It was Wednesday morning and I was on my way home from the workout room and stopped by Max’s place to see what was going on. When I walked in, he was sitting contentedly in his favourite chair, a cup of coffee in his hand (I deduced from the nearby brandy bottle that the coffee had more than the usual authority) and he nodded to me. He didn’t speak because the Bose was playing Willy Nelson’s version of “Over the Rainbow.”

I poured myself a cup of coffee, kept it virginal, and sat down. When the record ended, I spoke up.

“You’re not in mourning after the sad news we got this morning?”

He rolled his eyes over to me, gave me a disapproving look and asked, “You mean, of course, the passing of Old Chappaquiddick?”

“None other,” I replied.

Max gathered himself and sat up a bit more, put down his coffee cup and said, “This morning, when I saw the news on the net, one thing flashed through my mind, the image of that poor girl alone in the dark in that sunken Oldsmobile, tearing at the material and the floor mats with her fingernails trying to get out of there before she drowned and at the same time, Teddy boy slogging past the fire station where a lighted button near the front door invited one and all who had an emergency to press it and summon the entire volunteer fire department, all of whom were trained in emergency treatment and resuscitation.”

“He didn’t stop.”

“He didn’t stop. It was more urgent that he get his toadies to put together a cover story for him than to rescue that poor thing in the car.”

We were silent. I sipped my coffee and did Max.

Max spoke first. “When you were flying fighters, how would you have liked to have had Old Chappaquiddick for a flight leader?”

I chuckled. “I would have felt quite safe with him in command. We never would have gotten anywhere near the enemy, that’s for damned sure.”

We were quiet for another moment and Max said, “I’ll always remember another high point in his career, his trying to scuttle the ’86 Geneva agreement by personally negotiating with Gorby.”

“I wonder if the Democrats are proud of those initiatives. He and Gorby couldn’t keep the Soviet Union from collapsing anyway.”

“Already ancient history,” Max said. “No one cares anymore, like Chappaquiddick. Memory is short, especially when it’s inconvenient.”

Max sauntered in through the back door, got a bottle of water out of my auxiliary fridge and plopped down on the couch. He took a long pull from the water bottle and asked what I was doing.

Without looking up, I replied, “I’m reading the morning paper about how the Attorney General of the US and A is in full cry after those nefarious Bush-era CIA guys. They’ve even appointed a special prosecutor and you know what that means.”

“Yep!” he answered. “Someone will be a sacrificial lamb and by that time, the health-care question will have been decided and the angry left will have stopped chewing on the president’s behind.”

“Oh, I get it,” I chuckled, “lots of noise and sensationalism to satisfy the hungry wolves.”

“Another Siberian sleigh ride,” Max mumbled under his breath.

“What’s a Siberian sleigh ride?”

“You don’t know the story? I’ll tell you. The scene is a midwinter night in Siberia . A two-horse sleigh full of paid passengers is on its way to an inn for the nightand running late. Anyway, on board this sleigh, there’s the driver, of course, two working men, an older, rich gentleman who resents having to share space with peasants, two ladies and a young mother with a still suckling babe.

“As they hurry along the road, a pack of starving wolves suddenly emerges from the forest and starts after the sleigh in full cry. The passengers are horrified and ask the driver how far they must go to reach the inn and safety. He tells them they still have nine miles to go and lashes the horses to a full gallop. The sled gains speed and pulls away from the ravening wolf pack. However, the horses have already come a long way and they are near exhaustion and they begin to slow and the wolf pack to gain. The passengers cry out frantically at the driver to go faster. Of course the driver is frantic himself and lashes at the horses, willing to kill them to save his own neck from the wolves. But it soon becomes obvious the wolves will overtake them and drag down the horses before they reach the inn.

“The wolves draw closer, close enough the passengers can see the long, white teeth which may be their fate. Suddenly, the rich man cries out, “Someone must sacrifice himself so the rest can live!” The others stare at him in shock until the idea takes hold. Like a drowning man clutching at a straw they look at one another. Who will be a saint and do this thing? No one volunteers. They all want to live, rich and poor, hale or ill, they cling stubbornly to life? The rich man asks the working men in turn to jump off the sleigh and save the rest. In turn, each shakes his head and hides his face. The rich man looks at the women and they turn away and he considers picking one of them up and shoving her over the side. But both are too hefty for that and he had a bad back.

“The faster wolves have reached the end of the sleigh, soon they will be at the horses and they all will die horribly. It’s now or never, so the rich man snatches the suckling babe from its mother’s arms and throws it off the back of the sleigh. At the sudden scent of warm meat, the wolves stop and attack the delicious bundle fate has handed them. The young mother screams into the night and the sleigh rushes on to the inn and safety.”

Max sat back, took another swig from his bottle and looked pleased with himself.

"Another of your wonderful allegories, huh Max? Distract the wolves long enough to get away, as long as it doesn’t cost you anything personally.”

“You’ve got it, my friend. The public option feature of Obamacare is in trouble and the Democrat left wing is in full outrage. They are nipping at Obama’s heels and he is looking for something to throw them long enough for him to make his figurative getaway. So why not give them something juicy, something in which they can indulge their outrage, the Bush Administration. It has worked every time before, why not now?”

“The CIA investigation, of course,” I laughed. “But that may come back to bite them.”

Smiling, Max said, “Down the road, who knows what surprises lurk? Remember how that CIA cabal used the Valerie Plame thing to embarrass Bush and he didn’t have the huevos to do what had to be done? So he just tossed poor old Scooter to the wolves.”

“You think the Agency may get even?”

“You didn’t ask how my story ended,” Max said, smirking.

“Oh, I thought it had already ended!”

“So did the rich guy,” Max went on. “But when they reached the inn, the young mother’s husband, a huntsman, was waiting on her and his baby. When his sobbing wife told him what happened, the huntsman took his great gun and blew the rich man’s head off. That’s how the story ends.”

“I love ironic twists,” I said.

Listen to this,” Max said, reading from the paper:

‘If the Republicans in Washington are smart, and I'm not saying they are, they'd do well to get out of Nancy Pelosi's way. She may be just about the best politician the GOP has these days. Every time Madam Speaker goes on camera, you can almost hear Democrats' approval ratings drop.’”

I laughed and asked, “Who said that?”

“That was Paul Greenberg with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,” he replied, grinning. “Has a way with words, doesn’t he?”

“Saying Paul Greenberg has a way with words is like calling Beethoven a tunesmith, Max. I’ve been reading him for a long time. He never disappoints. What else is new?”

“Here’s a bit of nostalgia for you and your fellow Republicans,” Max said, matter-of-factly but I could tell by his tone he was suppressing a laugh. “This is from 1988, when George Herbert Walker Bush was making his acceptance speech to the National Convention. He said, and I quote:

‘I want a drug-free America . Tonight, I challenge the young people of our country to shut down the drug dealers around the world... My Administration will be telling the dealers, 'Whatever we have to do, we'll do, but your day is over. You're history.’”

“Damn!” I blurted. “I don’t remember that. And from the way the drug cartels are taking over countries, no one else does either, or cares.”

“Brave words, dissolved into the air surrounding cold, hard reality. That’s why I read it to you. I thought it hilarious.” Max chuckled.

“Yeah, hilarious,” I replied. “Like a busted crutch, hilarious; but very appropriate to mark the occasion of Big O’s visit to Mexico and promising more money for the drug war. I imagine the drug lords down south of the border got a real belly laugh out of it. Surely you have something more uplifting than that stuff you’ve got there.”

“Here’s something,” he snorted, turning a page. “ Brazil is about to get $10 billion from the U.S. to develop its offshore oil reserves”

“Seeing as how the Cubans are letting the Chinese drill in the Gulf of Mexico , that’s a good deal, I grunted. “I assume we are still on good terms with Brazil ?”

“Apparently. According to this, the newswire out of Spain reported last week that the U.S. Eximbank is raising its stake in Brazil 's offshore oil fields to as much as $10 billion, from an initial $2 billion.”

“Well hurrah,” I exclaimed. “Given how many ratholes our government could pour our money down — wind farms, switch grass — it's good to learn at least some cash is going toward something productive.”

Max looked thoughtful. “Someone must have been taken with a fit of reality!”

“And not a moment too soon,” I added.

“Here’s something that’s close to my heart,” Max exclaimed, pulling a section from the newspaper. It seems that four more developed nations have cut their corporate tax rates this year.”

“Who dat?”

“The Czech Republic , our friends to the north the Canucks, South Korea and guess what, even the specialists in soft socialism, the Swedes, cut their rate,” Max announced. “That puts the tax rate average among the 30 OECD nations at 26.29%.”

“And, don’t tell me, the US of A is still second highest.”

“Yup,” Max replied, “right behind the Japanese at 39.4%. We’re at 39.1%.”

“So we are still at a competitive disadvantage,” I growled. “And the White House and their union bully boys gripe about our companies taking business overseas. They just don’t get it, do they? Leveling the playing field is beyond their grasp.”

Max squinted at the paper. He looked up and me and said, “Talk about ironic! It says here that a report by the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development itself said last year that ‘corporate taxes are the most harmful tax for economic growth.’ Not even personal income taxes or consumption taxes were found to cause as much economic damage.”

“Fat chance on getting them reduced under that current bunch of Chicago armbreakers,” I groaned. “I’m afraid economic realities are taking a back seat to the dominant philosophy. Lowering taxes is somehow a cardinal sin in the left-secular canon.”

“How much like the church fathers they are!” Max remarked.

“Huh?”

“Verily I say unto you, those that grow rich must be made to repent their sins,” Max intoned, making a sign of something in the air like a priest blessing the fleet.

It was either a distorted cross or a dollar sign, hard to tell.

Max aimed the remote at the TV set and clicked it off. “I’ve had just about all that crap I can stand,” he spat.

“Somethin’ eating you, pal?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

Max gave me that look he gives me when I try to be funny and fail miserably.

“Do you realize how much plain old crap we are being fed every day? He growled.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the talking heads on TV, the newspapers, the bureaucrats, the hysterical left, the hysterical right, the success haters, the racists, the holier-than-anybodies, the left-wing politicians that are afraid the downtrodden are going to become middle class and leave the plantation, the right-wing politicians that are afraid the downtrodden are going to get the vote and those that are afraid that somewhere, somehow, someone is going to have outside-of-marriage sex in other than the missionary position in a lighted room and actually enjoy it.”

“You sound as if you are fed up with everyone,” I observed.

“That sums it up,” he said, nodding. “Do you realize how many stupid, contradictory things are being pushed out there by people with an agenda? How many times have you heard a politician say, ‘yak, yak, yak, and end our dependence on foreign oil,’ then turn around and vote against domestic drilling? Do you remember when the Brazilians turned down $ 40 million in US anti-HIV aid money because the Bushies insisted on them signing off on a pledge to condemn prostitution, a country where prostitution is legal and which, incidentally, has one of the best anti-HIV programs in the world? Why you’d think that Pope Saint Vitus Dance himself was running the Oval Office!”

Max got up and paced.

“The right wing is screaming about the left trying to suppress religion and they themselves want to require Christian prayers to be forced on all children in public schools whether they want it or not. What in hell do you call that? Government Motors bureaucrats are talking about building tens of thousands of electric cars that you just plug in to the wall socket ignoring the fact that all that recharging has to be done off an already marginal grid. The politicians keep mouthing off about ‘renewable energy’ but they keep pushing intermittent energy that doesn’t exist when the sun goes down and the wind doesn’t blow and they want to close down the coal-fired generators that supply what power the grid does have while there is nothing to take their place. The Senate majority leader got the repository for expended nuclear fuel rods closed down because he didn’t want it in his back yard so we’ve got to quit using nukes to produce electricity or put those old fuel rods in a plain brown envelope and mail ‘em out of town.

“Congress tries to steamroller legislation through that no one has read, much less the people who pay the taxes and they get all testy and talk about Nazis when pissed-off and scared-to-death people, organized or not, show up at town hall meetings and act rude. But the last thing they seem willing to do is put the legislation out where everyone can read it for themselves instead of picking up a bunch of slanted crap off the internet.

“We had a Republican Administration that abandoned all pretense of fiscal conservatism and spent more money than even Lyndon Johnson and, in the process, Bush signed every damned outrageous ear-marked, pork-laden, over-spending bill that fell on his desk. As if wasn’t bad enough but now we get an administration that claims that it’s got to repair the economic damage done by Bush by borrowing four trillion dollars from the Red Chinese with which to bail out failed corporations and auto companies who build crap that no one wants. The Red Chinese? What in the hell would Thomas Jefferson say?

We’ve got a congressman with a phoney Purple Heart who oversees military appropriations and spends a gazillion dollars for an airport that no one needs, wants or uses and names it after himself. And no one complained? But then, he’s upholding a sacred tradition. Remember the aircraft carrier the Navy couldn’t use and didn’t want but which a senator had built in a Mississippi ship yard and was dubbed ‘Lott’s Yacht’?

“By the way, the current Administration has no energy plan other than some hoaked-up abandonment- of-all-reason exercise produced by a malevolent anti-capitalist ogre that will penalize anyone and anything that has a hand in creating this country’s wealth and all it of based on a hoax, a fraudulent “hockey-stick” graph that some second-rate scientist who sold his soul and backed into an algorithm that would please the uber-bureaucrats in the United Nations who, in turn, simply ignored the fact that he pretended that the most significant global heating and cooling eras in the last thousand years simply hadn’t existed. And a former vice-president is still using that load of poles to get rich selling people carbon footprint offsets. The administration intends to ram through legislation to give the politicians more power over our means of production instead of doing what reasonable managers would do, take the time and money to develop a non-carbon fuel source that’s cheaper than oil or gas and I’m not talking about switch grass or raising methane-farting microbes. When and if we come up with a new fuel that’s cheaper, coal and oil will die a natural death.

“And I am sick to death of hearing a woman being called a pinhead when she asks a competent doctor for an abortion because she’s carrying a malformed fetus with no brain, or no kidneys or no face. I won’t even go into the choice names the right wing calls that doctor. Those holy-mouths even object to a competent abortion for a woman who more than likely will die trying to deliver a malformed monstrosity. They would force her into an illegal, back-alley clinic where she stands even less of a chance. Hell, why not just pass out the mandatory burkas and be honest about it!

“And it’s time to swallow the bitter pill and put Amtrak up for bids on the open market. We auction off the profitable lines, shut down the rest and recycle the rails. Then the US taxpayers will no longer be on the hook for paying $600 for each and every passenger that climbs aboard. Good grief, we could buy those passengers airline tickets and it would be cheaper! If the trains can’t pay their own way, who in the hell needs them? But our intrepid congressmen and women keep the losers going because the hometown folks like to have the convenience, just in case they want to go somewhere. I don’t think we have any business subsidizing those hometown folks any more than we ought to be subsidizing those corporate moonshiners turning out that ethanol crap we are required by federal law to put in our cars. Then Congress sticks a 54 cent a gallon import duty on superior foreign ethanol to protect our second-rate domestic product. And incidentally, turning a basic food into fuel for our SUVs has run up the cost of every food item in the supermarket and made it even harder to feed starving people in the third world. Why hasn’t someone gone to prison over that?

When Max paused for breath, I looked at my watch and said, “Are you going to wrap this up pretty soon, I’ve got to go eat supper? Have you got your perfect world worked out?”

“There’s no such thing,” Max snapped back. “But we can make it better, if we can keep the Republic together.”

“Are you worried about the Republic?” I asked.

“Our national debt is now $7.3 trillion dollars. Fannie Mae and Freddy Max are on the hook for another $5.4 trillion and Geithner is dusting that pair off and sending them back out to make some more bad loans. What do you think?”

He paused and said, “Remember when the lady asked Jefferson what kind of government we had created, he said, “A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

Max was in a pensive mood. He seemed lost in thought after watching the evening newscast so I asked him, “What’s wending its way through that labyrinthine mind of yours?”

“I would like to ask the President one question about his health care plan,” he replied in a distracted manner.

“Oh. What’s that?” I asked.

Max scrunched up his face and said, “I’d like to ask him, if he is so concerned about insurance companies not covering uninsurable people and he’s concerned about the poor people who can‘t afford health insurance, why doesn’t he just target those groups, the uninsurable and the poor, and leave everyone else the hell alone? Why does he have to force the insurance companies out of business and run up a trizillion dollar deficit covering everybody?

I replied, “Because, as Barney Frank said, they are after a single payer system. It’s a political objective; logic and economy have nothing to do with it. I thought you knew that. After San Fran Nan said openly the insurance companies are evil, do you think they’re going to let for-profit companies stay in business?”

Max sighed and said, “No, I suppose not. And it looks like Obama will cut any deal, make any promise to get that thing sold. Did you see what Chuck Grassley pulled off?”

“No, what was that? Wasn’t he already on Obama’s side?”

“Yes and no. Actually, Grassley was on Grassley’s side. That fellow Shannon that Obama nominated for the ambassadorship to Brazil made a remark about helping out Brazil and lifting the 54 cent per gallon U. S. tariff on ethanol from Brazil .”

“If they really believe in that crap, that’s the thing to do, I suppose,” I gruffed.

“Well, you know that our corn ethanol is less energy-efficient that Brazil ’s sugar cane ethanol, don’t you? Mr. Grassley was taking care of his constituents who are selling subsidized corn ethanol and he held up Shannon ’s nomination until he got a pledge that the tariff would not be lifted.”

“Did he get it?”

“Sure! Obama needs all the help he can get so he rolled over on what is an unpatriotic, un-environmental and bastardly tariff against Brazil ’s cheaper ethanol.”

“How did you find out about this?” I asked, surprised.

“Hell, Grassley made no secret of it. He was straight up. ‘Keep the tariff or do without your ambassador,’” Max chuckled.

“Well, well,” I sneered. “So they are saying to hell with the taxpayers and the people who are required by law to use that damned moonshine, so Grassley can keep the taxpayer subsidies flowing.”

“Let’s face it,” Max said, pouring a cup of coffee. “The environment scam is useful for covering up all kind of highjinks, especially those that make constituents rich.”

“I suppose that’s what politics is all about,” I sighed. “Pity.”

"It appears, from what I read in the fair and balanced press, that your fellow Republicans are on a great tear of rebellion against the poor, the uninsurable and the highly principled senators trying to hold grass roots meetings out among the great unwashed,” Max chuckled.

“Poor babies,” I responded. “The senators are lucky to be avoiding the honor of a tar and feathering judging from the mood in the streets.”

Max nodded and said, “I understand that some liberal got hold of a nefarious message from an organizer that urged the right wing rabble to disrupt the town halls with protests, shouting, embarrassing questions and other impolite behavior. ‘Twould appear some of it is organized.”

“Wow, you really think so?” I asked in mock amazement. “It’s not like they thought up something new, after all. Do you recall the organized mobs in the colleges refusing to let a guest speaker talk at all? And golly gee, I seem to recall something about anti-war protests that we were told ‘sprang up spontaneously’ and the anti-Star Wars demonstrations among ‘concerned citizens.’ Anybody that believes that, I want to meet. I’ve got a beautiful vacation home in downtown Bayonne I want to unload.”

“San Fran Nan has denounced the disturbances as Nazi-like and un-American,” Max replied.

“That’s no surprise,” I growled. “After all, doesn’t she represent America ? Isn’t she speaking for the multi-millions of uninsured out there dying in the streets? Aren’t the mobs protesting goals that are meant for the good of all?”

Max grinned wryly. “I recall when you fiscal conservatives used to call anyone who disagreed with you ‘Communists.”

Ignoring his remark, I went on, “Look, the Democrats set themselves up for all kinds of abuse,” I grunted. “Look at that ‘stimulus’ bill, passed in a hurry, set records for earmarks, and pushed out the door to cope with the ‘emergency.’ Then comes the health care plan, once again, ‘hurry up before the August recess and get it passed! Don’t read it, just approve it and buy into everything it says. Trust us!’ Then along comes that cap and tax thing, which might, if completely successful, and if Mother Nature decides to go along with it, reduce the temperature in 2100 by a half a degree centigrade. And we’ve got to get it passed before the Copenhagen meeting this fall. Of course, to even get that half a degree, we’d have to stop the Indians and the Chinese in their tracks and not let them build any more coal-fired generating plants. Lotsa luck on that! The taxpayers know they’re being hustled and they’re understandably insulted. The promised review periods aren’t being observed, everything is hurry up, pass the law now and deal with the unknown consequences as they boil up. What in hell do the politicians expect?”

“Tell me how you really feel,” Max laughed. “Well, I have to go along with you on that healthcare thing. As far-reaching and as expensive as that is definitely not something you want to rush into. We do have people here in the world’s richest country without healthcare, so we have to do something. But it would seem to me a bipartisan study group with access to all the economic and healthcare experts targeting the real needs would be a very valuable thing.”

“In other words, eliminate the political shotgun approach and aim at specifics with a rifle. How practical, maybe even affordable! Good idea! And I’ll tell you something else, my friend. With those 3,000 scientific robots out in the oceans telling us that the seas are cooling, we may have big trouble. If we’re coming up on another ice age, and if actual history is any precedent, global warming will be something to fervently wish for.”

Max sighed heavily. “I think I’ll just go to a place with a beach and nearby bar that has no television or radios. All this conflict is very unsettling.”

“Don’t bother Max,” I said. “Sixty years from now, people will be talking about this as the ‘good ol’ days.”

“Perverts!” he exclaimed.