Why-owa?

It’s idiotic that every year, the same few states have such an outsized influence on presidential nominees. I’m going to pick on Iowa here. I have nothing against the state but its caucus is the one that comes first and determines a significant part of the election narrative that comes after it, so that’s the one I’m criticizing.

The other day I heard on the news that “Iowans like to meet their candidates in person.” Well, la-dee-friggin’-da, Des Moines! Isn’t that nice, to be able to have presidential candidates pandering to you—you personally—over pancakes at the diner. I guess the rest of the voters in unimportant states such as California can just wait six more months to have any say in their party’s nominee.

Oh, you’re meeting your candidates personally. Is there anything else we can get you, Iowa? Another pillow for your back?

This system is stupid because the Iowa caucus is Byzantine. I’m not an uneducated person and just reading this article about the system gave me a headache. Iowa had previously measured Democratic candidates’ totals in state delegate equivalents, not votes. (Republicans have a more straightforward system.) This defies the common sense “one person, one vote” standard that most of the rest of us generally accept. In 2020, they will record actual vote totals for the first time, but there are still problems. The caucus system seems to alienate people with child care issues or who work late and can’t get to the caucus place at the specific time and stay there for hours. How does this serve democracy?

Why Iowa? What reason is there beyond tradition to give this state such an outsized say? We should rotate this every four years.

The other problem is that Iowa doesn’t represent the American population as a whole very well (New Hampshire doesn’t, either). They should have the first contest in California or New York or Florida or Texas, states with larger populations and a broader cross-section of people. Iowa is overwhelmingly white, something like 85 percent, which alienates everybody else, including populations of people who vote in overwhelmingly Democratic numbers (and without whom the Democrats cannot win). The media interviews Iowa voters and it’s always the same: a sea of alabaster faces at Karen and Chad’s Grain Silo Diner.

And don’t give me this horseshit that Iowa somehow represents the “real America” because when people say an 85-percent-white state is what’s real, the implication is clear. That dog whistle is a klaxon.

It’s all real America. Iowa is real America. Maryland is real America. California is real America. New Mexico is real America. South Carolina is real America. Farms are real America. Cities are real America. Suburbs are real America. So why not share the wealth and let another state have a say in presidential nominations, one with a more diverse slate of citizens?

And don’t give me any nonsense that the Iowa caucus has to come first because it’s “tradition.” A lot of traditions are stupid and once enough people wake up to that, we stop doing them.

Susan Collins Is Concerned

As Susan Collins reads the morning newspaper, the tiniest moue of concern shadows her face like the sun momentarily dimming behind a wispy cloud in an otherwise flawless summer sky. The news today is enough to cause dyspepsia. The press is reporting John Bolton, our former national security adviser, has confirmed in a book that President Trump admitted to withholding congressionally ordered aid from Ukraine in exchange for that country investigating his potential electoral opponent.

The Maine Republican sighs. It has been a long week in the Senate. Collins and her colleagues had sat through days of speeches, with water or milk their only sustenance, as the impeachment managers laid out the case against the president. They watched endless videos of the multiple officials who testified in the House to the withholding of the aid. They listened to verbose speeches that advocated for calling witnesses for this trial.

What to do? Collins stares at her used coffee spoons and bites into a peach. She thinks about the revelations of the past month: Bolton, Parnas, the GAO report, and others. She loses herself in existential musing: Is a trial without witnesses a trial at all? She thinks about the evidentiary documents the Trump administration has refused to turn over to Congress, all those who have refused to submit to subpoenas, and her brow furrows very slightly, almost imperceptibly.

It has always been a delicate dance, her time in the Senate. Susan Collins plays the moderate, the Republican who will think long and hard about dissenting from her party line before voting with the Republicans 90 percent of the time. She is the one the other side must win over. She is the one they must fête and praise and try their best not to upset, like a soufflé one must tiptoe around so as not to deflate.

Collins sighs once again. Is it worth it, this defense of the president in the face of voluminous evidence that he solicited foreign interference in the election? Is it worth the daily harangues and harassment this man vomits out every hour on Twitter? Is it worth having a president whose theory of his own executive power basically amounts to “L'état, c'est moi”?

The Down East senator ponders all this, lost in thought.

Later in the day, the answer comes to her: Adam Schiff repeats a grossly offensive falsehood that the White House said senators’ “heads would be on pikes” if they vote to convict him. That tears it for Collins. Nothing in the past three years has offended her more.

The moderate soufflé collapses before the faint footfalls. And Susan Collins votes the way Mitch McConnell expects her to.

My Keto/Paleo/Vegan/Egg and Wine/South Beach/Juice Fast/Lamb Chop and Pineapple Diet

It’s a new year and a brand new me! A me that is achieving weight-loss goals by embarking on several diets all at once! That’s right, I’m doing keto, paleo, South Beach, Atkins and a bunch of other crap! I’ve never felt better! Or more confused!

It can be a little hectic at times, I must admit. Like, I’m doing keto, so my breakfast is bacon-spiked eggnog and prime rib topped with peanuts. It’s just enough to get me to that sweet, sweet state of ketosis. Sometimes I add a carafe of breakfast wine so I can comply with everyone’s favorite, the egg and wine diet. But my paleo advisor tells me to avoid the eggs because the cavemen didn’t eat them, so I get a little confused. I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the pounds melting off like April slush.

I’m also trying to be vegan, at least part time, so I thought I should eat some fruits and vegetables for lunch, which would also help me adhere to Fruitarianism (although, like Tom Brady, I refuse to eat strawberries). But many of the existing diets tell me these foods are verboten. I’m kind of torn because I don’t want to balloon because I ate an apple. The good news is I’m sticking with the Atkins diet, so I burned all the bread in my house in an emotional ritual. Ditto all the gluten. But then this all conflicts with the Ornish diet, which is high in carbs and low in fat. So I’m thinking of switching lunch over to three fettucine alfredo sandwiches on white bread but I’m just not sure. 

For an afternoon snack, I generally adhere to the baby food diet. I try to balance this with my foray into the cabbage soup diet. But then all this puts me in conflict with the raw food diet. What to do? How can I achieve a healthy balance?

Since I’m on the lamb chop and pineapple diet, dinner usually consists of six lamb chops and an entire pineapple. Dessert is several sticks of butter, eaten whole, with a pork soufflé. But then I’m also on Weight Watchers and NutriSystem, and they advocate a more balanced diet. Do I keep eating butter by the pound or should I add in some leafy greens? That would also conflict with my adherence to the Whole30 diet. It’s a dilemma.

And since nothing works like an elimination diet, I’m also embarking on a juice fast! When I’m not on all the other diets, I eat nothing but kale juice for one meal a day. This diet lets me have control and certainly has nothing in common with an eating disorder. While I drink my liquid kale, I listen to a motivational tape of Jillian Michaels screaming at Lizzo.

Last but not least, I eat whatever Gwyneth Paltrow tells me to eat. My total faith in her compels me to buy all her products to increase my self-wellness and my essential essence of healthfulness. I even bought her jade eggs to insert into the vagina that I do not have.

So it’s been a whirlwind with all these diets but it will be worth it when I strut out onto the beach with a 12-pack! I’m not a doctor but I did spend a few valuable hours on PubMed, which is all the scientific basis I need! Remember, the most important thing in life is being healthy looking thin!

Eternal Rest Stop

The older I get, the less interested I am in standing in line just because there’s a line for something. I thought of this over the holidays when we stopped at a rest stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Somerset on our way back from Ohio. Given that it was a Sunday afternoon of a busy travel weekend, I should not have been surprised that it was packed, but I was annoyed.

Our son wanted Popeye’s so I stood in line with him. I don’t mind waiting for him but if it had been me, I would have left without eating and either found somewhere off the turnpike to eat or gone hungry until we got home. We waited for quite some time just to order at one of those kiosks that are at fast food restaurants now. (It seems like the kiosks are solving a problem that didn’t exist because they’re not always more efficient than ordering from a person. If I just want an order of fries, it’s much quicker to just order at the counter and pay, rather than click through a bunch of screens and keep confirming my order.)

Anyway, it took awhile just to get his food. (It was worse than standing in line at Boscov’s, which is a fine store but where time screeches to a halt. I could restructure the store’s debt in the time it takes for the cashier to 1) suddenly have it dawn on her that she needs a bag for my purchase and 2) find said bag in her apparently enormous register.) Steve just got something from the convenience store. I just got Reese’s peanut butter cups, since it was quick and I wanted to get out of there and get home. I was already annoyed by the wait and of course, I then unwrapped the Reese’s and found out somebody had already smashed my candy bar. GRRRRR.

So I’m not waiting in line just because everyone else does. I wasn’t about to wait in line at the rest stop for one of Auntie Anne’s deeply misguided “soft pretzels” and I sure as shit wasn’t about to spend any time waiting for Sbarro’s. A line does not make anything more exciting for me and I’ve never been one to wait for a hot night spot or restaurant or anything like that. God, who cares? I’d rather opt for something less crowded; I’m sure that restaurant that’s only semi-sardine packed is just as good.

An hour—literally 60 minutes—after walking into the rest stop for a quick bite, we were on our way. We could have just left the turnpike and found a diner and not been annoyed in that same amount of time. 

SNOW SQUALL!

WEATHER ALERT! WEATHER ALERT! SNOW SQUALL SCHEDULED TO HIT THE AREA AT 9:15 A.M.!

Are you ready for it? Are you ready for the SNOW SQUALL? It’s coming soon! Very soon! It may have already hit your area!

Check back for specific details on what time the SNOW SQUALL will strike your area! Marking the time will help you remember where you were when the WHITE WALL OF DEATH enveloped you!

SLOW DOWN! SLOW DOWN for the SNOW SQUALL! For the love of GOD, SLOW DOWN!

WAS THE ALERT LOUD ENOUGH FOR YOU? DID YOU THINK A CHILD HAD BEEN KIDNAPPED WHEN YOU HEARD YOUR PHONE SCREAMING?

No, it’s a SNOW SQUALL, one of nature’s most dangerous phenomena! You think the Australian wildfires are bad? Well, they’ve got nothing on a few minutes of SNOW that everyone will forget about five minutes after it ends! BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES!

What are you doing? YOU’RE NOT GOING SLOW ENOUGH! SLOW DOWN HARDER!