rlfj: Blog

A number of readers commented that Carl feeding pepperoni pizza to Hamid violates halal, and that Carl should have known better. Maybe so, but who cares. This is a four-year-old boy. Do you really think he understands any of that? Speaking as a former four-year-old, all I can remember of church in those days was being told to be quiet, sit still, and stop fidgeting! Unless Muslim children are a vastly different species of humanity, I suspect that’s all Hamid understood as well. In fact, we doubled down in Chapter 182, with bacon and sausage for breakfast! Or do you really think that Roman Catholic Marilyn is going to actually raise Hamid as Muslim?

There was a very accurate note from a reader about the difficulties of adopting a child from overseas, and all the paperwork and time that Carl skipped over. That is very true. I have seen adoptions like that, and it can take a year or more and cost $20k plus. There are huge impediments at both ends of the process, foreign and American. I would simply point out two things. First, the Kurdish end is being streamlined completely by Kurdish President Barzani. Realistically, he could do this and get away with it. Second, on arriving in the United States, it would take a very brave and very stupid customs agent to arrest the former President and First Lady on national television in front of Congress. Better to cause grief afterwards, but once Hamid is on American soil, that begins getting much more difficult. That’s why Hamid won’t be leaving the States until this is sorted out, which might take years.

Meanwhile, it looks like Carl is getting back into politics. Enjoy!

Chapter 179 had an html error which caused an error in the indents. I fixed it and uploaded a repaired version. It’s up now, but if you read it before that, you can read it again without the error. Ooops!

Well, the war is over and Carl is back to being a civilian. Adopting Hamid might have been a surprise to him, but it certainly wasn’t to my readers, many of whom commented on this. I guess being in combat focused Carl’s thoughts elsewhere.

The idea that we might have gotten involved in Somalia is not preposterous. We did it under two previous Presidents. For all that we can complain about the Bush/Cheney team getting us involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, the left-wing liberals have been screaming for just as long for us to ‘do something’ about the Horn of Africa. Many Hollywood celebrities had been begging for America to intervene in Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia for decades. They have a lot of sway with the Democratic Party. In addition, during the fictional Buckman/McCain era military losses were kept at a very low level. There is every reason to believe that an administration with very little military experience would believe it was a cake walk, history notwithstanding, especially if they believe that UN interference is what caused the problems before.

Also, as I have mentioned before, I am neither a flaming radical left-wing Communist nor a founding member of the Tea Party. If I seem like I am bad-mouthing Hillary, how is that any different than in earlier chapters where I did the same to Bush 43? Personally, I think Mercutio had it right – “A plague on both your houses!” If you don’t like it, stop reading!

A final note on Baltimore County – several people have written me asking whether Carl lives in Hereford or Upperco. This is one of the curious items about Baltimore County. There are no incorporated municipalities inside Baltimore County, which means there are no formal borders to towns. Towns and cities don’t have boundaries and tend to flow together. It is not at all impossible for two neighbors to think they live in different towns. So, how do you know where you live? Maybe by zip code, maybe by school district, maybe by the volunteer fire company that puts your fire out! In Carl’s case, he and Marilyn moved to the area as adults, and his business, the local high school, and his polling place are in Hereford. His kids, on the other hand, started school at Fifth District Elementary, the Upperco feeder school to Hereford, and they think they live in Upperco!

It gets even stranger. Carl is old enough to remember when your telephone number was assigned based on the local exchange, which was given a name. Carl’s childhood address in Lutherville was in the Dulaney Valley exchange, and all the phone numbers were 82x-xxxx, for VAlley. Ads at the time might say “Call Valley x-xxxx for…” My grandmother, who lived in Highlandtown, had a phone number that started with 44, for the HIghlandtown exchange. Many people figured out what town they were in based on their phone number. Is everybody confused now?

Things are definitely getting out of control for Carl in Syria. I wrote about 95% of the Epilogue before Iraq came apart at the seams. I certainly never anticipated the group called ISIS, and it seems that Carl’s semi-partition of Iraq has come true, though in my story the Kurds grabbed more of Iraq than seems to be the case in real life. Life imitating art? Very spooky, and more than a little depressing.

I’ve had several comments on my portrayal of Hillary, specifically that Bill would be able to correct her and guide her somehow. I just don’t know about that. For one thing, I don’t think she is anywhere near as capable a politician as Bill is. Regardless of how you feel about him, and my own feelings are rather mixed, I think Slick Willie is the savviest politician since FDR. Hillary is not in his class, not by a long shot. Second, I can’t really understand that family dynamic. Do they even live together these days? Just how much does she listen to him?

When I originally wrote this story, I published the Epilogue as a separate story. Now I am going to publish it as additional chapters for the main story.

Carl Buckman has spent the last two decades up to his ears in politics. If you thought that after he retired he was going to get out of politics, you are naïve! If you have managed to get through the first 175 chapters of the story, roughly 75 of which are political, don’t be surprised when he gets into politics in the Epilogue!

For those of you who wondered what kind of trouble Carl could get into now that he is retired, don’t worry. Carl will get into plenty of trouble! Enjoy!

Several readers commented that McCain was a guaranteed loser in the 2008 election. Their theory was that as a ‘novelty’ candidate, Obama was picking up huge numbers of votes, even from Republicans. He was younger, better looking, gave better speeches, etc. All of that was true, but McCain had some serious advantages, specifically the economy was fairly good through the late summer. It only collapsed in September. That was when McCain’s poll numbers dropped through the floor. McCain had a realistic chance up until then.

However, the real election wasn’t Obama vs. McCain, it was Obama vs. Bush. By the end of his Presidency, George Bush was the most despised President since Richard Nixon. (This is not an opinion; check the historical records of popularity indexes.) Bush had two disastrous wars, had screwed up Katrina, and by 2008 it was obvious we were trillions in the hole. None of this happened in this timeline. McCain would have a very good chance under these conditions.