Poetics and Ruminations

A Cyberspace Interview with Bill Clinton

Special to the Dresden Mills Gazette. Sunday, January 27, 2008. This interview was held in cyberspace on this date, the day after Senator Barack Obama won a decisive victory over Senator Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina Democratic primary, beating her by more than two to one. The interviewer for the Gazette was Wesli Court, political editor for our news sheet.

Gazette. Mr. President, it would appear that Senator Obama’s campaign is far from dead, as you have sometimes intimated it ought to be. He has, in fact, taken a major step toward becoming the first Black President in U. S. history. How do you respond to such an event?

Clinton. I don’t respond. It’s a joke. You people of the media just love to jump to conclusions that don’t exist. There’s no way Senator Obama can ever be the first Black President.

Gazette. That’s an astonishing remark. How can you make it?

Clinton. Because I was the “first Black President.” Ask anybody. Ask anyone who’s black, in fact. They’ll all say that I was the first Black President.

Gazette. I know that’s a claim that has been made, but you’re not ethnically or racially Black, so the claim is moot.

Clinton. No, it is not.

Gazette. Then why did practically all of the registered Black Democrats in South Carolina vote for Senator Obama rather than your wife? The state is 60% black, and 55% of its Democratic voters, including many whites, voted for him. That includes both black and white women.

Clinton. We’re thinking of asking for a recount. There’s something wrong with those figures.

Gazette. That would very likely be a futile gesture. Do you think that your being your wife’s attack dog might have had something to do with her defeat? She has now lost two big preliminary primary fights to Senator Obama, Iowa and South Carolina. The New York Times said today that, “Her advisers’ steady attacks On Mr. Obama appeared to prove fruitless, if not counterproductive, and the attack-dog role of former President Bill Clinton seemed to have backfired.”

Clinton. We may have to do some tweaking of our tactics in upcoming primary states. We will not be denied the White House a third time.

Gazette. “We?” That sounds as though you believe you’re going to share Hillary’s Presidency if she makes it.

Clinton. Well, she shared mine, didn’t she? And she parleyed that into a senatorship from New York State. She has over a decade of experience in American politics at the highest level, unlike Obama who has only a couple of years’ experience from a second-level state, Illinois.

Gazette. But your wife is a carpetbag senator, unlike Obama who has had a lot of experience in the local politics of his home state, most of it in elective positions. Hillary had never been elected to anything before she invaded New York and used her name recognition to win her office. You sound as though you look forward to sharing the power of your wife if she wins the Democratic nomination and the White House.

Clinton. I have fond mammaries of the White House, especially of the Oval Office.

Gazette. Did you say, "mammaries"?

Clinton. No, I said, "memories."

Gazette. My mistake. Sorry. Some people have implied that you look at moving back into the White House as a restoration of your Presidency; in fact, as your third term in office.

Clinton. Okay, you’ve got me. You know, people say I’m the most astute politician of my generation, and, yes, I plan to be the first President to hold a third term in office in fact, if not in name, since F. D. R. Boy, that’ll be some coup, won’t it?

Gazette. If you keep thinking and acting that way, Mr. Clinton, Democrats will catch on to what you’re really up to. In fact, the Times today also said, “Indeed, surveys of voters leaving the polls” in South Carolina yesterday, “showed that many Democrats who believed Mr. Clinton’s role was important ended up voting for Mr. Obama.” Your tactics may have the effect of electing the person who will really be the first Black President in American history.

Fantaseers, A Review by Steven Scarpa

A review by Steven Scarpa, Meriden CT Record-Journal, of Fantaseers: A Book of Memories by Lewis Turco, Scottsdale AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2005, ISBN 1-932842-15-2. $14.95, quality paperback.

Lewis Turco, proprietor of the Mathom Bookshop in Dresden, Maine, for twenty-six years and founder of both the Program in Writing Arts at the State University of New York College at Oswego and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, grew up in Meriden, Connecticut. He attended the University of Connecticut at Storrs where he took his B. A. in 1959 and began his teaching career as a graduate assistant and part-time instructor of English. Subsequently, he took his M. A. from the Writers’ Workshop of the University of Iowa. He has been a summer resident of Dresden for more than half a century, and in 1996 he retired there. He is the author of forty-some-odd books. His most recent volume, Fantaseers, published this past August, is about a fledgling writer’s growing up in the 1940s and 1950s.

“Pick a day, just any summer day between 1945 and 1947. The sun is boiling down through the big elm on the corner of Springdale and Windsor Avenues in Meriden, Connecticut, and Lewis is sitting on the front steps of the parsonage looking across Windsor at the run-down corner grocery store, Galuzzo’s Market. If he shifts his gaze and looks right, to the northern corner, he will see another grocery – not quite so run-down, not quite so large – Cotrona’s”

This paragraph begins noted poet Lewis Turco’s musings on growing up in Meriden, entitled Fantaseers: A Book of Memories. The book, recently released by Star Cloud Press, is a collection of essays about his life as a preacher’s son in Meriden, his friends, his childhood adventures, his first loves and his development as a writer.

As a child Lewis lived all around Meriden. His father, a Sicilian immigrant who became the minister of the First Italian Baptist Church, constantly moved, chasing ever-elusive cheap rents. Throughout his grade school years, Turco moved to a different place every year, Curtis Street, Lewis Avenue, Prospect Street, North Third Street. When his parents finally settled into a parsonage at the corner of Windsor and Springdale Avenues, he was at prep school.

“When I came back to Meriden to go to Meriden High School, I thought I would have to adjust again and that I wouldn’t know anyone. When I walked in and looked around, it turned out that I knew everybody. I’d played with them all as a kid,” said Turco, now seventy-one years of age.

Turco founded the Cleveland State University Poetry Center and the Program in Writing Arts at the State University of New York at Oswego. He is also the author of the seminal The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics which has gone through three editions and many printings. He has written plays, fiction and journalism in addition to poetry over the course of his long and varied career. “It is and has been a great pleasure to publish some of Lew’s books,” said Steven E. Swerdfeger, publisher of Star Cloud Press and one of Turco’s former students at Oswego.

Murgatroyd Tries Again

Murgatroyd and Mabel were butterflies. That is to say, Mabel was a butterfly, but Murgatroyd was still a caterpillar, in a way. They had both been caterpillars once. Murgatroyd had been a sort of spring green in color, with bright orange spots. Mabel had been covered with soft brown fur, and she had two pretty yellow tufts on her head, like a hat.

Then, one day, Murgatroyd and Mabel had spun their cocoons, and when they came out Mabel had worn two lovely lavender wings on her slender pink body. But when he came out, Murgatroyd looked just the same as before. He still looked like a caterpillar, except for one thing. Instead of growing wings, Murgratroyd had grown a propeller on his nose.

Murgatroyd could fly very fast with his propeller, and he could do loops and other tricks. "I wish I could fly like that," Mabel told him, and that made him happy. As Mabel would flutter by, Murgatroyd did barrel rolls and loop-the-loops around her so that they could get where they were going at the same time.

But one day as Murgatroyd and Mabel were sitting on a green twig in an apple tree he said to his friend, "Mabel, I think I'd like to try again."

Mabel was quite puzzled. "What do you mean?" she asked him, waving her wings delicately in the summer breeze.

Murgatroyd spun his propeller a little bit. "I'd like to try to grow wings again," he said.

"Oh, I see," Mabel said. "But you fly very well. Why would you want to do that?"

"Just to see if I can do it," Murgatroyd replied.

"You'll have to spin another cocoon, then," Mabel said.

"That's just what I had in mind," Murgatroyd said, and then and there he began to spin a new cocoon on the apple tree twig. Mabel sat and watched, and when he was through he poked his head out of the door of his cocoon and said, "I'll see you in eleven days."

"I'll be waiting," Mabel said, and Murgatroyd closed the door.

The sun rose and set ten times, and ten days passed, but there was hardly a sound in the apple tree except when a robin perched near the cocoons to look out over the green fields. On the eleventh day, though, something began to happen to the cocoon. Slowly, slowly, the door opened, but it was so dark inside that Mabel could see nothing at all.

Then, at last, Murgatroyd came out — only, he didn't look exactly as Mabel remembered. When he had come all the way out and stood on the apple tree twig Mabel said, "Oh, Murgatroyd! It didn't work! And, and...."

Murgatroyd looked down the length of his body, but it seemed to be just as it had been before he went into the cocoon. He looked at Mabel and said, "And what?"

Mabel felt very sad. "And you've even lost your propeller. Now you won't be able to fly at all."

Murgatroyd crossed his eyes to look at his nose, and, sure enough, the propeller was gone! "Oh, no!" he said. "I should have left well enough alone!" He was so dejected that he forgot to hold on to the twig, and he fell off.

"Murgatroyd!" Mabel cried, but there was nothing she could do. He was heading for the ground lickety-split. Then, suddenly, something happened. There was a roar, a blast of flame, and just as he was about to hit the ground Murgatroyd began to climb into the sky leaving a vapor trail behind him.

Mabel watched as her friend roared through the branches of the apple tree and disappeared into the sun, and she was still watching when Murgatroyd reappeared in a flash and settled onto the twig beside her.
"What was that?" she asked him.

"Look at me again," Murgatroyd said. "Don't you see?"

Mabel looked at him very closely, and then she saw it — Murgatroyd had lost his propeller, and he hadn't grown wings, but he had grown a jet pod instead!

"Oh, Murgatroyd," Mabel laughed, fluttering her lavender wings as she flew away from the apple twig. "You're twice as fast as you were before!" But Murgatroyd had no time to answer, for it was all he could do to shout "Whee!" as he did power dives and triple barrel rolls around her in the sweet summer air.

From The Book of Dialogue, How to Write Effective Conversation in Fiction, Screenplays, Drama, and Poetry, Hanover NH: University Press of New England, copyright © 2004 by Lewis Turco. All rights reserved.

NOTE: The original installment of this story, Murgatroyd and Mabel, with full color illustrations by Robert Michaels, published in 1978 by the Mathom Publishing Company, is still available at $9.95, shipping included, from the author, Wesli Court, at P. O. Box 161, Dresden ME 04342-0161.

The Joint

The text for George O’Connell’s series of monoprints, “The Jazz Joint.”*

What were the gals singing as we walked in swinging
like the cool dudes we were then,
not quite men but ready?
Oh! we were ready, if a bit unsteady, maybe, on our pins.
But the night was young, as young as we were, that’s for sure,
and the joint was jumping,
the trombone pumping, the drums dumping ⎯

it was a glory to be born and horny
with the ivory morning so damn far off
it was dim and boring. Who gave a hoot
beyond the cornet’s mute with those guitars stringing us along
like beads bouncing on a strand of gold?
Those honkytonk keys were opening doors
we never knew were closed, and we walked in swinging.

Well, the gals were singing and we
were winging some wild fandango,
keeping up with the man on banjo, in a race
with the guy on bass and winning, we thought,
when our heads went into a tailspin
and we were flying so low we crashed
into a cloud of sound and everything went still.

_____________
*The Jazz Joint, linoleum cuts by George O'Connell; captions, “The Joint,” by Lewis Turco, Oswego: Grey Heron, 1997; included in a four-person show, Some Kind of Narrative, at the Kirkland Art Gallery in Clinton, New York, from March 4 — April 11, 2001; subsequently published in The New York Quarterly, No. 59, Spring 2003, p. 50, all rights reserved. To see the images from this series, look in this blog at the photo album titled George O'Connell's The Jazz Joint.

Honkytonk Revisited

Once: young, drunk,
hoohooing with floorshows,
swooshing with beer,
white as a lamb in swabbie clothes,
free of the sea, free
of anchors, capstans, captains,
coils of ratline, wallows, waves —
once: wild, wayward,
I wound a knuckle around a pencil,
pummeled a napkin, pounded
the table and snaked a sheepshank
of grammar about glorious grammar:

I made a poem.

"Honktytonk" I called it in that
honkytonk: the sax honked,
we hooted at fat babes,
skinny babes, naked frills,
fools in the lewd who outhoused
the farmer's lass; we foamed,
fumed, fondled infamy —
ah! we were grand!

So was my poem.

Then back to the ship,
back to bunk out, flake out,
sack out: we were looped,
not really free,
and in my jumper there was a lump,
there was a greatness,
there was a napkin,

on it, a poem.

At dawn it was a scratch
and a scrawl, a tall story, a tale
untrue and wanton.

It was no poem.

In a flash and a tear it was gone,
torn, tossed to frothy water,
fallen on seas, washed unto fishes —
now I recall it: young, drunken,
rampant with g-strings, bursting with beer,
badly unbalanced, lacking meter, marvelously
disorganized, dissembling and dirty, ah!

That was a poem!

From Poetry: An Introduction through Writing, Reston VA: Reston Publishing Co., copyright © 1973 by Lewis Turco. All rights reserved.

The Wanderer

Alone I am driven each day by dawn
To wake and wander, to cry my cares.
Now there are none among the quick
To whom I dare to bare my heart,
Tell my thought. Too truly I ken [know]
That in a man it is no vice
To keep his counsel chest-locked,
Hold close his mind-hoard.
No weary wit may scorn weird, [fate]
Nor wrecked will work hope;
Wherefore, belike [likely], fame-chasers
Fasten darkness in deep moods.

Therefore I must curb my mind —
Cut off from kindred, cast from country,
Care-overborne — bind it in fetters,
For long ago the ground's grip
Took my weal-lord. Wretched, I went,
Winter-dreary, over the wave.
I sought the hall of a gold-giver
Where, far or near, I might find
Him whose meadhall would host the castaway,
Grant comfort to one cursed,
Hail me heartily.

........................He who struggles
Knows how cruel a companion is care
To him who has few shield-friends.
The path presses him, no purse of gold;
Not Midgard's [Earth's] glory, but heart's cavern.
He recalls hall-men, treasure-sharing;
In youth-yore his loaf-lord
Sat him to feast. This joy is fallen.
He who is forced to forgo the word
Of his liege-lord learns this lore:
How sleep and sorrow, twined together,

Bind in a bight [knot] the bitter outcast.
Dwelling in dream, he and his lord
Clasp and kiss, lay on knee
Hand and head, as betimes
In days dwindled, upon the gift-stool.

Then he wakens, the forsaken man,
And spies before him bleak spume;
Seamews swimming, stroking feathers;
Swirling hail; hoarsnow falling.
His heart's wounds hurt anew
For his loved lord. Grief blossoms.
The wraiths of kinsmen gather in thought;
He cries out gladly, scans eagerly
The throngs of his hearth — they scud away.
Long-boatmen's ghosts bring not many
Old lays there. Care freshens
In him who sends forward too oft
His warm heart over weary tides.

In Midgard I wit not why
My mind is not mired
When it roves the lives of earls,

How in a stroke they forswore their halls,
Those mood-proud theigns. Thus does Midgard,
Each day and all, age and fall.

No man is wise who has not won
His winters-lore. The wise man bides,
Not hot-hearted, nor speech-hasty,
Nor weak in war, nor wanting in reckoning,
Nor too goods-grasping, too glad, too mild,
Nor boast-breasted, before he kens.

The sage forbears folly-boasting
Till fierce wit fully wots [knows]
Which wind will take his spleen.

A wise man grasps how grim
This world shall be when its wealth wastes,
Even as now, in numberless places,
Earth's walls fall, wind-riven,
Rimed with hoar-ruined houses.
The wine-halls moulder; their wrights lie
In wolfbane, their bandsmen slain
Under the tower. The sword took some

In its course; a bird carried
One over Ocean; one the werewolf
Dealt to death; one stretched
His dreary-eyed earl in an earthen trench.
The Man-Maker [God] has marred this hearth
So men's laughter has sunk to stillness:

That wight [man] who looked on these walls wisely,
Who sounded deeply this dark life,
Would hark back to the blood spilled,
Weigh it well. His word would be,
"Where is the steed that served these men?
Where is the horde and the hoard-sharer?
Where is the fastness, the feast, the fanfare?"

Bright Cup! Burnished knight!
Eager earl! Your age tarnished
In night's helm, torn out of time!

There stands, instead of staunch theigns,
A louring wall wrought with worm-wrines;
The earls eat dust beneath the ash-spear —
Thirsty biter! Their weird is proud.

Storms stutter on the stone hill,
The ground battered by bitter hail,
Weather-wrath. Bleakness breaks
And night-shade spreads, sends from the North
The hobnail sleet to harry man.

In Midgard all is crossed and melled;
Weird's-will wrenches the world.
Wealth is our loan, friends our lending;
Mankind is lent, kinsmen lent:
Earth's frame shall stand forsaken.

Anonymous Old English

From “Ancient Music” in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale: Star Cloud Press, copyright © 2004 by Lewis Turco. All rights reserved.

A Cyberspace Interview with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Special to the Dresden Mills Gazette. January 4, 2008. This interview was held in cyberspace on this date, the day after Senator Clinton’s third-place finish in the Iowa Caucuses behind winner Senator Barack Obama and runner-up John Edwards. It ought to be remembered that Mrs. Clinton was washed-out as well as washed-up, though she had, in fact, managed to wash up before the interview took place, like a flounder on the shore of the Dead Sea. The interviewer for the Gazette was Wesli Court, political editor for our news sheet.

Gazette. Senator Clinton, how do you feel after your debacle in Iowa. Have you begun to recover from your unexpected loss?

Clinton. I don’t feel much of anything. No, I haven’t. I’ve answered two of your ten questions.

Gazette. Ten questions?

Clinton. Yes, ten is your allowance. And that was your third.

Gazette. May I ask…? Let me rephrase that.

Clinton. Probably a good idea.

Gazette. You’re a very controlling person.

Clinton. Was that a question?

Gazette. No.

Clinton. Too bad. (She glances at her wristwatch.)

Gazette. But this is: How do you explain your third-place finish in Iowa?

Clinton. I can’t. We had just oodles of money to spend.

Gazette. “We”?

Clinton. Four and five. My husband and I.

Gazette. But your husband isn’t running for President. You are.

Clinton. Oh, that’s right. Six.

Gazette. That wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact.

Clinton. Sorry. Oh, I’m so very sorry. But I’m clearly the most qualified candidate in the field of Democrats.

Gazette. The most qualified candidate still in the race after yesterday is probably Bill Richardson. What, besides your few years as a U. S. Senator, are your qualifications?

Clinton. Now, that’s six, isn’t it?

Gazette. Yes.

Clinton. Well, as soon as we got into office, I started to push for universal health care.

Gazette. No doubt you mean by “we” you and your husband Bill Clinton.

Clinton. Yes I do. Was that question seven?

Gazette. No, that was an assumption based on empirical evidence. As I recall, that health care “push” was also a debacle, and the person you pushed was your husband.

Clinton. I’m so tired I can hardly focus. Perhaps I need a focus group.

Gazette. Then what you are claiming as your “experience” is actually your husband’s experience, isn’t that right?

Clinton. Seven. I suppose technically that’s right, but I was there in the White House for eight years learning and watching.

Gazette. Learning and watching is not exactly experience. This is question eight: Your duties during those eight years was acting as First Lady, setting up dinners, approving guest lists and menus, being a hostess, and so forth, wasn’t it?

Clinton. Well, yes, of course, but….

Gazette. But Barack Obama was elected to the Illinois legislature several times, and he’s been a senator like you for two years, and he has an exceedingly cosmopolitan background, world experience while he was growing up “learning and watching,” besides which he is a magnificent orator of the sort we haven’t seen in America probably since Abraham Lincoln, clearly a leader, and not nearly as tired as you…isn’t he?

Clinton. Well, but….

Gazette. Here’s my final question: If you were elected President of the United States in 2008, what would your husband’s role be in your administration? No need to reply, I think we all know the answer. Thank you for your time, Senator Clinton, and good luck with your campaign.

A Cyberspace Interview with Congressman Ron Paul, M.D.

3 January 2008, Special to the Dresden Mills Gazette. On this date, while the Iowa caucuses were being held, Dr. Ron Paul, a Congressman from Texas who is vying for the Republican nomination for the Presidency of the United States, was kind enough to grant the Dresden Mills Gazette an interview in cyperspace, not in outer space as some sources have suggested. The interview was conducted by Wesli Court, a staff member of the Gazette.

Gazette. Dr. Paul, thank you for allowing us to interview you on this important day. You have said that you are in favor of unregistered gun ownership for all Americans. Why is that?

Paul. Because citizens need to be armed so that they can defend themselves against the government if necessary.

Gazette. What government would that be?

Paul. The American government, of course. I’m against taxation without representation.

Gazette. But it was against the British government that the American colonists used that slogan in 1776. This is your own government you’re talking about.

Paul. The British government was their own government then, so the American colonists rebelled against their own government.

Gazette. Yes, but their “own” government was across the Atlantic ocean, not in Washington, D. C., and the American government is a representative government and you are one of those elected representatives. Don’t those representatives have the responsibility to enact laws?

Paul. No government should have the right to control firearms.

Gazette. But on 22 March of 1631 the colonial government of Massachusetts Bay enacted the first military legislation in North America requiring that all adult males (except ministers and magistrates) had to own arms and therefore constituted the militia which could be called upon in any emergency to defend the towns and villages of the colony. The requirement that all able-bodied males needed to own a gun was a form of taxation, wasn’t it?

Paul. The government of Massachusetts required people to own guns? Now that’s an enlightened government.

Gazette. Yes, adult male citizens of Massachusetts Bay were required by the government to purchase their own firearms if they could afford them; those arms had to be registered with the government so that, for one thing, the government during emergency situations could confiscate the arms of infirm or elderly owners of guns who could not serve in the militia, and those arms would then be furnished to able-bodied but non-gun-owning members of the militia. Otherwise, towns were required to furnish arms to adult males who couldn’t afford them and later collect the costs of those arms through taxation, which was called “raising a rate.”

Paul. Where in the world did you come up with such nonsense?

Gazette. It’s history. You can Google it.

Paul. Whose history? The Commies’?

Gazette. Let’s talk about the brick wall you want to build across the southern border of the United States in order to keep illegal immigrants out.

Paul. Right. It ought to be tall and strong, but it doesn’t have to be brick.

Gazette. Like the Great Wall of China?

Paul. Exactly.

Gazette. Why was that wall built?

Paul. To keep out the Mongolian barbarians.

Gazette. Did it work?

Paul. Certainly it did.

Gazette. Didn’t the Mongols breach the wall and rule China for hundreds of years?

Paul. What’s that, some more of your Commie history?

Gazette. Are there any other reasons for building this wall?

Paul. To keep out Muslim terrorists. Our southern border is not secure and therefore terrorists may simply walk into the U. S.

Gazette. But the people who attacked us on 9/11 came over our Northern border. And they were not illegal immigrants, they were visitors. If we're going to secure our southern border, shouldn't we also secure the northern one? Shouldn't we keep out foreign visitors as well as illegal immigrants?

Paul. Uh, I mean, er…the Canadians are our friends.

Gazette. So are the Mexicans. Why do most illegal aliens want to come to the United States in the first place?

Paul. To get free health care and Social Security.

Gazette. Don’t they have to pay into Social Security like other workers, own a Social Security card, provide proofs of paying taxes? Don’t they have to work to get those things?

Paul. Yes, and that’s another thing they come for, to take American jobs away from American citizens.

Gazette. Do many legal American citizens want to work as migrant laborers, field hands, housekeepers, sweat shop workers, and so forth for illegally substandard wages?

Paul. Well, of course they do.

Gazette. What would happen, then, if your wall kept out illegal immigrants? Would citizens flock to get the jobs that the aliens had vacated? Or would the fruits and vegetables rot in the fields, our homes go uncleaned, goods they produced rise in price?

Paul. Look, they aren’t citizens, so I’m not going to worry about them.

Gazette. Those of their children who were born here are citizens.

Paul. They shouldn’t be! I’m a pediatrician, and I say we should do away with birthright citizenship. Illegal aliens should be deported and their illegal children with them.

Gazette. Illegal children? How does being born in the U.S. make them illegal?

Paul. By virtue of the fact that they crossed into this country with their pregnant mothers.

Gazette. But how can you assume that their mothers got pregnant elsewhere? Don’t most of them become pregnant here? And even if they were pregnant before they crossed the border, what makes their children illegal?

Paul. We should have caught them and sent them back. They knew they were illegal.

Gazette. Who did? The unborn children?

Paul. Maybe not, but their parents knew. They had a choice.

Gazette. Are you Pro-Choice? Should the pregnant women have chosen to abort their fetuses?

Paul. No, no. I speak as a Pro-Life pediatrician congressman. They had the choice NOT to come to this country. We have the DUTY to send them back with their illegally-born babies.

Gazette. By getting rid of “birthright citizenship.”

Paul. Exaclty.

Gazette. But if a “birthright” isn’t a “birthright,” couldn’t the government you dislike so much and are a part of also do away with the birthrights of ALL American citizens?

Paul. Absolutely not. The militias would rise.

Gazette. And then what?

Paul. We’d create a governmental system we like.

Gazette. Thank you, Dr. Paul. You have given us all something to think about.

Paul. Thank you. Logical thinking is important.

The Surge Is Working!

SPECIAL TO THE DRESDEN MILLS GAZETTE, January 2, 2008. Not! According to the official nose count of dead American soldiers, the year 2007 recorded more deaths than any other year of the war in Iraq. No one knows how many Iraqis have been killed in any year of the war, so no total for them in 2007 is available.

When asked on what basis his Office of Misinformation made the claim that The Surge Is Working, General B. S. Allotte replied, "There is a Colonel O'Scents who does our nose counts for us, and, though he does not actually keep the noses themselves, he has photographs of them all, except of course for those that have been blown off by IEDs, and in those cases he substitutes photos of toes, except ditto."

Having been informed that he had not answered the question put to him, General Allotte referred the press to the Office of Misinformation. When it was pointed out to him that he was the head of that office, he replied, "There is no proof of that."

When asked what he himself thought was the basis for the Success of the Surge ("S.O.S." in military parlance), he replied, "That's simple. We have separated the warring factions in the Green Zone by building walls between them, and by sending minority members of alien factions away from their homes in sections where they are not a majority to homes in other sections where there are a majority of those minority members, and vice versa."

A brief silence followed this revelation and B. S. Alotte said, "There being no other questions, I bid you good day. We've had a good year, and let's hope we have another one as good in 2008."