Author: Dick

The media is all gaga over the Iowa caucuses this evening. At least the media have done a pretty good job lately of explaining just what the hell a caucus is. That takes some doing, especially the Democratic version which is more like a cross between a country square dance and a tribal mating ritual practiced by the lost tribes of the Dog Islands. In reality, Dog Island is a Florida Gulf Coast barrier island and although it may have been inhabited as far back as 8,000 years ago it hasn’t been Metropolis as of late. And I don’t know if any tribes were lost there or even existed.

After (the caucus in) Iowa is over the pack o’ press will be heading for New Hampshire where they get to stand around in the snow and watch those presidential candidates who didn’t drop out — after getting beaten in Iowa like a rented mule — stand around outside factory gates and kiss factory workers or work the quaint little cafes shaking hands with babies. Or maybe I got that backwards. Oh well, who knows and who knows whether it all makes a difference. A lot of people put great stock in these early exercises in democracy, which are coincidentally the only places throughout the only presidential election process in which retail politics are actually practiced on the “neighbor grocery” level.

Of course, inevitably other localities across the nation seem to believe, like the editorial board of the Austin American Statesman, that much ado is made about quite a bit due to actions of a few corn farmers in Iowa. But one has to admit that the Statesman board like hundreds of similar newspaper executives and civic leaders across the country aren’t happy unless their city is the center of the universe. And in a big-picture type of sense they have a valid argument.

One would think a democracy would have more emphasis during the process of electing its leaders on bringing in as many folks as possible to do the “pre-pre-election” before the “pre-election” a.k.a. the party conventions. But nothing is perfect and that is perhaps more prevalent a phenomenon in politics than in any other facet of life with maybe the exception of picking a cellular phone company.

Frankly, I have felt disenfranchised during the last two elections as a voter in Texas. Of course, since I hold no sway over the idiots of the Supreme Court who elected Gee Dubya the first time, it would have made little difference in 2000. I honestly don’t know what the harm would be from a nationwide primary election, or just let matters be a free-for-all until the conventions, much like it was in the olden days. Why, nations with parliamentary forms of government can form a government upon the sneezing of a prime minister. And last but not least, the Electoral College? Give me a break. I would rather a president be picked on the basis of an arm wrestling, tomahawk-throwing or rail-splitting contest than under our system which waits patiently each four years for a royal screw-up every four years.

Oh, and while we are at it, I would like to see the presidential election season drastically shortened from just after the concession speech until the last lawyer figures out they can’t get an injunction to stop the results before going before our “college” of electors. In other words, the presidential election should be a sprint rather than a marathon. I mean, after all, it seems like we have fared just as well with accidental presidents than with those whose campaign took a geological epoch to transpire. (Just a firm opinion, Gee Dubya Bush was no accident. At least, not as a president.)

The reality is that no one of importance ever listens to me so nothing I said above will have any impact on the current state of the presidential electoral process. Knowing some of the bone-headed things I have done over my past half-century, you might decide upon closer examination that, like Martha Stewart so elegantly puts it: ” … is a good thing.”

One place in which the Internets, as Prez Gee Dubya calls ’em, have made a huge splash is in the speed and ability of obtaining political campaign finance data. Slightly more than a decade ago, when working as a reporter at a small East Texas newspaper, I can remember going on an assignment in Austin for something or other. My editor told me that since I was going out there, I should stop by the Texas Ethics Commission and get the disclosure reports for the local politicians. That’s right little chil’ren we didn’t have an Internet then and used to have to walk five miles in the snow to get coffee and it wasn’t even Starbucks. How primitive, right?

A short while ago this evening I was looking at the Federal Election Commission Web site. They have now a user-friendly “map” on which contributions to both presidential candidates and those of congressional candidates can be searched. It is really easy. It’s kind of like eating lettuce.

I did a search of money given to presidential candidates from folks in my very own city, Beaumont, Texas. It is home to a bevy of high-profile trial lawyers — names like Walter Umphrey and Wayne Reaud of the tobacco litigation wars, and upandcommer Brent Coon who has been making his name by besting British Petroleum over their killer Texas City refinery explosion in which 15 workers died. Beaumont courts over the years have also turned out large verdicts in asbestos and various other civil litigation. The city doesn’t quite display: “Beaumont: Judicial Hellhole and Damn Proud of It,” but close. The area is also filled with refineries and traditionally has had a Democratic labor union base. So given these fields of employment it isn’t very unusual that trial lawyers and some others would mostly be giving to Democratic presidential candidates.

Coon himself, for instance, is shown with more than $7,000 spread over five contributions to both John Edwards and Joe Biden. That’s not a lot, but despite the national media’s clamor over the first primaries and the Iowa caucus, the election is in (shhhh!) November. FEC stats shows Reaud giving $4,600 split evenly between Biden and Bill Richardson. And while the Mrs. Umphrey has a few donations of her own, $4,600 was doled out by Walter Umphrey, between the $2,300 for Bill Richardson and $2,100 for John Edwards.

As I said, these contributions are hardly surprising to anyone around these parts or others who might know what a “Yellow Dog Democrat” might be.

Contributions for one of our area congressmen are a little more puzzling. Republican U.S. Rep. Ted Poe went to the House largely on his fame for headline-grabbing “creative” sentencing when he was a state district judge in Houston. He has never met a news camera, especially one playing to right-wing causes, that he didn’t like. Poe has been the darling of immigration hawks like Lou Dobbs and the Fox News crowd. The congressman has been seen in news clips on the Texas border, which if you know anything about Texas is a hell of a long drive from his own district.

Yet FEC records show that Walter and Sheila Umphrey contributed a total of $8,400 to Poe’s campaign. Dick DeGuerin, arguably one of the nation’s premiere criminal defense lawyer, gave Poe $1,000. That is kind of a surprise but not. DeGuerin was David Koresh’s attorney but he also represented former GOP House Marjority weasel Tom DeLay. No big surprise is the $2,000 given Poe by Drayton McLane, Houston Astros baseball team owner and a former board of regents member at uber Baptist Baylor University in Waco. To be fair, Umphrey is a graduate of Baylor Law School and a donor of the millions given to build the Sheila and Walter Umphrey Law Center at Baylor. Speaking of schools, the $250 donation doesn’t stand out and probably neither does the name Dr. James Simmons of Beaumont except for the fact that he was long-time band director and now president of the area’s state school Lamar University.

Poe has been in the forefront of the anti-immigration effort to release from prison two former border patrol agents — Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean — who were imprisoned for shooting a suspected drug dealer who was fleeing across the Mexican border. The agents say they didn’t think he was injured so they didn’t bother reporting the shooting. The suspect received immunity from prosecution for testifying against the agents. In light of this case and Poe’s clamoring for the two disgraced agents’ release, I don’t know if it is irony or just sad that one of his congressional campaign donors is Russell Ybarra, a contributor of $250, who is listed by FEC records as president of Gringo’s Mexican Kitchen.

Nothing “reported” here is particularly earth-shattering, even to me. I don’t know if it is even being reported. I just started looking at some numbers and next thing that I know I think it’s time to shut off the computer for the night. What else I am I going to do, finish that biography of Millard Fillmore (Oh, sorry you dumb son of a b***h, he was the 13th president of the United States of America!) that I have had for a month? Man, that is absolutely the worst of all the presidential histories I have read. I’m sorry if someone reading this was the a cousin or wife or kid of the author, Robert J. Rayback, but I will be happy when it is read and like Fillmore is history.

My goodness gracious how far we have come with civilization so that we can blog from the laundromat? It used to be that people communally doing their laundry could do something like … read or watch soap operas or even … in extreme circumstances, talk.

With a good portion of my young Navy days spent in pursuit of women and beer to drink, it was almost heaven minus West Virginia when I realized a bar down the street from the Seabee base in Gulfport two-fered as a laundromat and bar. I believe the establishment was named “John’s Laundromat and Bar.” Some of the even more hardcore among my young friends but more so among the old-timers was delighted by the fact that John’s opened at 7 a.m. I used to like beer but only winding down a day at 7 a.m. and not starting the day with the so-called “Breakfast of Champions.”

It is funny, however, that once I got into a bachelor enlisted quarters (a.k.a. barracks) with a washer-dryer, going to John’s went out the window because those were the 1970s, the heady days of 35-cent beer in the barracks vending machines.

No matter how easy the Navy use to make it for both doing laundry and heading straight down a pathway toward substance abuse, I never found a particular fancy for washing my clothes. I did continue drinking beer and will drink one every now and then these days.

A lot of talking heads have pontificated upon how this plugged-in, wired-up, dialed-out society of ours is losing interpersonal communication as an important part of what makes a civilization functional. That might well be. Although one may also argue that the explosion of technology gives each other the ability to communicate with each other like never before. I, for instance, keep up with family and friends much better than in the past especially because of the Internet. And those same people can keep up with me either through e-mail, to a lesser extent cellular or occasionally even through my blog although that is not the primary purpose of this site. I no longer bother warning any of them of looking into my world at their own peril. My relatives especially will likely read and have read my points of view, some of which they vehemently disagree. But just like I tell any other cyber voyeur who happens to pass by, the same road that leads into this place leads out. This is my spot, my space if you will, that has been staked out on the great Internet Prairie.

With that said, I think I better see if my clothes are ready to dry. If technology could only make laundry no longer a necessity then I suppose we will have reached Ne’er do well Nirvana. I am willing to give it a try, however.

Here is hoping your 2008 is better than your 2007 which is really saying: “I hope my 2008 is better than my 2007.”

I’m looking for better. I am looking for good results in mid-February with my colon-o-rooter. More money. A better place to live. A presidential candidate I can actually vote for and not have to write in Willie Nelson for the second election in a row. Not that there is anything wrong with Willie. Or like Tom T. Hall’s wonderful words in “The Cowboy and the Poet” said: (Wow, three references to three country singers in one day! What gives?):

I told him i was a poet/I was lookin’ for the truth
I do not care for horses, whiskey, women or the loot
I said i was a writer, my soul was all on fire
He looked at me an’ he said, “you are a liar.”
“It’s faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, and more money.”

A happy new year to all, ‘cept for those people who really pissed me off.

Ted Davis: …but don’t get her drunk. If you get her drunk,
[alluringly]
Ted Davis: she loses control!
Walter Davis: Ted, are we talking a loss of inhibitions here, or does she pee on the floor? — From Blind Date (1987)

Perhaps I should just face the facts: When a hot woman about 15 years my junior asks me out and offers to pay, then all kinds of red flags and warning bells should start going off. Right? I say that primarily because I don’t date a lot these days. Most of it has to do with money. The place in which I live is hardly a babe magnet for one thing. I feel old somewhat, sometimes, for another. And yet another fact is that all my exes — whether they live in Texas or elsewhere — are still exes.

But as I live and breeze this nice-looking gal with the most stunning brown eyes I have seen in … weeks … months …. whenever … came by to see me last night just as I had given up on watching the Cowboys go up in flames like a cheap Chinese toy. It wasn’t a blind date, I knew the woman as she had previously dated a neighbor, but the night did turn out to be in some respects like Blind Date, the movie in which Bruce Willis is escorted by Kim Bassinger who has a really, really bad reaction after drinking booze.

“Dee,” as I shall call her wanted to go to a nearby bar, have a couple of drinks and shoot some pool. I was okay with that except the government decided to pay about five days late which hopefully will turn out to be Wednesday. No problem says Dee.

So we go to a place just up the street have a couple of beers and things are going rather swimmingly, said the sailor. For whatever reasons, a change of scenery or not much happening or take your pick, we decide to go up to another bar up the street.

Dee buys us both another drink. By this point we had been getting along very well indeed, better than I would have imagined. She decided to buy some cigarettes and then went outside to smoke. Without a sign, without warning, without so much as a “kiss my a**” things start to go South. She had maybe a total of four drinks that I saw and was fast on the highway to getting plastered. Perhaps she had been drinking all afternoon. If so, she didn’t act as if she had when she first came by. The next thing I know she is powdering her face for some biker on the other side of the bar. I said to myself: “Nope.” I told her I was out of there and she said she would see me “tomorrow.” I haven’t seen her today, not that it matters, no matter how amusing it might be for me.

I thought briefly about leaving her there in the bar but not much more than briefly. She didn’t make a big deal about me leaving and neither did I. I also figured that the patrons there probably had more to fear from her than vice versa. I’m sorry. No, I am not sorry. I have heard too many country tunes and have been witness to many a domestic dispute a couple of which involved the very same good-looking woman who asked me out. Kenny Rogers is damn straight. You got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them. And since I had no losses to cut. I quit and walked out, this time, ahead.