The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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.

Since it’s a rainy day and I haven’t quite motivated from the morning’s lethargy, let’s rehash the day’s headlines, maybe find reasons to fire up while the coffee is percolating through my sluggish pathways. That arsonist kid blew himself up down in Austin. Good news there. Donald Trump brags he could beat old Joe Biden to a pulp in a fistfight. Nice to know our president has the Putin-esque mentality of a 10 year old punk. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says he takes full responsibility for the Borg’s lack of data security. Course, he crossed his fingers. That fully automatic car that killed a woman on the side of the road had a human aboard who didn’t see her either. It happens. Jarod Kushner lied about rent controlled housing numbers to New York City in order to increase profits. No kidding? Putin won by a landslide in jolly olde Russia. Really?….

The Bomb Kid managed to blow up 5 bombs before the Authorities tracked him down. You might have been wondering, like me, how many people he would kill before the ATF, the FBI, the local police, the Texas Rangers and who knows how many other crimefighters pooled their vast resources to bring this nutcase to ground. And maybe, like me, you were stunned how quick they nailed him. Cameras at FedEx, cellphone pings, credit card information, security video at Home Depot, license plate on his vehicle … the boy didn’t get very far. We live in an extremely interconnected world of sticky digital webs. You want to go off the grid, good luck. Ted Kaczysnki slunk off to a cabin. The Barefoot Bandit never used a cellphone or a credit card. No cars. No vehicle licenses. No known addresses.

The rest of us, good luck if you want to be Anonymous. If you want to be Left Alone. If you want to be Individual. Mark Zuckerberg will tell you these are Thought Crimes. What have you got to hide??? Individualism is Anti-Social. The Collective is Happiness. ‘Friends’ are your Salvation. Your Cellphone is God. Information will set you Free!

I try to be optimistic in these strange times we live in, but hellfire, the news coming in at me feels more like shrapnel or those nails the Bomb Kid packed into his explosives. I don’t exactly feel like an innocent bystander, though, since I keep peeking at the headlines. Maybe the trick is to wean off, slowly at first, then, once the D.T. ‘s subside, turn off the computer. Just watch out for the self-driving car that could smack you by the mailbox!!!

Grab a broom, y’all. We’re going witch hunting. I know, doesn’t seem sporting, doesn’t seem fair, the prey are such easy targets. They’ve laid down a trail a blind turkey hunter could follow in the rain. Tax records, graft, payoffs, porn star affairs, lies and misdemeanors, felonies and blatant nepotism, election tampering, bullying, name-calling just follow the latest tweet, you pretty much got the witch treed. That howling you hear isn’t the coon hounds baying, it’s the witch his screaming self. ‘Who would have thought that some little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness.’

These are dark times in Trump Tower, its gold logo looking smoke damaged and tilted. The T is falling off, leaving rump Tower as ironic icon. The hunter has become the prey, his attorneys are lawyering up like madmen, and the greasy little Giuliani has finally weaseled himself into the inner sanctum where men are chewed up and spit out faster than an Oscar Mayer wiener. Even the True Sycophants become sausage in a matter of weeks, sometimes days. Loyalty is a bad joke, it’s All for One and One for One. The rest, they’ll have a snarky nickname shortly.

The center cannot hold, as Yeats wrote, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The evangelicals may like this guy just for the reason that he may be the rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. There are plenty of folks who pray for Apocalypse, plenty who secretly want the pandemic or the Big One, lots of folks who see the End Times and rejoice. The Anti-Christ, they may be hoping in their dark hollow hearts, the One who brings Chaos to the world. Drain the Swamp! Pull down the Walls! A better day is Coming.

But there will be no Second Coming this go around. We will be having an exorcism, a witch trial, a great national cleansing, count on that. You want End Times, you’ll have to wait a little longer in your miserable sanctimony. This isn’t the One prophesied in Revelations, kids, this is the wicked witch of the west. The bucket of water is being readied, the monkey army of Republicans will cheer when it’s thrown and the witch is melted, we’ll all go back to the old partisan politics. History will sort this out later, plenty of new jobs there. But we will be rid of the Reign of Terror that will be Trump’s final legacy. Ding dong, the witch will be dead.

Yes, you heard right, folks are clamoring in the heartland for their hero to be nominated for the Peace Prize. The dotard who threatened to obliviate the Little Rocket Man’s country. The pacifist who stands up to Russian aggression in the Crimea and Ukraine, not. The bully who uses his office to berate those individuals he dislikes. The boy who wants to build a 2000 mile wall between us and Mexico. But let’s stop, you know who I mean.

The man is many things, but a promoter of world peace, let’s dial down the meds, okay? Next thing you know, we’ll be giving him the Literature Prize for his tweets. And the Physics Prize for that impossible comb-over. I know you like the guy, all that tough talk and swagger, but c’mon, let’s stay in earth orbit.

But, you say, he has brought North Korea to heel. They’ve got a rapprochement with the South, they’ve quit testing their nukes, they wilted in the face of the Man who embodies the art of the deal. So what if their testing facilities had collapsed completely? So what if the South brokered the deal? The man is taking full credit. Not really sure yet for what, other than a meeting to discuss some kind of deal, but why not give him that Nobel right now anyway?? We’re working on blind faith obviously. The coal jobs are coming back (Economics award!), the tax cuts are fueling the American Revival (can we give him two Economics Nobels???), his golf courses are doing bang-up biz (Sports Nobels, anyone? or at least some kind of Olympic medal), he’s drained the Swamp (Biology?) and he’s turned facts and science on their heads (Philosophy).

Obviously some folks must think this is the Messiah. I know, he doesn’t seem very religious, but … this must be a New Religion. Maybe, let’s fly with this, maybe we should anoint him Pope or …. Guru … or … World Archbishop or, well, honestly, who am I, a mere mortal, to imagine the exaltedness? I have no doubt he will let us know when the time is right. Probably soon. Expect New Commandments, tweets five times a day, prayer rugs to face Mir-a-Lago, a Pyramid on top of the Lincoln Memorial. Ramses will pale in comparison. Meet the new Caeser, Pharaoh of the Universe. Pay homage. Tremble in his shadow. He is the Mighty and Powerful Oz.

When the Great Orange promised us he’d drain the swamp, I guess some folks thought he’d be cutting waste, encouraging efficiency, removing the dead asses, cleaning up government. A leaner and probably meaner machinery. Instead he hauls in his pals, the rich boyz, and they roll in expecting all those perks they figured every agency head and cabinet secretary has always gotten. Otherwise why would they take a pay cut. These aren’t folks whose value system ranks Public Service at the top of their list of virtues.

Scott Pruitt could be the poster boy for the Swamp Monster. He travels first class on the government dime, coach when he’s paying. He uses his staff to hunt down a sweetheart deal on a D.C. apartment and doesn’t mind that the landlord is the wife of a lobbyist, no conflict of interest there so long as the rent’s cheap. He orders himself up an SUV with bullet proof seat covers. I know, you didn’t realize that was an option at the dealership when you bought your last car. Kevlar in plaid. Pricey, but when you’re as important as the head of the EPA, an agency you are doing your damndest to gut, you worry about pissed off folks maybe drill baby drilling your Chevy with a spray of rounds from an AR-15 equipped with bump stock. He travels in the car with a full security team, runs red lights if he’s in a hurry to get to the opera, detours his planes to Disney, all those activities that the Swamp is notorious for. Mr. Pruitt has champagne tastes to go with his paranoia even as he demotes his staff for questioning the prudence of spending like a drunken sailor.

So when he orders up a custom phone booth, sure, eyebrows were raised. $40K for a bulletproof, soundproof phone booth. Why not? People are listening in. Enemies are eavesdropping. Terrorists may be bugging his Apple. These are dangerous times in government offices, for sure. A man, a very Important man, can’t be too careful. So what’s a guy like this to do??? You got it, he orders up a Cone of Silence. Maxwell Smart, the undercover agent with the clandestine phone in his shoe, but when you need maximum security, he demands, well, he demands the Cone….

Pruitt, the Maxwell Smart of this generation, is equally clueless, equally unapologetic, equally bumbling. His boss is sticking with him, at least for the next 24 hours. After that, who knows? Cones of Silence for every cabinet secretary?? Or just stick with the shoe phones? Calling all alligators….