Dear President Obama;

I voted for you.

Long before you ran for President, my youngest daughter and I saw you on television when you were still Senator Obama. You were speaking at some youth awards for service or something. It was late at night, so it was a rebroadcast, but Amanda and I sat there and listened to you speak with damn near tears in our eyes.

I turned to Amanda and I said, “That man is the real thing. I hope someday I get a chance to vote for him for President.” I had no idea I would get that chance as soon as I did, but the stars aligned and I did.

I am very proud of my vote.

Even now, when you have had your ass handed to you by the bankers, the health insurance industry, the military industrial complex, the Republican Party, and members of your own party, I think you are a man that wants what is best for all Americans.

Reality bites, Mr. President. You have ended up in a city where everybody is out for themselves and they will bend over and take it from whoever pays the most or smacks them the hardest.

No great legislation was ever passed in Washington, D. C., without head busting. Lyndon Johnson would actually knock the crap out of Democrats that were even rumored to be thinking about voting against the party line when he was Senate Majority Leader.

You’ve got Harry Reid, and he lets people like Joe Lieberman get away with f**king you over every day. Hell, come to think of it, you let Joe Lieberman f**k you over and get away with it.

I have two words for you, Mr. President…Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter came to our nation’s capital with great ideas and love in his heart for all people. Washington, D. C., ripped his heart out and stomped it to shreds. Members of both parties got wind of the fact that Jimmy Carter didn’t like head busting, and they ran all over him and managed to get him blamed for anything that went wrong.

It should be at least interesting to you that outside of the United States, Jimmy Carter was respected as a man of peace. In Washington, D. C., he was ripped to pieces…sound familiar?

In 1980, Ted Kennedy mounted a primary challenge against Carter for the Democratic nomination for President. Carter fought Kennedy off, but lost to Ronald Reagan in a landside.

Mr. President, you are going to become this generation’s Jimmy Carter if you don’t start busting heads. Hell, I won’t be able to vote for you in 2012 if this is how your presidency is going to go.

Tell Harry Reid to be part of the solution or get the f**k out of the way. The Senate Majority Leader can’t be a pussy, and Harry Reid is a pussy. Fire his ass.

Tell Joe Lieberman to get the f**k out of the way, or you will strip him of his Chairmanship and kick his ass back to his Mommy. You need to remind the Democrats who the President is and what he can do. If you need help, for God’s sake hire it…NOW.

This January will mark the end of your first year in office. All the Republican bastards in the House and the Senate that face re-election in 2010 are going to run on a laundry list of crap they prevented you from doing. All the Democratic bastards in the House and Senate that face re-election are deciding if they will run with you or run away from you.

If the cowards in the Democratic Party facing re-election in 2010 start a stampede away from you, then you become a one-term, lame duck President that had a lot of promise but could not govern.

The Republicans already can smell blood, Mr. President; if the Democrats start to smell it too, you will be a very lonely man. People you thought were allies and believed in what you believe in will find someone else to believe in. You’ll be lucky if Bo would bother to walk across the White House lawn to piss on you if you were on fire.

I don’t think it is too late, sir, but time is running out. If you end up handing the health insurance industry this gift of 35 million new, mandated customers and abandon us to the unregulated health care Hell that will result if the current Senate Bill becomes law, you will have ruined what could have been great.

If you become Jimmy Carter, I’m afraid Sarah Palin will become Ronald Reagan.

Potential has a shelf life Mr. President…tick-tock, tick tock.

Love and Merry Christmas,

Bill Devol

By Bill Devol

There will be no public option for health insurance.

You will be required to buy health insurance, and there will be fines for those that don’t.

Medicare might be expanded in 2011 to include those 55 to 64 years old that don’t have and can’t get insurance from their employers. At first, this sounded pretty good, except that the price for such coverage will be really steep because there will be no government subsidies based on income levels.

This age group (my age group) is perhaps the least cost-effective for the health insurance industry. We go to the doctor. We have just started to wear out. If we go on Medicare, the government gets to pick up the cost and the insurance companies increase profits.

One recent poll said that 56 percent of Americans want a public option…well we can all go take a flying f**k at a rolling doughnut. It isn’t happening. The health care industry just came in first, second, and third. They got the trifecta; we got the shaft.

Our national legislature has been bought by the insurance companies. The House and Senate don’t give a random rat’s rectum what the citizens of the United States need or want. Politicians have a new constituency, and this one pays much better. The Representatives and Senators don’t even seem to be embarrassed that we have caught them bending over for their corporate masters.

Game over, man. We can’t compete with corporations and purchase our own politicians. The price is too rich for our blood.

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How embarrassing for the Nobel Committee; they give President Obama the Peace Prize and he escalates the war in Afghanistan which is really a war about Pakistan where the CIA is blowing up civilians along with the bad guys in secret drone attacks.

This just in…we are still in Iraq…Merry Christmas!

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New York says gay people can’t get married. New Jersey will follow suit. Gay people can’t bury their partners in Rhode Island. Gay marriage is only legal in a half dozen or so states. Citizens in some states where legislatures have made it legal have turned around and voted to make it illegal.

Hey, I’ve got your sanctity of marriage right here pal…The five top states in percentage of men married three or more times are (from 1 to 5) Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. The five top states in percentage of women married three or more times are (from 1 to 5) Oklahoma, Arkansas, Wyoming, Nevada, and Idaho.

If I were gay, I’d be getting just a bit sick and tired of a bunch of serial-cheating, 50-percen-divorce-rate, Jesus-loving, fellow-human-hating breeders getting up in my business.

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Democratic Representative Alan Grayson from Florida’s 8^th Congressional District (He’s the guy that said the Republican health care plan was “Don’t get sick, but if you do, die soon.”) suggested this week that former Vice President Dick Cheney should STFU (shut the f**k up).

You have got to admire old Dick, however. He sticks to his guns in the face of all reality. The following is what I imagine to be an average thought of VP Dick:

”We didn’t torture; we used enhanced techniques. Those enhanced techniques saved lives. I didn’t get five draft deferments; I used enhanced combat avoidance techniques. Water boarding a guy 183 times in a month was not excessive; it saved lives. Five deferments wasn’t excessive; it saved lives. Killing people saves lives, God damn it! Doesn’t anybody but me know how to save lives up in this mother f**ker? Give me some CIA drones and I could save a whole bunch more lives.”

Our former Vice President is a war-mongering, torture-loving, piece of crap. As much as I’d love him to STFU, I have to support his right to spew his vitriol. Spew away, Mr. Vice President; spew away.

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Tiger Woods, you are a freaky-deaky bastard. Has Mr. Happy ever had a day off in the last dozen years? Seriously, Tiger, you need to take stock. Dude, you have accomplished all that you have with the brain between your legs doing all of your thinking. Imagine where you could be if you had let the head on your shoulders do some of your thinking for you.

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Sarah Palin makes no sense. That’s what scares me. She is channeling Ronald Reagan, and he got elected as President…TWICE! She smiles and jumbles conservative talking points together and ends her sentences with, “By golly,” and “Gosh Darn It” and people eat that crap with a spoon.

Q: “Governor Palin, what do you think America’s long-range economic planning should consist of?”

A: “Drill, baby, drill, you know, the free market, welfare cheats, terrorists, liberal media, gosh darn it.”

Q: “Governor Palin, how would a Palin administration create jobs?”

A: “Tax cuts, the 10 Commandments, lipstick on a hockey Mom, prayer in schools, the ACLU, strong anti-terrorist stance, by golly.”

I can see her winning in a landslide…Happy Holidays!

By Bill Devol

I just got done watching Rachel Maddow’s interview with United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice. I was watching President Obama’s United Nations Ambassador but I was hearing Dubya’s words.

If you exchange Afghanistan for Iraq, it is the same BS that Dubya spread during his administration.

Apparently, we are all going to die if we don’t get more American soldiers killed defending a corrupt government. We will all die if we don’t get Afghanistan ready to defend itself from the people that are trying to kill us…can you say Vietnamization or Iraqinization?

President Richard Nixon introduced his policy of Vietnamization 40 years ago. The plan was to encourage the South Vietnamese to take more responsibility for fighting the war. It was hoped that this policy would eventually enable the United States to withdraw gradually all their soldiers from Vietnam.

President George W. Bush kept saying that when Iraqis “stand up we will stand down.”

It was bulls**t when Nixon said it…the Vietnam War lasted longer than Nixon’s Presidency.

It was bulls**t when Dubya said it…we went into Iraq in 2003 and we are still there.

Ipso facto…it is still bullsh**t even if it is President Obama and Afghanistan.

Lyndon Johnson said the Communists would kill us all. Dubya said the Terrorists would kill us all. President Obama has just said the Taliban will kill us all.

Back when Dubya was serving up this crap, he could count on the fact that Vietnam had been 40 years ago.

President Obama, Iraq and Afghanistan are still going on! I’m not buying this crap from you any more that from Dubya, LBJ, or Nixon.

With all due respect, sir, you have had your ass handed to you by the military industrial complex. Generals only get to general if they can be shooting at something, so if you ask a General what you should do, they will say, “We should shoot things.”

Let’s review…the banking industry is kicking your ass…the health care industry is kicking you ass, and the military industrial complex is kicking your ass. Doesn’t your ass hurt?

It is hard to fight these entities. They have more money than God. They have bought and paid for politicians. They have immense public relations machines that can manufacture an unruly crowd or a feature story on Fox News with a single phone call.

If these entities end up kicking you to the curb of history, don’t be surprised. They have been at hardball politics much longer than you have. I’m betting that it is finally dawning on you that these folks are capable of doing anything to keep their place at the public trough.

Our government has been squabbling internally for quite some time. They seem far too interested in kicking each other in the balls than with doing things for the people that elected them.

Our roads suck. Our bridges suck. Our schools suck. Our power grid and infrastructure sucks. Everywhere I look, I see something else suffering from the fact that no one in our government seems to give a rat’s ass about how we are doing out here.

How many kids go to bed hungry in America? How many people die each day because they have no health insurance? How many Americans will die in war zones because our government has decided that war will be the test to see whose balls are the biggest?

By the way, Susan Rice all but said the only troops you are committing to bring home in 2011 are the surge troops. As long as our military is in Afghanistan, our generals will want to shoot more stuff.

When the military industrial complex throws a flaming bag of dog crap on your porch just about the time you want to start bringing our troops home in 2011, don’t say you weren’t warned.

Check out what happened when Eisenhower got talked into authorizing “just-one-more-time-please-it’s-really-important-we-swear” U-2 spy plane flight over Russia. Ike had stopped the flights because he thought them too dangerous to justify their weak intelligence value.

The flight Ike was talked into was piloted by an ex-Air Fore Captain working for the CIA. His name was Francis Gary Powers. When he got shot down over Russia, the resulting crap storm stopped dead peace talks scheduled between the United States and Russia. That was in May of 1960.

If you want some scary reading, Mr. President, get the text of President Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961. Ike knew what you should know…beware of the military industrial complex.

I’m pissed, Mr. President. We elected you to stop this crap, and here you are cheer leading this disaster. I’m disappointed in you and I hurt in advance for the families that will lose loved ones to your war. You have hit the big time, Mr. President; you have your very own body count started…Congratulations!

I said I was taking the week off…that was before I heard that President Obama was going to get more American troops killed just so no one can call him a pussy.

When Dubya and his boys were in, they could give a crap about what the other side thought. Now that the Democrats and Obama are running the show, they are kissing as much ass as they can find.

You crazy bastards have missed the whole point to your take over. We voted you in because we wanted an end to these motherf**king wars and we wanted affordable health care and we wanted equal protection under the law to mean something again.

What have we got…more dead Americans…no public option worth speaking of…and you still get kicked out of the service if you have sexual relations with consenting persons of your own gender. You sons of bitches are pretty pathetic.

If you keep trying to straddle the fence, you are going to fall on your nuts. However, with balls as tiny as your metaphorical gonads appear to be, you wont hurt much when you fall.

34,000 more troops into Afghanistan? Are you f**king crazy? Great, there will be even more kids without one of their parents by next holiday season. Merry F**king Christmas, Sally, Daddy is dead. Happy F**king Hanukkah, Emily, Grandpa got blown up because President Obama didn’t want to look like a pussy and perhaps get his clock cleaned in the 2010 mid-term elections.

Change I could believe in…I can’t believe I fell for it AGAIN!

By Bill Devol

If you should see a t-shirt or bumper sticker that reads, “Pray for Obama – Psalms 109: 8,” please grab yourself a bible and read the afore-mentioned passage…

“Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” (King James Version)

Hmmmmmmm, “days be few”…”let another take his office.” Well, these folks just want President Obama to have a single term. There’s nothing wrong with wishing someone wasn’t President; I wished Dubya wasn’t President for 8 years, so there’s nothing wrong with someone wishing and praying for Obama to be out of office…unless you check out the entire Psalm…especially the next few verses…

“Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”

“Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg; let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.”

“Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor.”

“Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.”

“Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.”

“Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let the sin of his mother be blotted out.”

Those Christians are a real laugh riot, aren’t they?

When I told my sweetheart, Gail, about the Pray-for-Obama folks, she said, “Would Jesus Do That?” Thus was born the title of my blog this week…WJDT?

I believe the reference to Psalm 109 suggests that there are folks praying for the death of a man and the desolation of his family. I am not attempting to speak for Jesus, but I don’t believe he’d be all up in such talk based on some of the things he is quoted as saying.

When did Christians get so nasty? Historically speaking, they got nasty right after they stopped being killed for being Christians and just before they started killing other people for not being Christians.

I’m not talking about the folks that believe Jesus was the son of God that died for their sins and who follow his teachings. I’m talking about the folks that use their “religion” as a bludgeon and a justification for brutality…I’m talking about the Godstapo.

The Godstapo believe God wants them to kick spiritual ass and take spiritual names. They want people to be scared into behaving in a manner they approve of while claiming it’s what God wants…like God would bother to explain his/her will to such a**holes.

The Godstapo are bullies that prey upon (not pray for) people. Do they do it to spread the word of God? They say they do, but I think they are in the religion business. They convince people they are selling the only way to heaven, and those people will pay for salvation with loyalty and money.

I don’t speak for God, nor do I think God needs anyone down here to speak for him. My impression is that God will let us know what he wants when he wants it, and he won’t need some $5,000 suit-wearing, Rolex-flashing, Bentley-driving Television preacher to get his point across.

That’s what I believe. I don’t think what I believe should be codified and turned into some scriptural justification for legislation. It’s what I believe, and, no matter how much I believe, I won’t know if I am right until after I’m dead…if ever.

I long ago learned not to trust someone that says they have all the answers. I learned to start worrying when someone says, “Don’t worry.” The Godstapo will tell you they have all the answers and that if you do exactly what they say, you will have nothing to worry about…run, run for your lives!

I’m taking next week off for Thanksgiving, but I thought I should leave you with words of wisdom…just to tide you over until December. Some of this advice came from my life experiences, and some of it came from Mom and Dad.

• When someone says they have God on their side, put one hand on your wallet and the other hand on your genitals.

• Never trust anyone that says God speaks to them directly.

• Never draw to an inside straight.

• Never bet against the Yankees at home.

• Never wear dirty underwear out of the house.

• Never go home with a woman with an Adam’s apple…unless you are into that sort of thing.

• When someone tells you they can see the future, punch them in the mouth and ask them why they didn’t duck.

• If part of someone’s religious doctrine involves killing nonbelievers and sleeping with your wife, don’t call him an idiot to his face.

• If you can’t say anything nice about someone, make a living out of it…right, Rush?

Happy Thanksgiving!

By Bill Devol

If you are a highly decorated, certified Air Force pilot hero that has sex with people of the same gender, you have to leave the military, but if you show signs of being a violent Islamic extremist with a bad service record, you get to stay in the military until you kill 13 of your fellow soldiers.

Wow…that really doesn’t make any sense.

Tuesday, the Governor of Rhode Island, Don Carcieri, vetoed a bill that would have given same sex partners the right to…wait for it…wait for it…plan each others funerals. The Republican Governor of our smallest state has proven he has an equally small mind by calling this bill an incremental erosion of heterosexual marriage.

Having your funeral planned by the person you loved is erosion of heterosexual marriage? Even giving gay people posthumous equality is too much.

Wow…Governor Carcieri, you are a real dick.

In Ohio, if I author a legally witnessed document that says my dog Edgar gets to plan my funeral, the State of Ohio can’t do anything about it. My family can sue, but the State of Ohio can’t do a freaking thing.

In Rhode Island, if I was gay and died without a legally binding document naming my same-sex partner as my funeral planner, my Dad could flip my partner off and bury me any way he wanted. In such a case, I’d get a shave and a haircut, I’d be buried in a suit with an “I Love Poontang” lapel button, and there would be strippers at the wake.

How much do you have to hate someone to f**k up their funeral?

I’m glad I asked…

Fred Phelps, Sr., pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and his parishioners have been f**king up the funerals of gay people for more than a decade.

If you have time (and a strong stomach) let your fingers Google godhatesfags.com. It’s at this web site that you get to share the wisdom of the belief that god wants us to heckle the mourners at the funerals of gay people.

The Reverend Phelps also has decided that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are part of the “fag” agenda. Because of this, any soldiers that fights in these wars are defending the “fag” way of life, so when they die, they are going to Hell. Good old Fred and his flock actually attend the funerals of those that died in combat and heckle the mourners.

Wow…those Westboro Baptists are a bunch of dicks.

Samuel Johnson is oft credited with a line that goes something like this, “Sir, only God has the right to judge us, and he only does it once at the end of our lives.” I don’t know if Mr. Johnson actually said it, but the anti-gay rights crowd can take the sentiment and shove it up their asses…in a purely heterosexual way, of course.

In Maine, last week, the voters overturned a state law legalizing same-sex marriages. Many people were worried that “they would have to teach same-sex marriage in the schools.”

Such a statement is really code for, “they will have to tell little kids what gay people do to each other when they have sex.”

Since straight marriage is legal in Maine and everywhere else, I could argue that “they have to teach straight marriage in the schools.” I could suggest that they have to tell little kids what straight people do to each other when they have sex….“Then Daddy calls Mommy a frigid bitch, and storms out of the house to get drunk at the strip club.”

That is ridiculous, of course, but it’s the same twisted logic that people buy when they need a reason to be so scared of gay people that they want them all to go away.

I don’t know why so many un-gay people are scared of gay people. I have always been of the opinion that they think gay cooties will turn them gay over time.

It has to be fear…doesn’t it? Only fear can drive you to deny the human rights of a whole group of people both before and after death.

Fear of gay people is unfounded, but every time the straight community gets a chance to extend an olive branch to the gay community we manage to let fear mongers screw it up.

I don’t fear gay people…although, there are some lesbians that make me a little nervous sometimes…it’s the ones on the motorcycles…they look really tough.

All kidding aside…some of those biker lesbians have really huge muscles and tattoos, and they look like they want to drag me behind their bikes…hold it…that’s not actually fear…I think it may be a really inappropriate and disturbing fantasy…forget what I said.

By Bill Devol

I was cruising along on a nice mellow…for me, I mean…Gail and I had a couple of hundred trick or treaters last Saturday, and we had fun passing out candy.

My new anti-depressant is working well with my old anti-depressant. Even when the citizens of Maine stripped a whole bunch of people of their civil rights because of the gender of their sex and life partners, I didn’t lose my composure.

When I saw video tape of Michelle Bachmann inviting protesters to come to the Capitol Building today and “scare” Senators and Representatives into burying the healthcare reform effort, I realized that an insane person just says insane things. Sooner or later, the voters in Minnesota will tell Ms. Bachmann to go home for good.

Then I saw video tape of Republican Representative Todd Akin of Missouri ask a crowd outside the Capitol Building to join him in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance because “it drives the liberals crazy.” That has really harshed my mellow.

Todd, you, stupid, combed-over, Show Me State jackass of a human being, The Pledge doesn’t drive liberals crazy. It’s a$$holes like you that drive liberals crazy.

Todd you voted to give the unborn equal protection under the 14^th amendment, but you voted against making it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of an employee’s sexual orientation.

Todd, you refused to vote for any economic stimulus money, but you voted to make it harder for citizens to declare bankruptcy.

Todd, you flaming butt wipe, you voted for a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman only, but you voted against regulating the subprime mortgage industry.

Todd, you voted against enforcing against anti-gay hate crimes, and you voted against shareholders getting to vote on executive compensation.

Todd, you voted against removing subsidies for oil and gas exploration, and you voted against an additional $2 billion for the Cash for Clunkers program.

Todd, you voted for prayer in school, but you voted against requiring states to test students.

Todd, you voted for promoting free trade with Peru, but you voted against assisting workers who lose jobs due to globalization.

It’s crap like that drives this liberal crazy, Todd; it is not the freaking Pledge of Allegiance.

What drives me crazy is the fact that you have your head so far up the ass of corporations in this country that, when the CEO of Goldman Sachs farts, your shoe laces flutter.

What drives this liberal crazy is that a$$holes like you have the balls to pimp Christianity while making sure that you do nothing to feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the naked, and house the homeless.

Screw you, Todd! Screw you and all the rest of you smug, white, Christian millionaires up there on Capitol Hill that are making your fortunes by helping the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer.

Go ahead, hang with the Minnesota Madame DeFarge , Michelle Bachmann, and the low-rent replacement for Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy, Joe Wilson of South Carolina. Pal around with Ohio Representative and House Minority Leader John Boehner (pronounced…BONER) who just this week announced the Republican alternative to “Obamacare;” it’s called “WeDon’tCare.” They seem to be your kind of people.

Todd, you and the rest of the great “Party of No” can go to Hell.

Now, if I might have a few words with President Obama…

The Mayor of New York would be a Democrat today if you would have at least gotten the national Democratic Party to support Bill Thompson against Bloomberg. Thompson lost by about 50,000 votes…that is nothing…he ran bare back against $100 million and barely lost…that could have been one in the Obama column.

Joseph Lieberman is no friend of yours. He has been bending you and the Democratic Party over the table every chance he gets. He is a bought and paid for healthcare whore. Kick his political ass and let him be the Chairman of the Senate Flatulence Subcommittee.

Oh, by the way, do you think gay people are stupid? You blew enough smoke up their asses during the campaign to float Balloon Boy all the way to China. So far, you have flapped your lips a whole bunch, but you haven’t come through with one promise to the gay community…the clock is running.

People are still dying in useless wars. I was touched by your show of support last week when you saluted our fallen heroes, but show your support by getting the live ones home, as soon as possible. If you don’t stop this soon, you will never be able to wash the blood off of your hands.

So far, sir, the only change I see is now it is you changing live people into dead people.

This original short story is offered as a Halloween treat and not a trick.

By Bill Devol

Hank Stafford’s bad day had already been one for the record books when the lights on Athens Municipal Airport’s Runway 11-29 blinked out seconds after Hank had broadcast the VHF signal to turn them on.

“Shit,” Hank muttered and pushed the throttle forward and banked his Cessna 350 to the right to gain altitude and come around for another pass at a landing.

“Celeste is going to chew my ass as it is,” Hank thought.

Hank’s two-day business run to Cleveland turned into a three-day trip when his single largest customer, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, challenged Hank and his company Vector Rolled Paper Products to come up with a 10 percent price cut for newsprint.

In the end, Hank gave up. The Plain Dealer was set to publish a series of community shopper newspapers later in the year. He’d have to eat a crap sandwich in the short term, but he’d get to stay for the prime rib.

“Celeste won’t give a damn one way or the other,” Hank said out loud as he lined the Cessna up to the left of and parallel with East State Street and rebroadcast the VHF signal to turn on 11 two niner’s lights. When the lights came on, Hank made final course corrections and busied himself with landing.

The Davis boy, Tim…Thomas…Tony! Tony Davis was rubbing the back of his dark brush cut and looking sheepish when Hank stepped down from the cockpit.

“When is the city going to buy a new Pilot Controlled Lighting unit, Tony? We could have us a spectacular crash some day,” Hank said with mock sternness.

“Hey, Mr. Stafford,” Tony said. “They don’t even buy me my coveralls to work here; they’ll buy a new PCL when pigs fly, besides, in about half an hour the Moon will be up and folks can land by the light of the full Moon. Want some help tying her down?”

When Hank and Tony finished the post-flight checklist and tied the Cessna to huge rings set deep in the tarmac, Hank pressed a $20 into Tony’s hand.

“Holy shit,” Tony said. He blushed bright pink and added, “I mean, thank you Mr. Stafford.”

“Don’t mention it,” Hank called over his shoulder as he carried his bags to his black Porsche Cayenne parked next to the white clapboard house that served as the terminal. Hank pointed his key at the Porsche and clicked the button that opened the rear hatch.

“Full Moon in 27 minutes,” Hank said out loud as he tossed his things in the back of the Porsche.

Hank fished in his left pants pocket and pulled out a small brass key. He used the key to open a panel in the floor of the SUV. After looking both ways, Hank took off his denim jacket and pulled a double shoulder holster from the floor safe.

Hank slipped the rig on, shrugged his shoulders to make a few adjustments to the fit, and put his jacket back on.

Hank reached back into the safe and extracted a TeleDart RD406 tranquilizer pistol. He turned a dial on the side of the weapon and saw the pressure gauge turn red when the pistol was fully charged. Hank loaded a tranq dart into the breech, flipped the breech shut, loaded five more tranq darts into a clip on the front of the right shoulder holster, and jammed the TeleDart into its spot.

“No safety, no safety, don’t shoot yourself in the balls if you have to use it,” Hank said to himself as he pulled a Desert Eagle Mark XIX .50 caliber automatic out of the gun safe in the floor of the Porsche. Hank slapped a clip into the butt end of the hand cannon and put the pistol into the left holster. He put three extra ammunition clips into the pockets of his denim jacket, relocked the safe, buttoned the bottom two buttons of the jacket, and looked at his watch.

“Shit,” Hank hissed. He had less than 25 minutes until Moon rise and he had to do his best to get home to Chauncey in about 20 minutes or there could be hell to pay.

Hank knew there was no way to get over Peach Ridge on Route 33 and take Route 13 to Route 293 and get up Utah Ridge Road to his compound before the Moon popped over the ridge top. He knew it, but he drove like he could make it…he wasn’t even close.

“If the FAA let me put in my own landing strip, I’d have been home 30 minutes ago,” Hank thought as he slid around curves on Route 13. What good was money if you couldn’t do what you wanted with it?

He had to stand the Porsche on its nose when a good old boy in a late 60s Chevy pickup pulled out in front of him about a mile from beautiful downtown Chauncey.

“Move your ass, you old fuck,” Hank screamed at the old man in the Chevy. Hank wondered for the thousandth time why he agreed to move to the wilds of Athens County, Ohio.

The answer was, of course, he loved Celeste. He would do anything for her. When she agreed to marry him, Hank had promised to make sure nothing bad ever happened to her. He hoped tonight wasn’t the night he’d break that promise. Most of the time, Celeste was the most beautiful woman Hank had ever met, and she was sweeter than she was beautiful. It was hard to believe she had come from such a weird family.

The Moon was up before Hank turned on to Utah Ridge Road. He knew he was too late, but he didn’t take his foot off of the gas peddle until he slammed it on the brake peddle at the gate to the compound. He slid to a stop sideways in the driveway.

Hank pushed a button on the dashboard, and the two halves of the gate opened slowly at him. He drove quickly through the gate and pushed the dash button again: the gates closed behind him.

He drove the Porsche around the first bend in the tree-lined driveway before he put the car into Park. He pushed the button that slid the window down, turned off the ignition, and listened. There was nothing to hear at first except the tick of the cooling engine and the breeze in the trees.

The first howl rose up from somewhere on the south side of Hank’s 50-acre property.

“Shit, the pine trees,” Hank said out loud. If she was in the pine trees, she was closer than he liked. He wasn’t going to make it up to the house without running into her.

Hank put his right hand on the butt of the Desert Eagle and opened his door with his left. After he slid to the ground, he eased the door shut with barely a click. That’s when he heard the second howl.

She had heard him. Her ears were like directional microphones. He could picture her turning her head at the sound of the car door closing. She would have thrown her head back and howled a warning. She wanted her prey to know she was hunting. Spooking the prey into a mistake was just the thing she loved to do.

The good news was she was coming to him. The bad news was she was coming to him. Without hesitation, Hank sprinted off the driveway and into a small knot of brush off to his left. He had the Porsche and the open road between himself and Celeste.

Hank reached into his pants pocket with his right hand and pulled out the Porsche key. He stuck the button end of the key between his teeth where he could bite down on the trunk-release button and keep both hands free.

Without making a sound and with deliberate slowness that belied his hammering heart, Hank transferred the Desert Eagle to his left hand and drew the tranq dart pistol with his right.

Celeste would be on his scent now that she was coming. She would follow his scent right across the road and into his hideout if the trunk release trick didn’t work. Hank was going to have to be at least 30 feet away from Celeste when the dart hit her, or she’d still be able to get a paw or two on him before she went to sleep.

Hank shuddered thinking about the damage Celeste could do.

Since Celeste wanted him to know she was coming, she wasn’t shy about letting out excited yips and barks as she came across the property on the dead run. She was heading directly for Hank and she was already tasting him with her mind.

The light-brown werewolf broke from cover about 20 yards in front of the Porsche. She froze for a moment to sniff the air. She could smell his fear; Hank was sure of it.

She growled deep in her throat and started slowing loping toward the Porsche. She leapt from the road to the roof of the Porsche and rose on her hind legs and surveyed her surroundings.

Celeste’s muzzle was long and slender. Hank could see the breeze flutter the soft fur at the nape of her neck. Her ears twitched in unison and then separately. Her black nose wrinkled as she turned slowly.

She knew where Hank was. She could smell him and she could hear his heart hammering against his ribs. Celeste was playing; she wanted to get him to break from his hiding place. Jesus, even as a werewolf, she was beautiful.

Celeste dropped back down to all fours and dropped to the road behind the Porsche. She would charge him any second.

Hank bit down on the trunk release button. The trunk clicked open a few inches. Celeste turned to check for an ambush. Hank leveled the tranq gun and pulled the trigger.

Celeste turned back toward the hiss of the CO₂ cartridge just as the dart struck her in the right side of her furry neck. She howled and charged, but she dropped after three halting steps.

Hank heard the growl from behind him. He flattened himself to the ground and had the sense of something just passing over his back. He heard the clack of empty jaws slamming together where his neck would have been.

“Aw, crap, two of them,” Hank screamed as he rolled to his left and pointed the Desert Eagle at the Porsche and pulled the trigger until the automatic was out of bullets.

Two of the hot brass casings had ejected and ricocheted off of a small tree and down the open neck of Hank’s shirt. They burned white hot against his neck and chest, but Hank ignored the pain, reloaded the traq gun, and jumped to his feet.

The second werewolf was flat against the road. Hank had never meant to hit it. He just wanted the boom of the .50 caliber and the sound of breaking glass to give him a few seconds to get a fresh dart in the gun.

The second werewolf leaped from the ground. Hank pulled the trigger. He didn’t hear the hiss of the dart and the whump of it hitting its intended target. He was momentarily deaf from emptying the Desert Eagle into his Porsche. Hank did feel the jarring thump as the werewolf hit him square in the middle of his chest.

Hank went down in a jumble of biting, snapping werewolf. It was trying to tear his throat out, but missed on the first two tries. The third try would have been perfect, but the werewolf collapsed on top of Hank fast asleep.

He wanted to rest. He had the wind knocked out of him and his ribs were killing him, but Hank had only a couple more minutes before the first werewolf would begin to come around.

Hank got plastic cable ties out of a bag in the Porsche’s floor safe. He got to work quickly, and, when he was done, he had two hog tied werewolves. He finished just as the first werewolf started to twitch and stir.

He still wasn’t going to put them in the Porsche and take them to the house. They were far too heavy and they could still bite Hell out of him. They’d be safe out here until dawn when they would turn back into Celeste and most likely her Mom.

Sarah was a handsome woman for a 45-year-old, but Hank didn’t want to see her turn back into his naked mother-in-law.

Hank saw the damage to the Porsche was cosmetic. He tossed the key on the ground where Celeste could see it in the morning. Celeste and Sarah would shrink back to normal size when they changed, and the plastic ties would slip right off.

“God damn,” Hank said to the thinner of the twitching werewolves on the ground. “I hate it when your family visits.”

By Bill Devol

Pakistan has nuclear weapons. I don’t think they need them, but no one ever asked me about it.

India has nuclear weapons. I don’t think Gandhi had that in mind when he practiced civil disobedience against British rule.

India and Pakistan are the meat in a really scary nuke sandwich. To the east of our two nuclear powers is another nuclear power, the People’s Republic of China. Somewhat removed, but to the north, we have Russia and all the new countries that formed when the old Russia bit the big one…they all have nukes.

Just north of Pakistan is Afghanistan where the Taliban gave safe haven to the folks what blew up the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. That same Taliban currently is up to no good in Pakistan.

To the east, Israel has nuclear weapons. We have nuclear weapons, and we are in Afghanistan and Iraq. England has troops in Afghanistan and they have nuclear weapons.

The only world nuclear power not within spitting distance of India and Pakistan is France.

Here in lies my dilemma. Normally, I’d say screw ‘em. It’s not because I’m a pacifist; I’m a realist. Back in the day, we had mutually assured destruction keeping fingers off of nuclear buttons. The United States, Russia, and China all knew that if the balloon went up, only the cockroaches would survive.

It was all about economics. There was no money to be made from blowing each other to kingdom come. There was no percentage in nuclear war.

Now, I’m stumped for an overall plan because many of the players in this nuclear hot spot hate each other because they disagree on who runs the universe and what happens after you die…religion!

When you add religion to what used to be economic suicide, you turn everything ass over elbows.

I worry about people that will kill themselves to kill other people to get to what they think will be an afterlife of bliss and joy. I worry about people so nuts that they would blow huge chunks of Israel off the map knowing full well that Israel would return any attack to the tenth power.

I worry that religious people have the fate of the world in the palm of their hands and that most of them think the greatest gift they can give their God is bunches of dead people from another religion.

I want all of our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Those poor men and women have gone way above the call of duty with multiple deployments which mean separation from their families and maybe getting dead.

I also want the religious crazies over in the nuclear zone to not blow each other up and pollute the atmosphere with fall out and other stuff that could kill the rest of us.

How can we do both?

I don’t know if we can keep the nut cases from blowing each other up. If we take over the whole area, including Israel, Syria, et.al., and go house-to-house looking for nukes…NOPE…that is impossible.

I have long said that you can’t make people do what you want them to do; you can just make people sorry they didn’t. That isn’t control; that’s punishing bad behavior…sorry, it’s all anyone has. We should use it.

We need to bring everyone home and get them rested up. Then we can revamp our military so that we can put huge hunks of it on the ground anywhere in the world in just a few hours.

Once we get that all done, we then tell the idiots around the world that if they shoot off a nuke we will come to their country in a big old hurry and blow lots of stuff and people to smithereens.

Remember, however, that religious nuts think dying for their God is just about the best thing they can do. That means that they can get to their heaven and move to the front of the heavenly rewards line if they can get us to kill them.

So, if we threaten to do to them what scares us the most, they would think we were doing them a favor. These people are nuts. How do you stop people that are nuts?

Killing them all just makes more people that want to kill us. Ignoring them got us to where we are today. I have a friend who believes liberating their women and giving their children MTV would be the best revenge.

I say we try being nice. We could reward good behavior with things their people need like potable water, schools, medicine, and food. While we are at it, we could try that here as a pilot program.

I know it sounds crazy, but we can always go back to shooting people and blowing stuff up if being nice doesn’t work.

By Bill Devol

Last Sunday, there was a Tea Party on the courthouse square in Chardon, Ohio. My town is the County Seat of Geauga County, and the only thing we got more of than Republicans out here is raccoons.

As far as Democrats go in Geauga County, Ohio, besides me and a lady with 500 cats, there are a few thousand of us. The official results in the last three Presidential elections were:

• 2008 – John McCain beat Barack Obama 29,096 to 21,250
• 2004 – Dubya beat John Kerry 30,370 to 19,850
• 2000 – Dubya beat Al Gore 25,417 to 15,327

Local Republican leaders are mulling over strategies for curtailing the steady increase in Democratic voters, but thus far they haven’t hit upon any real winners…although a Hamden Township Trustee came close when he suggested arresting registered Democrats for being “fag lovers.”

Our Tea Party was complete with signs demanding the immediate return of America from the bastards that stole it away by that old trick of…WINNING THE F**KING ELECTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let’s go over this AGAIN…

We had an election…it was in all the papers. Barack Obama and a whole bunch of other Democrats got elected. These folks won because more people voted for them than for their Republican opponents.

Mystery solved! There was no coup. There was no revolution. No one took power by any other means than by getting more votes than the other person.

That crazy Michelle Bachmann beat her House opponent up in Minnesota. Bachmann makes many schizophrenics look sane, but they had an election and she won. She didn’t steal anything. She is the legitimate Representative to Congress from her district…I don’t get it, but I have to admit it.

When people look into news cameras with tears running down their cheeks and say, “I want my country back,” what are they talking about? Their country hasn’t gone anywhere.

They may have gone around the bend a little, but their country didn’t go anywhere.

I do understand how they feel, however. During Dubya’s two terms, I felt like many people had lost their minds and were willing to put up with anything as long as it helped capture or kill Muslims. I didn’t so much feel that I had lost my country, as I felt lost in my country.

Any of my six regular readers will remember I had some pretty harsh things to say about our last President. I may have suggested that he was guilty of negligent homicide. I may have suggested that Big Oil had purchased itself a President. I may have thought he was dumber than a bag of hammers. I may have thought he was capable of nearly any trick to try to remain in power past his second term, but I knew there was only one way to stop him and his kind…winning elections.

That’s all Barack Obama and the other Democrats did. They won elections. The voters liked the pictures they painted…OR…the voters were so sick and tired of the Republicans that they wanted a changing of the guard.

Tea Party people, never fear, there are more elections coming. If you folks run good candidates, they will get a shot at this thing we call governing. It is a messy process, but the process works.

That brings me to the Republican leadership.

If you encourage the Tea Partiers and the Birthers and the Deathers in some vague plan of enlisting the crazies to help knock the Democrats back into the minority, you can’t complain when the inmates take over the party.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was raked over the coals by voters back home because he has exhibited some disturbing behavior lately. He voted for Justice Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court and claimed that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck don’t speak for the Republican Party.

Republican Senator Olympia Snowe from Maine is getting great flack from the nutty side of the Republican Party for having the gall to vote to allow the Senate Finance Committee Health Care Reform bill out of committee. That’s right, she didn’t vote for the bill; she voted to let the bill go to the Senate for further consideration. That evil woman…can death threats be far behind?

We had an election. The Democrats came out on top (ok, partly because the Democrats had better ideas and mostly because the Republicans sucked so bad).

We re-elect the entire House of Representatives in 2010. We also re-elect one third of the Senate that year. I would suggest that Republicans actually do things for voters between now and the mid-term elections.

I don’t think your current slogan is going to inspire confidence…

“Vote Republican in 2010…we kept anything from happening, but at least we brought you the Tea Partiers, the Birthers, and the Deathers.”