God's Plan To Keep Virginians Humble

Being a native Virginian, I have often bragged about the happy accident of my origins...Southern by birth, Virginian by the grace of God...that sort of thing. Besides the rich historical heritage of my home state comes the special geographic charm of living in a place which is equidistant from the Blue Ridge mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. In addition, we have four separate and distinct seasons. We get snow in the winter, beautiful greenery in the spring, hot summers and gorgeous fall foliage. However, once a year we also get something else, something that for a brief season makes me hate where I live. 

 Pollen.

Yes, about the time that we shake off the surly bonds of winter, we start noticing the yellow/green menace. It begins to sneak into our lives, a thin haze of goo, the residue of a veritable orgy of plant copulation going on all around us. All this vegetation has no shame, no sense of decorum. Everywhere you look, all manor of stamen, anthers and pistils are doing their business in full view, with no concern for the God awful mess they leave behind. It is left to us to clean it from our cars, our driveways and side walks. It is up to us to somehow prevent it from infiltrating our homes. Just this morning amidst radiant sunshine and mild temperatures, I briefly forgot that I am a Virginian and it is mid April. I foolishly decided to take my breakfast out on the deck. Within five minutes I noticed that a yellow film had coated the top of my coffee. It took five freaking minutes!!!

So, for the next month or so, Short Pump will see probably half of its citizens clutching white hankerchiefs in one hand and a bottle of Claritan in the other. Everyone's eyes will be red and runny, and half of us will be high on some sort of anti-histamine, making car travel on Three Chopt, Pump and Broad an even dicier proposition than normal. You put a West End woman behind the wheel of a Tahoe under the best of circumstances, and your odds of damage are pretty high. Hype that woman up on Benadryl and you've got an M1 Abrams tank with a half blind teenager at the wheel.

Then there's the problem of what to do with the cars. I mean, you can't just drive them around with an inch of nature on the windshield, but you also can't spend 30 bucks at Carpool getting them cleaned either. So, you put them in the drive way each night and while wearing all the required protective clothing, you hose the things down. Then you watch the yellow river of pollen flowing down your driveway into the street, a trail of tears. Then you turn the leaf blower on yourself before going back inside the house. Still, a cleansing shower must be taken before you dare get into bed for the night.

Fortunately for we Virginians, this is only a four to five week adventure. It is the price we pay for being so clearly better than the other 49, God's way of keeping us humble, I suppose. There's more I could write on this subject but I've gotta go to Lowe's to buy some air filters.

Lucy and Me at the Hospital

In the past 24 hours I have discovered that the only place worse than an actual hospital is a pet hospital. Last night I spent 3 and a half hours at the Veterinary Referral & Critical Care facility in Manakin-Sabot with Miss Lucy. I spent most of that time in the "family room" waiting on reports from the doctors, and talking with my fellow stressed pet owners. I heard the life story of a 14 year old diabetic Chitzu who was near the end of her life. Through a stream of tears, a middle aged single woman told me about her chocolate lab Willow, who, like Lucy, had eaten something she had no business eating and was now plagued with gastro-intestinal issues. Since this woman had never married and had no children, Willow was her child and she didn't know what she would do if she didn't pull through. About the time I figured that the place couldn't possibly get any more depressing, in walked a giant of a man clutching a Dalmatian puppy close to his chest pleading with the nurses to help his little guy who had apparently broken one of its back legs and was in extreme discomfort.

It was a long night.

In Lucy's case, it has been a couple of days since she has eaten anything, and after a rather routine bowel movement 36 hours ago, she has been a hot mess, obsessed and extremely agitated with her bottom. She can't take two steps without practically giving herself whiplash whirling around trying to smell or inspect it. Her personality has drastically changed; she wants nothing to do with us. It's as if she is embarrassed by whatever is wrong back there and wants to be by herself. Well, 36 hours, three trips to the Vet and pet hospital, two sets of X-Rays and $987.36 later we still don't quite know what's wrong. Although there are no obstructions, she obviously ate something out in the yard that has given her fits as it makes its way through her system, vomiting and now diarrhea. They kept her last night for observation and hydration and as I type this, I am waiting for the promised 7 am phone call from the Vet to let me know how she did during the night and to inform me of what the next step should be. At least no surgery will be required which was very much a possibility last night.

See, this is the thing with dogs. They barrel into your life like an out of control freight train, completely disrupting your routine. You throw everything into their care, spend ridiculous amounts of money in pursuit of their happiness, then slowly feel them wrapping their tentacles around your heart. In no time, despite bathroom accidents, ubiquitous slobber and occasionally ill-placed vomit, you wake up one day and realize that you are hopelessly in love with a 60 pound shedding monster. Then they dig up some plutonium in the back yard for an afternoon snack and you wind up at the Veterinary Referral & Critical Care facility listening to a brick layer telling you the story of an eight year old Boston Terrier named Max. You're actually fighting back tears.

Dog ownership is not for the selfish, not for the poor and definitely not for the faint of heart.

The Ticking Clock Called April 15th

Today is April 15th, the day that federal taxes are due. My life is oriented around this day. As of this writing, my return is not yet in my hands, but I am assured by Carl, my accountant, that it will be ready in time. I have no idea how much I'll owe. I hope it's not very much, but I'm prepared to be disappointed.

I am not an anti-tax zealot. I have no objection to paying them. Taxes are what free people pay for the privilege of living in a free country. I may object to how much I have to pay or how it's spent, but not to the concept of taxation itself. Further, even if I think I am over-taxed and the government wastes money, it's up to me to pay what I owe. It's the law of the land, and I have no patience for free-loaders.

Still, there is a part of me that resents how large a roll April 15th plays in my life. The complexity of taxation seems intentionally baked into the cake, making it necessary for me to hire an accountant to navigate me through the maze of schedules and forms. I feel helpless. When Carl delivers my return to me today, it will resemble a college thesis written by a math major with the gift of gab. I won't even bother to look at the pages and pages and pages that follow the cover page, because it's the cover page that helpfully distills the matter into a sentence that I can understand, " please sign where indicated and make a check payable to the United States Treasury in the amount of $........" 

Although I love Carl and I happily pay him for his invaluable services every year, I resent that I need him. The fact that our system of taxation is so bizarrely complex is at the root of almost every dysfunction in Washington since it is precisely this complexity that gives those in Washington their power. Imagine how fast K Street would become an abandoned city if our 50,000 page tax code were replaced with a flat tax with no deductions. Try to imagine how less sinister our Congressmen and women would be if they were stripped of their ability to micro-manage our lives through the tax code. The reason that most of Washington is against tax reform generally and the flat tax in particular is because they all know this to be true. 

Personally, I would be in favor of a flat tax even if it meant I would have to pay more. Ironically, even if it could be proven that a flat tax would increase revenue to the government, nobody in government would want it. They would rather retain the power to encourage me to use wind-powered, carbon-neutral solar-paneled lawn mowers by giving me an accelerated depreciation allowance and a tax credit, that I will have to hire an accountant to figure out how to claim. 

"Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You?"

I have written blogs about each candidate who announces for the Presidency. This one is about the latest, Marco Rubio, senator from Florida. Actually, it’s not going to be about him, but rather about something he said in his announcement speech that has resonated with me. I have no idea whether or not I will support Rubio, I don’t yet know enough about him. He may very well be a jerk, for all I know, but these lines spoke to me,

“I am humbled by the realization that America doesn’t owe me anything; but I have a debt to America I must try to repay. This isn’t just the country where I was born; America is the place that changed my family’s history.”

Fifty-five years ago, a Democratic President stood on the capitol steps and stirred America with these famous words,

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

John Kennedy was the very last Democrat to make such a suggestion to us. Every Democrat since has had a very different message which can best be described as, “Vote for me and I’ll make sure that the government takes care of you.” In all fairness, Republicans haven’t been much better. Each election seems to be a contest between which party will bring home the most bacon. Washington is now viewed as the source of all solutions to the problems we face. The government now has morphed into a giant vending machine that dispenses favors and benefits. You want 
subsidies for your struggling business? Have our lobbyists write a sweet deal into the 
tax code. You want to insure that buying a home gets subsidized by your fellow 
taxpayers? Give money to the Real Estate lobby to fight tax reform. You want the government to pay you unemployment benefits forever when you lose your job? No problem, vote Democrat. They have all the compassion with other people’s money you can possibly imagine.

Ronald Reagan came along and reminded us that the ten scariest words in the English language are, “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you.” But, although his heart was in the right place, even he couldn’t slow the inexorable growth of the power and reach of the federal government. Today, it seems that the trend away from self-reliance and towards the welfare state is complete and irreversible.

Then, this 43 year old presidential candidate declares that this country owes him nothing. Not only does it owe him nothing, but he’s the one with the debt, because this country made his life and the life of his family possible. As someone who was born in 1958 into a family who had recently lived in a trailer park in south side Richmond, Virginia, I feel exactly the same way. On the day that I was born, no one in my extended family had ever attended college. One of my grandfathers was a sharecropper in Buckingham County. Now, I sit at this laptop computer contemplating the astounding good fortune which has come my way from a land of such profound opportunity…and I feel nothing but gratitude. I’m the one with the debt. And although Marco Rubio might not get my support, I for one am grateful for a candidate who dares to call us back to a time when all of us felt that debt and that gratitude.

Hillary Clinton for President?

So, now it's Hillary Clinton's turn.

I find it quite ironic that she should choose to announce her candidacy on the very day that Pam and I watched the last two episodes of House of Cards. In them Claire Underwood, after spending thirty years in a calculated political marriage whose sole purpose was the acquisition of power, suddenly discovers that the Oval Office only has one chair...and she is none too happy about it. In the final scene of season three Claire does something that Hillary never had the stones to do...she leaves her husband.

I say all of this because I find House of Cards to be a rather thinly veiled biography( or hack job ) of the Clintons. Bill and Frank are both southern Democrats with tons of charm and few scruples. Claire and Hillary are both publically devoted and subservient to their husbands, but privately, equally duplicitous co-conspirators. The series is a monument to the ugliness of pride and arrogance and the spawn of those two vices...entitlement.

So, now the smartest woman in the world will run for President for the second time, and like the first she will enter the race as the prohibitive favorite. When she couldn't win in 2008, when she couldn't beat a nobody first-term senator from Illinois, with the thinnest resume since Kim Khardashian, I thought she was finished. But, here we are eight years later and she is the front runner...again. I suppose you should never count out the wife of Bill Clinton.

A quick review of strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths:

Experience. She has been close to the levers of power in this country for the better part of twenty years now. That counts for something.

Fund Raising. With the help of Bill, she has demonstrated an unprecedented ability to raise millions of dollars. The Clinton Foundation has shaken down not only every entity in the United States that hopes to get anything done in Washington, but foreign countries with the same objective. 

Symbolism. Hillary has the same advantage as the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She is a symbol, a totem, the ultimate aggrieved minority, the latest "first." She would be the first female President, smasher of the ultimate glass ceiling. For an awful lot of people, men and women, this will be enough.

Weaknesses:

Accomplishments. Ask any Hillary supporter to sight five things that she has accomplished in her years of public service and you will hear a lot of stumbling and stuttering that usually ends with something about raising consciousness about some such thing or another. She was First Lady for eight years, and totally botched the only big job she was ever given, 1994's Hillary-Care fiasco. She was a carpet-bagger in reverse US senator from New York where she did less than nothing. Her years as Secretary of State have accomplished  the amazing feet of managing to make John Kerry look competent. 

And yet, here she is again, poised to make history. She leads in the polls practically everywhere and against practically everyone. If elected, she will give us the first "First Man," Bill Clinton. That alone might be reason enough to elect her. The First Rogue will be the single greatest thing to happen to late night comedians since Dan Qualyle.

The Most Dangerous Drive in America

What's the most dangerous drive in America? The first answer that pops into my mind is interstate 95 from Richmond to Portland, Maine. Having driven it over thirty times in my life, I can attest to its white-knuckled, edge of your seat qualities. But, an equally compelling case can be made for the beltway around our nation's capital, or rush hour in Atlanta or Los Angeles. However, I have come to the conclusion that the most dangerous place to be in a car is in the parking lot of a big box hardware store on a Saturday morning, anywhere in America.

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day here in Short Pump after a week of dismal cloudiness. Lowe's hardware was the place to be for every handyman homeowner on a mission. And that's the thing...make no mistake, when we homeowners find ourselves with a sunny Saturday on our hands, we most definitely are on a mission. We are going to finish that project today even if it kills us, and the way we sling our cars around in the parking lot, getting killed seems like a reasonable expectation. See, it's only ten o'clock but we are already behind schedule. Who knew we were out of Tiki fuel? And, we could have sworn we had plenty of that mold and mildew remover that you hook the water hose to and spray on the front steps to remove that gross black stuff. But nooooo, somebody threw it away!!

Anyway, there I was yesterday picking up a few mission-essentials at the hardware store. Upon completing my purchase, I walked through the parking lot towards my car when the peaceful calm of suburbia was interrupted by the loud screech of tires, an angry horn and a stream of profanity. Some knucklehead had backed out of his space in too big of a hurry and had nearly impaled a senior citizen with an opened box of aluminum siding sticking way too far out of the back of his truck. Meanwhile, a woman in a Suburban had almost hit them both while talking on her cell phone and driving entirely too fast. Incidentally, why is it that when women use the F bomb, it sounds so much more lethal? This was near death experience number one, and I was still fifty yards from my car.

Then I saw a late model Ford Taurus with several sheets of plywood on its roof precariously secured with a few bungee chords and the driver's left hand. This sort of vehicle always warrants special attention in a hardware store parking lot, since these guys are always in a huge ball-crushing rush. Sure enough, Pedro had miscalculated the size, weight and displacement of his load and as soon as he made the first big turn, the plywood began to shift, snapping the bungee chords and slinging across the asphalt towards an incoming Tahoe. Again, profanities were exchanged.

At this point, I'm thinking of the old saw about how bad things come in threes. I get in my car determined to drive as defensively as possible. I check my mirrors, adjust my seat belt and say a quick prayer, "Lord, if you get me out of this parking lot alive, I swear I won't ever complain about how boring church is ever again...this month!"

I ease the CTS out of my space, and make my way slowly, very slowly towards the stop sign in the distance, when suddenly some guy driving a Volvo stuffed full of flowering plants obscuring his vision backs out of his space within a foot of my front bumper! I stand on the horn and scream out my own brand of anger, which if I recall went something like this, " WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE??? HOLY CRAP, IS EVERYONE IN THIS PARKING LOT ON FREAKING DRUGS??!!"

All of this for a couple of bottles of that mold and mildew remover stuff that hooks onto your water hose so you can spray it on the front steps to remove that gross black stuff.

First world problems.

Truly Horrible Eye Puns, and the Rand Paul Campaign

Yesterday I published a blog about Rand Paul's candidacy. I noted the fact that instead of being a garden variety lawyer, the senator was and is an ophthalmologist. Today, in anticipation of what surely will be a parade of horrible EYE PUNS over the next 19 months, I thought that I would get ahead of the curve and offer a few of my own:

1. Rand Paul, ophthalmologist, certainly has his eye on the White House.

2. Rand Paul, ophthalmologist, offers a unique libertarian vision.

3. Rand Paul potential campaign slogan...eyes on the prize.

4. Rand Paul, ophthalmologist, brings intense focus on NSA.

5. Rand Paul, ophthalmologist, brings farsighted approach to foreign policy.

6. If it were discovered that Rand Paul, ophthalmologist, was once a communist sympathizer, would his opponents call him a ....pink eye?

7. Does Rand Paul's vision for America need contacts?

8. Rand Paul, ophthalmologist, to appear on ABC's 20/20.

9. Rand Paul, straight-talking libertarian ophthalmologist, demonstrates  steely-eyed resolve.

10. Does Rand Paul, ophthalmologist, have a blind spot for the poor?

Please feel free to offer your own pun to this list. Then we can all sit back and count how many of these will be used by the media during the coming campaign.