America's favorite dachshund endorses Hillary

Today's commentary was written by Bonnie,
America's Favorite Dachshund, whose opinions
may not necessarily reflect the opinions of
tomdryden.com's editorial board.

November’s presidential election will almost certainly be my last. I’m turning 15 next month. I’ve already outlived most dachshunds.

I want to be sure the candidate I endorse in what will most likely be the last election of my lifetime, is the one who will do the best job for this country that has given me so much, including Cesar’s Canine Cuisine Rotisserie Chicken Flavor with Bacon & Cheese in Hearty Sauce. 

I have come to the conclusion that Hillary Rodham Clinton is that candidate. My reasons are simple: Mrs. Clinton and I have a great deal in common. 

Arkansas roots

Though she is an Illinois native, Mrs. Clinton first came into the national spotlight as the First Lady of Arkansas during her husband's five terms as that state's governor. 

I also have Arkansas roots, having been born in a Blytheville puppy mill that shipped me to a pet store in Connecticut whose owner, after forcing me to live in a cage for four months, put me on sale.

We’ve both lived in the White House

One day a man walked into the puppy store, saw that I was on sale, and asked to take me to a back room to, as I overheard him tell the clerk, “play with me” and “see if she is affectionate.” I was absolutely terrified. But, I was also desperate to get the hell out of that God-awful store, so I pretended to be playful and cute. Twenty minutes later I was in a car headed to my new home, which turned out to be a white house atop a hill.

Mrs. Clinton also resided in a white house but hers was in Washington on a flat and somewhat larger parcel of land.

We are both products of elite New England schools

Mrs. Clinton attended Wellesley, where she was president of her class, followed by Yale Law School.

Like her husband, I attended Georgetown, but not the one in D.C.  where he completed his undergraduate studies which, as anyone with a grasp of basic geography knows, isn’t is New England. My alma mater is the Georgetown Obedience School in Georgetown, Connecticut, from which I graduated at the top of my class. (Granted, I didn’t have much competition. My classmates included a pair of beagles, a poodle, a Labrador Retriever and a mongrel with the body of a Great Pyrenees and the brain of a Chihuahua). I’m certain I would have been chosen class president had elections been held.

We both lie

Mrs. Clinton is famous, even among her most ardent supporters, for her ability to stretch the truth when she thinks it is to her advantage to do so.  For example, “Chelsea and I had to dodge sniper fire when our plane landed in Bosnia" and “I turned $500 into $500,000 trading cattle futures on my own” when, in fact, a friend trying to court influence with her husband made 30 of the 32 trades.

I am not a liar to the extent she is but I will admit to being a lier. At my age I sleep 23 hours a day. So, in the mornings, I lie my left side. Afternoons I switch to the right. Evenings I lie in the fetal position on the sofa between the humans as they watch TV.

We both support Planned Parenthood

Mrs. Clinton is a staunch defender of abortion rights.

I support a less drastic method of birth control -- neutering. I firmly believe that not only females but males should be neutered. It is her misfortune that Mrs. Clinton didn’t have her husband neutered years before the Lewinsky scandal that tarnished his legacy.

We take what doesn't belong to us 

On Bill Clinton's final day as president, as he was busy signing pardons for his political cronies, Mrs. Clinton took government property including furniture and gifts given to the White House that didn't belong to her or the president. Following an investigation, the Clintons' ultimately repaid the government $134,000 for the items they took.

Every morning I steal my dachshund brother Billy Ray’s food by standing at the sliding glass door and barking, pretending I see something outside. Idiot that he is, Billy abandons his doggy dish, and runs to the window barking and growling at … nothing. As he is lunging at non-existent enemies, I circle back around the kitchen island and steal his food.

We blame others for our mistakes

Mrs. Clinton and her minions spun a story blaming the deaths of Americans during the Benghazi attacks on Libyan insurgents’ reactions to a youtube video that desecrated Mohammad when, in fact, they died because the State Department, which she was running at the time, ignored pleas for help.

I once took a dump under the buffet table while my parents were having a party then ran out of the room, leaving Billy, who was asleep under the table, to take the blame when the mess was discovered and people started fleeing not only the room but the house. I could have come forward and taken responsibility. But I didn’t.

In conclusion

I believe in my heart of hearts that Hillary Rodham Clinton is the only rational choice any American can possibly make for president this year. And if you’ll be honest and examine your heart, you’ll come to the same conclusion. Despite her many flaws, America will be better off being ruled by my fellow bitch than by a Marxist hippie, an inarticulate bleached blond billionaire, or a whack job who has zilch support from his fellow Republicans who consider him to be a total asshole even I wouldn’t lick.

For all these reasons,  I offer Hillary Rodham Clinton my endorsement, and my fellow Americans, my prayers. God help you. And me, if I’m still here come January 20, 2017.

Voting drunk

Florida's winner-take-all presidential primary is Tuesday but the polls have been open for the last 10 days for early voting. I cast my ballot on Wednesday. And I was drunk.

Not drunk as in “I don’t remember who I voted for” but I was feeling no pain, as I would have most assuredly felt had I voted for that asshole candidate sober. Truth be told I’m not much of a drinker. One drink and I become chatty. Two and I’m high. Three and I throw up.

I never drink at lunch – swear to God  – but I’d made an exception that day because we were with old friends we hadn’t seen for years and were having a great time. I hadn’t eaten anything before we sat down so the alcohol from the two drinks I downed roared through my system like a freight train.

Up to then, I wasn’t even sure that I could bring myself to vote because I was so disgusted with the choices my party had served up, but the alcohol gave me liquid courage so I did it. I didn’t cast my vote because I believe in the candidate for whom I marked my ballot; I most emphatically don’t. I voted against that person's opponent(s).*

If your state's primary is coming up and, like most Americans, you find yourself disgusted with the choices but feel you really ought to vote, take it from me: Two Absolut Ruby Red Grapefruit Vodkas with tonic and a slice of orange on the rocks may be just what you need in order to be able to hold your nose and pull the lever, mark the ballot or whatever it is you do in your state. Or, if you live in Colorado or Washington where cannabis sales are legal, you can always smoke a doobie.

Be advised you will most likely feel worthless for the rest of the day. But look at it this way: So are the candidates from whom you’ll have to choose.

* As America’s Only Objective Journalist ®, I’m not revealing who I voted for. If I said “opponent” you’d know I voted for a Democrat because only two are still in the race. If I said “opponents” you’d know I voted for a Republican because there are still four in the race. So I said opponent(s). Read into it what you will.

Trespasses & debts & dunks & sprinkles

I grew up in Auxvasse, Mo., a town so small there were only five churches – one Presbyterian, one Methodist and one Christian (which is what the central Missouri branch of the Disciples of Christ called its congregations back then; my father always referred to its members as “Campbellites” which Wikipedia says is a “mildly pejorative term for followers of certain religious groups that have roots in the Restoration Movement whose most prominent nineteenth century leaders were Thomas and Alexander Campbell.” I can't imagine that dad, who never said anything bad about anyone, was aware he was using a pejorative term.) In addition, there were two Baptist churches, one for whites, one for African-Americans.

My family belonged to the church with the smallest congregation, the Methodists. On any given Sunday there were, tops, 40 people in attendance, half of them as old as Methuselah. For decades, the church’s treasurer, Pearl Houchins, who always wore a raspberry beret of which I am reminded whenever the Prince song by the same name comes over the radio, stood up at the end of services and recited the same report, which varied only by the numbers of attendees and the amounts collected.

“The Auxvasse Methodist Sunday School met Sunday (month, date, year) with a total attendance of X including X members and X visitors, and a collection of $XX.XX.”

While God surely appreciated Mrs. Houchins for her many years of service to the church, what undoubtedly earned her admission through the Pearly Gates were her secret recipes for the ethereal burnt sugar candy and buttery peanut brittle she distributed to the Methodist children every Christmas. She must have taken them with her because there’s nobody down here who knows how to replicate them and believe me, I’ve searched high and low.

When Methodists recited the Lord’s Prayer, we, unlike worshippers at the other churches in town, asked God to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The other churches said it differently. They asked God to “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Even as a boy I found that weird because “trespasses” aren’t the same as “debts.” The former implies you have done something out of line. The latter means you owe someone for something.

The other churches baptized differently, too. Baptists and, if I recall correctly (I may be wrong here), the Presbyterians and Christians, fully immersed their members in galvanized tubs. The Methodist minister, on the other hand, sprinkled a few drops of water on the heads of the newly-saved, a ritual that was certainly less messy since the congregant was able to return to his or her seat rather than have to run into the back room to change out of wet clothes.

My grandmother was a Baptist and I occasionally accompanied her to revival meetings at her church. I much preferred the Baptist hymns to the Methodist ones. Baptist songs about fountains filled with blood drawn from Emanuel’s veins and Jesus being nailed to a tree were much more graphic and therefore interesting to my enquiring young mind than the tasteful hymns we Methodists sang like “Others” and “In the Garden.”

As one of the few kids in the Methodist Church, I took classes with Ross Howard, Kathy LaFon, Carla Foster and Dale Ray Rudd that were to culminate with our baptism. But when B-day arrived I backed out. At 11, I wasn’t ready to stand up and declare my sins because, as far as I could tell, I didn’t have any worth declaring – certainly not enough to swear I was ready to completely turn my life over to God because, even then, I was a bit of a control freak and had big plans to get out of Dodge. I was given the Bible I was to have received as a new member anyway since the minister had already inscribed it with my name.

Fifty-three years later I still haven’t gotten around to being baptized. That, I suppose, means I will spend eternity in hell while my fellow Methodists who went through with their sprinklings will spend theirs in heaven, gobbling up Mrs. Houchins’ candies without gaining an ounce or raising their bad cholesterol levels.

A decade or so ago I was visiting my mother the weekend the Auxvasse Methodist Church closed its doors for good, by which time it was down to a handful of members. Mom, my sister and I attended the final service. A pastor sent from the Missouri Methodist Conference in Fayette stood up and uttered a prayer deconsecrating a modest redbrick building that, for nearly 100 years, had witnessed happy events (including my sister’s wedding), sad events (including my father’s funeral) and baptisms (of just about every youngster who ever colored Joseph’s coat of many colors in Evelyn LaFon’s pre-school Sunday School class but yours truly).

The United Methodist Church sold the building to a congregation of Holy Rollers who, I am told, agreed to allow the stained glass windows honoring the church’s longtime members, including Mrs. Houchins, to remain in place. I hope those windows are still there because, even though I’m a fail when it comes to religion, all those people who made up that little church -- Sunday School Superintendent E.T. Pasley, who took me under his wing and gave me a job at his gas station after my father's death and his wife Neva who, for years, did my mother's hair; my seventh-grade teacher and church pianist Pauline Meador whose annual rambling rendition of the "Holy City" precluded the Easter sermon; her daughter Marge Lubbers, the only woman who could harmonize, and Marge's husband Dick, who always had a smile on his face; Jac LaFon who caught the catfish for the church's annual fish fry and his wife, Evelyn, one of the kindest, sweetest women I will ever know; Jess Burton, who boomed out the bass "below the line" chorus of "O How Sweet" whenever the congregation sang the hymn "Precious Name," whose wife was famous for her hickory nut pie; Mrs. Houchins' daughter Reba Middleton, who always wore an apron everywhere, even to church; Justine Foster who, every year, hitched a trailer full of stray dogs behind her Cadillac and took them to winter in Padre Island from whom, I swear, I got my love of dogs because it sure didn't come from my family; Nina Foster, who stitched the quilt my wife and I have slept under for 40 years; and Doc and Mildred Domann, my parents' best friends, among others -- will forever remain in my heart.

All this trespassing/debting/dunking/sprinkling and other small town church memories came back to me in a rush today when I encountered the above sign on a vacant lot during my daily 10-mile bike ride. Adjacent to the “No Trespassing” sign was a “For Sale” sign. The eight-acre lot, abutting the local high school and a block from the new world headquarters of the Hertz Corporation, would be ideal for high-end condos or attached villas. The developer who buys it will make a fortune.

I don’t know whether the members of Christ Community Ministries church, which owns the lot, say "trespasses" or "debts," or whether they dunk or sprinkle.

Whatever, I trust they will forgive me for trespassing a few feet over their property line to snap a picture for this blog, and am in their debt for erecting a sign that, for an hour or so this beautiful Spring afternoon, transported this 64-year-old back to a simpler, kinder, time when I believed that everything would turn out okay.

As, by and large, it has.

The unimportance of being early

There are two types of people – those who insist on arriving early, and those who don’t.

My wife is one of the former. For some reason I’ve yet to fathom, she likes to arrive at airports three hours before flight time and, for movies, concerts and appointments, at least an hour early.

I, on the other hand, am one of those people who prefers to arrive at the last possible minute.

It all goes back to the early days of running my own advertising agency when, in order to impress clients with my responsiveness, I would start work on an assignment the moment I hung up the phone. As often as not, once work on the project was well underway, the client would call with a change of direction, which meant the work had to be revised or scrapped, or would cancel the assignment altogether. Clients, I quickly discovered, tended to sit on invoices for work they authorized but were unable to use because they didn't want their bosses to find out they had wasted money by hot-potatoing assignments to the agency just to get them off their desks. I often wound up having to remind clients, repeatedly, to pay bills for revised or canceled work and half the time they would try to negotiate me down to protect their own asses.

So, for most of my career, I started work at the last possible minute. I found that by doing so, a.) I was less likely to have to re-do it and b.) I produced my best work under deadline pressure. It drove my employees, who for some reason liked to go home around 5 p.m or so, crazy, but that’s the way I ran my business, even though I often wound up working nights, weekends and holidays including one Christmas spent in a recording studio.

  

In all that time my agency missed exactly one deadline. I was able to weasel my way out of that by claiming the client’s layouts were on a FedEx flight that had conveniently crashed overnight. By the time the layouts arrived at the client’s office one day late, the project had been cancelled and it took me 90 days to collect payment.

The net net is that, in business, I learned it’s a waste of time to be early for anything, a lesson I still apply to my personal life.  Plus, I enjoy seeing my wife hyperventilate.

Now that I’m retired, I occasionally give in to her unreasonable demands for early arrival just so I won’t have to listen to her complaints. Friday night, for instance, we went to a concert at a venue 15 miles from our house. She insisted we leave an hour and a half early, claiming we might get caught in traffic or have trouble finding a parking spot. We arrived 73 minutes early, time I could have used to ride my bike, go to the gym or binge-watch two episodes of Veep on HBO-To-Go. Instead, we wasted that valuable time in a nearby bar, which is why I don’t remember much about the concert.

Nowadays, if my wife is flying somewhere on her own, I drop her off at the airport, as she demands, three hours early. What she does there I can’t imagine. I am told that airports have restaurants where one can buy snacks and stores that sell reading materials, but I wouldn’t know since I’ve never walked down a concourse, I’ve always ran.

As I like to remind her, of the hundreds of flights we've taken together over the years, we've never once missed a plane. I'll admit that, returning home from a business trip years ago, I did have to beg a TWA agent, who had already rolled back the jet bridge when I got to the gate, to reattach it so I could board.

It cost me $50, which I palmed off to the agent discretely so none of the passengers who had irrationally arrived early for the next flight scheduled to depart from that gate could see it but, by God, he agreed. 

Trump finally sends the NY Times over the edge

The folks who run The New York Times are hysterical – beyond hysterical – at the thought that any American in his or her right mind could possibly be supporting Donald Trump.

How else to account for the following articles the Times has published on its Facebook news feed over the last three days? 

Donald Trump’s message resonates with white supremacists.  “Intentionally or not, Mr. Trump’s campaign is mobilizing white supremacists so much that he has their support despite awkward attempts to publicly disavow it.” Author: Jonathan Mahler.

What wouldn’t Jesus do? “What stuns me is how my fellow evangelicals can rally behind a man (Trump) whose words and actions are so at odds with the central teachings of our faith." Author: Peter Wehner.

Donald Trump retweets post with quote from Mussolini. “Donald J. Trump on Sunday morning used his Twitter feed to post a quote attributed to Benito Mussolini, the founder of the fascist movement, from a parody account.” Author: Maggie Haberman.

Goldman Sachs puts worker linked to Donald Trump on leave. "The only Goldman Sachs employee to contribute to Donald J. Trump's campaign has been placed on administrative leave." Authors: Suzanne Craig and David W. Chen.

Donald Trump elicits shock and biting satire in European media. "His nearly every move and pronouncement has been reported from Paris to Berlin to Helsinki." Author: Dan Belifsky.

If Donald Trump changed genders. "The Trump campaign’s success doesn’t say anything good about our progress toward gender equality." Author: Frank Bruni.

The Times’ penultimate anti-Trump story to date, “Measuring Donald Trump’s Supporters for Intolerance,” appeared on February 23, the day after the South Carolina primary. It reported that polls showed “nearly 20 percent of Mr. Trump’s voters disagreed with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation which freed slaves in the Southern states during the Civil War. Only 5 percent of Mr. Rubio’s voters share this view. This isn’t about Trump. It’s about his supporters.”

As long as it was linking candidates to their supporters' views, the Times could have reported that, "More than 50 percent of Hillary Clinton's supporters believe it is acceptable to butcher a child in the womb under the auspices of birth control." That, unlike the Emancipation Proclamation, would have actually been relevant to the upcoming election since the next president will likely be appointing Supreme Court justices who could overturn Roe v Wade but, because the Times' editorial board supports abortion, it ignored that story.

While the media is, ostensibly, supposed to report the news objectively, it doesn’t and never has and the conservative media is as biased to the right as the liberal media is to the left. But the Times’ hysteria about Trump is, even for a newspaper that last endorsed a Republican for president in 1956, above and beyond when it comes to biased reporting.

Times’ writers seem genuinely mystified that anyone could find anything at all appealing about Trump. That’s because the Times is written by and for eastern liberals who, in their own ways, are every bit as parochial as conservative residents of the rural Middle West (a term the Times persisted in using to refer to America's heartland until a few years ago) and South. I say this as someone who grew up in a narrow-minded conservative rural Missouri town but spent most of his adult life living in narrow-minded liberal New York and its narrow-minded liberal Connecticut suburbs. Narrow-mindedness is a two-way street but you have to get out of your ivory tower and onto the street to fully understand the extent to which traffic flows both ways.

Perhaps if the Times would dispatch its reporters to flyover country to spend time with some of the millions of otherwise reasonable people who support Trump – and yes, there are, apparently, at least some who believe it’s not acceptable to own slaves – it would find that his popularity isn’t just a reaction to political views with which it disagrees, it’s the reaction of ordinary Americans fed up with being told how to think in the guise of “news" generated by media outlets like the Times and Fox News. It is richly ironic that both the nation’s leading left- and right-wing news outlets don't even attempt to disguise their fear of Trump, who refuses to kowtow to their editorial boards.

Maybe Trump is a fascist and a racist and a misogynist who believes that slavery shouldn't have been abolished. Perhaps he’s a child molester who tortures puppies for fun and has already selected the sites for the concentration camps to which he plans to send his political opponents for extermination.

If he is elected and turns out to be any of these things and the Times reports on it, a large percentage of the public isn’t going to believe them precisely because of the hysterical and misleading reporting it’s doing at this stage of the election.

The Constitution guarantees freedom of the press but with that freedom comes implicit responsibility for journalists to attempt to report the news fairly -- something the Times, whose slogan is "All the News That's Fit To Print," is abrogating in favor of hysterical backed-into-a-corner journalism that makes the National Enquirer look downright stately. 

On the off chance that Trump wins in November,  the Times editorial board would do well to get a grip right now and try to understand why his message seems to be resonating with millions of voters, rather than publishing ridiculous stories like the ones listed above lest it lose what little credibility it still has.

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A Broadway story

My wife and I had lunch yesterday with an old friend of her family's, Harvey.

Harvey lives in the small Missouri town where he was born 96 years ago but winters here in Southwest Florida where, most days, he plays 18 holes. He is in amazing shape, both physically and mentally.

Following a fender bender, Harvey has become hesitant to drive long distances, so he hires someone to drive his mini-van from Missouri to Florida and back every winter. Over lunch he mentioned he has hired a driver to drive him across the state this week to visit an old friend, Lucy, who lives in Palm Beach. 

Lucy, Harvey explained, grew up in a nearby town that was even smaller than his hometown, which had a state teacher's college. When, in the late 1930s near the end of the Depression, it came time for Lucy to go to college, her parents asked Harvey's parents if Lucy could board with them. Harvey and Lucy, who are a year apart in age, lived under the same roof for three years until shortly after Pearl Harbor when Harvey enlisted.

Harvey said Lucy was bitten by the acting bug early on. Right after college, she took off for New York to find fame. But the only job she could find was as an usher in a Broadway theater. One of her duties, after the patrons exited, was to turn up the seats so the janitors could clean underneath them easily.

One evening Lucy found a diamond necklace that clearly belonged to a woman of means. She turned it in to the front office. The next day, the manager informed Lucy the woman had called the theater, desperate to know if her necklace had been found. When she learned Lucy had turned it in, the woman said she wanted to meet her and give her a reward.

“Oh no,” Lucy told the woman when she offered her a generous cash reward. “I was only doing what I was raised to do. All I could think about was how awful you must have felt losing something that valuable.”

The woman told Lucy that, if she wouldn’t take her money, she would find another way to repay her. She was as good as her word. Turns out she had connections on Broadway, and arranged for Lucy to audition for some bit parts … which led to bigger parts … which eventually led to supporting roles in a couple of B movies in Hollywood. It was in Hollywood that Lucy met a Broadway producer from an old New York family who had sold the rights to one of his plays. They married, adopted a daughter, and Lucy retired from acting.

Harvey and his wife stayed with Lucy and her husband whenever they visited New York. He said the couple lived in grand style. Lucy's husband went on to produce some of the most successful plays ever to appear on Broadway and in London's West End. Harvey and Lucy have stayed in touch over the years by phone and mail.

Lucy and her husband retired to Palm Beach twenty years ago and, a few years ago, her husband died. Harvey called her the other day and she invited him to come over to see her. Lucy told him she is losing her sight. Though she lives in a condo overlooking the ocean, she can no longer see it.  She told Harvey that the daughter she and her husband adopted, now in her late sixties, has turned out to be the greatest blessing imaginable and takes good care of her. And she told Harvey that, before her sight goes altogether, she wants to see her dear friend's face one more time. Harvey says he can’t wait to see her either.

The world is complicated. Actions have consequences, but things don't necessarily work out the way one expects. Good things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people.

It was lovely to hear the story of a stage-struck girl who had no idea, that night nearly 75 years ago when she turned a rich woman's necklace in to the front office, that, sometimes, things can work out even better than you planned.

None of the above

I’ve voted in every presidential election since 1972. In each, there was at least one candidate I felt could do a, if not stellar, decent job.

Not this time around.

Never in my lifetime has there been such a sad and appalling aggregation of out-and-out losers and, in some cases, certifiable lunatics vying to lead this country. I’ve watched almost all the debates, both Democrat and Republican, hoping to find one I could support. None of the candidates from either party are palatable choices. And most people I know agree with me. Recapping our choices:

Donald Trump: He’s inarticulate, brash, thin-skinned, offensive to women, African-Americans and Hispanics, and has no vision other than making “deals” to rid our country of all he says is wrong with it, the details of which are vague if they have been thought through at all. America would be at war with half the world within five minutes of him taking the oath. His base of support is working class citizens fed up with standard politicians who have brought their country to the brink of mediocrity. So was Hitler’s.

Marco Rubio: This guy can’t even manage his own family’s budget much less America’s. Think Michael Dukakis Lite.

Hillary Clinton: Want a progressive? She’s a progressive. Want a moderate? She’s a moderate. And, by the way, did you know she is a woman and that if you’re a woman and don’t vote for her there’s a warm spot in hell with your name on it? Not to mention she’s untrustworthy, corrupt, a liar and thief who, while her husband was busy issuing pardons to his political cronies on his last day of office, stole furniture and china from the White House. Even Bill and Chelsea don’t look that enthusiastic robotically clapping on stage behind her. Few genuinely like her. Many, many more despise her. As president, she would make Tricky Dick look like the Great Unifier.

Jeb Bush: While he and Hillary are polar opposites politically, they are equally arrogant in believing that, because of their last name, they are entitled to be coronated as president. The fact he actually thought anyone would support his candidacy after two failed Bush presidencies speaks volumes about Jeb’s grasp on reality.

Ted Cruz: A presidential candidate has to come across as likable to the majority of voters and he presents himself as not only cold and aloof but despicable and smug. Trump nailed it in last night’s debate – he’s a “nasty man,” perhaps the most unlikeable person ever to get this far in the primaries. Like Hillary, he is intelligent but Cruz is way, way too far to the right for a country yearning for moderation and reason. Nobody in his own party can stand him, and the few right-wingers who have endorsed him are tinfoil hat-wearers like Glenn Beck.

Bernie Sanders: Just what we don’t need – an angry, old, draft-dodging, tax-crazy, class warfare-mongering Marxist obsessed with picayune issues like paid birth leave which, considering the domestic and foreign issues facing our nation, in the scheme of things, should be near the bottom of the list of our priorities. His appeal is to an underclass that feels, not without some justification, that their birthright has been stolen by elected officials from both parties who, for years, have allowed Wall Street to control the country. He would have been an acceptable presidential candidate in the eighties. For the USSR. 

Ben Carson: Sounds stoned whenever he opens his mouth. Carson was a neurosurgeon for Chrissakes. He has no qualifications whatsoever.

John Kasich: A political hack straight from central casting. Unlike his fellow GOP contenders, he does his best to try to stay above the fray, focusing on his “accomplishments” as governor of Ohio, including a preposterous claim he created 400,000 new jobs. Like all the GOP candidates except Trump, he wears his religion on his sleeve; that’s certainly his right but it’s off-putting to many in our increasingly secular society. Plus, as my wife points out whenever she sees him, he has bad posture. He is, at this point, the only one I can imagine myself holding my nose to vote for in November but mine would be a vote against his opponent, not a vote for him.

My hope is that at this late date, someone – preferably someone accomplished, articulate, likable, inspiring and free of any political party affiliation – will come forward to throw his or her hat into the ring. People are fed up with politics as usual; hence the support for whack-jobs like Trump and Sanders. We need a president who is liberal to moderate on social issues, conservative to moderate on financial issues, a president who can keep us safe, who understands the separation of church and state, and can prioritize what we need. We need a president who will do what’s right for America rather than pandering to the people who control his or her political party in dealing with both domestic and foreign issues, and respectful enough of our Constitution to appoint Supreme Court justices who will do their jobs free of political pressure. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has indicated he is considering running as an independent but he is too far left for many voters and, like Ted Cruz, isn’t likable. That said, I’d vote for him. Hell, I’d vote for one of my dachshunds over any of the current candidates.

Is there anyone out there willing to step up to the plate? Anyone at all?

If so, thank you in advance from a grateful nation.  

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Ruby and her Man-Tailored Size 16 Petite Wedding Suit

My mother, Ruby, was widowed at 52.  Fifteen years later, in a barbershop where she had taken my sister’s sons to get haircuts, she ran into a high school classmate, Bill, a retired physician whose wife had died the previous year. Ruby and Bill, who hadn’t seen each other for decades, started talking about the recent 50-year reunion of their high school class, which mom had missed.

One thing led to another and six months later, to the surprise of their children, they announced they were getting married and set the date: January 1, 1982. “It’s going to be a small wedding,” mom said. “Just our families and a handful of close friends.”

My wife, Judy, and I were living in midtown Manhattan at the time. Mom, who had spent her life in small Missouri towns, was living in Columbia, Mo.

My parents were married in 1933, the height of the Great Depression. Back then, weddings in rural Missouri were, of necessity, simple affairs. Couples often went to their local pastor or justice of the peace to get married. There were no guests, other than a few people who were often pulled off the street to witness the ceremony and sign the marriage license. Mom and dad were married by his favorite college professor who was also a justice of the peace. After the ceremony, they stopped by the tourist camp her parents owned for homemade ice cream where, next to a gas pump, the bride posed for a picture.

Ruby on her first wedding day,
June 25, 1933

“When I married your father, I had no money. I ordered my wedding dress from the J.C. Penney catalog and paid $2.98,” mom told me over the phone. “This time around, I want something nice, something from New York, a man-tailored suit.”

“You’re gonna wear pants for your wedding?” I asked. “No,” she explained. “A skirt with a jacket made from the same fabric, like the suits men wear.”  My wife said she had never heard of a man-tailored suit either – it must be a term from the thirties or forties – but understood what mom was saying.

We settled on a date for mom’s shopping trip. Ruby’s sister Betty, who lived in suburban Washington, D.C., called and said she would take the train to New York and together, the two of them could have fun shopping for mom’s wedding suit.

Ruby and Betty arrived on a Thursday evening. I was surprised to see that mom, who was five feet one tops, had packed on a little weight since I had last seen her. “You’re not pregnant, are you?” Betty teased. Mom said she and Bill had been eating in restaurants a lot and that she wasn’t happy about the weight she had gained.

 “Well, what size are you?” Betty asked.

“Sixteen Petite,” mom replied.

The next morning before we left for work, my wife drew a map to show mom and Betty the locations of department stores that were within walking distance of our apartment – Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales and Bergdorf Goodman. “You’ll find exactly what you want,” Judy assured them.

But that night, we were surprised to learn that mom and Betty, who had grown up in a tiny town with fewer than 100 people, had come all the way to New York and bought only one thing between them, a bottle of nail polish remover.

“Nobody in this town has ever heard of a man-tailored suit,” mom complained with some bitterness. “The snotty clerks looked at me like I was from outer space. The few who did understand what I was saying said their stores don’t carry anything in Sixteen Petite. One of the Bloomingdale’s clerks asked where I was from. When I told her, she said, ‘I suggest you go back to Missouri to buy your suit if they have such things out there.'”

“Don’t worry,” my wife, an expert shopper, told her. “Tomorrow I’ll take you to Macy’s Herald Square. If you don’t find what you want there, we’ll go to Lord & Taylor. One of those stores will have the suit you want.”

The next morning, for some reason, I volunteered to accompany them. “You’ll find your suit then we can have a nice lunch,” I told them.

If you’ve read this far, there’s something you need to understand. Ruby and Betty didn’t talk in normal tones when they were in each other’s presence. They YELLED, but not because they didn’t like each other, they were devoted. Their mother had lost most of her hearing by the time she was in her forties and her daughters, when they were together with their mother, spoke LOUDLY to make sure grandma didn’t keep interrupting their conversation by asking them to repeat themselves. Grandma had been gone for nearly 20 years by the time Ruby and Betty got to New York but old habits die hard. All of us had grown accustomed to NONSTOP YELLING whenever the sisters got together.

The four of us took the subway to the world’s largest department store, Macy’s Herald Square. My wife, who knew the store like the back of her hand, guided us from floor to floor, to all the departments that sold women’s suits. While they didn’t find many Sixteen Petites, mom tried on probably a dozen skirts with matching jackets that fit and looked perfectly fine to us. But none of them were acceptable to her.

After lunch, we cabbed to Lord & Taylor where, on the first floor, my wife pulled off the rack a white wool suit she and Betty convinced Ruby to try on. Judy, Betty and I agreed it was, by far, the best-looking suit we had seen and told mom that she looked beautiful in it.  Ruby said no, it wasn’t what she had in mind; she wanted to continue looking.

And so we took the escalator up and up and up, stopping off at various floors where Ruby tried on suit after suit. There was a sale on winter coats on one floor. Mom and Betty both found coats they wanted to buy.

Standing at the cashier, Betty pulled out her Lord & Taylor credit card. “HOW ARE YOU GOING TO PAY FOR YOURS?” she yelled at Ruby.

“I’M GOING TO WRITE A CHECK,” Ruby screamed back.

“I BET THEY WON’T TAKE AN OUT OF STATE CHECK,” Betty bellowed.

“SURE THEY WILL,” mom shouted in her Missouri twang.  “WHEN I WAS VISITING JERRY IN LEAVENWORTH I FOUND A DRESS IN A STORE THERE AND THEY TOOK A CHECK.”

Jerry, my brother, was an Army career officer who attended the Army’s Command and General Staff College in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, which also happens to be the home of a notorious federal prison with which it is often confused. The clerk’s eyebrows shot up when she heard “Leavenworth.”

“Ma’am” she said firmly. “I can’t take your check.”

“I’ll put it on my Lord & Taylor card,” my wife told Ruby. “You can write me a check.”

Ruby and Betty handed me their coats to carry and the quest for Ruby’s Sixteen Petite man-tailored suit resumed.

Mom tried on more – many, many more – suits on the upper floors that my wife, aunt and I decreed were perfectly fine, but none of them worked for Ruby who, we were convinced, was looking for something that didn’t exist.

As we were riding the escalator back to the first floor, Betty asked mom, “WHY DON’T YOU DO YOURSELF, YOUR GROOM, TOM, JUDY AND ME A FAVOR AND BUY THAT WHITE SUIT WE SAW WHEN WE CAME IN? YOU LOOKED GREAT IN IT.”

“I’LL TELL YOU WHY,” mom yelled back. “BECAUSE WHITE IS FOR VIRGINS … AND HE (pointing at me) IS PROOF IS THAT I … AM NOT … A VIRGIN.”

Every sophisticated New York head going up the up escalator and down the down escalator turned to see the non-virgin and her spawn. If the escalator had collapsed at that moment and hurled us all to our deaths it would have come as a relief.

Once we reached the first floor, we exited through the revolving door, got into a cab and went back to our apartment where I downed several stiff drinks. The girls, after a short rest, went out to visit some neighborhood boutiques but returned empty-handed.

Mom never did find the suit she had come all the way to New York to buy. She found it, as the Bloomingdale's clerk suggested she might, when she got home, a blue suit that matched her eyes. And on her wedding day, all of us agreed she looked beautiful in it.

As beautiful as any 68-year-old bride can look wearing a Sixteen Petite man-tailored suit.

Ruby's second wedding day, Jan 1, 1982

A house-hunting TV show I'd like to see

Now that I'm retired, I can watch TV  -- whenever I want, whatever I want.  

I've always loved reality shows that feature people shopping around for houses. There are a number of variations but all of them pretty much follow the same formula.

A couple with polar-opposite ideas about what they want visits three houses with their real estate agent. At the end of the show, the couple chooses one of the houses, which hardly ever meets the criteria they told the agent they wanted in the first place.

Nobody talks like the people on these shows. And nobody could possibly be as annoying as the house-hunters complaining about picayune details while overlooking flaws that are readily apparent to viewers. The couples and their real estate agents are obviously reading from scripts. I read somewhere that in many cases, the couples have already decided on a home before taping begins, so the whole show is bogus from the get-go.

Here’s the script for an episode I'd like to see.

Joe and Joanna move to Philadelphia

Voiceover (as a map appears with a line being drawn from Montana to Philadelphia): Joe and Joanna are relocating from Butte, Montana, all the way across the country to the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

(Cut to quick shots of Joe and Joanna as they stroll hand-in-hand down Market Street in Philly, walk in to a real estate office and sit in front of an agent. They chat animatedly as the voiceover continues...)

Eager for a place they can call their own, they have enlisted the aid of real estate agent Susie Green to find a home for their growing family that will come in within their budget of $39,000. Susie has her work cut out for her because Joe and Joanna have vastly different concepts of what their new home should be. Joe wants an ocean view and space to display his growing collection of assault rifles. Joanna dreams of a rambling turn-of-the-century-style farmhouse with an open concept living/dining/family room and an up-to-date kitchen with industrial grade appliances in Philadelphia’s tony Rittenhouse Square neighborhood, along with an ice skating rink in the backyard for their twins, Harding and Coolidge.

(Cut to Susie, Joe and Joanna standing in front of a door)

Today Susie is taking the couple to see what she thinks might be the perfect compromise.

Susie (opening the front door, gesturing for her clients to look around): Well, what do you think?

Joanna (looking down in horror): Uhh, that turquoise carpet. It’s God-awful. I hate carpet.

Susie: There’s hardwood underneath, but I don’t know what shape it’s in.

Joe: I do like the orange walls, though. Very tropical.

Joanna: You moron, this isn’t the tropics.

Joe (turning angrily to his wife): I’m sick of being dragged all over town looking for something that exists only in your mind.

Joanna: Look who’s talking Mr. "I've Gotta Have an Ocean View Or I'll Die." The nearest ocean is in New Jersey.

Susie: Let’s check out the kitchen, shall we?

Joanna: Is that a Viking range? I love to entertain.

Joe (contemptuously): You don’t entertain on a range. You cook on it.

Joanna (smugly): Your best friend found me very entertaining on top of our Viking range back in Butte.

Susie: To answer your question, it’s the original wood-burning stove from 1879 when this place was built. A nice historical touch, don’t you think?

Joe: I like these purple cabinets. Are they wood or laminate?

Susie: Laminate but we can change those out because this place is listed for just $19,000, so there’s plenty of room in the budget for renovations.

Joe: I like the laminate. What I don’t like is having a bathtub in the kitchen.

Susie: It doubles as the sink. If you’re in a hurry, you can take a bath and wash your dirty dishes at the same time.

Joanne: How many bedrooms?

Susie: None, this is a studio apartment.

Joe: Is there a window, so I can watch the chicks in their tight bikinis as they frolic on the beach?

Susie: No, but if we can pick this up at the right price there’s money in the budget to put a window in but … it will look out on the brick wall of the building next door. Why not tape a poster of a beach scene on the wall?

Joanna: Well, you have certainly given us something to think about. What else do you have to show us?

Susie: I think you’re really going to fall in love with the next place.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Voiceover (with quick cuts from previous segment of couple looking at apartment): Joe and Joanna and their realtor, Susie, just looked at an historic home in Philadelphia which, while it does have a roof, doesn’t have everything else they were looking for. Today, Susie is taking them to see another house.

Susie: I think you’re really going to fall in love with the next place.

(Cut to Susie, Joe and Joanna standing outside a frame row house)

Susie: I think you’re really going to fall in love with the next place.

Joanna: What are you, stupid? That’s the third time you’ve said that.

Susie: I know. The directors never have enough material for a 21-minute show so they make us repeat ourselves again and again. Plus, they assume people who binge-watch these shows don’t remember what they just saw because they all run together after a while.

Joanna: What is this neighborhood called?

Susie: Smacktown.

Joe: Are those hypodermic needles on the sidewalk?

(Susie opens the door.)

Susie: Yes, unfortunately many people in this neighborhood have diabetes and need insulin. Let’s go in, shall we?

Joanna: There’s carpet again. I told you I absolutely, positively detest carpet. Are you listening to anything I’ve said?

Susie: It could use a cleaning but the good news is, this place is $1,000 below your budget so you can have that done first thing.

Joe: Those people passed out in the front yard, do they come with the house?

Susie: I’m told they’ll be leaving soon.

Joanna (looking out window toward backyard): I don’t see a skating rink.

Susie: You can always put one in.

Joe: But, where’s my beach? I really don’t…

Joanna: There’s definite potential here. But we don’t want to commit until we see one more place.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Voiceover (as Susie, Joe and Joanna get out of SUV): Today, Susie is taking Joe and Joanna to Atlantic City, New Jersey, about sixty miles east of Philadelphia, where she’ll be showing them a house that ticks all their boxes.

(Cut to Susie, Joe and Joanna standing outside a farmhouse on stilts, overlooking the ocean.)

Joanna: This place looks interesting.

Susie: It is. Six thousand square feet, just completed by a master builder. The asking price is $12.2 million.

Joe (indicating beach in front of the house where people are swimming and sunbathing): Where’s my private beach?

Susie (opening door of house): You’ll have to share this beach, but wait 'till you see the private Olympic size pool out back.

(They step inside the foyer.)

Joanna: I was hoping for a skating rink for the boys.

Susie: In winter, the pool will become one if you don’t drain it.

Joanna: I love this open concept living/dining/family room and the beautiful kitchen equipped with quartz counters and industrial-grade professional appliances.

Joe: How many bedrooms?

Susie: Nine. All en-suite. 

Joanna: We only need four – one for us, one each for the boys, plus a guest room for my mother when she visits from Montana.

Susie: Believe me, you’ll have plenty of guests if you buy this house. Here’s the first of the guest rooms.

Joanna: Carpet again. I’m gonna puke.

Susie: Hand-woven in Persia just for this room. And if you don’t like it, there’s hardwood underneath, a rare mahogany from Mozambique, in a lovely herringbone pattern.

Joe: How far is this place from work?

Joanna: You haven’t worked since 2002.  

Joe: Is there an office in case I decide to?

Susie: Yes, and it has built-ins, a wet bar and, naturally, an expansive ocean view.

Joanna: But I wanted to live in the heart of the city.

Susie: Well, you’re just steps from the Boardwalk which has shopping, restaurants, muggers, everything you’d find in downtown Philly.

Joe: Looks like we have our work cut out for us.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

(Joe and Joanna in a restaurant, sipping wine)

Joe: I really liked those orange walls in house number one. House number two? I’m not so sure.

Joanna: Since the director said we have to eliminate one and act like it was an excruciating decision, I think we need to ixnay that one and look like we're agonizing as we do it. There’s no room for the boys’ skating rink.

Joe: Agreed. Let’s eliminate house number two.

(Cut to photo of house #2 as an “X” supers over it.)

Joe: What about the farmhouse by the sea?

Joanna: I can’t get past the carpet in the ninth guest bedroom.

Joe: Me neither. And it’s beyond the top range of our budget. What shall we tell Susie?

Joanna: I think we should …

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Voiceover (as viewers see quick shots of Joe and Joanna in the three houses they have been shown): Joe and Joanna are relocating their family from Montana to Philadelphia. They’ve looked at three houses. House number one is well within in their budget but both agree it has issues. House number two is larger, but they’re not so sure about the neighborhood, plus they’ve already eliminated it but the director said I needed to fill 15 seconds so I’m telling you again. House number three has almost everything they want but, it’s in Atlantic City, sixty miles east of Philadelphia, and it’s more than $12 million over budget.

(Camera closes in on Joe)

Joe: What shall we tell Susie? That we're taking house number one?

(Cut to close-in shot of Joanna)

Joanna: We should tell her we’re getting a divorce. I never realized what an idiot loser I was married to until I went house hunting with you.

Joe (as camera pulls back to reveal both of them): We’re not married, bitch. I never divorced my first wife.

Joanna: Well that’s good because Harding and Coolidge aren’t yours anyway. I’m taking them and going back to Montana.

Joe: Good. Haul your fat butt back to Butte and I hope I never see you again.

Joanna: Likewise, asshole.

(Joe and Joanna get up from table and go off in separate directions)

Voiceover: Joe and Joanna have decided to put their house hunt on hold for now.

(Cut to Susie at her desk)

Susie: I have to admit, I was disappointed. But I’m confident that when they decide to resume their search I can find them something they can make their own.

(Credits roll.)