The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The Fender Bender Repair Shop hides down past Tyee Store’s huge footprint, mostly just a pole building with four stalls, one with a hydraulic lift over a three foot pit. Ben Paulsen started it then years ago as an auto repair business to replace the income he lost when the tool and die shop he’d worked at twenty years closed down during the Great Recession. Ben used his 401-K savings to buy the dilapidated metal shed and lost a fortune on the penalties for cashing in early.

“How’s Biz?” I asked when I drove up with my truck that needed a new clutch. Ben groaned and said sadly, “You’re it, that’s how business is lately.” Most days Ben and a few layabout cronies can be found in an upstairs office with large windows overlooking the empty bays, television on with Fox News yammering in the background and a refrigerator full of barely cold beer the boys haul in but never take out. If Benny’s making money, it pretty much goes into the fridge and cable. Us locals know to make our appointments in the morning before the noon Happy Hour if we want quality repairs. Late afternoon, we might as well do them ourselves, just as bad but far cheaper.

“Whatcha got for me, Skeeter?” Ben finally asked. I told him my clutch was starting to slip. “All right, lemme order a new one, get it tomorrow. That okay?” I said it was and asked if I needed an appointment. Ben cast an arm out over the barren bays. “I think you’ll be first in line.” He dug his grease fissured hands into his ancient overalls. “Trump don’t bring those jobs back soon, this place is toast,” he lamented forlornly. I didn’t have the heart to argue with him.

“I’ll see you morning after next,” I said and got back in my old pickup, started it and backed up. Ben stood watching, then turned and headed back up the stairs. Fox News was flickering through the big windows. The Fender Bender Repair sign, bordered by small theater lights, flickered too. In Ben’s mind, the whole damn country was doing the same.

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You maybe remember Oliver North, the poster boy for the Iran/Contra affair, that black spot on American History where Reagan and his team played a little fast and loose with the law to secretly fund a war in Nicaragua with money from Iranian arms sales. Some might say this should have gotten Ronnie impeached, but in the malaise of Nixon’s exit, another presidential ousting was more than Congress could stomach. Ollie, some say, took the fall instead. Me, I think the belligerent little soldier of fortune deserved all the jail time we could give him.

So it was little surprise Fox News gave our traitor a hero’s welcome. They’d give Benedict Arnold an anchor spot if they saw George Washington as the status quo. And now the National Rifle Association just announced Ollie will be their new President, replacing, well … nobody we’d remember since Charleston Heston memorably played the role. Hard to beat Moses. But Oliver North isn’t a bad choice. You know, if you want a hard-nosed, take-no-prisoners, cold hearted sonofabitch for your spokesman. And apparently the NRA does.

I mean, you got these snot nosed high school kids tugging at your bump stocks, smarmy smart asses who wouldn’t know an AR-15 from an AK-47, who think a Glock is a pharmaceutical stock their parents have in their portfolio … punk kids who want to embarrass their legislators for taking money from the NRA, protectors of the second amendment, and whose aim is to ban all shooting irons in the Yew Ess of Aye. You need a killer for president. You need a paid assassin. You need, yep, you need Ollie. Apparently Stephen Seagal and Dick Cheney are busy. Personally, Dick would have been the better choice. He was willing to shoot his own duck hunting partner. You have to RESPECT a man who blasts his friends, a man would willingly lay waste to those high school kids, no twinge of conscience for him. Have gun, will travel.

The NRA apparently feels under siege. Thousands of high school girls and boys, placards held defiantly high, picketing and getting out the future vote. That’s more firepower than La Pierre and his paranoid thugs were prepared to confront. They needed a stronger offense, if you can imagine that. They needed an Oliver North. Probably to sell arms to the Iranian mullahs for cash to power up a P.R. blitz. All I can add is that Fox News’ loss is probably nobody’s gain. Go get em, Ollie!

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Rudy Giuliani, the former federal prosecutor and mayor of New Yawk on 9-11, is currently (as of the last few hours) Donald Trump’s newest attorney. The man has a mouth like Montezuma’s Revenge and if he had any clue how to use it, he might be dangerous. The President may have found the perfect counselor, a mouthpiece to match his own, full of sound and fury, signifying … well, who knows. He’s been walking back his first statements, then his second and now his last and in the end, it’s exactly like his boss, bad craziness, lies and bombast, ignorance and narcissism full throated. Try, if you can, to avert your eyes, much less your ears.

Trump just hired the guy who was Clinton’s attorney when he was impeached. Tell you something? I can’t remember his name right off, but then, why bother keeping track, they come and go faster than Trump’s girlfriends. Rudy was brought in to clean up the whole witch hunt bizness and so far has pretty much hung a tire around Donald’s neck, mentioning how he knew Cohen was paying off Stormy, how he met with Cohen to make payments when Cohen complained he was getting stiffed, how the payments were necessary given the election was a week away. If Trump was worried Cohen would sing like a canary, he doesn’t have to wonder about his boy Rudy, the man is a bad opera.

Giuliani’s newest fallback is that he doesn’t have the facts yet. Just blabbing off the top of his head, I guess. Like I said, a perfect match for his master. Attorneys usually are conservative fellows, reluctant to say more than what is necessary, usually nothing much at all unless they’re under oath themselves. Whatever lawyer/client privileges might have been invoked down the road, Rudy has pretty much burned that argument by spilling his guts day in and day out.

If I wanted to drain the swamp there in D.C., I might start with a lot less lawyers and lobbyists. Trump, not so much. This guy can take credit, almost single-handedly, for bringing the unemployment numbers down, creating jobs at an incredible pace and hiring folks most people would consider unemployable. Give him credit where credit is due. I just wish I’d gotten a law degree.

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These are hard times for the 1% … even though they have control of most of the state legislatures, the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court and the office of the President. Oh sure, they pass tax reform bills that mostly go to themselves, but, and here’s the Rub, some of it went to the undeserving poor and middle class. They classified corporations as people so all that money that used to be given to the lobbying efforts can now go to elections. With a little luck and a lot of loot, they should soon be able to save billions on lobbyists that are no longer needed. You might think these are the Golden Years for the rich.

But you’d be wrong. The rich are never really happy apparently. Like John Paul Getty once answered when asked how much money he could possibly need: More. Succinct and honest. He wants more. He and many of the richest folks in America want it all. How much is enough? More. And trust me, that includes yours.

So when Father Patrick Conroy, the congressional chaplain, inserted a line in his prayer for the legislators to consider the poor in their deliberations, to be fair and inclusive, well … he definitely crossed a Line. Imagine the nerve of this guy!! Speaker Paul Ryan said, just before firing his chaplain, he had brought politics into his prayers. Sorta like that guy Jesus who told folks to sell their riches and give it to the needy. Politics! I guess if you think you ought to have the whole enchilada, giving crumbs to the poor is extremely political.

The thing is, though, they can take umbrage over someone like Padre Conroy inserting charity and hope into his mini-sermon, but they shouldn’t show it publicly. Looks bad. Greed and insensitivity, even in this Trumpian Era, don’t actually play well. They need to feign concern for the poor and downtrodden while they’re picking their pockets. Otherwise they look like, well, avaricious legal thieves. They should offer them a paltry cut in their taxes that they can always recoup with user fees, gas taxes, etc. while taking the lion’s share and claiming they cut taxes for everyone. Let the preacher have his sappy exhortation for charity. They’ll be slicing Medicaid back a few notches and cutting back on welfare programs before he can say Amen.

Sure, they walked it back on the chaplain’s dismissal. But not before they’d drawn back the curtain on their smoke-filled room where the Wizard was discovered to be all those back-slapping, cigar smoking, brandy sniffing yahoos and their lobbyist cronies. Just like you always suspected….

Say a prayer for them. They need saving.

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