The (Surrealistic, Barely Avoided) Conversion of Paul

"But what are we to do with the weak?" Paul asks, his pupils having strangely grown to the size of dark quarters since the reception that followed Mitt's big speech. "What do we do with the losers, the screw ups, the ones who can't be whipped into shape, who buy high and sell low, who don't respond  to reasonable incentives ... "

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Mitt wonders, frankly, frustrated, sitting his glass of plain water on the coffee table and leveling a severe pair of non-dilated eyes at his young companion. These odd, incongruous questions from Paul are very perplexing, particularly after he, Mitt, has just given a speech that was nearly as memorable as Clint Eastwood's discussion with the empty chair.

Paul, holding what looks like a Cosmo in one of those pretty glasses, leans forward in his stuffed leather chair, his head slightly askance. He appears both amused and disoriented, as if he were staring at himself in one of those old-fashioned fun house mirrors. "I thought Mormons didn't curse."

"I didn't curse," Mitt informs him. "I was being profane—adjectivally profane—which is something different."

"You know what you look like?" Paul says now. "You look like someone who would play the president in a movie where the president doesn't have much of a part ... like in that movie where Clint Eastwood plays the Secret Service agent who listens to Miles Davis ... and then puts the moves on Renee Russo ... this when he isn't trying to catch John Malkovich, who, if you ever saw the movie, is way creepy, some ex-CIA guy ..."

Mitt, bristling, gives him a good slap across the face in the hope it'll straighten him out. Paul smiles, as if he wants him to do it again. Mitt asks, "Have you been drinking? Is that what this is all about? Tell me something, why is it that Catholics drink so much? Especially the Irish Catholics. Why, when I was the governor, in Boston—"

Paul winces. "Don't mention Boston."

"What?"

"With Boston comes equivocation. The Etch-a-Sketch has erased it."

Mitt wants to slug him now but doesn't. Instead he points to the glass. "Do me a favor and tell me what you had to drink. What are in those pink things? And what are those things floating in your glass."

"Confetti." Paul replies dreamily. He looks down in his glass. "Little tiny squares of confetti ..."

Mitt gets up. "I'm going to call the doctor. I think you've been drugged—"

Paul laughs—hysterically, convulsively, like someone who has been drugged—then says, "You know what I can't understand? I can't understand why you can't drink just a little coffee in the morning, before you step in front of a microphone. I mean, your forefathers took Benzedrine—"

Mitt picks up the phone, but then remembers what happened to McGovern after they found out Thomas Eagleton had had a few jolts to his nervous system. Mitt doesn't want to end up like George McGovern in '72. No, Mitt thinks he'll just have to talk him down himself. "Listen to me," he begins, only to have Paul ignore him, run over to the window, stick his head out and yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!!"

"Imagine," Paul says, coming back now, his face flushed, "if people actually DID that. If they wouldn't just accept their lot in life. If everytime people like us left our homes without security we had to worry about getting our throats slit by someone who wasn't accepting his lot—"

"But people don't do that," Mitt replies, his voice soft and reassuring. "They have television to calm them. And there are many, many drugs. There are workout routines. Moreover, we DO have security. At least for the moment—"

Paul frowns. "We're going to lose, aren't we."

Mitt knows it's true, but sees no need in adding despair to Paul's situation at the moment. He regrets that he let that last part slip out. "Now, now, let's not be silly—"

"The Secret Service, for us, is fleeting. Soon we will be on our own—"

Mitt sighs, thinking this is what often happens to these true-believer types. Even Barry Goldwater went soft in the end, after he had that homosexual caregiver ... No, better to lick your finger, he thinks, and hold it up into the breeze for guidance. "We're going to straighten this country out," Mitt takes Paul by the shoulders and insists, staring into Paul's eyes, now, and seeing a full-length black and white reflection of himself. "We're going to cut the capital gains tax so I can make serious bank again. We're going to repeal that health plan that Obama stole from me, all of it except the part about covering the people with pre-existing conditions—"

"The expensive part," Paul says.

"That's right," Mitt winks. "After all, I'm not heartless.

Paul smiles, supremely entertained as he watches Mitt's entire skull expand and contract like the lobe of lung. He takes another sip of his Cosmo—he loves these things. He wonders what one would cost in a real bar. Then, suddenly, his mood slips. "The poor will always be with us. I just didn't realize until now just how much—how close—they would be. If we do what I want to do with Medicaid, for instance, Uncle Ned might be in my basement. And maybe Aunt Virginia. Those two couldn't balance a checkbook much less make sensible decisions with a Medicare voucher. Uncle Ned would have probably taken it and bought the FaceBook IPO—"

"Then he deserves what he gets," says Mitt, who is finding all this fussy talk of consequences tedious.

"What he'll get is a tent," Paul retorts. "One big enough to hold all his guns, and he'll pitch it in my yard! Until I let him have a room in my basement!"

"Make him help out," Mitt suggests, sensibly. "Who knows? If you train him right, you might be able to fire the guy who mows your lawn."

"Or Ned could shoot me in my sleep."

"Well then there's always Virginia. You did say Virginia, right? Maybe she wouldn't be entirely useless. Maybe she could pick up the slack for Ned. Does she do floors? The person doing my floors at the moment is ... let's just say he isn't doing much of a job."

"Why don't you fire him?" Paul suggests, looking a bit more himself, Mitt thinks. "I thought you liked firing people."

"I would," Mitt admits, believing he may have seen the turn, "but he frightens me."

Paul stares at him indignantly and shrugs. "So don't call him again. Get someone else to do your floors. Get a dog, an alarm system. Hire someone else."

"But he hasn't left since the day I let him in."

Paul is at once intrigued and aghast. "What do you mean he hasn't left."

Mitt isn't entirely sure this is working, but keeps on. "I mean, Paul, that I have a big house, and the guy who does my floors, or did, once, is living in one of the rooms—the one farthest from mine and Ann's. I got him a flat-screen TV with all the premium channels and I have my chef cook him whatever he wants when he wants it. You could do the same for your aunt and uncle. Maybe build your uncle an underground firing range, so that he leaves you alone—"

"But I don't have that kind of money, Mitt. I'm not as rich as you."

Mitt scoffs. He's tired of people telling him they aren't as rich as he is. "Well then, fire your maid. Get a job manipulating resources in the private sector. Be practical."

"But I want to be vice-president! If I was vice-president, and maybe, someday, the president, then I could have the Secret Service take care of Ned—"

"Or—I'm just saying, OR—you could make Ayn Rand up in Atheist Heaven proud, and get your spoiled by government work self to work in the private sector, and make millions, and buy an island somewhere. How well does your uncle swim?"

Paul, who could swear that the room they're in has just turned into a jumpy castle, thinks about this and says, "I'm not sure."

"Stick with me," Mitt finally says, not at all sure if it is good advice or bad at this point. "Once we're done handing out favors we'll be able to get you an island for a decent price. We'll get you set up better than Dr. No."

Paul smiles at the James Bond reference. He likes James Bond, how things always seem to work out for him, how James is a government employee, too, but nobody makes fun of him, because he's James Bond and would kick their ass if they did. He offers Mitt a drink from his glass."

"No," Mitt says, a bit shocked. He waves his hand and makes an attempt at a joke. "You know us Mormons. If it isn't Benzedrine, it's crap."

"Benzedrine?" Paul has forgotten about his Benzedrine remark.

"Never mind," says Mitt, adding, "What do you say I freshen up my water and grab my Book of Mormon, and you grab your copy of Atlas Shrugged, and we see which book will put us to sleep first."

Paul, much to Mitt's relief, thought that was a great idea. After a little bit, Paul asked, "Do you think I could do a mission to Africa some day? Get away from all these government jobs ..."

"This is America," Mitt answered, distracted and overwhelmed by the torpor of Rand's prose. "You can do anything you want here."

"That's what I was hoping."

And in this way, the universe was righted once more.

Those Fundamentally Different Paths

I'm going to make this quick (I know, bullshit, but one must try), since I have a woodpecker banging on the side of my house that I need to go outside and shoot, before I pick up my mower from its annual physical, and maybe go sell some gold to pay for my health insurance premiums, which have recently gone down, considerably, though I no longer have "behavioral health" coverage (which some of you might find astounding, or at least unwise, given certains tics and tendencies you've observed in the author's recent posts), and am currently waiting on my refund of the difference, which, well, if you want to see an insurance company dilly-dally, and flat out lie to you, ask them when you can expect your refund (hint: not in time to pay your American Express bill, chumpie).

So not only did I watch Obama speak to the DNC last night, but I saw him again today addressing some "folks" in Portsmouth, NH, essentially repeating the same speech as last night, though this one had a little more humor in it (joking on making Bill Clinton the Secretary of Explaining Stuff).

I don't care what anyone says: he's an incredible speaker, doing just exactly what he needs to. Unlike his opponents, he's cool, self-deprecating, and yet ... he's quite ... presidential.

Anyway, that fucking bird is going to have a hole in our cedar big enough for a bear if I don't get out there (he sees me even peek my head out on the deck now and he flies away, that's how scared he is of me), so let's get to the matter at hand ...

In short, what no one tells you, is that the consequences of continued tax cuts, or further concentrating the wealth among the wealthy while cutting programs (to finance the cuts) that overall serve to stabilize the fortunes of the unfortunate, is going to be a lot more strife. You can run a professional sports team on the principle of Winners Only. You can run a Gulag or a Concentration Camp on the principle of Only The Strong Survive (to do more work, for those running the camp). But if you aren't willing, or don't have the stomach, for such strong, highly un-Christian measures, then you need to accommodate the entire population. Which is to say you need to govern a society, and not pretend that you're fielding a team of olympians and when all is said and done there will only be beautiful and talented people using the 15,000 condoms provided for the Olympic Village.

No ...

There will be people with no athletic skill at all, who don't fuck well or maybe don't fuck at all, but who will nonetheless be stealing the condoms because, well, fuck those pretty, talented people because I'm not one of them ...

This is not going to change by making these people exercise more. Not everyone is, or ever could be, an olympic athlete.

Is this not obvious?

Similarly, not everyone is going to "win" at capitalism. Not everyone who gets a big line of credit is going to behave sensibly with it. And we can let those people go broke, and bitch about how unfair it is that our tax dollars have to pay for these fucks ups and all that, but unless we take them to a ditch and shoot them—and everyone else who fucks up, who doesn't have a respectable Win/Loss record—then we have to deal with them. As scripture says: The poor will always be with us.

So, all matters of decency, and compassion, Christian charity and all that, aside ... would you rather leave it up to these folks to wisely use a grossly indequate voucher to sensibly buy their health insurance in their dotage, from unregulated (or far less regulated) for-profit insurers, or should we make sure that we do what we can to keep Medicare funded?

Should we ... spend more money than the Pentagon is even asking for (and not on soldiers, but to make happy the various pigs at the trough of the "Military-Industrial Complex" Eisenhower, a Republican, warned us of over sixty years ago), and take it from Medicaid, from the real losers in the system, many of whom don't even vote, and then, what ... make them go out and get jobs? Where? And what about when Dad's money runs out and it's either Medicaid paying for his nursing home or you bringing him home and setting him up and, well, that's going to do wonders for the disposable income you could otherwise use to stimulate the economy. Though it might be good for you as a person. Or it might not. Maybe some pretty ugly things inside you might come out, things you might have kept inside and never been made aware of until Dad was asleep in his grave. Though you would have the consolation of knowing the wealthy had gotten wealthier while you were learning these things about yourself rather than, say, going out to eat from time to time, or taking a vacation, or maybe even paying for your son or daughter to play hockey.

The game with Republicans, since St. Ronald, has been, in theory, to choke the beast—government—though, as Clinton's numbers (verified by Bloomberg News the following day) indicated, they've done a terrible job. Government has grown, considerably, under every Republican administration including St. Ronald's—one could say St. Ronald took the idea of growing government to new levels, levels never seen before. And yet our new disciples sing his praises.

What they did was give the tax dollars to different people. That's all they did. And it seemed to work out all right while the economy was in a generational expansion ... which is to say, a natural leg up, and the stock market we were all encouraged to buy into was going up, up, up.

But what goes up, must, at the very least, take a breather, a pause; these pause, when you measure them closely, last about as long as the legs up. Politicians hate them, since during these fallow times difficult decisions need to be made that don't sit well with the people doing the voting.

The endgame to the Crisis of 2008 has always been whether we would end up getting suckered out of programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and probably VA benefits, so that the wealthy can continue to make respectable year over year gains in the stock market at a time when the market should, in a free market environment, be selling off, getting cheap, until a new cycle begins, or whether we embark on a different sort of arithmetic, one less the calculations of the gulag, and more the calculations of the neighborhood. Woodpeckers and all.

The Junky Awaits His Fix

No, this isn't about drugs—well, not really. Not literally. This is about the money-changers, and what they're hoping for, and probably won't get ...

From Ben (Bernanke, tomorrow), and then Mario (Draghi, September 12th).

All these free market folks hoping for a little government boost, to help keep their markets (which would otherwise be sinking like bricks) afloat, the price of gold rising (as the dollar and the Euro get further watered down), and to perhaps (for the more earnest) stimulate growth in our otherwise intractably moribund economies.

One thing I agree with the Libertarians on: you can't stimulate growth in a debt-soaked culture by adding more debt to it. As with someone who has already rung up his credit cards to the limit, one can raise the limit to keep him going (and out of your hair, your basement, your wallet) a little longer, but that does not solve the problem. Still, if you don't want him in your basement, or stealing your stuff, and  by raising his limits on a card or two you can keep him at bay for a little while longer, maybe, among a bunch no hope solutions, it isn't the worst.

Still, don't call it a strategy for growth.

And if you're Paul Ryan—a pretty much lifelong employee of the taxpayers, don't forget—don't act like fixing the problem is as simple as telling the guy to live within his means. Especially when you're still insisting that he keep up his bar bill at the place where you tend bar, and keep buying his leased vehicles from your dad's lot, this on a salary that isn't what it once was, and that you have no intention of increasing. Your thinking is pure goofiness, too. You, in particular, should get your head out of your ass and understand that this fellow isn't going to go gently into that good night ... though he could be closer to living in your basement than you might think.

Anyway, back to Ben and Mario ...

Here's what I think: those waiting for Ben to save the day are going to be disappointed, in the near-term, if not the long-. In a mere two months we here in Ben's local economy vote for the next president of that local economy, and Ben Bernanke, given the not terrible situation the economy is in at the moment compared to, say, Europe, or where it was when we were voting for the last president, isn't going to sully his office any further for the moment by doing a solid for the political classes. Moreover, he must be tired of everyone looking to him to solve a situation that he isn't going to be able to solve without a great deal of political (read: fiscal) help of the sort he isn't getting (and let the voters, in November, decide why), and a minimum of another decade of patience from the population he nominally serves (especially if you're a banker), even if certain politicians who may or may not know better would like us to believe otherwise.

But don't get me started.

Mario Draghi, of the European Central Bank, on the other hand, might do something. Timmy Geithner (the Secretary of the Treasury—a position the European Union doesn't have, which, some would say, is a problem) has been seen skulking through Europe lately. Perhaps he and Mario, and some Germans, have talked. Mario doesn't need to worry about a conflict of interest vis-a-vis the upcoming American Presidential Election, he just needs to worry about the Germans, who, if you know anything about the Germans and the Greeks and their history going back to, say, 1940, might give you, as well as Mario, a dispiriting pause.

Still, tough love isn't isn't all it's cracked up to be—especially once you've let the fuck ups in the door. They have their pride, too ... and we've all made our mistakes.

And memories are long.

Still, right now, if I were junky looking for a quick fix, I'd be looking to Mario more than Ben.

Stay tuned!

Akin, Mitt, and How One Gets Legitimately Raped

I know I'm a little late coming to the subject, and frankly, haven't been paying that much attention to the details, but over the years I've found that paying a lot of attention to the details when it comes politics really isn't very helpful. So long as you paid attention for too long at some point in your life, you pretty much know everything you need to know. Many would dispute such a claim, and yet I would maintain that the story with politics is much like the story with soap operas—

"General Hospital," for example. My wife had a little down time the other day and happened to land on GH, which she hadn't checked in on in over a year, she claims, and lo and behold, within a couple of minutes she was gasping: some character who'd done something over a year ago was doing it again, this time with a brunette ...

Anyway, handicapping politics, it's like riding a bike ...

Go back to any of my pre-elections blogs back in 2008. I was right about practically everything. Obama was going to win. He'd beat Hillary Clinton, for Christ's sake! He was going to clean up on John McCain, especially after the financial crisis hit ...

Obvious, and I'm not even that smart, or plugged in, and yet ...

Last January, I predicted that Romney would eventually emerge as the nominee for the Republicans—obviously—and that he would get trounced by Obama in the general election in November. Again, to me, for any number of reasons, this is obvious—as it is obvious to most thinking Republicans, who are privately very concerned that this year's ticket is going to not only lose, but be a flat out disaster for the party.

My Democratic friends, on the other hand, are mostly doing what they always do: wring their hands and worry that over half the voting population is going vote for someone like Mitt Romney. This despite the fact that Mitt Romney, not to mention the earnest Ayn Rand disciple who voted for nearly all of Dubya's budget busting policies back when it was popular to do so, Paul Ryan, are even poorer candidates than McCain and Palin were—which is to say that more gaffes, and yet not as fun, or funny, is a bad follow-up to 2008, and is going to lead to a result, regardless of what the economy does, that is going to cause some soul-searching in the Republican Party.

At least it should.

But hey, we were going to talk about rape, right? Not listen to me pontificate about politics.

Fine. So here's one reason (bear with me) why Romney, from a political standpoint, isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer: after being for a woman's right to decide what kinds of things happen or don't happen in her  womb before he was against it, he is now, according to my Twitter feed, straight from the convention, supposedly, in favor of women having a limited amount of say over what happens or doesn't happen in their wombs, but only in the case of rape and incest.

A much more reasonable stand, supposedly, than that radical right-winger Ryan, who thinks, and is on the record as saying, that abortion should be outlawed categorically. Never mind if Uncle Ned had relations with your 15-year-old daughter, whether he raped her, legimately or illegitimately ...

And here is where, I'm sorry, we have to pause, briefly—again—to define some terms that even if you had paid a great deal of attention to politics and pundits of late, you might still be confused on just what constitutes legitimate rape as opposed to the other kind.

Thus, so we are clear, legitimate rape is the kind that involves people like Freddie Krueger (is that how it's spelled?), which is to say, real monsters, killers, forcing themselves on you. In fact, most women who are legitimately raped either die or are left for dead afterwards, and that's how you know they were legitimately raped. Kind of like with the witches in Salem: if they didn't drown, they must be witches.

Which brings us to illegitimate rape. Which is basically the kind of rape that happens when you survive it and can still talk coherently and don't have any cuts or bruises or serious amounts of blood running out of somewhere. For instance, let's say you meet a big professional athlete for the first time and you think he's kind of cute, and therefore, since you didn't spit in his face or tell him to fuck off right away when he started chatting you up, you probably led him on, and then, well, he doesn't just want to have sex with you in the one hole, but all the others, too—and he's fucking huge, right? Well, unfortunately, that's still illegitimate rape, and he doesn't go to jail, and still gets to play his sport and make millions and be well thought of again, because, let's face it, you tried to kill yourself a couple of times in the past, over totally unrelated issues, but still ... if he'd really raped you, he'd have probably strangled you too, so you wouldn't tell anyone, right?

Or here's another example: let's say Biff and Muffy—Biff is a college freshman, and Muffy, say, is a high school senior—really like each other A LOT, and really want to do it, but unfortunately Muffy's parents, rather than buying her a horse, or sending her to a convent, bought her a pretty expensive promise ring, with diamonds and her birth stone, with the idea that if they bought her this ring she wouldn't have sex with anyone until she was married, and practically passed out after the reception ... and well, she could fuck then but not before.

Anyway, turns out the two one night when Mom and Dad are out having sushi, or maybe off in a hotel somewhere fucking themselves, can't control the rage of their young hormones, and then the condom breaks, and holy moly, lo and behold, in a couple of months they've got a situation on their hands. And Mommy and Daddy are pissed. Especially Daddy. And let's say, for the sake of argument, that this is off in the future, and that contrary to all my smug predictions, Romney and Ryan end up in the White House, and they appoint a couple more anti-abortion judges, who overrule Roe vs. Wade, and now we're back to either flying Muffy to Europe, or Canada, or to the Bahamas or Bermuda, or getting out the hanger, or ... Muffy taking a pass on her first year at Princeton to have a baby that would one day grow up to know that he or she came about because the condom broke, and Dad—Biff—well, he lost interest, funny how that works, or ... Muffy could come to understand, after significant pressure is applied by both her mother and father, but especially by her father, who has made a lot of fucking sacrifices and saved a lot of fucking money so she could go to Princeton and not be raising a kid straight out of high school, in their house, that Biff in fact raped her.

And from there ... Mother and Father and Muffy take the case to the newly established, tax-payer funded, Abortion Tribunals, where it would be decided based on standards hammered out after a great many committee meetings, by a select group of experts appointed by someone who may or may not have a womb or a vagina, and who, themselves, may or may not have either, or agendas, or be having a particularly good day for that matter, whether or not the accused—Biff—did in fact legitimately rape Muffy, thereby, possibly, allowing her to go off with a signed, notarized document allowing her to get a legal abortion done right here in the United States, if not necessarily at Planned Parenthood.

Which is why I like Ryan's approach better. If it's all about killing and love of the unborn, then you have to love Uncle Ned's fetus, too—and Biff's.

Even Freddie's.

And if you aren't willing to tell your daughter to suck it up and remind her that she after all shouldn't have had sex in the first place, let alone let Ned anywhere near her, or Biff play with her boobies (which she ought to know leads to other things), that she should have been more careful not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with monsters and condoms that don't break, without pepper spray or a .357 magnum ... and really, if she wouldn't have been born a girl in the first place none of this would be happening, she could lose interest, maybe write a check or two and walk away all the way to Princeton if she was lucky, but ... unfortunately, the law's the law, and too bad for you, Muffy ...

Seems fair, right? Consequences, baby. Tough love!

Still, while I can't say I'm an expert on the matter, and don't follow the subject as passionately as many do, while I'm busy raising boys, not girls, I'm inclined to think—in fact, go figure, it seems obvious to me—that if you aren't willing to look some young frightened girl in the eyes and make such pronouncements, that you ought to keep your mouth shut when it comes to someone else's young frightened girl ... and to women generally.

But what do I know? I haven't check my Twitter feed for hours ...

And wasn't Ayn Rand an atheist? All that Christian nonsense getting people to care for people they shouldn't and making a mess of things? Didn't I read that somewhere, back when I was paying more attention?

Politics, and Other Things Americans Hate

There's an article below the fold on the front page of today's Denver Post, that begins: "Americans already hate politics ..."

Yes, and we hate violence, too.

This is why we have an election cycle that is nearly as ongoing as the painting and maintenance of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Because we hate politics.

This is why, days after breaking our previous record here in Colorado for people slaughtered and otherwise shot up in a single building at more or less a single moment, we are wondering, if just wondering, whether or not it is particularly unusual for a young man ostensibly interested in the neurosciences (rather than, say, the commandant of the local wing of the National Guard) to have purchased and kept 6,000 rounds of ammunition in his apartment. Many who don't hate violence like we do might just assume that owning 6,000 rounds of ammunition if you're not, say, a Russian in Stalingrad in 1942, or a German soldier stuck in a pillbox on Normandy Beach in 1944, isn't anymore crazy, necessarily, that buying and stacking up in your home 6,000 rolls of toilet paper, or 6,000 cans of dog food, or Spaghettios, or 6,000 condoms (assuming you're not an Olympic athlete).

But we wonder, and we wonder hard. Because we hate violence.

Yet ... we don't jump to conclusions. We shake our heads and sigh. We consider the damage that might be done to individual liberties, not to mention our "well-regulated militia" that, along with Homeland Security, the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, the National Guard, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, as well as our various local and regional police forces, guards our way of life (that, unfortunately, for whatever reason, seems to include the occasional random slaughter of persons in the wrong place at the wrong time by someone frequently deranged and armed to the teeth), the slippery slope we might be descending were we to let the government tell us, willy-nilly, that we can no longer order 6,000 rounds of ammo, to put in clips as big as a hat box, over the internet, or even a counter at some store.

After all, what are they going say we can't have next?

Best, perhaps, despite our hatred of violence, to leave well enough alone, for fear of unwittingly making our already deflationary economy worse. Gun merchants need to make living, too. Just like the owners of diners in Iowa and New Hampshire. Journalists ... imagine what would happen to those already beleaguered souls if we decided to wrap up our hateful politics in a few weeks, like they do in Canada? Where they pay higher taxes than we do, but don't complain as much about them, even though they have socialized medicine run by the government, because basically Canadians are too nice and polite to complain, much less be flat out hateful, like Americans ...

Who hate paying taxes, and hate politics. But don't take anything our taxes pay for, or our guns and ammo, away, or you'll know what real wrath looks like.

As Mitt and Paul, I suspect, will soon find out. If they don't already know ...

Did I mention that the story below the fold came out of Dubuque, Iowa? Probably someone who owns a diner ... who's had it with the politicos, all the grousing, the vicious attacks and lies. So different than the previous elections, when the candidates couldn't have been nicer, and the expense accounts were bigger.

Away in Nova Scotia

We're back now, after spending the last ten days in one of my favorite places. My wife grew up in Cape Breton, and for two idyllic years—1996 and 1997— we lived in a flat on the first floor of an old house within walking distance of practically everything worth walking to in Halifax. In those days I drove a 1986 Toyota pickup that I may have started three times a month. In those days I lived like my idea of king on thirty thousand dollars a year; I learned to scuba dive, bicycled the Cabot Trail, wrote for six hours every day, read all of Dostoevsky one winter and all of Tolstoy the next. Donna, in those days, waited tables, and would come home shortly before midnight and I'd have a fire going and we'd watch old reruns of "Law & Order" (Michael Moriarty lived in town in those days, got kicked out of so many bars that he had to move), and then she'd go to bed and I'd stay up until 3:00, reading, sleep, wake up around 10:00, have coffee, eat, write, work out, walk the dog, head down to the pub where I had my own stein waiting, have some dinner, listen to some music ...

We tend remember things better than they were, but those were good, well above average days. After living in the midwest all my life, I didn't find the winters to be that cold (and I had a toasty warm LL Bean parka for the cold, blustery days). The summers were short, but beautiful—memorable and rich in the way of things that end up being short. I liked the foghorns in the harbor late at night, the wind blowing so long as I was inside by the fire ... the rain, the green, the water, all of it ... it didn't matter, I grew up in Iowa, weather doesn't make or break my day.

There are a lot of reasons I could come up with for why we don't live in Nova Scotia. Family is an argument for and against it, to what degree depends on the day, and my mood. Most notably, it would be harder, and a lot more expensive, to go back with what we have now than it was to come here with what we had then. Moreover, we live, by improbable fortune, in a community in Colorado—Louisville, not full of itself yet but getting there one has to think—that is not only one of the best places in the country to raise a family but, increasingly, a cool, cat's meow kind of place to hang out as well (with many years still before it becomes the thing it never wanted to become). The school system is great, and so are our doctors, our dentists, our insurance agent, the people we buy coffee from, our karate school; we live in a great neighborhood that we joke (though not by much) has a waiting list to get into, have great neighbors, a great house that's too big for us now that we're down to four, and that I wish I could hire a maid to help clean, a handyman to fix, a butler to keep organized, but still ... a great place, by any reasonable measure.

And yet year after year, visit upon visit, I continue to miss Halifax and the Maritime Mode ...

Probably (I tell myself) because life hasn't been anywhere near that free of strain since. There's no living like a king on thirty thousand a year anymore. No reading until three in the morning. No scuba diving off the shore in cold, bracing water, followed by pints and cigars at Tom's Little Havana (where one can't smoke anymore, not there, not anywhere). I look back and think I could have gone forever writing on thirty thousand a year, but not when the need was ninety, not for as long as we had to with everything that happened. A smart guy, I keep thinking, would have known that, and accepted it, a lot sooner, and found something more financially sensible to do with his life rather than stubbornly persisting with a novel in nearly impossible conditions, in a civilization that has largely given up on novels, where the fashion is more to push oneself to the limit physically than to, say, read a challenging book (or even one like mine) in one's spare time—that is, if one has spare time, if one is that divorced from the fashion of the times (here in America at least) and still has that thing we used to call spare time.

But one may as well cry over spilt milk ... over his lost hair and the new ones growing out his nose and ears, over that May/September romance with the girl who really wasn't that special by conventional measures but that for some reason you've never been able to get out of your mind.

Halifax ...

Would it be quite a lot different now? Would a smart guy conclude that we're better off leaving our memories of that sweet life long ago alone, and focus rather on being thankful for the many fortunes we have right before us? Probably. Almost certainly. I suspect so ... and yet I suspect I'll always wonder, and continue to miss those late night fires, the cigars, lugging that diving gear over the rocks and into the cold salty water, the foghorns off the harbor as I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

The Weather, or How I Learned to Love Climate Change

I don't follow the weather that closely, and wouldn't say climate change is one of my "subjects," not in the same sense that the health care insanity is (don't get him started!!). I don't typically go on about climate change like I do global finance and our utter dependence on, and mostly willful ignorance of, their psychopathic marionette activities. I come from Iowa, where the weather just comes every day, usually in some tedious form, but where, nonetheless, 100 year floods now come every 10 years, so everyone, every generation, can enjoy them. Kind of like Colorado and fires.

As for climate change, I don't so much "believe" in it as consider it a cure for the normal human irritation with boredom. Like when we broke up Ma Bell, or deregulated the airlines. Life can be merciful that way. Give you these things to keep you from sleeping the day away, from being in a constant state of wonder and doubt. Things like, for instance, puberty, or mental illness. You don't hear someone with a twelve-year-old daughter going on about how he isn't really sure that anything notable is happening to his little girl who used to be so sweet and loved watching "Arthur" and thought ponies were so cute, but now, well, she wants a fucking horse, and he's thinking it might be a good idea to get her one, real soon, despite the fact that the picture, the evidence, is still equivocal ...

No. If you heard that kind of talk coming from someone, especially a father, you'd think he was a full-on idiot. You'd pay for your drinks and get out of there. Just like you would if someone sat down next to you and started going on about how the moon landing was staged in a hangar in the desert, and fossil records are evidence of God's perversity, and Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison and Osama Bin Laden and Hitler are still alive and in fact share a duplex right beside Marlon Brando's old place in Tahiti.

Similarly, when the temperatures hit 100 degrees about as often as they didn't this last June, and fires raged across the state, and now, here in July, we hear talk—unironic talk—of our moving into the monsoon season that apparently has always been a standard feature of Colorado weather in July, I don't need to do a thorough Google search to think ... cra-zy, not boring. Thank you! Finally ... a weather system that isn't just nice all the time but is at long last off its meds, that has some pretty serious issues, having lived with its crazy family for a little too long now.

But hey, it's great, right? Charlie Sheen has a new show. I finally got around to buying an air conditioner to cool the master bedroom in my 4,000 square foot house that was built without central air back in 1988, because back then no one thought you needed central air in Colorado. What the fuck for? The weather was great here. Nice and sunny in the morning, with a nice little shower late in the afternoon.

Boring!

About as exciting as a balanced budget and peace on earth. Imagine what that would be like day in and day out. Watching fucking "Arthur" every day, listening to your daughter talk about ponies.

Still, we complain. Not more than two weeks ago I called my wife on the cell phone, for instance, in a very stressed state. Honestly, I felt I was about to lose my shit from being stuck in my 4,000 square foot house in Louisville with the shades pulled after, I don't know, the fifth straight day in a row of 100 degree temperatures and my throat feeling like an exhaust pipe. I started going on about how these MFs in the energy industry were making money hand over fist while the taxpayers were paying to put out the fires and how maybe, just maybe, if we took, say, half of Congress and buried them up to their necks in the open space and slathered their heads with gluten-rich, genetically modified foodstuffs to attract the coyotes and prairie dogs and maybe even a few people who would otherwise eat a burrito from 7-Eleven, well then maybe we might get some folks waking up in Washington ... which is to say I was talking crazy. Until I went out to the hardware store that very same afternoon and spent some money on an air-conditioning unit for our master bedroom. After that I was just fine. And now, after all that fuss, it's raining, hard. After all, it's July. It's monsoon season.

Heat, burn, douse. It's all good, natural, I see now, sitting here feeling pretty stupid looking back.

Kind of like that summer I rode my bike up Loveland Pass and thought, golly, if I don't get to the top pretty soon I'm going to kill myself; but then, when I got to the top, I got to ride down the hill so fast I nearly shit my Spandex. Which was fucking awesome.

And pretty soon, I bet, we'll have mushrooms growing in our yard again. And when we get bored with that, maybe the wind will start up again.

Wouldn't it be cool if it snowed in August?