Excerpt #1 from Escape From Chaos

Jim Hipkins, the oldest member of the gang, was a 75 year old retired Air Force Colonel. Uncle Jim, as Max called him, had flown 25 missions in the Vietnam war. Jim despised the government who, he rightly believed, had refused to recognize the contribution he and his fellow combatants had made during the Vietnam debacle. Jim had been badly injured when his plane was shot down on his 25th and last mission over Nam 45 years before. Sam, who was in his Urology residency at the University of Minnesota Health Sciences Center at the time, helped patch him up. The two had been best friends ever since and Jim had followed Sam when he and his young family had returned to California in the early 1970's. Jim opened a private security agency in Walnut Creek and had done quite well providing his services to Nordstrom's Department Store and several other high end retailers in the area. All had gone well until the east bay shoplifters decided to shift their focus from the impoverished cities of Oakland and Richmond to the more prosperous retail outlets in Walnut Creek. This, of course, was good for the private security guard business, at least initially. All went reasonably well until Jim and his employees busted three inner city blacks who were caught red handed while leaving Nordstrom's with several shopping bags full of expensive merchandise, including a $5,000 ladies hand bag, they had not paid for. The arrest was routine but what followed was not. The defendants pleaded no contest to grand theft and were sentenced to two years probation. The prosecutor for Contra Costa County had agreed to the defendants proposed plea bargain because there was no room to house the petty thieves in the Martinez County jail. The local jails in California were bursting at the seams because Governor moonbeam decided to return all prisoners, who were deemed to be nonviolent, to the local lockups in the cities and towns where they had committed their crimes. So far so good, Nordstrom's got their expensive merchandise back and the shoplifters got a slap on the wrist, business as usual in twenty-first century America. Jim's rent-a-cops got a high five for stopping another heist and, with the good publicity the episode generated in the local press, Jim picked up two more clients. Then things took an unexpected twist to the left, the hard left. It was a quite Sunday afternoon and, as was their usual custom on Sundays during the spring of each year, Sam and Uncle Jim were sitting on the deck overlooking the serine valley below the house while consuming a couple of adult beverages. Sam knew something was afoot when his dog Dukie, who was always by his side, gave a low growl deep in his throat. This was Dukie's way of telling Sam that someone was coming down the road towards the house. The next thing they knew federal agents were at the front door with a warrant for Jim's arrest. The warrant stated that Jim and his private police force had violated the inner city black's civil rights when they arrested them for shoplifting. The rest is history, the trial was held in the Federal Court House in San Francisco before Federal Judge Susan Puling. Trials by one's peers, in none homicide cases, had been abandoned several years before because of the cost involved in running traditional jury trials. The federal prosecutor produced court records showing that over the past 5 years Jim's private police force had made 562 arrests for shoplifting related offences. Prosecutor Gonzales went on to demonstrate that the vast majority of those arrested, 96% to be exact, were residents from the minority communities of Oakland, Richmond and Bay Point. Prosecutor Gonzales argued that the large number of people of color being arrested was evidence per se that the defendant and his colleagues were relying on racial profiling to make their illegal arrests. Jim's high priced lawyer, Samuel Kline, tried to object, contending that there was no evidence, what so ever, that any innocent person, irrespective of race, had ever been arrested by Jim or any member of his team of security guards. Without a second thought, Judge Puling ruled that Kline was out of order and fined him $500 for, what she said, was his trivial attempt to disrupt the proceedings. The trial was short, if not so sweet, lasting less than an hour. Judge Puling ultimately ruled that, irrespective of the guilt or innocence of the shoplifters Jim and his staff had arrested, they had been illegally detained because he had used racial profiling to select them from a crowd of other prospective shoplifters. Defense lawyer Kline made one last feeble attempt to defend his client by pointing out that the level of shoplifting by the white residents who lived in Walnut Creek and its surrounding suburbs was too low to be statistically significant. Thus, Kline argued, with respect to the crime of shoplifting, the whole concept of racial profiling was meaningless. After all, how could his client be expected to arrest locals who lived in these communities if they weren't inclined to break this particular aspect of the law? By this time Judge Puling had had enough, she found Kline in contempt of court and sentenced him to 5 days in the county jail. As they handcuffed lawyer Kline and led him to the bus that would take him to the Martinez Jail, the good Judge fined Jim $100,000 and sentenced him to 600 hours of community service. With that, she slammed down her gavel bringing the proceeding to an end and called for the next case on her calendar. The verdict in the case, which was ultimately upheld by the Ninth District Circus Court of Appeals in San Francisco as well as the United States Supreme Court, changed the law forever. Before the Puling ruling, it was unlawful to use racial profiling to apprehend suspected law breakers. After the Puling ruling it became illegal to arrest individuals of a minority group for a crime if the overall percentage arrested for the offence exceeded their rank in the population as a whole. This was interpreted to mean that, in California, where minorities make up 50% of the population, it was evidence per se of racial profiling if more than 50% of those arrested for a specific crime were from the minority community. The states of Washington and Oregon adapted similar anti-discriminatory racial profiling legislation shortly thereafter as did most of the Northeastern states. Once again California had lead the way, taking judicial lunacy to an entirely new level, and a large segment of the clueless nation, had followed. Six months later Judge Puling disappeared after she left her home on Russian Hill one foggy Monday morning to drive to the San Francisco Federal Courthouse. No trace of her or her shinny new black Mercedes SUV was ever found, it was like she and her vehicle had disappeared from the face of the earth. Jim swore that he had no idea what had happened to the judge, but couldn't vouch for the innocence of several of his former employees who had been extremely pissed off when Jim was forced closed his security guard business and they lost their jobs. Sam later came to the conclusion that it was, more likely than not, Judge Puling had become the first casualty of the Second American Revolution. Well, she might have been the first, but she certainly was not be the last. Uncle Jim paid the 100 grand fine but never served an hour of community service. Once the feds got their hands on his money, they seemed to lose interest in him. Within a week he had closed the doors of his thriving private security business and discharged his entire work force of 22 employees. Nordstrom's also stopped doing business in Walnut Creek two months later, after several more robberies convinced management that they could not continue to operate a successful high end retail outlet in the Walnut Creek area. The department store's closure added an additional 225 people to the unemployment lines in Contra Costa county. Tiffanies followed suit shortly thereafter as did Davidson and Licht, a high-end jewelry store that had been a fixture in Walnut Creek since 1916. If you wanted to buy a Christmas present for your wife or girlfriend in Walnut Creek that year it wasn't going to be anything very fancy, more than likely it was going to be of the dime store variety. Go to my web site to learn more about Escape From Chaos at www.boobsbymerrill.com

America's First Black President

The people of Oz had lived for thousands of years in a land of milk and honey. It always had been their practice to work hard and save their money, putting it away for a rainy day. During the past 50 to 60 years, however, the industrious nature of the citizens of Oz slowly had changed, possibly due to something some evil demon had put in their drinking water. Or, Maybe, someone had cast a spell over them. No one knew for sure what had brought about the change. It was similar to a hive of honey bees that had been infected by a deadly virus that turned worker bees into drones, whose only purpose was to mate with the queen and consume the hives increasingly meager recourses. A hive like this, of course, was doomed to failure. But the Ozian's couldn't see what was happening to them, and like lemmings blindly running to their deaths over the side of a cliff, continued in their self destructive ways, hoping to beat France and Greece in the race to national irrelevance. And so it came to be, the people of Oz became increasingly fat and lazy as they sat back and watched their once prosperous nation deteriorate before their very eyes. But this tendency to slothfulness was not what ultimately did them in. No, it was their tendency to elect unworthy leaders that led to their ultimate demise. It began when they sent the socialist Woodrow Wilson to the White House and the folly continued when they elected Presidents Roosevelt, Johnson and the peanut farmer Carter. The leadership of these ultra liberal politicians, supported by the leftist dimwits and dingbats in the House and Senate, left the land of Oz swimming in a sea of red ink before you could say Jack Robison. But then, when things could hardly have gotten any worse, they made the biggest mistake of all, they elected their first black president. The sheeple of Oz ignored the fact that Senator Obama had been raised by a radical liberal mother and a Muslin communist father. Just as they overlooked his ties to the leaders of the cop killing Weather Underground's William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. It made even less difference to them, that president to be Obama, had sat in the pews of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years, while soaking up every word of the black leaders anti-Oz rhetoric. No, all that seemed to matter to the naive citizens of Oz was that the man they hoped to elect president was black. The fact that he was somewhat of a comical figure with his large misshapen and mismatched ears seemed only to endear him to the masses, the majority of whom would not rest until they had made him president. So, Obama became president of Oz and immediately began to change it into a country of his own liking. He took over General Electric and General Motors, demanded that the latter make electric golf carts disguised to look like actual cars, except that they didn't have real motors and wouldn't go very far on a charge of electricity. When it was determined that no one would buy the electric go-carts, their dear black leader insisted that GM give the fake cars away. The banks were the next to go. The former community organizer from Chicago's eastside, now the President of Oz, forced the banks to make home loans to anyone who wished to purchase a home, irrespective of whether or not they had a job or the means to pay for the dwelling. This led to the collapse of the housing market and sent the country into the worst recession since Oz's great depression 150 years before. The President's wife Mooch-chelle, who had thighs the size of medium sized redwood trees and liked barbecued ribs better than anything in the world, spent most of her time flying all over the world on Air force two at taxpayers' expense. She was accompanied by an entourage of camp followers, the likes of which had not been seen since the reign of England's King Henry the Eighth. When not on vacation the first lady grew vegetables in the White House garden and led the campaign to reform the school lunch programs in the land of Oz. This crusade was a miserable failure since most of the children, including their child President, preferred pizza and hotdogs too turnip greens and raw carrots. As time went on, the first black President's appearance began to take a turn for the worse. His face, the main feature of which had always been his lopsided elephant like ears, began, because of his incessant lying, to resemble that of the cartoon character Pinocchio. His big ears were no longer such a big deal, as his nose continued to lengthen with each passing day. This, of course, was an emperor's clothes situation and no one in his staff of advisors, or any member of the press, dared to mention the first black President's ever-enlarging Pinocchio like nose. Things came to a head, when the President's snoozle became so long that it interfered with his ability to read a teleprompter. His inability to use the teleprompter was a disaster because Oz's first black president didn't have the ability to form meaningful words, much less sentences, if left to his own devices. So ended, the reign of Oz's first black president. He left office in disgrace and returned to Chicago where he became the city's second black mayor. The first one, of course, was in prison with most of the state's previous liberal goveners. Proving once again, that you didn't have to know how to form words or meaningful sentences to be the mayor of a large city in the land of Oz.

The Dingbat Twins

THE DINGBAT TWINS The luxurious 230 seat passenger plane was sitting first in line to take off at the runway reserved for government dignitaries and other members of the elite class at the Dulles International Airport in Washington DC. The planes 12 person crew included a master chef, a wine steward, two serving people dressed in tuxedos, as well as speaker Pelosi's personal masseuse, Philip. Mary, the speakers $250 an hour hair stylist had fell ill at the last moment and couldn't make the trip. The airplanes co-pilot knocked politely on the door to the passenger compartment and was ushered to the plush black leather seats where Speaker Pelosi and Senator Boxer were sitting. Each had a large glass of $438 a bottle aged single malt scotch whiskey in their hands, Pelosi's was already half empty and she appeared to be a bit tipsy. "Permission to take off Speaker Pelosi," the Air force colonel said. He kept his eyes on the floor as he spoke, as a show of deference to his prestigious passengers. Everyone knew that the two liberal politicians hated the military and the speaker's response was not entirely unexpected. "Well, of course you can take off, you moron, what have you been waiting for?" she snapped. "Do I have to tell you everything? Now get back in the cockpit and get this thing off the ground! I've a good mind to have you court-martialed, and I will if you don't smarten up." The colonel bowed slightly and turned to walk away. "And you tell the captain that I expect a smooth ride this time. I won't tolerate any more of that turbulence you subjected us to last time! My nieces and nephews were sick for a week after what you put us through." "Don't you just hate those military types Babs? Lord knows I do, with their stupid uniforms and better than thou attitudes." "Yes, and I can hardly stand it, Nancy, when they come to testify before the senate, with their condescending attitudes and all. One of those fools even had the nerve to call me ma'am at one of the hearing last year. Who do they think they are treating elected public officials like us in such a disrespectful manner? Just who do they think pays their salaries anyway. Well, his career in the military is over, I saw to that! "Good for you Babs' low-lives like that need to be kept in their place, that's for sure." I don't know how this country could survive without your steadfast leadership in the Senate." "Oh Nancy, aren't you just so kind, but you're the brilliant one! Just think, convincing those morons that they should vote for Obama's Health Care Bill before they had even read it. Now that was a stroke of pure genius. You will go down as the greatest speaker ever for pulling off that one, no doubt about that, none at all." "Oh, it was nothing really Babs, anyone could have done it." "Anyway, its nearly time for dinner. I hope you like Maine lobster, that's what we are having. I just know you are going to love the champagne, its Perrier-Jouet 1945. It costs $5,000 a bottle," she giggled, "but, of course you have to buy a case to get it at that price." "Pretty expensive," Nancy, "must be nice to have a rich husband." "Heavens to Betsy, Babs, if it wasn't for the business I sent his way, we wouldn't have a pot to piss in, I can assure you of that! Anyway, I would never spend that kind of money on anything, let alone a bottle of overpriced French wine. I hate the damned French almost as much as I despise the military. No, the sheeple that contribute their hard earned dollars to my campaign fund paid for the wine as well as the lobster. Hell, they pay for damn near everything. That's if I can't find a way to wheezel it out of the government." "Well, traveling with you certainly is a treat, Nancy, I just hate flying commercial these days. I fly first class, of course, and buy up all the first cabin seats so I don't have to mingle with the other passengers, Lord knows what you might catch from those peasants. But it's still such a hassle, getting to the airport and going through security and all." "God, I know what you mean, Babs. As you know, I had to give up most of my perks, including the plane, when we lost control of the house in 2010. I thought having to go commercial again would be the end of me, I really did!" "That must have been awful, Nancy, the least that meany Boehner could have done was let you keep the plane! Just think of it, and after all you have given to this country, where would we be now without your insightful leadership all these years. I tell you, there just no justice in this world anymore, none at all!" "Well, I begged him to let me keep the plane, I even shed a few tears. But he, being the SOB he is, wouldn't hear of it, said it didn't look right to have someone in a leadership position flying around in a 230 seat private jet at taxpayers expense, especially with so many out of work and surviving on food stamps. There was just no reasoning with the guy. Oh, he did offer me let me use a smaller plane, but I refused his offensive jester, recognizing it for the slight that it was. The very idea of having to downsizing to a 20 seat aircraft, the nerve of the guy." "I admire your courage and steadfast resolve, Nancy, I think you have been very brave about the whole thing. It must have been very hard on you and your family too." "Yes it was, looking back on it now, I'm kind of surprised that I was able to make it through those dark days as minority leader. I still have nightmares about the weekly flights on those awful commercial airplanes. Having to wait in those endless lines at the airports and being screened as if I were a common farm hand. I tell you it was downright humiliating, that's what it was. Fortunately, I wasn't subjected to as many personal searches or pat downs as I was in my younger days, but it still was a terrible experience being herded around like a bunch of cattle." "Yes, public figures like us pay a heavy price for the indispensible service we provide our country, but that's our lot in life and we just have to make the best of it Nancy." At that point the head waiter approached the two dingbats and announced that their lobsters were about to be served in the planes lavish main cabin. They staggered to the dining room chattering away like magpies who had gorged themselves on to many fermented Christmas berries and were oblivious of the world around them.