Do You Want Cheese With That Pizza?

Miss Sugar and I visited a car dealership, where we met an interesting sales person, who was very entertaining.

He is, he told us, 47 years old and does not run out to nab prospects “like the young spider monkeys” who are also part of the sales team.

We asked about a certain vehicle, a Lexus RX350.  Miss Sugar said she would like leather seats.  I said that I think all Lexuses (Lexi?) come with leather seats.

The car salesman confirmed my assumption.  He said, “When you order a pizza, you get crust and cheese without the cheese counting as an extra.  You don’t have to order cheese, but you might have to pay extra for sausage.”

This was a fitting analogy because the salesman has a very Italian name.  Sugar understood immediately because her father is Italian.

I just liked being right.

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Russian Allies

I have heard in the news that Russians have hacked into some voting machines across the nation and altered the outcome of our presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. It sounds very complicated and is even more nefarious if voting machines are not connected to computers into which to hack via the internet, also known, appropriately, as the worldwide web, which, as we know, was invented by Al Gore, who was cheated by hanging chads in Florida, prior to the involvement of Russia in our American presidential elections.

I, for one, am suspicious that the election fraud was not caused by computer hackers from afar but rather by Russian spies among us, who have wormed their way into the offices of election commissioners across the land, posing not only as Americans, but as election workers in the highest positions with access to counting ballots, or I should say, miscounting ballots.

These serious allegations do not trouble me. They teach me. In prior blog posts, I have announced my plan to skip traditional election campaigning to focus on obtaining votes in the electoral college from faithless electors. I have revealed my strategy of raising money by selling influence and using donations with strings attached to bribe electors to vote for me regardless of who wins in their respective states.

Now I see an alternate strategy. That is, I should recruit Russian spies and hackers to help me win the election in 2020.

I have a few years to learn the language in order to make friends with Russian spies and hackers.   It is all falling into place.

“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”

I am grateful to Hillary Clinton and her minions for explaining how to win an election.  She can really teach.

Campaign Finance

This is a sequel to my prior blog concerning my path to the Presidency.

You will recall, if you read that blog post, that I plan to bribe electors in the Electoral College to vote for me.  I estimated $1 million per elector would be sufficient.  I need 270 electoral votes.

Some might criticize my plan by questioning how I can raise $270 million. I am glad that you asked.  The answer is simple:  selling influence.  Admittedly, I am not the first to come up with the idea.  Some other political candidates have used the technique without always admitting it.  I am being transparent.

So here is the deal:  Pay me money, which I will use to bribe electors, and when I am successful obtaining 270 electoral votes, I will use the office of the Presidency to do favors for you.  The size of the favor depends on the amount of money contributed.  You scratch my back, I will scratch yours (in accordance with your generosity).

Some have used the term “pay to play” in connection with the Clinton Foundation, inferring some sort of access to the power couple for those donors.  I do not need huge donations.   I will provide small access to me for small donations.  Win/Win.

If 270,000 people donate $1,000 each, I will win the Electoral College.  Those donors will get VIP tours of the White House and a commemorative coffee mug.  For just $100, you get the mug.  For $10, you get an autographed photo of yours truly, suitable for framing.  We can do this.  Together.

Thank you in advance for your support.

 

 

A Modest Proposal For My Path To The Presidency

A couple days ago, I was talking to my friend, Kent, about the pressure being put on electors in the Electoral College, and I came up with a path to win the presidency on a reduced budget.

Kent is something of a Constitutional scholar.  He explained the concept of “faithless electors” voting contrary to the popular vote in their state.  I thought it was automatic that electoral votes, at least in “winner take all” states, automatically go to, well, the winner.  Apparently, Hillary Clinton supporters believe the electors should vote according to one’s “conscience.”  Presumably, it follows under their view that anyone with a conscience would vote for Hillary in the Electoral College.  That is, unless one’s conscience has to do with honoring the American system of electing our President.  At any rate, pressure is being put on electors to be “faithless” to their commitments to honor the popular vote.

And that is when I came up with my plan.  It is an improvement on Hillary’s campaign because it saves money by ignoring the costly campaign to win the votes of regular voters, who matter less than electors in the Electoral College.  You see where this is going.

My plan is to win the hearts and votes of electors regardless of any popular vote.  It is very costly to run television advertisements.  It is costly to travel to rallies around the country.  It is costly to put on a nominating convention.  My plan is to focus on bribing electors to vote for me.

As I recall, it takes 270 electoral votes to win the Presidency.  Let’s budget for $1,000,000 per electoral bribe to persuade electors to be “faithless.”  I would use the budget to heelp these people of conscience feel good about voting for me as a matter of conscience.   Who cares about nominated candidates and votes in the general election?  Let’s let 270 electors “do the right thing” by benefiting themselves and America as well.

My advice, dear readers, is to look into becoming an elector in 2020.  Then you can look forward to meeting me to discuss voting your conscience, unhampered by the votes of the deplorable voters in the general election.  It will be worth your while.

Now I just have to come up with $270,000,000.  I’d do almost anything for that amount of money.  Let’s talk.

Hey, I know, you could contribute to my foundation.  That’s the ticket.

Me, Colin, and the Constitution

Colin Kaepernick and I have never met, although we have some things in common.  He is an NFL quarterback  and I am an NFL unsigned free agent.  We share many of the same physical attributes.  (See post entitled Quarterback Material).  If I meet him at an NFL activity, such as a game or NFL Player Association meeting or party, I would probably like him.

Watching him sit during the national anthem, I don’t like him so much.  It seems disrespectful.  Actually, he himself says it is intended to be disrespectful.  He says:

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

He has the right to say whatever he wants, of course.  The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech.

We Americans have other amendments in our Constitution too.  The Fourteenth Amendment says:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

I, like most of you, am opposed to oppression and racial prejudice, and unfairness of any kind.  It appears that the authors of the Constitution and Bill of Rights were opposed to the same things to which Colin is opposed.  Not all the same things, of course.  As far as I know, they were not ashamed of our flag.  We probably did not have a national anthem yet.

I, like Colin, and all of you other Americans, have the right to freedom of speech.  That includes the right for me to say I don’t agree with Colin’s symbolic  speech by him sitting during the national anthem.  I don’t agree with disrespecting our flag.

I think his sitting does not make his message clear.  Many football fans who see him refusing to honor the flag have not read his words of explanation.  I have read those words and still do not understand.  He himself does not seem too oppressed.  He could do more to improve our nation by positive example than simply pointing out the obvious that racism still exists, despite such progress as the election of a mixed race President, who has appointed two black Attorneys General.  There is racism even in Denver, where we have a black mayor and a black chief of police.  My point is that, despite progress in fighting institutional racism by changing laws to ban discrimination, there are people who are still prejudiced.  Ironically, Colin is one of them, apparently, because he has judged from afar whether cases in which he did not participate are being handled under due process of law.  Colorblind law.

Colin seems to be saying that Black people have been killed by police who, in his opinion, should not get paid leave during an investigation because he already knows somehow that the police were not justified in using deadly force.  Maybe he doesn’t want the police to get due process of law per the 14th amendment.  Maybe he wants to be the one to decide from afar, without participating in the legal process.

Colin’s example of sitting has nevertheless influenced me to emulate him.  My wife has requested that I mow the lawn.  I mean no disrespect towards her, but it does not seem right for me to blissfully mow the grass when there is crime in our nation.  Sure, we have  passed laws against crime, but people still commit crimes.  Until there is no crime, I refuse to mow.  Oh, and until there is world peace too.  I will make the world a better place by sitting.  It would be selfish on my part to mow during these troubled times.

Would someone please explain my constitutional rights to my wife?

 

Cowboy Gathering

Folks from across the West

From Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas

From Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arizona, Utah

From South Dakota, Montana, Nevada

And even from California.

Open microphone on the stage in the park

Later taking turns singing around the campfire

Or saying poems or telling tales

My kind of crowd

Gathered at Encampment, Wyoming

For three days

The fourteenth annual cowboy gathering

Of which I have been to five

Attending with Miss Texas

Town Tour

Small Wyoming town with no sidewalks nor stoplights

A three story mansion across the street from a mobile home

Propane tanks rather than gas lines from public utilities

A horse and two mules in one backyard

With a view of the tavern

One paved street

300 people

200 dogs

No zoning

Plenty of free parking

 

 

History of Violence

I met a young man who shared with me that he suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of “being involved in a murder trial.”  (I did not meet him as a law client or potential client, but in another manner).

I asked if he had been a witness or juror or defendant.  Defendant was the answer.

He explained further that when he was only 17, he entered into a plea bargain to avoid the risk of a murder conviction as an accomplice to assault and accomplice to murder.    It seems that his father had beaten a man to death and he, the son, was accused of being involved.  He had gone to prison as a result of the plea deal.  He told me that a book was written about his father’s case and trial.

I commented to the young man that I had gone to school with a guy with the same last name, but in another state.  I told him that the kid I knew was named Butch.

“That is my Dad’s name,” he said.  I told him where I grew up.  It was a match.  He told me the year his father was born.  It was two years before my birth.

Same guy.  What a coincidence.  I did not tell the young man the nature of my relationship with his father.

My wife researched the old news story about the murder trial.  Part of it described the father’s criminal history.  Butch was known in his town as a bully it said.  He had many arrests for assault and, well, various violent crimes. Tough man. Had pulled a straight edge razor on the victim in a bar during an argument about high school wrestling.  He wanted his 17 year old son to fight the 28 year old who had criticized his wrestling.  The 28 year old, 6’1″, 245 lbs, was invited by Butch to their home to finish the conflict resolution.  The result was a dead 28 year old.

Decades earlier, when I was 12 and Butch was 14, we went to the same junior high.  Butch was in 9th grade.  I was in 7th.  Butch was a bully, supposedly, by reputation, very tough and mean.  I had a foolishly exaggerated sense of self esteem.  I had watched too many cowboy movies.

So, since my peers were afraid of Butch, I thought it would be hilarious to mock Butch.  Remember the song about not tugging on Superman’s cape and not pulling the mask off the Lone Ranger by Jim Croce?  Well, the song had not come out yet when I was in 7th grade.

It would make a better story if I had saved someone from the school bully.  Rather, I teased him to show I was not afraid.  As he ran by on the way home from school, I ran after him.  It was unthinkable to the other 7th graders.  They were smart.

So Butch noticed the laughter and turned around and saw me imitating him.  He came over to me and knocked the books out from under my arm.  In those days, we did not carry books in backpacks nor, heaven forbid, brief cases.

The onlookers watched, fascinated, as I faced a beating.  To their surprise, and probably mine, I retaliated and knocked Butch’s books out from under his arm, to the ground.  Then he shoved me.  I shoved him back.  A crowd gathered in a circle.

Then a miracle happened.  Butch picked up his books and left.  I like to think that he wondered why I was not afraid.  I wonder too.  It has worked for me on other occasions.   My wife, Sugar, has witnessed the same phenomenon.  (See “A Cry for Help on a Downtown Street ” https://cowboylawyer.wordpress.com/?s=+cry+for+help+).

Butch was either scared of me or he was just in a hurry to beat up some other kid.  I ain’t saying I could whip Butch.  I am just saying that he did not beat me to death like he did that other poor feller.

Girls’ Afternoon Out

My lovely wife, Sugar, aka Miss Texas, on occasion goes to a nail place for manicures and pedicures.  Some women do that.  Girly ones that is.

As you, dear readers, know, it is a universal truth that manly men do not get pedicures, nor do they get manicures.  It is also an undisputed and widely known fact that I myself am a manly man.  Well, until today that is.  This very afternoon I committed an act which likely will lead to me being required to turn in my manly man club membership card.

But I can explain….

Several years ago a horse stepped on my left foot, resulting in an injury to my big toe.  I don’t rightly know whether it broke my toe because I am too tough to get it checked out by medical personnel.  I just know that the subject toe turned black and blue and the toenail fell off.  The injury affected my gait for awhile causing me to go on “injured reserve”  which as you can imagine prevented me from playing in any NFL games for that entire season, whichever season that was several years ago.

Unfortunately, that severe toenail injury resulted in the replacement toenail growing back in thicker and misshapen.  Up until then, my appearance was without flaw.  Since then, I have been unable to model sandals.  Losing gigs as a sandal model has been costly by limiting my opportunities to earn a decent living.

So, out of economic concern, when Sugar, who was sharing a car with me, thus stranding me at the nail salon, suggested that I get a pedicure while I was stuck there waiting for her anyway, I conceded.

So I did, very self-consciously, take a seat in one of those pedicure chairs, carefully watching the front door in case someone I knew came in.  I was ready to duck.

That toenail on my left big toe now looks and feels mahvelous!!!!!!!!!

Hey, before you judge me, walk a mile in my boots.  It was pretty difficult with that thick, ugly, jagged toenail tearing holes in all my socks.  Now my boots are more comfortable and, darn it, I am more secure about my masculinity than ever.  (Just promise to not tattle to the National Football League Players Association.  I don’t want to be laughed out of the locker room).

 

 

 

One Day at a Time

It can be positive to live each day like the last so as to make the most of life without regrets.

It can be unhealthy to live each day like the last in the sense that one wonders about ending life the next day,  enduring one more day without hope.

It can be courageous to live one day at a time while trying to overcome addiction or the difficulty of an unrelenting medical condition.

Some people are fighting to survive; others are longing to die.

Same choice.  Different perspectives.