Where Are They Now?

( Note:  This is satire, people. Well, mostly)

With the 2012 campaign but a distant memory, we caught up with former Massachusetts governor and GOP nominee Mitt Romney at his family’s residence to find out what he’d been up to since November.

  “Man that was bad. That was a dark time for me, really for everybody.”  Gov.  Romney told us while sitting in a room with the shades drawn. Even in the dim light we could see that he had put on a bit of weight since his defeat at the hands of Barack Obama.  “ I just came home that night and crawled underneath the covers and ….hey,  does it look like my hair is falling out?”

 The candidate has been a virtual recluse since the election, even to his 1.6 million Twitter followers who have heard absolutely nothing from him since election night. A few days later a haggard looking Romney was spotted at a gas station pumping his own gas.  The website from his campaign still bears the image of an optimistic looking candidate and a cheerful blurb  about  having hopes for the future, but to those close to the former GOP nominee, it’s a different situation altogether.

Romney pumping gas

  “It was crazy” said a cashier at the local grocery store speaking on condition of anonymity. “ I mean  he always had somebody do the grocery shopping for him. You know, a service. But the day after the election he comes in here big as life and buys every tube of chocolate chip cookie dough in the entire store, plus a big spoon.  I told him I voted for him, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye.”

  A source close to the family reported he fell into a sobbing fit when his book wound up on the discount rack at his local bookstore. Witnesses report that he began to rant about how he had ‘the perfect hair, a gorgeous tan’, and had taken ‘every position on every issue at least once. What do you people want from me?’

  By contrast Congressman Ron Paul of Texas has been busier than at any time in his life.  He retired from Congress , giving one of the great political speeches of all time, and since retiring has  written  yet another  best selling book, launched a home school curriculum,  opened the doors to the Ron Paul Peace Institute, and given speeches  to  ever-growing crowds all over the globe.  During one particularly energetic rally, the normally soft-spoken Dr. Paul challenged some members of the college-age audience to “Punch me in the stomach. Come on, I can take it!” and unconfirmed reports claim he has taken up the hobby of jumping over cars and through flaming hoops on a motorcycle.  An eyewitness at a state fair told the Associated Press that the regularly scheduled daredevil had fallen ill, but Dr. Paul just happened to be  in the area and   strapped on the colorful costume, revving the motor and calling out to the crowd “Who’s the boss? You the boss!”” before zipping the bike towards the ramp and easily clearing the obstacles.  Paul staffers would neither confirm nor deny the incident, but merely commented that, “Dr. Paul is enjoying the newfound liberty he has as a private citizen. There’s lots of thing he couldn’t do as a Congressman.”

Probably not Ron Paul

 Reports that he  has challenged Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke  to an ‘Indian leg wrestling match’ were flatly denied.

A Short Story

( I submitted this story to  David Malki's Machine of Death  Anthology. It did not get accepted. I guess it's probably indicative of my general philospohy of using any avenue I can to get the gospel in front of people)

  He took a break from the preaching to distribute some gospel literature to people as they passed by. Standing slightly behind him leaning against a lamp post, watching with a smirk on his face was a young man in his 20’s. The old preacher was aware the younger man had been standing there for several minutes, and after handing out tracts to those passing by the preacher finally spoke to him, offering him a  gospel tract.

  “Young man, did you get one of these?”

 The young man took it, and disinterestedly stuck it in his pocket. His eyes went from his pocket and back to the preacher.

 “I really am surprised there are still people like you around.”

“People like me?”

“You know religious types.”

“Ah.” The old man continued to   pass out tracts.

 The young man came off the lamp post, warming to his target. “I mean really, in this modern age, with cell phones, and science, and MOD’s, the idea of guys like you still peddling your fairy tale book is, well kinda sad.”

  The old man smiled kindly. “Got it all figured out, do you?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you old man. The game is over.  We know where we came from, and we know how we’re going to exit the scene.  People like you are an anachronism.”

  There was a break in the foot traffic and the old preacher turned back to the young man. “What’s your name?’

  “Daniel.”

  “Good name.  So by ‘where we came from’ you mean..”

 “You know, evolution.”

The preacher nodded with an amused smile. “..and the ‘how we’re going to exit the scene’ part?”

The young man looked at him like he was an idiot. “The Machine of Death, of course.”

“What about everything in the middle?”

The young man shrugged an annoyed shrug. The old man laughed gently.

“And things on the other side of death?”  Daniel was silent. “Sounds like me like you’re missing some pretty important pieces of the puzzle there, Daniel.  Tell you what, you read that tract I gave you and I’ll be praying for you.” The preacher turned and headed down the street. Normally he would have talked longer, but something told him this wasn’t the last time he’d see Daniel.

  A week went by, and the preacher found himself back on that corner, and when he finished his first round, Daniel was there behind him, leaning on the same lamp post.

  “Good to see you again.”

 “Let me ask you a question. Are you one of those people that are opposed to the MOD’s?”

“Opposed, no.  Unconcerned, maybe.”

“So you’ve never been tested?”

“ I assume you have?”

The young man nodded.

T he preacher watched Daniel’s countenance closely. “And the verdict?”

The young man shuffled around nervously, looking at the ground.   There was an uncomfortable silence, but the old man waited. “Car crash.”

 The preacher nodded solemnly. This was tricky business what happened next and he threw up a quick prayer for wisdom. “And, from what I’ve read, even though nobody knows how the Machines work, they’re always right?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Then  why not move to the Sahara,  to some place with no cars and live forever?”

  “People have tried that. It never works out. Somehow, the machines are always right.”

  The preacher nodded again. This wasn’t the first time he had had a conversation like this. “So you have absolute security in the accuracy of a machine that you don’t even know how it works?  What faith!”

 Daniel changed the subject. “You never told me whether or not you’ve been tested.”

“I have not.”

“Why not?”

The preacher shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me.  Especially if I can’t do anything about it.” He held up his Bible, pointing at Daniel with the spine. “You may know how you’re going to exit the scene, but that knowledge doesn’t do you any good. I know what’s on the other side of your car crash.”

 Daniel waved the preacher off with a dismissive hand . “Yeah, yeah.  Put my faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ to wash away my sins or I’ll be condemned to the Lake of Fire for all eternity.” He looked vaguely embarrassed at how well he’d recited it. “I read that thing you gave me.”

  “And?” Daniel said nothing. “Look Daniel, you and I know  that you’re going to die,  and  you say you know how you’re going to die, but yet you resist making any preparations for what comes after.”

  Daniel tried again to change the subject. “I think you should get tested.”

  “No thanks.   Daniel, it’s been good talking to you, but I’m going to go back to preaching again.”

  “Wait! You may not be curious, but I’m curious.”

 “Curious about how another man is going to die?  That’s a tad morbid, don’t you think?”

  Daniel didn’t have an easy answer for that.   None of the conversations with the old man had gone as he’d planned. He expected the preacher to be some wild-eyed simpleton, repeating parrot-like phrases from some book of mumbo-jumbo.  He thought it would be like talking to a cave-man. Instead the preacher not only claimed to have some answers, but seemed very content with what the answers might be. His whole attitude, his demeanor, was like he was from some other world. He also looked at Daniel, really looked at him, like he was a person.  Daniel personally found the preacher’s lack of concern about his own demise a tad offsetting. Everybody he knew had been tested as soon as they were of the legal age.  “They have these portable units, you know?  I can get one, and we can test you. And then, well, I’ll let you tell me some more about Jesus.”

  The preacher watched the young man carefully. This was a most unexpected turn of events. He thought for a moment and then offered a compromise. “Ok Daniel. We’ll do this, but on two conditions. One is that I really don’t care anything about reading what comes out of the machine. I’ll let you do that.  The second condition is that you come back out here next week and help me pass out gospel tracts. We’ll discuss Jesus as we work.” The preacher was pretty certain the kid would never go for it, and after holding the preacher’s gaze for a few minutes, Daniel looked down and quietly began walking down the street.

  “Can’t win them all.” The old man said to himself and once again he cupped his hand to his mouth and began preaching to the passing crowd.  He was surprised when he finished to find Daniel standing behind him with a small portable MOD in his hand.

 They just stared at each other for a moment and the preacher finally relented . “A deal is a deal.” He offered up his finger to the machine, which pricked it, drew a small sample of blood and began various mysterious calculations. In less than a minute, a small piece of paper rolled out and fell to the ground. Daniel snatched it up and clutched it in his fingers. He read it and looked quizzically at the old preacher.

  “ I don’t get it.”

 The preacher smiled.  “I expect you to meet me here at 3 pm this time next week to keep your end of the deal.” He turned and began heading down the street. Daniel took the small paper and turned it over as if the back of the paper would explain the front. He looked at the figure walking down the street and repeated to himself the mysterious phrase on the slip of paper.

“NO STING.  I wonder what that means.”

The Greater Tragedy

The truly scary part of the events in Boston, and by extension the events like it over the last  few years, is how it brings out the absolute worst in an unthinking public.

  The news that 2 suspects had been identified and one of them had been killed by police was actually greeted with cheers by co-workers of mine.  One of the coworkers said mockingly to me “Would love to hear your take on their so called ‘civil liberties’ now.”  His position , reiterated to me multiple times over the recent past is that ‘terrorists’ have no civil rights, no right to a trial, just kill them. He has used this mental blind spot towards his own horrific statements  to celebrate the  drone bombing of innocent people in faraway lands. He has actually made the statement “It serves them right for living so close to  the bad guys.”

  So let me make myself very very plain here. A human being accused of a crime has the right to a trial regardless of what crime he is accused.   Notice I did not simply say ‘a citizen’ has that right, and I did that on purpose. My rights, and yours, do not come from a piece of paper, even if they are enumerated by that piece of paper. My rights and yours come from our humanity and a fair society will honor the rights of whoever happens to be under its jurisdiction at the moment, whether they be a ‘citizen’ or not.  To do less is to commit a crime against the accused.

  The state enjoys a monopoly on violence in many areas, and a monopoly on the ability to incarcerate.  I cannot lock my neighbor up in a cage if he transgresses against me, only the state enjoys that privilege.  In theory, to counterbalance that privilege, the burden of proof rests upon the state to make their case before a jury of my peers that a crime was committed and that it was committed by me.  If they cannot make that case, then I go free, even if everybody ‘knows’ I did it.

  When we cast that aside and we seriously contemplate extra-judicial killings for certain offenses, a couple of things happen.  First of all we sacrifice a piece of our humanity by our crimes against the accused. Secondly, that list of crimes where it’s acceptable to just ‘take them out back and shoot them’ always grows larger over time. Trials are expensive, and the system is cumbersome. It’s hard to get a conviction, and it should be, because an out of control police state is far more dangerous than an out of control bomber.

Boston

  Well now that the  gummint seems to have found their patsys, it will be interesting to see how this pans out.  It prompted some interesting  discussions here amongst co-workers, in which  NeoCon (my pet name  for him)  puffed his chest out and   publicly  gushed over the  brave  police and such that  risked life and limb to find the perp.  He  mocked me a bit saying that this incident  sort of makes null my opposition to   cameras on every street corner.  I told him I didn’t have all the facts, but my gut was that  the 2^nd  guy will never  see the inside of a jail cell. They will kill him first and claim he was resisting arrest.  He laughed a bit and told me that cops are  specially trained not to shoot unarmed people and he  would challenge  me to find  a single incident where a cop shot a suspect  just for resisting arrest.  I’m not entirely certain what planet he’s  from or what planet he currently lives on.

Sincerely Wrong

  In the wake of the  bombing in Boston earlier this week,  Susan Estrich, who by all  indicators seems to be a very nice lady,  wrote a syndicated  column that appeared  in our local  paper  entitled 'Just Keep My Children Safe From Terror'. This  no doubt heartfelt column is  such a sterling example of wrong thinking that  I felt it necessary to   address it.  She writes:
"What do we want the government to do? How  much of our liberty and privacy are willing to give up in the hopes that it might  stop terror?.....So this is my answer: I'd give up a lot.  You want cameras on every corner? Fine with me. I don't care who pats me down at the airport. Pat away. Keep the confidences of my clients, but other wise my email is  an open book. Mine my data;listen to my conversations. If it will keep my children safe, I don't care."
  I know,gentle reader ,that there are  a plethora of angles from which one could approach this  wrong thinking. I'll just throw out a couple of the more obvious ones and we'll see where this goes.
  Giving up liberty has never brought security. Ever. Our security is in our liberty. The reason is simple. Your government is more of a threat than any network of terrorists ever will be.  To entrust the government with the power it seeks is worse than giving the fox  the keys to the henhouse; its giving him the  keys, an axe,a pot full of boiling water, and a book  of chicken recipes.  To trade liberty for safety is to trade what you cannot get back for what you will never gain.
  Mrs Estrich says that she would be comfortable living in a  surveillance state, which to her would make her safe.  Never mind that the governments of the world killed  over 200 million people in the last century, a number  terrorists could never hope to match.   Even if she could  give away her liberties in exchange for safety, and even if the  state were capable of  making her safe, by what right does she impose that condition on everybody else? I for one am not  comfortable with  more power given to an entity whose very nature is rooted in brutality.  It will not keep her children safe  nor more than it will keep  my children safe. Instead she will be fitting them with the manacles of their  own enslavement while softly cooing to them that it's all worth it.  Patrick Henry must be turning in his grave by now.
  I  have full faith and confidence that Mrs. Estrich means every word she wrote. That, unfortunately is the truly scary part.

Nothing New Under the Hollywood Sun

  I was watching the Magnificent Seven (one of my favorite movies) and I made the comment to my oldest, who is  almost 11, that this  movie always made me think of the Steve Martin movie ‘The Three Amigos’.  Robert had never seen The Three Amigos, and I tried to explain the plot to him.  Halfway through my explanation he said “oh, so it’s 'Galaxy Quest' set in the Wild West.”  I sat back and marveled at his brilliance.  Here I was, a supposedly educated person who had seen all 3 of the movies discussed who knows how many times, and I had never made the connection that Three Amigos and Galaxy Quest are the exact same movie!

  This is made all the more embarrassing by the fact that I have espoused a theory for years now that there are only about 30 plots in any movie, book or TV show, and these plots are tweaked,   scrambled, and recycled over and over again.  Most if not all of these plots have their precedent in  the Bible. Some  accomplish their ends by being the exact opposite of the Bible precedent. Despite rattling on about this theory at every opportunity (yeah, I’m one of those guys), I had never made any sort of attempt to catalog any of these plots and give specific examples.  I will now attempt to do so, as many as I can think of , and let my readers be the judge of whether or not I know what I’m talking about.

(Note: While composing this, somebody asked what I was doing, and when I told them, they informed me that such a list already exists.  One Google search later, I’m forced to concede a certain amount of ground in this area, but I still think my list will be more entertaining)

1) The best and the brightest of an organization betrays the organization and becomes their sworn enemy.  This shows up in everything from Star Wars  to The Last Starfighter to the fall of Lucifer in the Bible.

2) A fair maiden is threatened by the chief villain, and is rescued by the hero (who everybody thought was dead) at the last possible moment, usually on a white horse.  Think of almost every Western you’ve ever seen. This also shows up in the book of Revelation.

3) Two siblings are polar opposites in temperament, and their destinies collide, ending in a face-off some kind.  Jacob and Esau or Cain and Abel are the Bible examples.

4) A man shows his devotion to his bride by risking life and limb for her.  The story of the crucifixion is the original, almost every romantic comedy you've ever seen fits this  type to a lesser degree.

5) An innocent man  sufffers willfully for the guilty.  Charles Dickens took this plot device  for Tale of Two cities directly from the story of  Christ at Calvary

6) An enemy of an organization becomes its most fervent  convert.  Saul of Tarsus anyone?  Some would argue that this is simply a reversal of  #1, and my counterpoint would be: Leave me alone or write your own list.

7) A murder is commited and hidden, only to be revealed later. Moses did this

8) A female of modest  origins  marries a man of immense importance. This is an easy one.  Cinderalla is the   most obvious example, along with its scriptural parralel of  Christ the redeemer  taking lost sinners to himself to be his bride.

9) A female is rescued from self-inflicted damage by the true love of a prince or king. Snow White eats the poisoned apple, and  'dies', but is ressurected by her Prince.  Genesis  3.

10) A man kills another man (or somehow disposes of him) to hide an affair.  David did this to Uriah the Hiitite centuries before  the first murder mystery was written.

11) The novice becomes the  master , (and only hope) after the master dies or disappears.  Luke Skywalker took on Yoda's mantle just like Elisha took on Elijah's mantle. 

12)The bad guy steals from or defames the  good guy in order to promote himself, than later is exposed and punished.  Here the movie Big Fat Liar coincides with the  story of Haman and Mordecai in the book of Esther.

13) A creation turns on it's master and  has to be destroyed.  There are elements of this in the biblical story of man's fall and God's susequent dealings with  him. This plot  mirrors itself in everything from Frankenestein to Mimic

14)  A chosen one  dies or disappears and re-emerges exercising great power.  The life of Jesus Christ would be the precedent with movies like The Matrix borrowing from it.

15) Somebody gets the blame ( or credit) for something they did not do. Joseph goes to  prison in Genesis while Jimmy Stewart's character in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance gets accolades. Both become powerful political figures.

16) An unlikely champion vanquishes a larger opponent.  David and Golaith is the template for a  score of movies and books in this area, including  almost every 'feel-good' sports movie you've ever seen.

17) A cursed person is restored by the love of another.  Beauty and the Beast reversed the genders, but it's the Bible story of salvation in a nutshell.

18) A group of people ( usually 5)  goes on a quest.  I dont really have any  Biblical example here, but it happens  so often in everything from Scooby Doo and Star Wars to Lord of  the Rings that there must be something to it.

19)  A person violates their conscience and suffers the consequences. Let's see,  there's Pinnocchio for starters.  In some  works of fiction, the  guy that violates his conscience ends up in  a #13 scenario. the Bible example would be every person who ever lived.

20) The most unlikely  person arises as the champion.  The book Ender's Game  may be  my favorite non-biblical example of this plot stolen from the  life of David, Joseph,  and Jesus Christ.


Let's see, that's 20 so far. I now open the floor to contributions, with worthwhile ones being added to the list ( and full credit given) thanks to the miacle of the 'edit button'.

Boston Fallout

 Well now it  begins. Rep Peter King of NY was interviewed and he said the following, none of which should come as any surprise to anybody that has been paying attention for any length of time. In fact, some of us could have  written these lines for him. He was asked if we needed more cameras.

 I think we do because I think privacy involves being in a private location. Being out in the street is not an expectation of privacy. Anyone can look at you, can see you, can watch what you're doing. A camera just makes it more sophisticated, but it's no different from your neighbor looking out the window at you or a police officer looking at you walking down the street.

So, I do think we need more cameras. We have to stay ahead of the terrorists and I do know in New York, the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, which is based on cameras, the outstanding work that results from that. So yes, I do favor more cameras. They're a great law enforcement method and device. And again, it keeps us ahead of the terrorists, who are constantly trying to kill us.

I hope also that members of Congress, both parties, including my own, will realize that the war against terror is not over. And it's foolhardy to be making cuts in Homeland Security, especially to cities, whose police departments need this to train and to be ready to take on terrorism

  Now the most powerful lies are half-truths.  Yes, in public you  have  no expectation of privacy. It is  quite common while performing public ministry for me to be photographed or videotaped by private individuals. I have no legal recourse against that since I don't own the  photons bouncing off my  body.  But there is a difference between  'no expectation of privacy' and  the constant  surveillance,  and archiving of all information , pertinent or not, on  citizens by a police state.  Just because you're in public doesn't mean that the  4th Amendment is suspended.  Privacy does not  only apply to being in a private location. The police cannot (although they will if you let them) just randomly stop people in public and  rifle through their effects.  What Mr. King is  suggesting is not the same as your  neighbor looking out their window. It's more  equivalent to your neighbor following you around with an infrared sensor and a   boom microphone.   If your neighbor was to do this, and then begin compiling a list of  your friends, associates,   places you  frequent, etc, we would call that 'stalking'.   It's no less creepy when Mr. King (ironic name, no?) wants to  do it.
  Then he says  that he thinks  'we' need more cameras. Who is this  'we ' he's talking about?  I  don't need any more. I don't need a dossier on my fellow Americans.  I don't need a huge megacenter to store all of my neighbor's emails and cell phone conversations. So who is this  'we'?  I think Mr. King  means himself, and his fellow power-hungry elitists when he says 'we'. 
  'We' (there he goes again)  have to stay ahead of the terrorists.  What in the world does that mean? It's one of those statements that are a waste of syllables, as it   takes up space but  is  empty of substance, sort of like  'they hate us  because we're free' or ' if we don't do this, the terrorists win'.  If you cannot  stay ahead of a  ragtag group of misanthropes living in  a cave with the billions of dollars we spend fighting the 'war on terror' then a handful of cameras aren't going to help.
  Think about the logistics for  second though. Here we have one of the most  televised  events in America, and nobody saw anything.   Plus we live in an age in which everybody has a cell phone with a camera. Well I don't, but I'm a ragtag misanthrope living in a cave.  Everybody else has a camera though. Nobody saw anything!! There are  probably  several  very plausible reasons for this. I'm going to go with the  simple one. Nobody was looking.  So to effectively stay  ahead of the terrorists, you would have to monitor  everybody all the time, right?  At the end of the day isn't that  what Mr. King is  suggesting?  If you really wanted to stay head, you need video of   the terrorists assembling this  stuff in their homes.  I mean, if you're committing a crime, you have no expectation of privacy, right?
  "The war on terror isn't over."  Of course not. It, by its very nature  and design is open-ended and unwinnable. There will always be another shadowy  bearded guy in a cave somewhere, always a new villain waiting to be stopped by  our  'best and brightest' in law enforcement. There will always be another  country that needs to be invaded..  All of this is done on purpose, and Mr. King  may not know much about the Constitution, but I'm certain he knows that. To those  looking to expand the police state, this event in Boston was  a godsend.  Just as the America people were  getting fed up with being  patted  down by perverts and spied on, here comes another   bombing!
  The terrorists are 'constantly trying to kill us'. Really, Mr. King? Even if everything the government has told us about 9/11 is true, which is  impossible, and would be the first time they ever told us the truth about anything)  2 or 3 attacks spread out over 12 years  is the most ludicrious definition of  'constantly' I think I've ever seen. 
  Although, since my elected representatives have gone to all the trouble to redefine the word for me, maybe I should  start using it that way.  Maybe we all should. For example, I am 'constantly' mobbed by adoring fans.  I am 'constantly' awash in money.  This could work for me. Maybe I owe Mr. King a  'thank you'. But I'm getting  off topic.
  Here's my prediction, and I certainly hope I'm wrong.  It happened on Tax Day in Boston, and so  even if this is a false-flag, and I'm perfectly OK with thinking that,   the liberty movement will be blamed.  They will get their cameras, and their checkpoints, and most people will not care a whit, and not make a peep. Will you?