a cosmo and walked away, holding hands.

"I like it here," Romney said, taking a sip—it was an alternate universe, after all. The rules regarding Mormons were still getting worked out.

Obama, wondering if it would hurt him to sneak a cigarette, if not a joint, had to admit he found the place agreeable as well. "Helluva a lot better than Denver," he sighed.

"All we have to do is keep it interesting," Romney reminded him.

Obama, tired, wishing it were otherwise, nevertheless raised his glass. "To a satisfying pageant!"

Cheers!

Selling the Book: The Attention-Getting Query Letter

Dear Editors:

As with the hundreds of other emails you will get today, requesting the very same, I have a novel, the working title of which is Dearly Departed, which, unlike the hundreds of other requests your wearied eyes will consider today, is actually pretty good. I won't bore you with even a line or two of details, since there are many who can write jacket copy who can't write an affecting line much less an affecting novel, so, please, to save us both time and needless torpor, read the rest of this, my query ... and then, contrary to habit and probability, write me back and ask that I send you, per the custom, fifty pages, for you to read and consider.

Having then read and considered them, ask for more. At which point you will come to the reasonable conclusion that they are quite a lot better than almost anything you see on a daily basis: that the writing is excellent, the narrative drive compelling, that, along with real-life gore, and sex, and interestingly fucked up characters getting under each other's skin in ways both nuanced and not so, there is even a well-hung midget, albeit deep into the book, one who, granted, we never actually see, but nonetheless, a well-hung midget is a well-hung midget—one I wouldn't be averse to mingling in the action a little more if it suits you.

Which is to say, on certain matters, I'm flexible.

That said, on the actual point of whether or not you decide to read and publish my book, I am not so flexible. On that point I am actually quite insistent. Which is to say: you will like and publish my pages, my novel, please, or so help me God I'll blow my fucking brains out.

Let me explain ...

But before I do, before you note my address and panic—OMG! He's from Colorado! A nutjob threatening us from the state currently at the top of the A-list for nutjobs!!! WTF!!!!—let me assure you that, should you decide NOT to publish my novel, I will NOT, I promise, shoot or otherwise harm, in any way, anyone else, this despite what would surely be considerable disappointment on my part.

Furthermore, I have a wife and two young children, and am certainly not going to blow my brains out in the house where I currently reside ...

Frankly I don't even own a firearm (for reasons that should be obvious by now), which is not to say I couldn't get one pretty easily (need I say more on THAT subject?), or that, on the contrary, I'm looking forward to my children one day getting older and looking at me, ensconsed in my study, ignoring them—"radically wasting time," as the great Annie Lamott once called it—and coming to the stark, hateful conclusion that this is why we no longer have any money, why we are having to, conceivably, sell our house and move to a small apartment far away from the fine neighborhood and school district that is currently ours, why there are no vacations to Hawaii and New York City anymore, why they can no longer partake in the kind of expensive activities that their older brothers took for granted—because Daddy is a writer who had to write a book, one that when he finally finished it he couldn't fucking sell!

Regardless of your circumstances, dear editor, you can surely understand how a responsible parent (such as the term is generally understood in our better communities) wouldn't exactly look forward to such an eventuality. Enough that he might consider, on occasion—now, for instance—doing something that many would consider a bit extreme. Especially when one considers that even if you publish my book, and it enjoys modest success (as the term is generally understood with regard to first-time literary novels), that modest success will only provide me, the writer, with enough money to pay, with any luck, next month's bills, this depending on whether someone had to go to the hospital, or the dentist, whether ice fees for hockey were due the previous month ...

And—AND—surely, you being the sensitive, at times neurotic literary type you almost certainly must be—working for free, yes? reading scores of mediocre to poor manuscripts, imagining yourself on your better days, nonetheless, as a kind of Soulmate to the Monks, in the Dark Ages, keeping literature alive!—you despair over the staggering amount of drivel, the wincingly, cringingly tepid, self-indulgent, uninspired (if occasionally "well-crafted") shit, much of it from cash-flush MFA programs, getting slung around to scores of agents and publishers like yourself, many of whom are dependent now more than ever on reading fees and handouts from those few wealthy souls who haven't already handed out all they are going to hand out to cure cancer, to feed the starving, support their candidates, their causes, not to mention the local orchestra and theater, who have, magnanimously, left a little back to support LIT-RAH-CHOOR. You have to admit you are thankful that most of them aren't readers, that they simply like the idea of supporting LIT-RAH-CHOOR, kind of like you like the idea of being an agent for, an editor of, LIT-RAH-CHOOR—

Except that on some days, my fucking God ...

Still, and despite your own unsettling moments of despair, you have to admit it would bother you if you were to find out not long after you insouciantly deleted my email query that I did in fact blow my fucking brains out. Even if I didn't do it in my home, or under a tree outside your office (think about that! you who thinks woodpeckers and pigeons are annoying), even if I went out into the woods, or way up in the mountains, and didn't make a mess that someone like Amy Adams in that movie "Sunshine Cleaners" would have to clean up (a profession, btw, should you be looking for a new one, where one can make serious bank).

It would bother you the worse for the fact that, once I was dead, someone, probably several, would actually be asking for the manuscript, looking at it, reading it, considering it, the new platforms post-suicide, the money, and wondering why no one—YOU—ever bothered to ask for it, a mere fifty pages, from a suicidal author!

Soon, all over Twitter and Facebook ... Tumbler, all those sites that have contributed to our fragmenting attention and made your particular failing, antediluvian industry an even poorer, more depressing economic bet, there would be the easy, predictable comparisons to John Kennedy Toole, who, likewise, killed himself after not being able to publish his novel ... a novel that later went on, after his mother (who doesn't come off well in the book; one must admit the pathos is heartbreaking) showed the manuscript to the estimable Walker Percy, at LSU, to win the Pulitzer Prize.

And keep in mind that the late John Kennedy Toole never had children to be ashamed of his failure, or a nice house in a desirable neighborhood in the best town in the country to raise a family and buy locally produced art, to lose—no, he was merely a misfit radically wasting his time with a Big Chief tablet in his mother's basement, trying to publish when, let's be honest, it was quite a lot easier to get published.

Keep in mind: You don't want to be that person. You want to be the person who says, Don't be an asshole! Don't run off to the mountains and kill yourself! Send me your pages to me, and I'll read them! I'll publish you! I mean, why not? Who the fuck will notice, right? We'll publish you and afterwards leave you to continue on in your Sisyphean way, to radically waste time, to make sure that your children look to your example one day and think: Fuck that, I'm going to medical school.

Only then will the success of your insensible enterprise become apparent.

Yes, you want to be the person who says all that, if not much less. Who, after publishing my novel, can go on television and maybe write a book yourself one day, telling how you saved another writer's life. Maybe put a well-hung midget in there, one with fangs. A well-hung, walking dead midget with fangs who can travel through time and has a dog who can quote Shakespeare and philosophize on a level that people who aren't terribly philosophical might think is brilliant.

You could be the person who might one day, from a podium somewhere, thank me.

Looking forward, expectantly, to your reply.

All the best,


The Author