His hands oozed and bled within the first hour of work. The skin peeled from the blisters and the pain was plentiful. His work partners allowed him rests to dry up and to clean up the sores.
Morning coffee was glorious and more cigarettes were dropped off. The cops who worked at the range were very decent, even to Bill who was in for assaulting a police officer. One of them said he’d been in court the other day and was talking with Hopkins, the sergeant who had officially busted Bill. He said he couldn’t remember how they’d gotten on the topic, but they were recalling the day of the riot at the University. Hopkins was boasting about being credited with the first bust, a stupid kid named Bill Wynn. The kid had been knocked cold by the undercovers and came to in the paddy wagon. Hopkins boasted about having the kid led through a conversation that appeared verbatim at his trial, a conversation in which he said things about the police, calling them pigs and f—ing pigs and a whole lot more. An undercover planted in the paddy wagon led and guided the conversation. Hopkins was proud of the fact that the kid never had a chance, never knew what was happening, what was coming at him. He even boasted that the kid was so out of his mind from being knocked out that he didn’t know what he was saying.
Mid-morning, that cop came down to the work area and gave Bill some band aids. He also brought soda pop for all the inmates. He told Bill not to use the band aids unless he really needed them. Then he looked at Bill’s hands. He said another day and the calluses would start, that it’d be best if he could tough it out. He said the oozing would stop and the pain would abate.
Lunchtime, Bill sat by himself on a slight hill outside where they worked. He could see inside where the others ate their sandwiches and drank their packaged juices or milk. Bill didn’t eat and wasn’t hungry anymore. He drank a chocolate milk and closed his eyes to picture and re-picture that day he was busted, the events that occurred after he’d awakened.
There were three cops in the front of the paddy wagon. Hopkins was in the passenger seat. Bill didn’t know his name then, but he was called sarge, so that must have been him. The guy in the middle didn’t say much. Mostly he laughed. The banter up there was between the driver and the sergeant.
There were three prisoners in the back. Bill was on the driver’s side. His hands were cuffed behind him and the cuffs fastened to the links of the paddy wagon behind him. He couldn’t move his hands at all and he was bleeding down his face. The blood, he could see, was dripping to his clothes.
Across from him was Harlon. He didn’t know his name then, but he would learn it later. He was the kid the undercovers—later Bill would learn they were FBI—were beating on when Bill entered into the melee.
Next to Harlon was a guy Bill had never seen before. He was the one who led the conversation. He was the one who…
Bill remembered. In his cell was Harlon and the other guy. Like in the paddy wagon, the other guy led the conversation. Bill couldn’t remember what was said. He had a humongous headache. His eye was cut and his head was cut too. His shirt was blood-soaked. The only place to sit was on a metal bed-rack. Bill sat there and held his head.
About a half hour, maybe an hour into the lock-up, he couldn’t really judge time, that other guy was pulled out. He disappeared, just disappeared. But Bill saw him again, once, on a side street in Columbus. He tried to sell Bill drugs and Bill realized when he came around the corner and saw him get into a squad car down the street that the guy, he was an undercover. This was about two months after the day he was arrested and about three months before his trial and incarceration.
Bill was in lock-up that day for about ten hours before he was bailed out. For the entire time they kept bringing in new prisoners. Altogether six hundred would be arrested. He was the first. Sometime in mid-afternoon a gas was released into the lock-up. There were a lot of screams and yells and a really foul odor. Everyone coughed, Bill too, his head throbbing worse with each cough. The gas spray stopped after about five minutes, but the effects lasted about an hour. Or, really, they lasted a lifetime.
A lot of people could have said “he’s not my president” about Obama back in 2008. They might have asked who this man was who promised hope and change, the first African-American to win his party’s nomination, the first African-American to become president.
Throughout much of the country there was jubilation. Throughout much of the country there was trepidation. Blacks felt as if they’d arrived. Many whites rejoiced. Many others wondered and feared. But no one spoke out in divided terms (with the exception of fringe groups perhaps) or demonstrated or destroyed things or called him names. In fact, no one even deeply vetted the shady past from which he emerged, to wit, his ties to a known terrorist and a racist Reverend. No one seemed concerned that he was a left-wing socialist.
Along with Obama we got a first lady who said that only since her husband was nominated was she for the first time in her life proud of her country, or perhaps that always until then she was ashamed of it. Of course, now in her exiting the White House she has said that her husband’s departure means that hope is gone.
Obama is a narcissist beyond any ever seen in the White House. He claims many things, yet most of his claims are nothing more than that, empty words. He had no real accomplishments before entering the White House and given his actions in the transition period thus far, it’s safe to say that he will leave no positive legacy to speak of. Instead, he leaves the country more divided than he found it, the Middle East in turmoil and chaos, Russia and China threatening and even taking aggressive military actions inclusive of annexing territories. And that’s not to mention his leaving a politicized and corrupt IRS, State Department and lack-of-justice department that selectively chooses which laws to enforce and which to disregard. Of course, he also leaves a failing medical care system, Obamacare, in which unless you’re so poor that you’re totally subsidized, your deductible is so high you might as well not have insurance, which you can’t do since you’re penalized monetarily.
So he leaves a mess all around while claiming he’s the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln. Shame on him! Shame on him for the lies like Benghazi and for rewarding and promoting the presenter of the lies. Shame on him for his overt racism and for sympathizing with Black and Muslim criminals and traitors like hands-up-don’t-shoot and Bo Bergdhal. Shame on him for being more supportive of illegal aliens than the families of those innocent American citizens they’ve killed.
Shame. Shame. Shame.
And now the worst. He began his presidency by first visiting Arab countries and apologizing to them for America’s “actions.” He’s ending it by selling out our one Democratic ally in the Middle East and our greatest ally, Israel, by changing the longstanding American policy of supporting Israel in the UN. Along the way of his time in office, he supported every Muslim enemy and foe while snubbing and demeaning every Democratic ally. Remember that insulting gift to Queen Elizabeth? No wonder a good many people still believe Obama is a Muslim!
Shame on you, Mr. Obama. The only transparencies in your administration have been your blatant disregard for American values, for American citizens other than Blacks and Muslims, your blatant disdain for our allies, for Christianity and for anyone who does not hail you as the legend only you believe you are.
Most of all, the greatest shame of all on you for stabbing Israel in the heart and once and for all showing your personal anti-Semitism while again unleashing world anti-Semitism.
You alone think yourself a legend, Mr. Obama. But you’ve shown yourself to be a petty, shameful, ignorant, bigoted empty shell of a president.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Tonight will be a little bit different for here.
Before anything more is posted:
To all my friends, family, followers, viewers and visitors:
A very Happy Hanukah
A very Merry Christmas
A very Happy Holiday Season for anyone who celebrates a different holdiay
A very Happy and Healthy New Years—may all the best be yours
Peter
Second verse same as the first! The second morning and every work morning, as Bill would discover, were exactly the same. Same wake up time. Same eating time. Same razor routine. Same wait for the call to work.
Food was the same too. That second morning, Bill had not eaten a meal since the day he was pronounced guilty in court and sent off to the workhouse, almost two full days. Runny, sloppy cereal, cold, hard and unbuttered toast, watery eggs and a slice of some indistinguishable meat, like a spam.
Per his usual now, Bill drank the chocolate milk. He knew that if it was like yesterday, he would get decent coffee and maybe even more cigarettes at the shooting range. Maybe he’d be allowed to go to the bathroom there, get a short walk on his own, by himself, to clear his mind. Tomorrow, he thought, he’d get a shower. Deodorant was something else he’d need.
Something interesting happened that second morning. His work group had been called and they had boarded the paddy wagon to head out. But a bus with new prisoners had arrived early and was blocking the gate. Actually, the gate wasn’t totally blocked and they could have gotten out if the driver were so inclined. Instead, the driver and his partner were intent on watching the show. Two other work crews, also already boarded onto paddy wagons, were stopped and watching too.
Bill had seen the show. It was the same show. The only difference was that Bill hadn’t known it was a show when it happened to him. Bill had thought it was for real; now he knew it was a put-on performance.
The same guard who had gotten on Bill’s case for Bill’s looking at him, for their eyes meeting, was calling out one of the new arrivals, the one who had the longest hair.
“You eyeballing me boy?” he said loudly. He stepped into the new arrival’s face.
“No.”
“No what?”
The new arrival, like Bill that day, had no clue what he was supposed to say. “No officer,” he finally said.
“You call me sir, boy.”
“Yes sir,” the new guy said.
“Lookee here,” the guard said. “We got us a bona-fide genuine hippie boy.”
All the guards came over. They all wore sidearms and carried shotguns. One guard cocked his shotgun and said “I see the slightest motion out the corner of my eye while I’m checking out this here hippie, I’m shooting at it first and asking about it after I shoot.”
“I’ll be damned,” one guard said.
“Remember the hippie we checked in yesterday morning?” another one said.
“I heard he enjoyed the strip search. You gonna enjoy the strip search, boy?”
The new guy did not answer.
Another guard, one who had not spoken, poked him in the ribs with the butt of his shotgun. “Didn’t you hear him ask you a question?”
“Yes sir,” he said.
“Well?” the same guard said, prodding the guy’s ribs with the shotgun with each word. “Answer his f…ing question. You like it up the ass? You look like a faggot to me.”
“No sir,” he said.
“You a queer?”
“No sir.”
“Goddamn,” Bill said aloud.
“What?” one of the guys in his work crew asked.
“They ran that routine on me. When I first got here, the same guards, even the same words.”
“They do it every arrival,” one of the work crew members said. “Those of us been here awhile seen it lots of times.”
“It’s to scare the shit out of the new inmates, so they don’t act out,” another crew member said. “It’s to keep order.”
“Anyone been here before knows the game. But it works pretty good.”
“Worked on me,” Bill said. “Worked just fine.”
They all sat in silence for the rest of the show. Bill mulled things over and over in his mind. The thrust of his thoughts centered around reality, what was real and what was their messed up theatrical version of reality.
I’m living in their reality, he concluded. It’s real, he thought. But it’s not reality.
No one said anything when a junior senator from Chicago with no real government experience and no administrative experience whatsoever was elected president. Only a few people, people like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, brought up the facts that this young, inexperienced junior politician started his political career in the home of a terrorist who had bombed a police station or that he’d spent twenty years in a church whose pastor’s sermons were laced with racist and anti American venom.
No one petitioned the electors of the Electoral College to abandon their sworn duty and not vote for the person who’d won the election then. No. No one said he had no experience or that he used drugs in college or that he was unqualified and unfit for office by his associations, his actions or his beliefs then.
The incumbent president was cordial, facilitated a smooth transition of power and quietly left the White House. In fact, no matter what the new president did, that president who had served his two terms stayed quiet for the duration of his successor’s two terms. He was a professional, a gentleman, a man who served his country and did not believe that his beliefs were absolute, that it was his way or the highway.
So how have we come to this? How is it that in this election cycle electors of the Electoral College are being threatened not to vote for the President-Elect? Yes, their lives are being threatened! How is it that the incumbent is taking potshots at the President-Elect and his press secretary is openly accusing the President-Elect of colluding with the Russians to alter the outcome of the election? Even the first lady has chimed in by saying now that the election ended as it did, hope is gone.
How did we come to this? Why would the losing party be so invested in discrediting the winning one before it even assumes office?
These are real questions, questions the American people must grapple with and come to terms with. These questions actually ask all the American people to check out what is going on in this country, to examine the actions of the losing party that is attempting to undermine the very core of our democracy.
It was Hillary Clinton who was so appalled that her opponent might not accept the results of the election. In fact, her opponent only said he would wait to see the results before he answered the question. He never said he would not accept them. Nevertheless, she viciously attacked him, called him un-American, said his words, his position and his attitude were un-American. Therefore, by her own words and logic, she must be un-American, and her actions (of course perpetrated by her front people, as is her way) must be challenging the very pillars of our democracy. Shame on her, shame on them, shame on the community organizer who became president who spent his entire presidency organizing, campaigning and playing politics, even going so far as to do it using the IRS, the State Department, the lack-of-justice department, the CIA and the FBI. Even more shame on him for taking potshots at the President-Elect and for being so arrogant as to think only his ways are right.
The left’s beliefs, the beliefs of the Despicable Dems—that only they are right and that anyone who doesn’t see this is so stupid that they need the Dems to lead them and take care of them—are a main part of the reason they lost the election. Their arrogance and self-righteousness are the cause of their being totally blindsided by the results, by the mere possibility that maybe a good part of America doesn’t want what they are pushing, that maybe they haven’t been as successful as they think they’ve been.
Nevertheless they plod on. They don’t look inward at their actions or at why they lost. They look outward, fund riots, recounts and bogus excuses for why they were rejected. They even support harassing electors of the Electoral College. In sum, they perpetrate all the worst behaviors and actions they attributed to the other side thinking it is okay because they are morally right, thinking their own poo doesn’t smell.
More hypocrisy! Maybe if Hillary had looked at how often she lied, how often she was insincere, arrogant and self-righteous while being nothing more than a self-serving, common thief, she might have been the first woman president. Her pretty words, front people and feigned indignation didn’t do it for her. America does not need the lefties to lead it by the nose. It needs to take inventory of where the Despicable Dems have taken it and where it wants to be. The election results reflect the beginnings of that inventory.
From his comments about Trump asking Russia to assist in finding Hillary’s missing 33,000 emails, Josh Earnest would have us believe that a real way to shore up the world economy and end world hunger would be to have us eat babies. Here in America, he, his friends and the all the Politburo Politicians wouldn’t have to do that, but it would be, according to his understanding of jocularity and sarcasm, a viable alternative for the rest of us here and all over the world, for all the little people.
After hearing him all this time, his name fits right in with his pattern of not recognizing sarcasm and jocularity. The spelling of his last name is spot on, not, for one thing he is not is his last name. If he is actually being earnest in his comments all this time, then really, God help America, or maybe it is too late already for God to help America.
So the latest is that now, all of a sudden, the intelligence community (they cite 17 intelligence agencies) have concluded that the Russians hacked our elections and that their intent was to assist President-Elect Trump in getting elected. The FBI has not signed on with those 17 agencies, contends that despite what they call conclusions, there is not a single shred of concrete evidence and asserts that CIA Director John Brennan, the only intelligence official actually prepared to claim that Russia sanctioned the hacking, “takes his marching orders from president Obama.” Comey further asserts that leaks to the press about this stuff are an attempt by the Democratic Party to delegitimize Trump’s election.
The Earnest Man, Josh, (is he joshing?) marched forward today despite the lack of any definitive proof and amidst the controversy by saying that President-Elect Trump asked Putin and Russia to assist in finding Hillary’s lost 33,000 emails [during the debate], concluding that Trump knew Russia was hacking, approved of it and was complicit in it. He even states this is a fact.
Wow! That’s a mouthful. No one has seen any facts yet, just conclusions drawn by political people based upon no-one-knows-what-facts-if-any which are then labeled facts by them. A fact is a fact, a conclusion is an inference unless it is of itself a fact. We can conclude it is 22 degrees outside if that is the temperature. To conclude it is cold is an inference based upon the temperature fact. It may be warm to someone who lives in sub zero weather all the time.
This fact/conclusion, observation/inference stuff is taught to second graders and reinforced from then on. It may even be taught earlier than second grade. Their reasoning is faulty. They want us to believe it. Shame on us if we do!
So we come back to eating babies. Yes. Yes. Yes. Being earnest is such a vital quality in our leaders and their spokespeople. They need to be earnest with the American people, for the American people need to believe that they are being told the truth and not being joshed.
Are we being joshed, Josh? Is Josh really earnest? Or is he a shill for president Obama? Is he only being earnest to the president?
Given that his candidate of choice didn’t win, the president surely sees all chance of his having any sort of positive legacy slipping away. It is clearly to his political advantage to have Trump accused of actually asking Putin for help to find those lost emails. It is his partisan politics at its ugliest to have Trump directly accused and being complicit in the hacking as the earnest Josh front-man so happily, it seemed, did yesterday.
They play so nicely at that game of having a front man speak what is said behind the scenes while they profess innocence, concern for the country and love of the Democracy.
Yes. Josh, being earnest, would have us eat babies. Swiftly, as this comes to the end, he must be joshing. Methinks The Despicable Dems doth protest too much.
Bill lay awake in his bunk a long while. He pondered why he had not gotten anxious or afraid when the tough and his crew had come by. He considered where his words had come from. “No, a cop,” he had said. He hadn’t thought about it or pre-planned it. As soon as the tough had asked the question, the words had popped out from his lips.
Bill knew it was God. God had prevented him from being beaten up. Instead of being a victim, God had made him a lone wolf, an enigma that the other inmates would regard with caution and wonder. God had made him, in a strange sort of way, a super-star celebrity.
It would take him some time to realize the status he just gained. Meanwhile, no sooner had the group walked away than Bill was overcome with anxiety and fear. He got the shakes and was immediately glad he was on a top bunk so that no one could see him without actually coming up close and looking directly at him. That would have been weird for anyone to do.
The shakes stayed with him no matter what he told himself. Eventually, he had to breathe deep and calm himself with soothing thoughts and deep, controlled breathing. The thoughts he used were his regular, steadying thoughts, the ones he used to put himself to sleep on those nights when sleep was far away.
He was the number two on a huge space ship off in deep space away from earth for a long, many-year mission of exploration. He was off duty, off the bridge, on one of the lower crew decks. It was night. Actually, it was always night and so the lighting on crew decks simulated night and day. As he walked, as always in this thought, he ran into the captain. “Captain,” he said.
That was it. By this time, usually, he fell off to sleep. but not this night. This night he was painfully aware of the sounds of the forty-six men there. Those sounds were snores, farts, burps and even talking. Mostly, however, they were the harsh hacking coughs of cigarette smokers. Those coughs, this night, reminded him of his own mortality. He remembered. His mother had died from a coronary at age forty-three when he factored in the months to make the math exact. She was a heavy smoker as was his father as was he. His fate was mixed in with theirs. But he wasn’t quitting. smoking now. No way.
Several times men got up to go the commodes. In the scope of things, now, in the midst of the night, in the mostly dark of the dorm, was a good time to take a crap since there was relative privacy. Bill could actually hear the plops into the water, even a grunt or a sigh of…relief perhaps.
His sore hands did not help him fall off to sleep. In the dark, in the mostly-quiet, he was painfully aware of how much they hurt. He wondered how he would work in the morning. He wondered how much more he would rip them up. Still, he was glad he had a place to go to, glad not to be stuck in the dorm-cell all day and all night.
Eventually he slept. It was not the sleep of the dead. It was a fitful and encumbered sleep. And then it was day, all over again.
They can accept 32 different genders. They can accept that Elizabeth Warren is an Indian. Pocahontas! They can accept that a boy of fifteen is allowed to walk into a girl’s dressing room because he says he feels like a girl on that particular morning. They can accept just about anything, no matter how preposterous, as long as it fits in with their narrative, with their beliefs, with their vision of how America should be according to them.
But they can’t accept that maybe, just maybe, their vision of how America should be isn’t the vision shared by the mainstream, Joe Q Average American, that same mainstream Joe Q Average American family who voted for Donald Trump. In not accepting that “maybe,” they’ve become The Election Deniers, those very same people Hillary Clinton was outraged by, those very same people Ms. Clinton was appalled by, those very same people the poor, misunderstood, always-being-attacked Mrs. Clinton who never did anything ever that she’s been accused of, said were challenging the very pillars of our democracy.
Yup. Now, among everything else, she has become an Election Denier. Of course, as is her style, she would never say that. As is her style, she has her front people do all they can to disrupt, discredit and misalign the dignity of the election while she gives statements of her deep concern for the well-being of America and the American people. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
But this isn’t about Hillary per se, as despicable as she is. (As an aside, however, because it is interesting, her approach to election denying, that same self-righteous, holier than thou, two-faced approach, is the same approach that caused her to lose the election. It’s the story of that naked emperor whose subjects were too afraid to tell him he was naked though everyone could see it but him. He thought he had the most beautiful set of new clothes on. She thought no one could see what she was doing, could see what her MO was and has always been. She thought she was a shoo-in, especially since she had the lack-of-justice department, the state department, the bulk of the media and the president in her pocket.)
So that in-her-pocket president now calls for an investigation into hacking of the election boxes, the effect of [Russia’s] hacking on the election. Now, he calls for it. This is after Jill Stein and the recount fiasco, shameful as it is and which is still ongoing, though of course there will be no election result changes, after all the Hillary-backer supported protests, after all the other accusations by the Clinton front-people about how something must be amiss because even though the results were not favorable to her, she didn’t lose since it was false news, Jim Comey, hacking and whatever else she can throw in there to see what will stick on the wall. Not her of course for she only speaks to her concern for the well-being of the American People. Gag. Gag.
Why now would Obama call for it? Why now would he become an Election Denier? Why all The Election Deniers?
That answer is simple. It’s because they simply can’t believe that America isn’t the way they say it is and want to force it to be. They simply can’t believe that most Americans, regardless of race and ethnicity, believe in simple, straight-forward old-fashioned American values, values like believing in God and being allowed to express such a belief, even in a Judeo-Christian God. They simply can’t believe that most Americans want safety, secured borders, good jobs and good education for their kids. They simply can’t believe that most Americans are tired of the PC police, are tired of the false narratives (Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, for one) they’ve been yelling at us for over fifty years, narratives that are belied by the results of their failed policies.
So they’ve become The Election Deniers specifically to discredit the President-Elect, to undermine his presidency before it begins by casting doubt on whether or not he is the legitimate president. For Obama, who has consistently shown himself to be petty and spiteful, maybe it’s payback for Trump’s birther-issue stuff even more than trying to protect his legacy, a legacy only he thinks, like that naked emperor, is a good one.
That’s why now. That’s why. And the more they hold to the moral high ground, like what Palmieri said to Kellyanne Conway about her rather lose than “providing a platform for white supremacists,” the more lowdown they are and the more lowdown they are seen to be.
The Election Deniers: the more they deny, the greater the chance they lose more and more of their support base and their power.
The Democrats have been having a rough time lately. Poor babies! Not only did they lose the White House, but they didn’t get the House or the Senate either. It’s enough to make them cry. It’s certainly enough to put them in disarray.
Here’s an idea. Let’s usher them all to one of those ultra-liberal, sixty-thousand dollar a year colleges that wants to be a sanctuary campus and give them all lollipops.
To sanctify the “sanctuaryness,” the campus would be off limits to Republicans. It would become a Democrat haven. Classes would be pass/fail and in order to pass all the Democrats would have to do is verify eating three free lollipops, demonstrate they’ve spent a minimum of fifteen minutes crying about the election loss, and write two short letters blaming Jim Comey and Russia for their losses. In the letters, grammar, spelling, paragraphing and punctuation would not count. The Democrats could remain there until they were twenty-six years of age and those over twenty-six could petition for an eight-year sanctuary status. This way, in case Trump is reelected, they will have the same safety and coddling for the duration of his presidency that most two-year-olds always require.
This solution has been given much thought. Fox News Network, Fox Business Network, The Wall Street Journal and any right-leaning newspapers and periodicals will be banned. Similarly, Breitbart and all similar websites will also be forbidden, as will any right-leaning think tanks. The Washington Post and The New York Times, those bastions of unbiased, non-opinionated purveyors of real news and only news, will be required texts. CNN and all the NBCs will be the mandated news broadcasts. The women from ABC’s The View will be welcomed as regular guests, especially Joy Behar since in this environment she can continue with her commentary of how President-Elect Trump is not right in the head. She might also complete her Degree in Psychology, although such a course of instruction may be too difficult to be offered here. It might be too difficult for Ms. Behar if offered. After all, a brain surgeon she is not.
This leads to the coursework. Of course, for the rich, uber-liberals that will be in residence, since they already know everything and everything they espouse and proselytize is morally right and factually 100% correct, there can be no required courses. Therefore, the offerings are mere suggestions.
Basic Courses
- Fetal Position Yoga for Beginners
- Advanced Fetal Position Yoga
- Group Solace 101
- Intermediate Group Solace
- Advanced Group Solace 501
- Intro To Coloring Therapy
- Choosing My Color Palate
- How To Choose Your Toilet Each Day: Gender Identification By Mood
- Losing: I Just Can’t Deal With It
- Our Sorrow: Getting Them To Pay For Our Healing
- Shielding Ourselves From Reality: Only Our Perceptions Count
- We’re Right, They’re Racists
- We’re All Winners Except Donald Trump
- Trump’s Not The President
- Hillary Clinton Really Won
- Hillary, Our Hero
- Obama, The Greatest President Ever
Advanced Courses
- Presenting Opinion As If It Is Bona-fide News
- Creating Psychological Pronouncements As If You Are An Expert
- Hypocrisy As A Credo
- Say It Loud Enough, Often Enough and It Is True
- Revisionist History
- Right-Wing Conspiracy: The Fixing of The Election
- Lying As a Tactic: It Doesn’t Matter If It Accomplishes Its End*
- Using The Bully Pulpit While Calling Them the Bullies
* Harry Reid will teach this course.
None of the courses on the Sanctuary Campus can have exams because exams are too stressful and the Dems are too stressed out to deal with such urbane and utilitarian matters. The mourning period and sanctuary period will last for as long as Donald Trump is president and will continue if after his term(s) another Republican is elected. Lollipops will be distributed every day, so the first requirement for passing is accomplished just for attending. Degrees will be awarded to everyone, since everyone in attendance is a winner. The Republicans, who are not winners, are required to work (at any job they can get) to support the Dems in their endeavors, for only the Dems, the poor, in-need-of-consolation Dems, are entitled to be and do and have exactly what they want. No lollipops for those Republicans!
Bill was tired and sore when he got back from the work detail. He was also sweaty and smelly, but he wouldn’t get a shower for two more days. They only got showers every three days, clean clothes too. The only exceptions were the farm details. They got showers and clothes every day since they worked in manure.
Bill’s hands were raw where they’d blistered. The blisters had burst, oozed fluid, then bled, but they’d finally dried. His joints were sore from all the work. Sawing through the lead wasn’t that bad, but pulling out the wires, that was tough. Some came out really easy. Others were a bitch. His back ached as well. That was from all the hours of leaning over the cable.
At least he had cigarettes. Later in the day two cops had come over. They weren’t workers at the range. They’d come to practice and had decided to see who was sorting lead and copper. They brought over a carton of Marlboro cigarettes and said they’d leave another for them for the next day. The cigarettes were seized in a bootleg cigarette bust and had found their way there. Oh my, they’d said, laughing. So Bill had three packs of butts enough to last him until he could get a visit on Saturday, three days away, when Sue could bring him cigarettes and put money in his commissary account.
Dinner was no better that night: brown cardboard stuff posing as some unidentifiable meat, runny-liquid, fake mashed potatoes, grey-green green beans and two slices of stiff bread. He drank the chocolate milk he’d chosen, slowly this time, remembering that he’d almost choked last time when he’d gulped it down.
Bill thought he’d sleep better this night. He was totally tired, his body fatigued all over. He wasn’t even hungry. The actual hunger pains had left him soon after he’d concluded he might not eat for a while. His mind was relatively calm too. He hadn’t had time to think much during the day and he was simply too tired to do so now as he climbed up to his bunk and lay down.
Oddly, he thought, there was a normalcy to things. The same groups as last night had formed and they were doing the same things they’d done then in the same places. Some men were sitting around in pairs, talking and smoking. The groups played cards, each with their own lookout. The tough’s group was more rowdy. The tough leading them, they went about rousting single inmates for cigarettes. The inmates were minding their own business, some napping, some reading. No one turned the tough down. No one spoke back. One guy said he only had a few left. The tough said he didn’t give a f–k.
One of the crew must have spotted Bill and said something because from nowhere the group took to the aisle and headed straight for Bill’s bunk. Bill did not see them until they were upon him, grouped between his bunk and the one before it. They situated themselves so the tough was out front of them and they we’re blocking the sight line from the front.
“Hey, new guy,” the tough said, “what you in here for?”
Bill didn’t move, didn’t get up. He didn’t even look at them. He spoke to the ceiling where his eyes were fixed. “Assault and battery,” he said.
“Who’d you beat up, your wife?” the tough asked.
“No. A cop,” Bill said.
For a long moment the tough studied Bill, what he could see of him. Then he pretty much did an about face and led his crew away.
Bill said a big thank you to God. Many times in his life he would tell people he was sure God existed. He was certain God had put those words in his mouth. He was certain God had protected him.
