Don’t they wish.

On October 8, from 2-4PM, several 9/12, TEA Party, and conservative/patriot organizations will unite in an “unprecedented” show of support for one of this country’s great American companies, Gibson Guitars at a “We Stand With Gibson” rally at the Scoreboard Bar & Grill parking lot in Nashville, TN.

For those who don’t tune in to Fox News Channel, read conservative blogs, or listen to conservative talk radio, chances are you are not even aware of what happened to Gibson Guitars last month when Federal agents raided their offices and factories in Nashville and Memphis, semi-automatic weapons drawn, clearing out all employees and confiscating guitars, supplies, files, computers, etc.

What was their alleged crime, you ask?  Using “illegal” wood in their products.   Isn’t it odd how nobody has even been indicted on any charges?

As I discussed in my last BigDawg spotlight piece on fellow BigDawg’er, Nathan Picard, seems the only real “crime” here is Gibson’s CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, is a Republican donor.  The feds have basically told Mr. Juszkiewicz that all of this “would go away” if they outsource their jobs to Madagascar.  Say what?

Meanwhile, POTUS is making the rounds touting his so-called “jobs bill”…demanding Congress “pass this bill” (90 times in 5 speeches)…. But do keep sending those jobs overseas.

If this doesn’t smack of gestapo-like tactics, y’all are still asleep.  It’s time to wake up and smell the tyranny.

How can you get involved?  Hop on a plane, train, or automobile, head to Nashville, and let this administration know that we say “NO YOU CAN’T” bully us into submission.  Rally organizers have stated the following:

The government’s actions impact not only Gibson but all related businesses working with Gibson products. This abuse of federal power must not go unanswered. We, the citizens who grant government its power and authority, MUST act to hold government accountable when that power is abused. Please join us October 8 in Nashville to Stand with Gibson.

We are asking you to do the following to show your support for Gibson:

1) Attend the rally (Directions);
2) Sign up for email updates on the rally. New information is coming out daily;
3) Tell your family and friends about the rally and encourage them to attend, as well;
4) Visit the Rally’s FaceBook page and “Like” it;
5) Share on your FaceBook and Twitter accounts. The Twitter hashtag is #GibsonRally;
6) Visit Grassfire Nation and sign the petition in support of Gibson (the plan is to present this to Gibson live at the event)

When we first learned about this rally less than a week ago, we contacted the organizers immediately and offered to help out in any way we could.  Considering a large number of our culture warriors at our site are right-leaning, liberty-loving artists/musicians, how could we NOT support a company that produces such great, American-made guitars?

As fate would have it, that very same day that we learned about the rally, one of our BigDawg Brigade members, Ms. Reese Ccup, shared a YouTube video with us of a gentleman named Steve Bryant (who just joined our site) singing an original song he’d written about the Gibson raid called “Keep Your Hands Off Our Wood”.  It was perfect!  Not only were the lyrics spot on, but he played the song on a vintage Gibson Blue Ridge acoustic guitar about which he had this to say:

Growing up, I always wanted a Gibson Guitar. My father played with the big bands and played a big old L-5. He died when I was 2 and my Mother had to sell his guitar before I was old enough to appreciate it.

As a pre-teen and teenager, I was fascinated with puppets. I studied puppetry and even operated a marionette on a syndicated TV show when I was 13. I also had my own troupe of puppets and did shows for birthday parties and events, even did “adult puppet shows” when I was a later teen. As a musician, I wrote and performed original music for the shows.

I saw this Gibson Blue Ridge in a South Jersey music store in 1969 (I was 18). It was love at first sight. I had saved almost the entire price of the guitar from the money I made doing puppet shows and my Mother gave me the last $50. As a lifelong hard working single Mom, I still don’t know how she was able to do it.

I took that guitar to Woodstock and the Isle of Wight in 1969 along with many other music festivals in the 70’s. The guitar went to college with me and when I became a QVC host, it traveled all over America and Europe. I was lucky enough to play it on TV with Tom Paxton, Richie Havens, Glen Campbell and many other artists. I was the primary musical and entertainment on-air host at QVC for over 15 years.

Now that I’m a talk radio host, I use my Blue Ridge to write and perform original songs and song parodies about pop culture and politics. She sounds better every year!

We had offered to do a promo video for the rally organizers and just had to ask Steve for permission to use his song for the video, which he was gracious enough to grant us.  Let’s just hope the feds don’t show up to confiscate all the “contraband” from the Gibson guitar-wielding musicians that show up, including Steve!

As of the writing of this article, there are 51 sponsor organizations for this rally including ours.  Confirmed speakers include Gibson Chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz;  Congressman Marsha Blackburn; Talk Radio Hosts: Steve Gill, Phil Valentine, and Mark Skoda; and Chairman, Tea Party Express, Amy Kremer.

Confirmed artists for this two-hour event include Eric Lee Beddingfield, and Grant Austin Taylor, who will “Rock the House with his rendition of the National Anthem on his Gibson Electric Guitar”.

Be sure to check the official event site regularly for updates as the sponsor list is growing by the hour and additional speakers and entertainers will be posted once confirmed.  This is an event you won’t want to miss!

Several BigDawg Music Mafia artists will be there to show our support.  Do stop by our booth and say hello.  We just might talk you into joining the culture revolution while you’re there and twist your arm into hitting the karaoke bars with us later in the evening!

“Targets Down“ (B&H Publishing), my second novel in the Matt Hogan series is now available. Publisher’s Weekly called my debut novel, “Enemies Among Us,” ”a page-turning roller coaster that feels like Jack Bauer’s 24 without sailing over the top.” Actor/producer Jack Scalia read an advance copy of TARGETS DOWN and liked it so much he optioned it. Mark Roemmich of Noble House Entertainment Pictures is writing the screenplay.

Much of my career was spent undercover so it makes sense Matt Hogan, my alter-ego, would be an undercover FBI agent…only younger, better looking, and with more hair than I have. Although fiction, I want to give the reader a realistic look at the FBI and what undercover work really entails. Hollywood seldom gets it right and too often our perception is only what we see on the big screen. 

As in many undercover assignments, where you begin is not where you finish. As I’ve discussed at Big Peace, I was undercover for three years in Operation Smoking Dragon. It began with Chinese manufactured counterfeit cigarettes but lead to nearly pure crystal meth, ecstasy, the North Korean Super Note, a $60 million surface-to-air missile deal, even former Russian intelligence agents selling me stolen cars. In TARGETS DOWN, Matt finds twists and turns as he seeks to find who killed two people and critically wounded an FBI agent’s wife.

Here’s chapter one, I hope you enjoy it…

TARGETS DOWN: CHAPTER ONE 

The powerful hand gripped the silenced Russian-made weapon and the tattooed arm straightened. As the teenager talked to the killer’s two associates in the darkened parking lot, she had no idea she was about to be erased by the threat behind her. It was all so impersonal, but career criminals operated on a different plain. Morality was never an issue; expediency was. The Ukrainian girl was a liability and thus expendable.

The ever-constant traffic on Ventura Boulevard masked the sounds of the two muted gunshots fired in rapid succession. From just a few feet away either shot to the back of the head was fatal. Before anyone exited the rear door to the Russian Veil, the three men threw the limp body into the bed of the pick-up truck and were gone: another anonymous victim of Los Angeles street justice, a judicial system lacking due process or fairness. Even a quest for freedom was a capital offense.

Matt Hogan stood in front of the mirror admiring his greased biker-hair look. His rugged battle-scarred features were in sharp contrast to the metrosexuals parading up and down the Sunset Strip on any Saturday evening. The undercover agent then sprayed a 70 percent solution of alcohol on the left side of his powerful neck. He carefully placed the Tinsley transfer, blotted the paper, waited a few seconds, and just as carefully removed the transfer. Satisfied with his work, he finished with a dash of baby powder to aid in drying the large prison-like tattoo. A movie studio German “SS” now complemented the stubble. But even clean shaven, Matt could be a menacing figure, a no-holds barred, man’s man.

If it’s true, the hotter the fire the stronger the steel, then Hogan was as strong as they came. A member of the FBI’s small cadre of undercover agents, he successfully played the role of contract killer, drug dealer, and when cleaned up, a sophisticated white collar criminal. A psychologist described him as a “synthesist,” a person who could void himself of his own personality and take on the characteristics, mindset, and mannerisms of whatever the part required. Matt was good, maybe too good. Sometimes even he questioned who he was.

Working undercover meant more than a fake driver’s license and a fictitious name. It was living life as a liar for hours, days, even months at a time. It meant becoming one of them without becoming one of them. Distance offered detachment but when you went undercover it became personal. It was getting close to people whom you will ultimately betray and probing the darkest side of humanity, including your own. Unlike Hollywood, there were no retakes—a botched line, a missed mark, a mistake—could mean instant death. Matt Hogan walked in the flames many times; he experienced the fire.

As he began writing the letters H-A-T-E on the fingers of his right hand, Steve Barnett walked into the Joint Terrorism Task Force locker room.

“Well, if it isn’t the Mary Kay of the FBI,” said Steve. “You enjoy putting on make-up way too much. I hope you aren’t switching sides on me.”

“Don’t ask. Don’t tell,” said Matt concentrating on his artwork.

“Why don’t you just pierce your ear and grow a ponytail, like every other undercover agent I know?”

“Caitlin won’t let me. She’s got a pretty strict dress code around the house. In fact, these biker undercover assignments keep me sleeping on the couch until I take a shower.”

“I guess that’s why she’s been spending so many nights with me at my place.”

“In your dreams big guy, I know for a fact she doesn’t date the follicly challenged with a bad weave.”

Steve pulled out a comb and began to rake his sparse locks styled in a weak comb-over. “That’s how much you know. I’m a Hair Club for Men honor graduate and she loves to run her fingers through these amber waves.”

Matt didn’t even look up, still writing on his fingers. “I’m surprised you’re awake. Isn’t this way past your bedtime?”

Steve looked in the mirror, moving his face even closer, carefully examining his skin, searching for tell-tale signs of aging, “These late nights are causing all kinds of wrinkles.”

“I’m not sure eight hours of sleep or Mary Kay will help,” said Matt without cracking a smile.

“What about Botox?”

“Yeah, that might fill in a few of those deep crevices around the eyes but you still don’t have a shot with any skirt rated higher than a three or four.”

“You’re probably right. I keep hoping my near perfect shooting scores at the Leisure World pistol range will attract some blue-hair with money, but I’m even striking out there.” Steve paused, turned serious, and then said almost in a whisper, “Dwayne said we’re ready to start the briefing, when you are.”

An FBI office is like a locker room with the requisite jock-snapping and sarcastic sniping. The thin-skinned need not apply. A sense of humor is almost a requirement, sometimes the sicker the better. Those on the outside would never understand or appreciate the need to talk or act the way grown men in law enforcement do. Those in the military understand. Those on the front lines fighting evil know the need. It brings a sense of relief from the tensions the real world throws at you everyday, the constant reminders of your mortality. It also brings a sense of camaraderie. You can’t count on judges, lawyers, law makers, or administrators. Like the combat soldier or Marine you can only count on the man next to you on the urban battlefield.

Matt blew on his fingers to accelerate the drying time of the ink from the tattoo make-up pen and followed Steve to the room at the end of the long hallway.

—–

Ed. Note: You can read Mark Tapson’s review of “Targets Down” here.

And it’s only Tuesday.

For those of you who have a real life, here’s some back-up:

A lewd photo of a pair of bulging underpants was sent to a Seattle co-ed from Weiner’s Twitter account. The woman, who Weiner follows on Twitter, had once referred to him as her “boyfriend. The pic appeared
after Weiner had tweeted when a TV appearance would air in Seattle.

Now Weiner claims he was hacked.

And, as a congressman – and son of a lawyer – he knows this crime calls for an FBI investigation.

But oddly – Weiner has hired a lawyer.

For himself.

So when a congressman hires private counsel instead of going to the cops – what does that say?

That it’s “time to move on,” says Weiner.

Now, when someone says “it’s time to move on,” it’s not a statement, but a plea.

If you’re a victim of a crime, you don’t want it “to move on.” You want the world to stop and help you.

“Nothing to see here,” means THERE’S SOMETHING TO SEE HERE.

In an interview Monday, Weiner rattled off the big issues that were far more important: the deficit, health care, the Supreme Court.

The problem is, the more you pile on the issues, the more we can see the thing you wish to hide. You look like a teenage boy hiding porn when your mom comes in to make your bed.

Anyway, since there’s a criminal allegation, why not a criminal investigation? Well, perhaps there’s a simpler explanation.

My theory: Congressman Weiner was out of underwear.

And so, he sent a picture of his favorite briefs to Hanes in Seattle, for a quick shipment.

Clearly he was excited about the whole transaction.

Or maybe – just maybe – he was flirting with this girl, sent a crotch shot, and hit the wrong key on his blackberry.

But that’s too farfetched.

It’s much better to act like you’re hiding something.

Tonight, on the panel:

Jedidiah Bila

John Devore

Ambassador John Bolton!

and Joe Devito, in for Andy Levy.

Child-abusing barbarians, I know.

They were rich, the Flemings. Grandfather made his fortune pioneering investment trusts, and when Valentine came of age he inherited hundreds of thousands of pounds. Thus it was that his second son Ian, born in 1908, grew up in a world of wealth and privilege. Mother was a typical socialite, a lover of status and all the good things that money could buy, but Father was different. He ran for government office as a conservative, and was by all accounts a thorough patriot of crown and country much admired by everyone who met him. When war became imminent, there was never any question whether he would use his money and influence to weasel out of the fight. Valentine joined the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars of his own volition and trained for combat, counting among his friends a fellow officer named Winston Churchill.

Ian and his family watched with dread as their Dad headed off to the front in 1914, and for the next three years they saw him but seldom. Valentine sent his family cheery letters to lift their spirits, but his missives to Churchill laid bare the truth:

Day and night in this area are made hideous by the incessant crash and whistle and roar of every sort of projectile, by sinister columns of smoke and flame, by the cries of the wounded men, by the pitiful calls of animals of all sorts, abandoned, starved, perhaps wounded. Along this terrain of death stretch more or less parallel to each other lines of trenches, some 200, some 1000 yards apart, hardly visible except to the aeroplanes which continually hover over them, menacing and uncanny harbingers of fresh showers of destruction. . . . It’s going to be a long, long war in spite of the fact that every single man in it wants it to be stopped at once.

Fleming was a nine-year-old student away in boarding school, his head filled with the stories of H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne, and Robert Stevenson, when word came in May 1917 that Dad was dead, killed instantly by a shell while scurrying between trenches. Winston Churchill, by then a rising figure in government, wrote the obituary for the Times. The Fleming boys were left fatherless among their socialite mother and her widow-wealth and elitist friends. From then on, whenever they said their nightly prayers, they would finish with, “And please, dear God, help me to grow up to be more like Mokie.”

The loss of his idealized father would have repercussions for the rest of Ian Fleming’s life. Without his war-hero Dad’s sterling example, his pampered circumstances transformed him from a devastated child into a spoiled teenage Byronic rebel, torn between his father’s laudable memory and his mother’s smothering social ambitions. He became a champion athlete but otherwise struggled with rigid school discipline, drifting through several tony academies as a constant source of upset to the rest of the family. Money and good looks allowed him to pose as a (in hindsight, quite Bondian) romantic loner, seducing young women by the score yet finding little real happiness in the effort. The girls called him “glamour boy,” and fancied him as a moody, handsome, far-eyed dreamer, his personality a potent mix of devil-may-care gaiety and inner sadness.

Spurred on by his mother, now a maven of upper-crust English society, he learned the usual social graces: dancing, food, drink, all things that would later give the fictional world of James Bond its verisimilitude. In Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond, biographer Andrew Lycett aptly describes the young rich kids of that era:

Their favorite destinations were the French resorts of Le Touquet and Deauville, where the casinos offered an opportunity to gamble as well as play golf. The young bloods crossed the channel — some in their private planes — for regular weekends of gaming and carousing, interspersed with the odd round of golf to cure hangovers and give the impression they were doing something healthy and good for their constitutions.

Yet in between the fun to be had at boarding schools, finishing schools, mansions, and European vacation homes, Fleming spent his idle hours writing world-weary poetry and short stories. He preferred books and the collecting of first editions to the usual moneyed pursuits of shooting, hunting, and endless soirees. Whereas his compatriots were enjoying the rich life and quickly rising to positions of power in government and business, Lycett describes Fleming as “a charming chancer who, dogged by the memory of an upright father killed on the Western Front in May 1917 and pushed by an ambitious and headstrong mother, had, by the time he was thirty, tried his hand at various careers — army officer, diplomat, journalist, banker and stockbroker — without ever finding his métier.” His was a life defined by a deep ennui.

While working for Reuters in the early Thirties, Fleming went to the U.S.S.R. to report on a Soviet show trial, and the experience gave him an insider’s look into the pure evil of James Bond’s future enemies. Later, as a (terrible, by all accounts) stockbroker, Fleming began rubbing shoulders with bankers and brokers with backgrounds in clandestine intelligence. The attraction to their world of veiled excitement, combined with patriotism and service and purpose, was immense. When WWII broke out, he lost no time in parlaying these contacts into a job as secretary for Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence, and with that his life took a most dramatic turn. The boring world of high-society cads and whores gave way to battles, tactics, weapons, cartography, languages, and espionage. A mediocrity at his previous jobs, he excelled at his wartime intelligence exploits, to the point where his superior said, “Ian should have been the D.N.I. and I his naval adviser.”

Matters of escape, sabotage, and subversion consumed his waking thoughts. He developed contacts far and wide throughout Britain’s underground spy apparatus, even visiting with the group charged with developing the exact kind of gadgets that Bond would later receive from Q. He visited America, met President Roosevelt and FBI Chief Hoover, and played an important role in establishing a fruitful intelligence relationship with “Wild Bill” Donovan’s OSS (the organization under which, you will remember from our first FCML series, film director John Ford also worked.) Three times in England he narrowly survived bombs falling onto the buildings he was in — the last one covered him in debris and plaster. One of his grimmer moments during the war was having to identify the body of one of his favorite former lovers, killed in her bed during a bombing raid.

By the end of the greatest conflict of the twentieth century, Fleming had revealed that under the dilettante exterior and the spoiled rich-kid gloom was a man of, in biographer Andrew Lycett’s memorable phrase, “steely patriotism.” The war energized him in a way nothing else ever had, pointing the way to a life of excitement and adventure and freeing his fertile mind from the chains of stuffy blue-blood mores. By 1944, the man who once flirted with poetry and short stories told a friend in an unguarded moment that he was “going to write the spy story to end all spy stories.” Decades later, after his death, his widow Anne pegged the core of this self-promise: “You must realize that Ian was entirely egocentric. His aim as long as I knew him was to avoid the dull, the humdrum, the everyday demands of life that afflict ordinary people. He stood for working out a way of life that was not boring and he went where that led him. It ended with Bond.”

Visiting Ceylon on an assignment during the war, Fleming discovered that he loved tropical heat and the sea, and vowed never to spend a winter in England again. In the years after the war he built Goldeneye (named after one of his wartime missions) his now-famous idyllic refuge in Jamaica. There, working for three hours a day on an old typewriter, he dashed off Casino Royale, the first Bond novel, at a blistering pace that saw the book finished it little more than a month.

Part of his energy came from finally settling down and wedding his longtime (and, until recently, married) lover that same year –  in his Fleming biography, Lycett jokes that writing Casino Royale was the author’s method for dealing with “the horrific prospect of matrimony.” In between sessions of composing, he would enjoy the lush accoutrements of Goldeneye, his sanctum sanctorum, whiling away the days swimming, fishing, spearing lobsters for dinner, reading in lush gardens, and (according to his wife) spending evenings on the balcony “smoking and wallowing in the melancholy.”

Casino Royale was published in April 1953, and by the end of May the initial print run had sold out. The world had been officially introduced to what Lycett glowingly calls “the sparkling luminescence and darting romanticism of [Fleming’s] original mind.” Spurred on by early success and the need for money (the family fortune was still largely denied him by his aging mother) he wrote a book a year until his death, with sales slowly growing with each new novel’s appearance. Aspiring to be a sort of British Raymond Chandler, he was delighted when that famed American mystery writer (who lived for a time in Britain and who, like Fleming, also began his writing career at an advanced age) sang the praises of Casino Royale and its follow-up, Live and Let Die.

Nevertheless, Fleming was all-too-aware of his limitations as a prose stylist. Later in their correspondence, pressured by Chandler to attempt a higher level of quality in his work, Fleming glumly admitted: “My talents are extended to their absolute limits in writing books like Diamonds Are Forever. I am not short-weighting anybody and I have absolutely nothing more up my sleeve. The way you talk anybody would think I was a lazy Shakespeare or Raymond Chandler. Not so.”

Nevertheless, in his fine book biographer Lycett opines on the hidden depths present in Fleming’s fiction:

Ian skillfully matched this hard-edged delineation of contemporary reality with a more mythical interpretation of events. Bond is taking on the forces of evil, a heroic St. George-figure fighting on the side of virtue (and the free world), saving and bedding the girl, and attempting to slay the dragon. . . Only through such an epic battle, Ian was saying, could the function of good be understood. Bond says in Casino Royale that the villains he fights are “creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist.”

In other words, beneath all the “sex, snobbery, and sadism” titillating readers, Fleming’s old wartime patriotism was once again present, fueling what on the surface seemed shallow and sensationalistic. Throughout his life, the creator of James Bond was an anti-Communist and anti-Nazi, going so far as to once quit a book club when he felt the monthly selections were becoming too left-leaning and fellow-traveling. Izvestia, the long-running Russian newspaper, accused Fleming of being a tool of American interests and dismissed him as “a retired spy turned mediocre writer,” slams which Fleming took as high compliments from the enemy.

A lifetime of seeing (and oftentimes enjoying) the effects of easy living left him with little confidence in human nature, which too often manifested itself in bitterness and rudeness. But in the midst of all the cavalier cruelty his enemies charged him with, simple gestures of humanity would often stand out. One American-based friend remembers fondly that — unlike the other wealthy jet-set acquaintances in their social circle — Fleming alone treated her belief in Catholicism “like hallowed ground,” going so far as to ask, after his health began to fail, if she could light a candle for him in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. When asked about this respect for Christianity, the creator of 007 replied sheepishly that “You can’t grow up in the English school system without it having an effect on you.”

Fleming’s later years, like his earlier ones, were in many ways not happy. Despite some genuine fondness his marriage was always a tenuous proposition, with both parties cheating regularly in between temporary reconciliations and bitter recriminations. A chain smoker and a drinker, his health declined precipitously just as Bond was giving him the income with which to truly enjoy his retiring years. Headaches, back and neck pains, and creeping coronary heart disease all took their grim toll.

Eventually, even the success of his novels became an albatross around his neck, albeit a lucrative one. “What was easy at 40 is very difficult at 50,” he wrote to a friend. “I used to believe — sufficiently — in Bonds & Blonds & Bombs. Now the keys creak as I type & I fear the zest may have gone. Part of the trouble is having a wife and child. They knock the ruthlessness out of one.” To another correspondent he lamented, “I am seriously running out of puff and my inventive streak is very nearly worked out.”

By the time of the fateful Saltzman/Broccoli Dr. No film deal, Fleming had suffered a major heart attack that signaled the beginning of the end. A few years later, just before Goldfinger was released into theaters, he was dead. Doctors long warned him about his inveterate smoking and drinking, but he never listened. If he had, he might have lived longer, true — but then he wouldn’t have been the Ian Fleming who created James Bond.

His wife later insisted that her oft-estranged husband was a “desperate melancholic,” and revealed that many of his last days were spent staring “from his bedroom window at the sea in total misery.” What was he thinking during those bitter times? In the final analysis, had his life meant anything? Had he even begun to live up to the long-cherished image of old “Mokie”?

One friend is on record as remembering her surprise when, while driving him around soon before his death, he asked to stop at a church so that he could pray for the forgiveness of his sins. Some might see that as a typical late-in-life hedging of the bets by a person with far too much to forgive and far too little actual remorse to put down as a down-payment. But I note once again Lycett’s analysis of the mythical “St. George” aspect of Bond’s character, as well as a small but perhaps telling factoid: from the time of his father’s death until the very end of his own days, Ian Fleming kept a copy of his father’s obituary, framed and signed by Winston Churchill, hanging proudly on his wall.

“Please, dear God,” Fleming would pray as a child, “help me to grow up to be more like Mokie.” Whether Fleming the Shiftless Cad believed at the end that his wartime service — and the literature it inspired — accomplished this is anyone’s guess.

Next week in For Conservative Movie Lovers: the man who brought Bond to life on screen, Sean Connery.

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond by Andrew Lycett. The best of the many biographies out there, heavily referenced for this article. Other books are valuable for various reasons, but Lycett synthesizes the rest while adding plenty of original research.

Interview of Raymond Chandler, conducted by Ian Fleming. Fleming became friends with the great Los Angeles mystery writer when the latter made one of his trips to London. This BBC Radio interview is not just a meeting between two genre greats, it also features the only known recording of Chandler’s voice.

Ian Fleming/James Bond Exhibition at the War Imperial Museum. A short tour of a great exhibition dedicated to Fleming and his famous creation:

For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming + James Bond by Ben MacIntyre. The print book that served as an accompaniment to the above-mentioned museum exhibition. A great way to see the displays up-close.

Centennial interview with Bond expert Brad Frank. Recorded for a local Tulsa, Oklahoma TV station on the occasion of Fleming’s centennial. Some good basic Fleming information from a knowledgeable fan’s POV:

“Eleventh Hour” starring Rufus Sewell was a remake of the British series with the same name that starred Patrick Stewart. The protagonist is a brilliant government scientist who investigates the experimental perils of modern science. Sewell plays an American scientist working for the FBI and Stewart worked for the Home Office. I found Stewart’s character, Ian Hood, to be somewhat arrogant and dismissive while Sewell’s Dr. Jacob Hood was far more soft spoken and likable.   

I also found that every episode led me to the Internet to see how accurate the premise was. Did you know that in some cases, heavy water reduces certain tumors? It can also be used to make things go boom-boom but this was just one of the many fascinating bits culled from the series. 

What probably sealed the doom of the show, however, was the moral stance Dr. Hood took in many of the episodes that ran contrary to the liberal bent in Hollywood. In the episode, “Pinocchio,” written by Angel Dean Lopez, Dr. Hood and his FBI cohort tracks down the infamous cloning doctor known as Gepetto (played by Richard Burton’s daughter Kate Burton.) 

I wrote an article for Human Life Review entitled: “Exposing the Lies about Stem Cell Research” and added some quotes from the episode: 

Dr. Hood: Well, the problem is, cloned babies are people no matter what their origin and some organs can’t be removed without killing a person. If you remove the organ, in order to put it into someone else, the donor’s going to die and that, last time I checked, was murder. 

Hood: When I was, am, holding that child, that cloned child, I had a feeling for a second what it must be like to be Gepetto, God-like, and it made me dizzy. I mean, if this is really where we’re headed, if, if we’re really going to be playing God, then I don’t want a part of it.  

I had once been able to post a video clip for that show but found that they had all expired and disappeared from the ‘Net. Fortunately, one has surfaced. 

Whenever I check my DVR series manager, “Eleventh Hour” is still on the list to be recorded. I should delete it but hope is a hard virtue to give up.

With all the unpleasantness that’s been in the news lately (ACORN, Polanski, Jaycee Lee Dugard, etc.), I was reminded of a book titled “The Last Undercover” by my friend, fellow Marine, and Big Hollywood contributor, Bob Hamer.  Bob spent twenty-six years in the FBI, all as a special agent working the streets, many of those years in an undercover capacity. He was the undercover agent in twenty administratively approved operations. Some of those assignments lasted a day or two others more than three years. He played such diverse roles as a drug dealer, contract killer, international arms merchant, degenerate gambler, and white collar criminal. By his own admission his most difficult role was playing a pedophile for three years as he infiltrated the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).

–

First, let me say that “The Last Undercover” is absolutely riveting.  Seeing inside an organization like NAMBLA, one that preys on children, through Bob’s eyes is enough to keep you up at night.  However, as things have transpired over the last few weeks, I couldn’t help but wonder about the people on the periphery of such groups and individuals.  For instance, I remembered the travel agent in Bob’s book that was more than happy to set up the NAMBLA members’ trip to have sex with children.  Sure, he didn’t have sex with kids but, if he could make a few bucks off of others doing it, he was pretty okay with the idea.  How about the lovely folks at ACORN?  Setting up a brothel for underage prostitutes?  Okay, let’s figure out the tax ramifications for such a venture.  Then, of course, we have the folks that are defending the talented Mr. Polanski.

So, what is it with these people?  Why the indifference to the idea of adults having sex with children? In what universe is this behavior acceptable?

I decided to talk to my buddy, Bob, to get his take on it.

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J.R. Head:  Bob, you spent a lot of time and energy taking down the folks at NAMBLA.  As a father, hell, as a human being, I’d like to thank you for that.  Right now, though, I’m trying to look at the bigger picture.  What are your thoughts about these folks on the periphery of such activity, the facilitators and enablers of sex with children?

Bob Hamer:  Wow!  No softball questions from you right out of the chute.

JRH:  Not today.

BH:  Well, I have never met a capitalist pacifist who owned gun store.  I believe fundamentally, the pacifist does not want to encourage what he perceives as a potential for violence, even if it might be profitable to own a gun store.  I’m a gun owner so don’t jump on me for that illustration but those I met while working undercover who helped facilitate sex with children saw nothing wrong with what they believed to be “consensual” sex with a child.  In fact, most believed an “enlightened” society would see the benefits of encouraging sex between consenting individuals of any age.  No one satisfactorily identified to me what those benefits were but “boy-lovers” as NAMBLA members refer to themselves often cite the ancient Greeks as an enlightened society.  The travel agent had no objection to putting together overseas trips even though he claimed not to be sexually attracted to boys.

JRH:  So, it was about the money?

BH: Certainly there was a profit motive for him but he saw nothing wrong with men having sex with boys and told me so.  Had he found the actions abhorrent I would hope he would never facilitate such conduct.

A Chicago psychologist we arrested who had a PhD told me of seeing a five-year-old operating out of a boy-bar in Thailand.  The psychologist said he did not have sex with that particular boy because the child “didn’t do anything for me, but I can’t be…a hypocrite and say, you know, ‘don’t do that…’” The psychologist told me his age of preference was “ten to twelve” and saw nothing wrong with his conduct. In fact, he bragged about his conquests.

JRH:  So, in his mind, having sex with kids is okay but God forbid he gets called a hypocrite.  Those are some messed up priorities, man.  Give me some info on NAMBLA.  What’s their story?

BH:  NAMBLA was formed in 1978.  Ostensibly its purpose was to abolish age-of-consent laws.  As my three-year infiltration demonstrated, the organization made no effort whatsoever to change the law.  Its sole purpose was to allow like-minded men, sexually attracted to boys, to legally congregate under the protection of the 1^st Amendment.  Even their definition of “consensual” differed from mine and I hope all of our readers.  They essentially defined “consensual” as “not bringing physical harm.”  I sat through a discussion where men believed it permissible to have oral sex with an eighteen-month-old boy as long as the boy wasn’t physically harmed.

JRH:  You’re kidding me.  How the hell do they justify that?

BH:  They justified the action because a child, while exploring his own body, might like the gentle touch of fondling himself.  Since the men believed they were in essence bringing pleasure to the child, their actions were permissible, even proper.  When that is your worldview, when you support men who believe those actions to be proper, it is easy to justify a lot of actions the rest of society deems illegal, even evil.

Most NAMBLA members with whom I interacted believe the boy-lover philosophy will be mainstreamed within their lifetimes.  I would have never thought that even remotely possible until recently.

JRH:  That’s the vibe I’ve been getting lately, too.  While reading “The Last Undercover,” I was filled with feelings of revulsion and anger about what these predators do.  I was especially disturbed to hear how they “profile” their potential prey and engage in the “grooming” of the target and the target’s family.  On the other hand, an understanding that the vast majority of people in the country would feel the same way about it comforted me.  However, the Polanski situation has kind of made me reevaluate my worldview.  Is the moral outrage over having sex with children eroding before our very eyes?

BH:  After investigating organized crime, drugs, terrorism, and child exploitation for two and a half decades, little shocks me but I am appalled at the Roman Polanski apologists.  Since when does being a “brilliant, fantastic genius” excuse anyone from heinous criminal conduct?  He admitted guilt.  He drugged, raped, and sodomized a thirteen-year-old girl.  Are we to excuse him only because his talent brought him riches and therefore he was wealthy enough to flee punishment?  Does Hollywood creativity allow one an alternative moral universe?

Whoopi Goldberg said on The View it wasn’t “rape-rape.”  No, it was non-consensual anal intercourse of a child.  Are we so perverted we will excuse such conduct because the perpetrator is an “artist?”  How can any parent or a person with a conscience condone such behavior?  Imagine the outrage of these same apologists had this been a TV evangelist or a priest.

I admire the victim who has forgiven Polanski but criminal charges are brought by the state.  A criminal indictment does not read “victim vs. defendant.”  It is the state or the federal government versus the accused.  Society is harmed by criminal conduct.  Apparently Polanski’s harm was greater than I first thought and not just to the child victim. It has infected a certain segment of society which condones the behavior and believes he should go unpunished.  Read the charges!  Read his admissions!  He deserves to be punished.

Polanski’s status as a Holocaust survivor has been cited as a reason excusing his criminal actions. As horrible as that experience must have been I can’t help but remember another survivor, Tibor Rubin. He wanted to pay back America for liberating him from the Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945. Rubin joined the Army, fought in Korea, and was awarded the Medal of Honor.

JRH:  I’ve met Mr. Rubin.  He struck me as an extremely humble and unassuming man.  He has an incredible story and I encourage my readers to look him up on the web.  That being said, Polanski is just one part of this.  The folks at ACORN who turned a blind eye to what they believed to be a brothel for child prostitutes also bothered me.  Now, I’m hearing about this Jennings fellow.  Do you have any insight into that?

BH:  Kevin Jennings is President Obama’s Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education.  His history and beliefs are well documented in the numerous books he has authored and edited.  There is some dispute as to the legality of his conduct while working as a teacher but by Jennings’ own admission the only counseling he gave a male high school student, who admitted having sex with a man he met in a public restroom, was to use a condom.  Jennings also has high praise for Harry Hay.  If NAMBLA had a Hall of Fame, Hay would be a member.  Hay fought for NAMBLA’s inclusion in the International Lesbian and Gay Association and once carried a sign proclaiming “NAMBLA Walks With Me.”  Although Hay died before I was invited to attend any of NAMBLA’s secret, underground meetings, Hay was a featured speaker at several NAMBLA conferences and at forums on man/boy love.  When members of the Administration admit to admiring a NAMBLA icon it gives me cause for concern and is at the very least a reason for further inquiry.

JRH:  I agree.  Do you feel like this is part of an inevitable coarsening of society in regards to the sexualization of children?

BH: What struck me about NAMBLA was how many men I encountered were high functioning members of our society…doctors, lawyers, ministers, teachers.  Yet these men looked upon boys as sexual objects and had no desire to change their behavior.  In the case of Polanski, “artists” are apologists for child rape.  As to ACORN, let me say I have the highest regard for the work of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles.  The ACORN tapes reinforce the idea that a segment of this society is unable to discern evil.  How can you label oral sex on infants or rape of a thirteen-year-old girl or promoting childhood prostitution as anything but evil?  We as a society must remain vigilant and maintain our moral compass.  I fear too many have lost theirs or never had one.

JRH:  I fear you may be right.  Thank you, Bob, for your service, your courage and for taking some time to talk with me, today.

Stir all those factors together with his insider knowledge that ADM was colluding with overseas food companies in one of the planet’s biggest price-fixing schemes ever, and the fact that Whitacre became both one of the FBI’s best informants ever may not have seemed all that surprising. But the fact that he also hid a highly unstable tendency to lie or leak information as well also made him one of the Feds’ most nerve-wracking and unreliable head cases ever – and it’s this dichotomy that forms the center of director Steven Soderbergh’s head-spinning and comically offbeat take on the ADM scandal, “The Informant!” 

Showcasing Matt Damon in a highly amusing turn as Whitacre, the film is an entertaining oddity because it tells the story of Whitacre and international conspiracy as a comedy, while its source book – investigative reporter Kurt Eichenwald’s 2000 book “The Informant” – is dead-serious in tone. In fact, Damon signed on for the role thinking that he was going to be delivering a dramatic performance, only to find later that Soderbergh (“Traffic,” “Erin Brockovich,” “Oceans 11, 12 and 13”) decided to start over from scratch and play off the ironies inherent in Whitacre’s double life. 

The film’s supporting cast is also filled with rich surprises, headed by Joel McHale and Scott Bakula as the two main FBI agents working the case. The real revelations, though, are a string of new-school and traditionalist standup comics – ranging from Tom Papa to Patton Oswalt to Jimmy Brogan – playing a mix of the film’s funniest and most serious roles. It’s rare to see some of these comics act at all outside of their comedy-club sets, so the casting is odd and yet spot-on as everyone delivers with spot-on peformances. 

While the film’s script by Scott Z. Burns (“The Bourne Ultimatum”) is only truly hilarious with the occasional throwaway line, the key to its highly amusing nature is the out-of-left-field, kitschy ’60s-lounge style score by old-school composer Marvin Hamlisch (“A Chorus Line”). The score’s jaunty undertones, mixed with occasional bursts of James Bond-style dramatics, provides the perfect undertone for Whitacre’s delusional mindset as he inflates his actually boring wiretapped meetings to the level of CIA-style excitement. In one of the film’s funniest lines, he shows a friend his elaborate and supposed-to-be-secret wiretap apparatus and says he’s known as “Agent 0014 – because I’m twice as smart as James Bond.” 

In reality, however, Whitacre is seen as a doofus by almost all around him. Sometimes he’s aware of it, as is the case with the ADM executives whose lack of respect for his hard work pushes him to turn against them in the first place. Yet far too often, he’s too clueless for his and the government’s own good, creating an often-stunning series of betrayals and problems for everyone involved. The end result historically is that Whitacre was regarded as a national hero by the FBI agents on the case, yet was dirty enough himself in his side deals and lies that he himself wound up with a nine-year prison sentence for fraud – a fact the film glosses over. 

With two of Hollywood’s most outspoken liberals at the wheel – Soderbergh’s most recent prior film was “Che,” an epic four-hour biopic of Communist rebel Che Guevara, while Damon’s dream project is to produce a TV miniseries based on radical historian Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” – one might expect “The Informant!” to be an anti-capitalist screed. Yet the film refreshingly refrains from taking an overtly political stand, instead choosing to make what could have been a dry polemic highly entertaining.

Alas however, it was not meant to be. A major stumbling block was a personality test the Agency gave all Jack Bauer wannabes. Scoring applicants on a 0-10 scale…a zero meaning you could live on a deserted island for years, a ten meaning you had to be constantly surrounded by people…I scored a ZERO. Yep, a zero. The psychologist said in all the years of administering the test he had never seen “a zero personality.” Now, I admit I somewhat skewed my answers. I figured they were looking for paid assassins they could drop behind enemy lines and remain secreted for weeks. Wrong! The agency was looking for “threes” and “fours.” On occasion my wife still reminds me I have been rated a zero personality by the federal government. I actually think I’m up to a .5, maybe even a one, but needless to say I’m not really comfortable in public settings making small talk… unless I’m undercover (but then I’m a completely different persona and my criminal alter ego takes over).

It’s not easy going through life with a zero personality, but I’ve recently learned of some ice-breaker questions certain to make me a hit at the next party:

What is your name, address, and date of birth?

What is your race?

Are you Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?

Where were you born?

What is your ancestry or ethnic origin?

How many cars do you have at your house?

Do you have a flush toilet?

Do you have a sink with a faucet?

How much is your rent/mortgage?

Do you have a second mortgage? How much is it?

Are you covered by a health insurance plan? Which type?

Do you have serious difficulty hearing? Seeing? Concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?

Do you have difficulty dressing or bathing?

How many times have you been married?

When did you last get married?

Where did you work last? What’s the address?

What time do you leave home to go to work?

What is your income?

What is your retirement/pension?

Do you have a VA disability rating?

What’s the most important thing you do at work?

Do you think these questions are too personal or even stupid? Apparently the federal government doesn’t… and if you don’t answer them you can be fined $100-$5,000. All of these questions and more are on the American Community Survey. To my knowledge I’ve never been part of a census survey. I thought they just knocked on your door and asked how many people live at your house. Maybe the surveys have always been this detailed but as we slide further and further into the federal government running every aspect of our lives, this intrusion concerns me. I can see no reason why the feds need to know how many times I’ve been married, my health care provider, or whether I can or can’t concentrate. I will admit to some hearing loss that allows me to tune out my wife and my wife often questions the way I dress but is that the fed’s business? According to the FAQ on the website, the government needs to know all these answers for their government programs. Maybe the reason I’m balking at answering is because we seem to have too many programs as it is…. but they don’t ask my opinion on that issue in the survey.

My whole childhood was like that. A lot of crazy stuff, a lot of running from police. Was a local sport, like train-hopping. But that’s all just the gritty side of Cambridge. And even though I’m a rank Righty today, I still love Harvard University all the way, the Square especially. It’s the Crossroads of the World. I was a total Harvard Square rat growing up. Harvard is the Bright Light of Olde Cantabrigia. Harvard was also very active in the community back then, and most likely still is today. Harvard hosted field trips to the campus from schools all over Cambridge. The Agassiz Museum was my favorite. Lots of dead bugs and dinosaur bones. That was Heaven to me. Still is.

So there it is. Cambridge Dark and Light. Of course, as a Harvard Square rat I ran into my fair share of elitist Harvard eggheads, both students and faculty, whose utter contempt for a lowlife Cambridge projects kid like myself could be felt with Hiroshima-like intensity. But given my many experiences on campus, and as a waif wayfarer on Harvard’s Challenge program, I believe most people at Harvard, both faculty and students, could not be more honorable or pure of heart and intent. I’m not going to smash that whole crate because of a few bad eggheads. Harvard has its troublemakers, too. Lots! Just ask former Harvard president Larry Summers. He was run out on a rail by militant feminists.

Fact is, I love Cambridge. Warts and all. Part of my heart and soul, and one of the most egalitarian cities on earth. So when news broke about Dr. Gates’ outrageous charges of racism, I immediately and most publicly called him a bold-faced liar. But not just in defense of my hometown or CPD. I called it based on personal experience. And I called it right on the money, did I not? See, some years back my brother and I, both drunk, were in a confrontation of my idiot drunken brother’s making with five Cambridge cops when I yelled “Your Mama!” at a black cop. We were arrested for disorderly conduct, cuffed, thrown into the paddy wagon and hauled off to the same jail as Dr. Skippy.

That incident took place not five blocks from Dr. Gates’ house. In short, I had experienced the exact same arrest for the exact same charge in the exact same neighborhood by the exact same PD. Who not actually there could have seen how the whole thing went down better? From yelling “Your Mama!” to cuffing to paddy wagon ride to booking in the same jail? Yet Dr. Gates’ hoax cry of racism at whom we now know is one of the state’s top racial profiling experts, President Obama’s Man Show suds-rinsing of Dr. Gates’ crime by sitting down white victim and black victimizer on an equal moral plane in sickening equivocating fashion, is not even the real monster here.

The real monster would have been if Al Sharpton brought his Traveling Racial Arsonist Show to town, which he was ready to do. Big Al lives for incidents like this to spark or fuel smoldering racially-tinged incidents into Towering Inferno proportions. Think about this. Had Officer Crowley been just some regular Officer Joe on the Beat, and not been able to provide the damning refutations of Dr. Gates’ hoax cry of racism, Cambridge, the city of my birth that I love warts and all, might at this very moment be going up in flames, both racial and literal, for Big Al’s race-mongering fun and profit. Just like Crown Heights and Freddy’s Fashion Mart. Nine dead in those two alone. And it would have all gone down over yet another foul race-baiting hoax, just like Tawana Brawley and Duke.

In my city? In my birthplace? He’ll have to kill me first! Over my dead body! Not a rare outcome when Big Al brings his racial gas cans and lighters to town. How Big Al a bullet did Cambridge just dodge? I’ll bet Big Al is breathing a sigh of relief as he watches Dr. Skippy burn in a fire of his own making, yet is even now scouring the American landscape for the Next Big Whitey Thing to torch to the skies. That’s who he is. A black David Duke, as Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe so aptly put it. What happens to the next racially-targeted innocent white police officer, his city and his peaceful neighborhoods, when said officer is NOT a racial profiling expert who teaches the subject?

Got an idea. And THAT is the monstrous 800-pound gorilla that is occupying and trashing the Obama Racial Harmony Room, to wit the all-too-profitable and most politically powerful black Lefty racial grievance-mongering Hate Whitey cottage industry in America. It’s got to go. The law, and the law alone, from the cop on the beat to the US Supreme Court, should deal with all crimes and legal matters of race, not the racists themselves. Kind of defeats the whole purpose, doesn’t it? They’re like the black radical version of the Klan, showing up with ropes and torches at even a whiff of white-on-black injustice, real or imagined, wherever it happens in America. Duke Lacrosse ring any bells?

In fact, black Lefty racial grievance-mongering is a HUGE business in America today. With a black President in a 72% white-majority nation, how sad is that? In this Obama Age of Racial Harmony, in particular? Tell me truly. What legal resources and avenues of redress do any and all minority Americans NOT have? The federal and state EEOCs, the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and a million other NGOs and government agencies exist, and even live, to redress real racial grievances to the fullest measure and extent of the law. As they should. For ALL races of Americans!

Since news on Dr. Gates first broke, I have been neck-deep in it. It has been my mission in life since to bring him down, and as many of his fellow career race-baiters and grievance-mongers who jumped all over this race-hoax abomination from the word go. Anderson Cooper’s AC360 show called me about my first damning oped on Dr. Gates. The Cambridge Chronicle is reprinting it Thursday. My reports are all on file at my article folder at Digital Journal, including one manic thirty-hour stretch when news was breaking insanely fast and furious.

Lots more deep background on Cambridge, and some very unsavory stuff on Dr. Gates et al. But this has all been a very unsavory episode, hasn’t it?

That monster is growing, people. Worst of all, with President Obama’s direct aiding an abetting by giving Get-Out-Of-Terrorizing-White-Voters-Free cards to the three Black Panther thugs whom career DOJ lawyers wanted to skin alive, and had default convictions in hand to do just that. Why did Obama do it? Aren’t white voters just as protected by the law as blacks in the Jim Crow South? Or are we witnessing a regression of the law in favor of black radicals? When you throw in Obama’s equivocation of Dr. Gates’ crime of yelling racial “Fire!” in a crowded country, it doesn’t look good.

A lot more background in my DJ reports, but here’s two related news items you may find interesting.

AL SHARPTON’S NIECE WANTS REPERCUSSIONS FOR SNITCH WHO CALLED 911

That would be Ms. Lucia Whalen, the woman who placed the 911 call, whom Brittany Sharpton wants revenge served cold on. Ms. Whalen has been insanely persecuted ever since that call, even though she never mentioned race until asked by CPD. Great. Rile up some whack job black racists to terrorize an elderly woman for doing a public service, even for Dr. Gates has it been a real break-in like the one he recently suffered. Like Uncle, Like Niece.

Here are some delightful insights from Facebook on NBBP poll watcher thug-in-chief Jerry Jackson, who will be right back terrorizing, er, I mean watching the polls in Philly:

DISTURBING CONTENT ON NBBP JERRY JACKSON’S FACE BOOK PAGE

‘Killin’ Crakkkas’ is very high on Mr. Jackson’s To-Do List. He also has a very welcoming sign at his home in Philadelphia: “COLORED ONLY: NO WHITES ALLOWED”

I have to tell you, people. I may not be black. But with all that’s going on lately, I’m starting to get an idea of how it felt to be a black man in the Jim Crow South. Tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way. Racial injustice knows no color, people. And Hate is as Equal Opportunity as it gets. Stop The H8!

The investigation included charges of conspiring to sell surface-to-air missiles, the sale of counterfeit currency, clothing, and cigarettes. It also included counterfeit postage stamps…yep, the Chinese were counterfeiting our 37 cent postage stamp (I’m sure now they are doing the Forever Stamp but all my connections are in federal prison so I guess I’ll have to pay for them like everyone else). I obtained hundreds of thousands of the counterfeit flag stamps packaged 100 to a roll. One postal inspector told me it was one of their largest seizures ever. I say all that because last week I had an issue with the post office and my “celebrity” status apparently carried no weight. 

I will be the first to admit I think the post office does a darn good job. I’m amazed most of the mail I send gets to its intended destination, but last week the USPS failed me. 

My wife and I were back in the Midwest on a family emergency. On Wednesday while bouncing between three states I realized I left my car keys in one state, was driving in a borrowed car to a second state, and the next day would be in a third state. I was returning to Southern California on Friday and needed the keys to drive home from the airport. Our daughter went to the post office and explained the situation. The keys had to be overnighted. They had to arrive on Thursday since the flight was leaving Friday. The post office employee was very understanding, provided her a price, took delivery of the package containing the keys to my pick-up, affixed the postage, and promised they would arrive by noon the next day. All was right with the world. 

When my wife and I arrived to the third state at five o’clock on Thursday no package awaited me. I called my daughter who provided a tracking number. We accessed the automated system and learned the post office attempted to deliver the package at 10:30 a.m. but no one was home to accept delivery. My father-in-law balked and said he had been home the entire day. Since he is a retired minister I accepted his word. We contacted the local post office and learned the package was still in state number one. The original postal employee quoted the wrong price to my daughter and affixed the incorrect amount of postage, therefore they would not deliver the package. The deliveryman went to my daughter’s house at 10:30 to get the additional postage but she wasn’t home so the package sat at the main post office in state number one, far from where I needed it to be. 

I refrained from using language I learned in the Marine Corps but questioned why they delivered first class letters with postage due but would not deliver overnight mail when it “absolutely had to be there.” The explanation was…it’s against policy. So the keys remained in state number one, that post office was closed, and my daughter could not pick up the keys until the next day, Thursday. Of course the post office couldn’t mail the package Thursday night because there was still postage due even though I agreed to pay the postage at this end. The next day when my daughter went to the main post office to retrieve the keys she sought a well-deserved refund BUT no. She needed to return to the post office where she mailed the package which was never sent. Now granted “rules is rules” but any Costco or Target will take back anything they sell at any store, seems like the main post office could at least give a refund. 

During this family emergency I also listened to people complain about the long lines at the unemployment office and the fact the FBI didn’t respond to their complaints in a timely fashion. I don’t doubt their heartfelt concerns but I did remind them the same people running the post office, working at the unemployment office, and answering phones at the FBI would be the same people deciding their medical treatment if the Democrats get their way. 

I’m sure my story fell on deaf ears but I’m checking with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his edition of Turbo Tax and maybe now I can deduct the entire cost of the trip as a business expense since Big Hollywood posted my story,