Run For Your Life

 It's here!

Not Election Day, but a reasonable facsimilie!

Halloween lets us know that life is scary, creepy things happen all the time, and the dead walk the earth. Most of them wearing red baseball hats. 

I have spent the last year feeling low level anxiety about the race for the White House, but over the past month or so it has ramped up to full-on terror. I find myself repeating the phrase, "It's only a movie," under my breath. 

I have been told for months now that this is the most important election of my lifetime. That lifetime that includes the election and re-election of such notables as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. I also bore witness to the defeat of the first major party female presidential candidate, and we know how that ended up. The idea that this low-charisma bronze tan racist might find his way back to Pennsylvania Avenue for anything but prison release work detail picking up litter after Kamala Harris' inauguration is frightening in the extreme. 

A quick historical note: There was a time when the zombies that appeared in our nightmares were shambling moaners with little on their to-do list than shuffling about, clawing at the occasional door, and eating the brains of those too dumb to outrun them. Then Danny Boyle, who had already exposed us to the "fun" of drug addiction in Trainspotting and the joy of taking a relaxing hike in the desert southwest in 127 Hours, decided to make his zombies fast. And aggressive. This undead crew gave up shuffling for sprinting. 

Thanks Danny. 

Just like the velociraptors that figured out how to open doors, the MAGAts have organized themselves into a demented, frothing, crime against nature. Like those zombies, we keep hacking them up (metaphorically speaking) and they keep coming back to "life." What do they want? Only our brains. Because they're envious of what they don't have. They may be dumb, but they're fast. 

Can you run? Run to the ballot box. Stop this horror in it's tracks. 

Taxing

 So, here's the deal: I don't really want a tax cut. I understand this is a big deal for a lot of people, getting a reprieve from paying the government any part of the money for which we all work so hard. 

Most of us are working hard. And ironically enough, it's those who tend not to do the traditional "hard work" of building things and breaking things and putting things back together who are the ones who get the attention when it comes to things like tax breaks. Economists will tell you that's because the percentages of the paychecks these laborers make the big bucks that can help pay for battleships and school lunches and the like. It's the billionaires who can not only afford to pay lawyers and accountants to starve off those nasty tax bills, but can also expect special treatment from the powers that be to lighten their "fair share." 

Meanwhile, you've got folks like me who have found themselves after a few decades in the workforce, trying to figure out where I will land once I decide to stop working. Did I save enough with all my tax-deferred accounts so that I can live comfortably into my even older age? Will there be enough tucked away in programs like Medicaid and Social Security to keep me from having to find a job that I can do in my golden years to pay for the lavish lifestyle that would allow me to enjoy three meals a day for me and my wife, perhaps on some sort of alternating basis. 

The thing is, I continue to vote for things that cost money. I vote, essentially, to raise my own taxes. I am not voting to lighten my burden to the community. It could be that my career in public education has made me ever more convinced that providing for those who have less is what we all need. Battleships. School lunches. Life. LIberty. The pursuit of happiness. It's not tax free. 

Fit To Print

 Turner Classic Movies did me a favor, of sorts, by broadcasting All The President's Men last Friday evening. I say "of sorts" because as great a film as I believe it is, nearly fifty years after it premiered, it appears today as a bit of a fantasy. 

Fantasy? 

Yes. Fantasy. 

The story of how newspaper reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward helped to bring down the Nixon administration after the crimes of Watergate is meticulously recreated from one of the all-time great investigative journalism triumphs of all time. 

Fantasy? 

Well, it just so happens that it was also this past Friday when the editors of The Washington Post, home of the legacy of Woodward and Bernstein, announced that they would not be endorsing a presidential candidate for the first time in thirty-six years. If the "bright spot" here is that the Wahsington Post did not choose to endorse the convicted felon, than things have gotten much darker than any of us had imagined. Is the mountain of evidence that has been laid out by media outlets and the Orange One's former employees that the Republican candidate is somehow insufficient for those in the fourth estate to make what is essentially an existential call? 

Here's something that wasn't true about the Washington Post in 1972. At that time, the newspaper was not owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. The programmers at TCM may have had this in mind when immediately after All The President's Men, they showed Citizen Kane. "I think it would be fun so run a newspaper." Indeed. 

Sleep Spending

 It was a pretty straightforward dream:

My son, who loves all things cars, had come into a considerable amount of cash. Apparently he had not only received a solid promotion at work, but he had also been saving money straight along, leaving him with a substantial chunk to spend. Stimulating the economy, and all that. 

His mother and I went with him to the Ferrari showroom where initially he was treated with mild disdain because he did not, in his T-shirt and jeans, look like the person who would normally be browsing the Italian supercar line. 

And yet, there he was, bankroll in hand, ready to throw down hundreds of thousands of dollars on a fine performance machine. His parents stood by in joy and admiration as he talked to the sales representative in ways that showed that he wasn't jut there to spend, he was there to invest. 

Once the deal was made, lattes were sipped, contracts signed and all those bills counted, the shiny gray vehicle was lowered down to the ground floor of the facility where he took ownership. His proud parents waited on the curb to see if they would be offered a ride. 

Eventually, we were. 

I don't remember much about the back seat, but I knew my son was happy. It was only when I woke up that it occurred to me that I probably should have made some dad move like suggesting that he spend far less on a new car of a more sensible variety. He could put the rest of the money away for a rainy day. He could be more responsible. 

Because that's what dads do. And moms. In spite of all the chaos that our family bank accounts have experienced over the years, being adults we somehow feel that we know best. About spending money anyway. 

But maybe not about how to be happy. 

I'm glad that in my dream I managed to be a better parent. 

Goofus And Gallant

 One candidate shows up to a town hall that might have been a second presidential debate. 

The other guy shows up at a closed McDonald's to make pretend fries for pretend customers. 

One candidate presents an eighty-two page plan for an "opportunity economy." 

The other guy drones on about the manhood of a professional golfer.

One candidate stands up for health care for all Americans. 

The other guy has "concepts of a plan."

One candidate appears on most every media outlet, seeking to spread her message. 

The other guy continues to trot out his same dog and pony show to his red-capped legion.

One candidate is a prosecutor.

The other guy is a felon.

One candidate is proud of her place in the melting pot of America. 

The other guy is a xenophobic racist. 

One candidate looks to bring people to the middle.

The other guy denigrates those who disagree with him.

One candidate looks to the future. 

The other guy is stuck somewhere in the past. 

One candidate is working tirelessly for your vote.

The other guy assumes if you don't vote for him, you're part of a conspiracy. 

One candidate deserves to be President of the United States. 

The other guy never did. 

Bottom LIne

 The guys who owned the Arby's franchise where I worked went by the names "Mike and Cowboy." To this day I do not know their actual names, nor could I at the time distinguish one from the other. All I knew was that every so often these two jokers showed up in the back room of our store, where we worked as a well-oiled and periodically drug-addled team. They came ostensibly to check in on their investment, which was humming along just fine thank you very much. We were a streamlined operation serving two to three customers every two to three minutes and we were all very clear on the concept of "clean as you go." Compared to a lot of fast food restaurants, the crew stuck around. Years at a time. We had one family in particular whose offspring used Arby's as a rite of passage. When they were old enough to don the brown polyester dashiki, they were welcomed in and given a shift. 

Mike and Cowboy didn't do the hiring. They were far too "busy" to be mired in such minutiae. Instead they turned their laser-like business focus on the things that really mattered. Like the time they used our prep area to conduct an experiment. They made a large order of french fries and a small in a small portable fryer. They weighed them both and were gleeful at the result. The small order was within grams of the large. The creepiest part about this was that they made this discovery at one of the few Arby's that did not serve french fries. 

Mike and Cowboy were my window into corporate greed. 

And over time, they served as a model for Derek Giacomantonio, the McDonald's franchise owner who invited a convicted felon to stage a fifteen minute training video at their fry station. While Mister Giacomantonio was quick to point out that the visit from the twice-impeached former "president" did not constitute an endorsement, he didn't have any response to questions about the fact that particular restaurant failed its last health inspection. 

Then came the avalanche of negative Yelp reviews. Followed up by an E. coli outbreak that spread across the Golden Arches. Consequently, McDonald's stock plummeted. 

I'm pretty sure Mike and Cowboy wouldn't have let that guy server fries without washing his hands or wearing a hair net. If they had been interested in staffing. 

At all. 

How Much?

 I pledge allegiance

to the check that Elon will write me

and to those principles

I left behind

I only care

about the cash in my pocket

This revamped version comes to us via the raffle that Elongated Mush is currently running. “We want to try to get over a million, maybe two million voters in the battleground states to sign the petition in support of the First and Second Amendment. We are going to be awarding one million dollars randomly to people who have signed the petition, every day, from now until the election." One might pause briefly to wonder about the pronoun choice, but I expect that since corporations are people and Elon has enough money to be a plural, why not?

If you're one of those people who read that pitch and wondered if this is entirely legal, fret not. 

It isn't. 

Federal law makes it a crime for anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting.”

But never mind all that legal mumbo jumbo. All you have to do is add your name to a list that says it is a  "Petition In Favor of Free Speech and the Right To Bear Arms." Don't spend too much time reading all that fine print at the bottom. You support the Constitution, don't you? Specifically those first two amendments, the ones that Elongated Mush, an immigrant who may or may not have eaten a dog, would like you to care about more than anything else. And since he's been bounding around on stages supporting one particular candidate, he might prefer if you would cast your vote in that general direction. 

Does any of this leave a bad taste in your mouth? Like Freedom is now for sale, and the chance to be a millionaire seems totally worth it unless you consider that by the time you slice off the twenty-two percent federal tax plus whatever your state might need for your privilege to say you "won big" by putting your name on that dotted line, you probably won't be shifting brackets anytime soon. 

Would it be worth subverting the democratic process? How much is your vote worth? 

"In God We Trust - All Others Pay Cash" - Jean Shepherd