rlfj: Blog

There was another suggestion for Carl – Do a Taft and serve on the Supreme Court. There is no requirement that you have to be a lawyer to be a judge. In fact, many, if not most, small town judges and justices of the peace are not lawyers. It won’t be happening, but it’s a fascinating idea! Could you imagine the carnage and uproar that would cause?

Finally, I want to thank and applaud a story by xofdallas, “The Best Meal I Ever Had.” This meshes quite nicely with the events of the Kurdistan War, and I included it at the end.

And so we come to the end of the journey. I had no idea this was going to be such a monumental task. Thank you all for the encouragement to see it through. Thank you also for the assistance, because it would have been nowhere near as good without your help.

One reader suggested he run for President again. Sorry, but the 22nd Amendment says he can’t get another bite of the apple, and there weren’t any loopholes for leaving office and trying again. Can Carl ever be President again? Interesting question. Here’s the relevant wording (the rest is simply some legalese that says that it doesn’t apply to Truman & it has to be ratified):

“Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

It is very short and to the point. Carl served more than two years of GWB’s term, so he could only run for President one time. There are no exceptions for leaving office and then running again. He can’t be elected President again, end of story.

It gets better. The last sentence in the 12th Amendment says, “But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” If the 22nd Amendment makes Carl ineligible to run again, then the 12th Amendment means he can’t sneak in another way

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?