What Would a White Riot Look Like?

My kids are coming home for Thanksgiving. Kaitlin and Jon will be on the highways and Patrick will be on an airplane. All of them will arrive in Short Pump near midnight. We will enjoy a few days together. It will be wonderful but will seem rushed. Then they will leave us as abruptly as they arrived. It is the new normal.

We should be thankful that they come home at all, and we are. I was talking with a friend recently whose kids live in Texas and Oregon, so South Carolina and Tennessee seem like a blessing. Then there are those friends whose kids have settled in foreign lands from Dubai to Thailand. In other words, we have no right to complain. But that doesn’t mean we don’t.

A few thoughts before the weekend:

One of my favorite commentators, Kevin Williamson, has suggested that the IRS needs a slogan and has offered up a couple of suggestions…

We have what it takes, to take what you have!

Somebody’s gotta do it!

To which I might suggest…We harass more people by 6am than other agencies do all day!

This weekend will probably bring an announcement by the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri. Most observers seem to believe that Officer Darren Wilson will be acquitted, unleashing God knows what in that beleaguered community. I think it’s interesting that I haven’t been able to find one story, one opinion that suggests what might happen if Officer Wilson is found guilty. Will the pro-Wilson forces take to the streets torching businesses and stocking up on big screen TVs and Bud Lite? Will the white citizens of Ferguson unleash their pent up rage by destroying private businesses? Why is rioting and looting only an understandable response to perceived injustice for the black community?

Of course, if white people were to riot and loot it would most likely look a bit different. Instead of big screen TV’s and lite beer, we would see pot-bellied white guys with crock pots and espresso machines balanced on their shoulders. White church ladies would be caught by cell phone cameras with twenty pound bags of flour and sugar under their arms and purloined copies of Good Housekeeping and Southern Living magazines stuffed in the apron pockets. There wouldn’t be one single piece of Duck Dynasty memorabilia left on the shelves in Ferguson, and good luck trying to find any Reba McEntire CDs!

The President vs. The President

Tonight, President Obama will give a prime time address to the American people on the subject of his decision to grant amnesty to up to 5 million immigrants presently in our country illegally. In doing so, he will be tasked with the difficult assignment of overcoming powerful arguments that have been made claiming that executive action without Congressional approval would be illegal and unconstitutional, claims made by…President Obama.

  March 2011: Remarks by the President Univision Townhall

"America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the President, am obligated to enforce the law. I don't have a choice about that. That's part of my job. But I can advocate for changes in the law so that we have a country that is both respectful of the law but also continues to be a great nation of immigrants. … With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed …. [W]e’ve got three branches of government. Congress passes the law. The executive branch’s job is to enforce and implement those laws. And then the judiciary has to interpret the laws. There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President.” 

“I swore an oath to uphold the laws on the books …. Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you. Not just on immigration reform. But that's not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That's not how our Constitution is written.”

January 2013: Pres. Obama Defends Deportation Record: ‘I’m Not A King’

“I’m not a king. My job as the head of the executive branch ultimately is to carry out the law,” Obama told Telemundo. “When it comes to enforcement of our immigration laws, we’ve got some discretion. We can prioritize what we do. But we can’t simply ignore the law.”

February 2013: Obama: ‘I Am Not a Dictator’

“I can’t do these things just by myself.” He reiterated that sentiment in a February 2013 interview with Telemundo. “I’m not a king,” he said.

Of course, maybe the President is counting on the famous stupidity of the American voter to not be able to do a Goggle search and find these statements. Or, maybe since he never has to face the voters again, he's just concluded, what the heck?! Or, maybe the role of "King" has evolved.

Welcome to Al's World

He’s the one in the $5,000 Italian suits expertly tailored around his newly trimmed down 60 year old body. He’s the one who scowls angrily at the cameras one minute, then flashes a mouth full of oversized teeth at you the next.

He’s the man who recently bragged, “I’ve been able to reach from the streets to the suites!” And because he is who he is, it hasn’t cost him a dime. Welcome to Al’s World.

The Rev. Al Sharpton was recently celebrated at a lavish Manhattan restaurant birthday party attended by every prominent New York State politician the other day where everyone took turns praising the great man. Even the President sent an aide with a message to read, extoling the Reverend’s many virtues. Apparently, thrift isn’t one of them.

It would seem that the good Reverend owes the Internal Revenue Service some $4,500,000 in unpaid State and Federal taxes, a figure that has been growing each year. Sharpton’s non-profit organization, National Action Network has been kept afloat for years by failing to pay Federal payroll taxes on its employees.(Now that’s some Action I could get on board with!) Neither Al nor his non-profit organization have bothered to pay travel agencies, hotels or a long list of landlords for years. Despite this penchant for welching on his debts, the lavish birthday bash at the Four Seasons was paid for by a long list of corporations that for reasons unknown are not troubled by his history of serial freeloading.

I bring this up because in just a few days the grand jury down in Ferguson will render their verdict, and if it doesn’t contain a conviction, that luckless town will go up in flames. Then Al will show up, a gaggle of cameras in his face recording the rhyming rage coming forth from his mouth. The Reverend will no doubt be in high dudgeon about how poorly African-Americans are treated, about how the system is out to get them and how the burning buildings in Ferguson are a just and understandable reaction to years of ill-treatment at the hands of the privileged white establishment.

When speaking this way, he will be referring of course to the great unwashed African-American population, not the Al Sharptons of the world. I’m almost positive that if Doug Dunnevant had somehow managed to amass a 4.5 million dollar bill for back taxes, my white skin wouldn’t stand a chance of saving my ass from the heavy hand of the IRS legal team. My prison cell would be the last on the left, right across from Hannibal Lecter. I mean, Al Capone got away with murder, extortion, bribery, and racketeering, but couldn’t fight the taxman. How does Sharpton manage it?

Becoming a race hustler and poverty pimp was obviously an astute career move for Al Sharpton. It’s Al’s world. The rest of us are just living in it.

2014 Christmas List

We have now officially reached the middle of November. This can only mean one thing—the unholy alliance between Christmas and Capitalism is upon us. For the next 38 days we will be bombarded by land, air and sea with relentless marketing extoling the virtues of conspicuous consumption. From the ubiquitous sales fliers crammed into our mailboxes to the carpet bombing Walmart television ad campaigns, there will be no escape from the Gekkoesque message, “greed is good!”

Pam needled me the other day about my Christmas list. She does this every year. I am always the last one in the family to attach my list to Dunnevant Christmas Central, our famous family Christmas website. Secretly, this is my form of silent protest, but partly it’s because I have a hard time coming up with a list of things that I want. Listen, I’m 56 years old. Most of the things that I still “want” cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I mean, I suppose I could put, “a lake house in Maine” on my list but what good would that do? So, each year I sit at my computer trying to come up with a Christmas list and each year it gets snarkier and snarkier. Who could forget 2011’s request for a Santa PEZ dispenser followed by “a capital gains tax cut?” Or how about 2012’s plaintive plea for “better spelling skills?” I can report that I did in fact receive the new fingernail clippers that I so daringly asked for in 2013.

This year, my list will be even harder to write what with all of the turmoil in the world today. It’s hard to prioritize a wish list while watching Bill Cosby implode right before your eyes.  Asking for a year’s supply of beef jerky seems rather petty while the country is poised a heartbeat away from a Joe Biden Presidency. But, it’s November the 17^th and I either do this now or face the wrath of Pam for the next month. Sigh….

So, without any further delay, here is my 2014 Christmas List:

1.     A new coffee maker

2.     Overnight success as a published author

3.     New exotic coffee beans from Central America, Jamaica, or South America

4.     New set of golf clubs

5.     Lake house in Maine

6.     A man or women of raw intelligence, common sense and actual accomplishment to run for President in 2016

7.     Gift certificate to Men’s Warehouse

8.     Gift certificate to Patient First

9.     A grandchild

10.   A less cynical outlook on life

11.     A new stylish suit

12.     A cool hat. (third year in a row for this)

13.    A really nice modern looking but not too ostentatious…watch

14.      Underwear

15.  Dress socks

Old and Stupid

The arrival of my new cell phone has unleashed a flurry of glitches that make the Obamacare website debacle look like a miracle of innovation. It’s so complicated I can’t even find the words to describe the trouble. It has something to do with my failure to back up my old phone to the cloud, the fact that I have too many pictures and videos, and maybe something to do with not having enough storage capability. Whatever it is, we are now on our third setup regime and I am temporarily phone-less.

This is always how it is with me and new stuff. There is always a glitch, usually multiple glitches. I am always left feeling old and stupid by the process. Once it all gets fixed I am happy with the new thing. But while my wife is at her happiest upon being presented with a new technological devise, I feel nothing except apprehension, a great disturbance in my sense of well-being.

One of the first strategies we employed yesterday to try to fix the phone was to go through all my videos and erase the ones I could live without. As it turned out I found that I could live without almost all of them, one in particular.

Most of the videos were of Lucy doing something puppyish that I thought was adorable at the time, but now that she has done the same thing a thousand times…not so much. There were videos of Nationals Park and Camden Yards, scenic vistas of the Shenandoah Valley, that sort of thing. Then I stumbled upon a video I took of my dad maybe a week before he passed away. I had gone over to the nursing home one night and was feeding him some ice cream. At the time I thought he was having a very good day and I wanted to take a video to send to Linda to encourage her. When I pushed “play” I was shocked at how weak and feeble he looked. Why on Earth had I thought that he was having a “good” day? I suppose that near the end this was good. I immediately deleted the thing and fought back a wave of tears suddenly welling up inside me. That’s not the way I want to remember him.

So, thanks Apple for forcing me to stumble upon such a depressing memory!

Stupid technology!

Password Hell

Now that I have that new cell phone I have entered that most cursed state of modern consciousness… password hell. Yes, all of my old phone data was magically rescued from The Cloud and safely deposited onto my new shiny phone, saving me the heartbreak of losing all of my pictures and other valuable stuff. The only problem is that now every time I want to actually use an app, I must reenter my username and password. The usernames were all saved, but all of the passwords were not.

Ok, here’s the thing. I haven’t been called upon to enter these passwords in nearly three years. My chances of remembering them all are roughly equivalent to the chances that any national democrat will admit to ever having heard of Jonathan Gruber.

I have two choices. First I could consult my dog-eared page of usernames and passwords that I keep deep in the bowels of my briefcase. Its reliability isn’t absolute since it is so old that the ink has begun to fade and several coffee stains have rendered it unreadable in places. My second choice is the painstaking process of trying to answer the safety questions that I apparently set up years ago to test my knowledge of my own past. For example:

What was your first girlfriend’s middle name?

What was your Grandmother’s favorite pudding?

If you were one of the Beatles, which Beatle would you be?

Wait…what??

So, having failed my own tests, I must then plead ignorance and beg the various companies to e-mail me a new password, or at least allow me to start the entire identification process all over again, always great fun.

Now before any of you technogeeks out there(and you know who you are) start sending me messages about some new gadget that I can get that will store all of my usernames and passwords in the Fort Knox neighborhood of The Cloud…save yourself the trouble. The last thing I need in my life is another gadget, because that would require me to come up with yet another username and password. My powers of creativity are tapped out in that area. Since I’m constantly warned not to use things like street names, pet names, middle names, birth dates, anniversary dates, in other words anything that I might actually be able to recall under pressure, I must conjure up weird things like…PuKeVTHokiessuckooii%43320{…to which I get the reply…Sorry, your password is insufficiently complex and must contain at least three punctuation marks and two mathematical formulas. Please try again.

Isn’t technology great?

Hooked

Almost three years ago I wrote a blog entitled, “Ignorant and Helpless…yes, I got a new cell phone.” It was my first smart phone and the thing wore me out. I felt like a third grader being introduced to calculus. My wife was very patient, and my two smarty-pants kids tried mightily to keep the snickering to a minimum, but I managed to learn how to use the thing in something quite less than record time. Well, this morning I got the following text from Apple:

“Good news!! Today’s the day! Items in order W246******* should be delivered today.”

My new phone is ready. Pam bought it so I don’t know much about the details except that it’s the newest model, but not the ginormous one. Hopefully the learning curve won’t be as severe. It should be pointed out that this order was placed a month ago because every retail outlet in America was sold out of the things, which reassures me that those 100 shares of Apple I bought four years ago on a whim might very well prove to be the best investment I have ever made in my life.

I suffer from major league ambivalence with these iPhones. On the one hand I love them. I love the convenience, the amazing power, and the functionality. On the other hand I hate how dependent I have become on their existence. When I see some hapless millennial walking down the street, nose six inches from the screen, fingers frantically typing away, I used to roll my eyes in disgust, fairly dripping with condescension. “Look at that moron,” I would sneer. “Dude probably can’t go to the bathroom without that contraption!”

Well…I may not require my phone in the can, but with every passing week I am growing increasingly tethered to this miracle machine, and it is a source of great shame and embarrassment. At least I have created phone-free zones for myself…the golf course for one, and…and…well, the golf course. I don’t even bring a bible to church anymore. There’s an app for that.

Whatever…it’s too late to turn back now. I’m hooked. Maybe one day they will discover that cell phones give us all cancer or that after 15 years of sustained use our ears suddenly fall off of our heads. Then we will all look back and wonder what the hell we were all thinking. Maybe then we will all stop walking into light posts. Maybe then we will rediscover the bliss of ignorance.