The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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The Powerball payoff, as of yesterday, was 1.6 billion dollars, the biggest payout in gambling history if someone has the winning ticket. If not, the wheel of fortune will just go higher and higher and mobs will form at every 7-11, convenience store, mom and pop grocery from here to Tinbuktu. You think Black Friday is menacing, just wait til the fevered ticket buyers think they have a chance to be Bill Gates. Bodies should be crushed, tickets stolen, computers jammed, all for a chance in a bazillion they might be the One, the newest Billionaire, the nouveau riche. But like the Washington Lottery ads love to tout: you cannot win if you do not play.

I always thought the state gaming commissioners had it backwards – you cannot lose if you do not play. Or as the David Bromberg song sez: A man should never gamble more than he can stand to lose. Being poor most of my life, I couldn’t stand to lose much of anything. Being a graduate of 6th grade math, I could see the odds weren’t really in my favor. Actually not really in anybody’s favor … other than the Jackpot winner. Life itself always seemed gamble enough.

I know friends who buy $10 of Lotto tickets a week. Entertainment, they tell me when I ask what their thinking is. Ten dollars a week, 52 weeks in a year, year after year. I guess the entertainment value is the fantasy of what you’d do if you actually won. I’d hate that myself — it would be a constant reminder of what I’ll never be able to do. Seems to me they’d be happier being, oh, a little more realistic, but that’s just me. They say money won’t buy you happiness. I just don’t want lack of it to make me unhappy.

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Those fun loving whacky Saudis, they’re always up to something, aren’t they? Rich as Midas, they got their finger on the oil trigger and now, with the new Crown Prince in charge, they want to clean up their image, maybe let the women drive cars finally, show the world they’re not the ruthless, paranoid regime that most of us see as incredibly backward-thinking power mongers who quash all reforms. Naw, they’re good guys. And look, a woman can get a driver’s license!! Their husbands probably won’t let them, but … you know, they could.

This week we’re treated to what has become an international incident with the disappearance of this Kashoggi reporter in a Turkish embassy. Guy just wanted to get a wedding license, but he was nervous something might happen to him if he went inside. He was right. The Turks, like probably every other country in the world, had their embassy bugged and when Kashoggi didn’t come back out and his fiancé never got a call back saying he did, well, they suspected foul play. So what, you say, people die all the time in this mean old world, just another casualty in the Middle East, big deal. Trump pretty much took that attitude. At least until the incident blew up into a major event.

The Turks claim Kashoggi was tortured and butchered by no less than 15 Saudi operatives, one of them an autopsy specialist carrying a bone saw. They say they have the audio and possibly even a video and Sec. of State Pompeo was dispatched immediately to Turkey to see what was what. The Saudis, sensing a backlash, at first said the man was missing, not dead, then he might be dead, but if he was, it wasn’t them, then he was maybe questioned but the questioning went awry and he was accidentally killed, now today they say he was in a fistfight and things got out of hand. Trump, ever accommodating, stated that he was encouraged and believed we are finally getting somewhere.

Kashoggi, he’s not getting anywhere. The Saudis chopped him up, stuffed him in suitcases and left the building. Odd, don’t we think, his body hasn’t turned up if it was a fistfight that got out of hand. Or a rogue killer. Or whatever phony baloney excuse they come up with next.

Lest we be accused of assuming guilt without proof, let’s thank Donald for assuming his innocence. He did with Kavanaugh. And okay, he shouted out to Sen. Gianforte, the man who body slammed a reporter, that he was My Kind of Guy. So it looks like he doesn’t really mind backing the guilty party. Muhammed bin Salman or Sawman or whatever, maybe he’s Trump’s kind of guy too. Rich, ruthless and powerful, what’s not to like?

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My old man asked me what I thought of that guy who came to the White House the other day. ‘You mean Kanye West?’ I asked, full knowing he had no idea who Kanye West was other than some black dude wearing a MAGA ballcap who got the full royal treatment from the President. My dad is 95, a Fox News junkie, but not really a rap aficionado. He couldn’t make heads or tails of this Kanye guy dropping F-bombs in the White House and hugging the Commander-in-Chief like he was his best friend.

‘Weird’, he muttered. I mean, after all, this was after Hurricane Michael, the 3rd most powerful hurricane to hit an American coast in a hundred years, had leveled entire towns and cut off tens of thousands of citizens from civilization without water or power or food or communication, another Great Job, Brownie moment for the Trump. Priorities, I guess.

It’s been, as my old man sez, a weird week. Kavanaugh confirmed and seated, Melania claims she doesn’t buy rumors of affairs with those women, the Washington Post reporter Khashoggi was killed and diced into suitcase sized chunks by the Saudis in Turkey, the U.N. issued a dire warning for the world concerning the threat of global warming, the stock market went into a two day free fall and Trump attacked the Fed chairman who he appointed. Weird week, weird year, weird America. I’m used to it, you’re used to it, we’re all used to it. We’re probably, without being aware of it, addicted to it. What if — and I know you can’t imagine it now — we had a news cycle, a full 24 hours, an eternity in this future shocked world, without a headline (genital)-grabbing pronouncement from the White House?

What if all we had was sports and weather reports? Would we tune our radio to music? Would we go back to soap operas instead of Fox and CNN? Would we start drinking early in the morning? Could we live with the boredom????

I heard a rumor that the Kanye West bromance was nothing but a prelude to the Trump News Network, the TV network Donald would launch after he declines to run for a second term, figuring that would be more fun than governance. Kanye, of course, would get a starring role as entertainment mogul. I mentioned this to my old man and he laughed out loud. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ he said. I said I agreed. I give it 50-50.

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Suppose astronomers discovered a meteor out by Pluto with an elliptical orbit that put it on a direct path with Earth. Big flying chunk of space rock aimed right at us with enough mass to obliterate the planet when it hits us and every year the scientists calculated its trajectory and every year were more certain the asteroid was going to hit Earth. What would you want the governments of the planet to do?

One group of scientists propose building a spaceship to intercept the Killer Rock armed with nuclear warheads. Actually they propose building a fleet of these Defense Missiles to insure the meteor is destroyed in case one or more don’t do the job, miss completely or fail to blow it up completely. The price tag is enormous. Sure, building that fleet would create jobs but nowhere near enough to pay for the project. Another group wants to develop lasers to tackle the mission and yet another proposes a strategy to divert the monster meteor away from the Earth.

Many years pass. The government here in the United States studies the problem for a time, but the will to act is not there. Taxes would need to be raised and a publicity campaign mounted to alert our citizenry to the dire consequences of not taking action. If nothing is done, the window of opportunity will be lost. Every year the planet’s scientific community, citing more and more accurate data, begins to assemble a Doomsday Scenario. In twenty years, then fifteen years, then ten, the possibility of deflecting or destroying the threat will be gone. Earth will be hit, possibly destroyed completely, definitely most of the planet will be set back into a dark age. Millions of lives will be lost, starvation will be commonplace, civilization will retreat.

The government of the United States, rather than begin preparations, calls the killer meteor a hoax. Bogus science, the Congress claims. Faux news, the President repeats endlessly. The preparations to build a world defense system, begun before the current Administration, are abandoned. Without our assistance, the plans probably won’t be completed in time. The United Nations issues a report that in ten years we will have reached the point of No Return. Nothing we can do after that will stop the coming impact.

What would you want our government to do? Save increased taxes by doing absolutely nothing? Question the science with a few politically motivated ‘experts’ who claim the data is wrong? Pray for Armageddon so you can ascend to Heaven?

Global Warming won’t wipe out the planet. It will disrupt civilization and it will kill millions of us. Anyone who understands how a greenhouse works in the garden can imagine how an atmosphere can trap heat and keep raising temperatures. There are processes at work that can accelerate the heating and yes, there are seasonal variations that an ‘expert’ can point to as proof that Climate Change is a hoax. If they’re right, we saved a fortune in taxes for ‘solutions’ that weren’t needed. And we saved those coal jobs too, don’t forget. If they’re wrong, we just condemned the planet to a man-made catastrophe.

Right now it looks like America is ready to roll the dice. Kind of a colossal gamble to save a few bucks. I wonder if we’re really that greedy or we’re being sold a bill of goods by those who are.

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