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The Pane Glass War
Our Government at Work

Robert W. Gallant

Prologue

    It all began quietly and without undue fanfare. Senator Al Ways Waist, chairman of the Congressional Armed Services Committee, added a paragraph to the annual appropriations bill, requiring the military to evaluate the use of reinforced window panes for border security, arguing that this approach would not only seal off the border but also allow the military to still see what the enemy was doing on the other side. The paragraph also stipulated that the window panes must conform to the specifications of Pane Glass, a company located in Senator Waist’s home state and best known for its slogan, “You don’t know what real pane is until you use one of our products”.

Eight Months Later

    General Mishap climbed from the armored vehicle, surveyed the huge nine foot tall by eighty-two foot long glass glistening in the sunshine, and frowned.
    “Major, it’s damn hard to see what the enemy is doing with that glare,” he growled.
    Major Problems hustled over and handed him an elaborate pair of goggles. “The Combat Innovations and Toilet Design Center developed these. The wearer has a clear view, because it flushes away the glare. We ordered one million of them in case we become engaged in combat. I’ve also brought in an additional combat company to reinforce our current token force. You can see them marching up the road now to take defensive positions.”
    “Excellent planning, major. How much enemy activity have we seen?”
    “Surprisingly, none up to now.”
    “That’s worrisome. They would hide only if they are planning a sneak attack.”
    A soldier came running up. “Sir, the enemy is moving troops onto the other side of the glass barrier.”
    “Get your one tank up to the barrier and have it point its gun toward the enemy as it moves back and forth along the barrier.” General Mishap commanded. “We’ll shove a show of force in their face.”
    Major Problems looked admiringly at General Mishap. “They’re doing exactly what you predicted, Sir. And you don’t hesitate to respond with action.”
    “That’s why I’m a general and not the president. All right, soldier, what do they have?”
    “We see one armored vehicle and a group of soldiers marching toward the barrier.”
    A moment later, the soldier shouted. “Sir, our observer has spotted an enemy tank on our left side.” Then he shouted again. “The observer in the middle has also spotted a tank.” His voice quivered. “And now one has been seen on the right.”
    “They have us outgunned.” General Mishap muttered. “What are their troops doing and how many do they have?”
    “Still marching toward the barrier,” the soldier replied. “Our observer estimates about the equivalent of a company in size. Also, the middle observer and left observer have seen another tank. But there’s something strange about their troops. The observer says they look very similar to our soldiers.”
    “Damn.” General Mishap growled. “Terrorist infiltrators. That’s a prelude to a major assault.” He punched a number on his cell phone. “This is General Mishap. Prepare for an air strike and deployment of an airborne division immediately. I’ll give you more details shortly.”
    “I’m deploying our new combat company into position for battle.” Major Problems shouted. “Those enemy bastards won’t get past us without a lot of casualties.”
    “The enemy is also deploying into attack position,” the soldier called out.
    “Get the fighter bombers in the air now and the airborne division headed toward us.” General Mishap shouted into his cell phone.
    Another soldier rushed up. “I figured out what’s happening.”
    Major Problems glared at him. “Sergeant, we’re in the middle of high level decisions here. Get back to your squad and fight for your country. Leave the big decisions to the men chosen to lead their troops.”
    “But this is important, Sir,” the sergeant persisted.
    “It better be,” the major growled.
    “The barrier shield is not a pane of glass. It’s a mirror.” the sergeant gasped.
    Major Problems glared. “Are you insane? You think I’ve been here for a month guarding this border and didn’t notice that it was a mirror? We ordered a pane of glass, not a mirror. It was certified and accepted by the General Accounting Office. In fact, a bonus was paid for delivering it only two months late and less than twenty percent over budget.”
    “But look at it, Sir.” The sergeant motioned toward the barrier. “It shows you and me standing here. It shows General Mishap. Every time our tank passes by, the observer reports another enemy tank.”
    Major Problems turned toward the general. “By God, he’s right. Everything that we thought was enemy activity were just reflections of us. None of it is actually happening. We almost launched a war for the wrong reasons. What a disaster that would have been.”
    “That’s not the real disaster,” General Mishap replied. “The real disaster is that we don’t know what the enemy behind that barrier is actually doing. We could be face to face with the greatest threat of this decade and not even know it.”
    “Oh wow,” the major said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “That’s why you’re not a general,” General Mishap replied.
    General Mishap paced back and forth in front of the barrier. “We need to somehow determine what the enemy is doing on the other side.”
    “I’ll walk around the end of the barrier panel and look,” offered the sergeant.
    The general shook his head. “No. That’s exactly the provocation they’re trying to trick us into. They’ll launch an attack, saying we invaded them first. I’ll rush through an emergency authorization to build an observation tower.”
    The sergeant stepped up to the major again. “One of our men has been on the other side of the barrier. They were playing pitch and catch and the ball rolled past the barrier. He went to retrieve it.”
    Major Problems scowled. “Without my authorization? I’ll court martial the bastard. He’s just lucky he didn’t provoke a war. Bring him here.”
    “He’s in the medical tent. He was injured while on the other side, but he says he saw activity.”
    “They tried to kill him, but he fought his way back,” General Mishap said. “Fought his way back, despite terrible injuries, to bring us vital information. I want to talk to that brave soldier.”
    The major nodded. “The man deserves a medal.”
    In the tent, General Mishap shook the soldier’s hand. “The doctor says you’re going to live.”
    “Yeah,” the soldier replied. “I twisted my ankle when I stepped in a hole. They were digging a lot of holes.”
    “Probably for burying land mines,” the major said.
    “Or for missile silos,” General Mishap replied. “Okay, soldier, tell us anything you can about the people there.”
    “They said they were members of a WMD team.”
    The general grimaced. “They openly admitted they were working on Weapons of Mass Destruction?”
    “No, Sir,” the soldier replied. “They said they were members of the Wholesome Meals Dieticians team and were planting vegetables and potatoes.”
    “Clever subterfuge, but we’re not falling for that old story.” General Mishap punched in a number on his cell phone. “This is General Mishap. I need to talk to the President immediately. I know he’s always in meetings with Congressional leaders on deficit reduction, debt ceiling, and tax increase crap, but this is urgent.”
    He scowled. “Well, if he’s not in the meeting, why can’t I talk to him now?”
    He listened and then growled. “He certainly has a telephone in there. We are facing a major military confrontation and I need authorization to fight back now.”
    He waited a moment, listened, and then replied. “I’ve had the same problem, Mr. President. Prunes always worked best for me. We’ve just uncovered a covert operation by a foreign enemy to launch Weapons of Mass Destruction against us. The damage to cities, loss of lives, and disruption of sports programs could be astronomical. They always blame the President when that happens. So I want to launch a full scale invasion now, before they can finish their preparations.”
    He listened again and then turned to the major. “He wants to know which country we’re talking about. He says if it’s Mexico, it could cost him a lot of the Hispanic vote.”
    The major shrugged. “I don’t know which country it is. They just sent me here to guard the border where the glass barrier had been erected. Never told me who it was protecting us from. But it’s been expensive for the soldiers to get illegal drugs and contractors say they can’t find cheap labor.”
    The general shifted his attention back to the cell phone. “It’s not Mexico. I’ll have to get back to you on who it is. But I need first strike war approval now.”
    He listened and then replied. “I know they say you can’t authorize going to war without the approval of Congress. But I plan on a surge that will overwhelm the enemy. It will all be over before your political opponents have time to protest. Once we’ve won the war, you’ll be praised as the gutsy President whose quick action saved the nation from a looming WMD catastrophe, rather than an inept politician who continues to dodge difficult national deficit decisions.” He leaned over toward the major and whispered. “George W. was my kind of President. Just say WMD and he’d have bombers in the air. His father was a good President but wanted to know who we’re going to destroy before he approved it. This one figures if he talks long enough, either the problem will go away or someone else will figure out what to do or he’ll find some group to blame.”
    He shifted back to the cell phone, listened, and then replied.. “I figure somewhere between ten billion and five-hundred billion dollars. And we’ll commit to bringing home thirty thousand troops before the end of the year. That’s not a problem. We simply send forty thousand more than we need. Let me remind you again, Mr. President, this war could make you look like a real leader rather than an indecisive wimp.”
    “Thank you, Mr. President.” General Mishap punched off his cell phone and turned to the major. “The President says go do it. We can’t openly take the credit, but you and I both know that we made it possible for the United States to fight another war.”
    He started to leave the tent and then turned back to Major Problems. “Find out which country is on the other side of the barrier. The President says the damn news media will harass him until he tells them who we’ve gone to war with.”

Two Months Later

    The President toured Fresno, California, telling the shocked residents that the federal government would move quickly to help them rebuild their city, devastated by the preemptive surge attack. General Mishap continued to insist that he misunderstood Major Problems message, thinking he said France instead of Fresno. If it had been France, those wimps would have surrendered the first week, the General added.
    At the Rio Grande River, the Texas Border Patrol commander stepped up to the podium and gazed out at the mass of news media people and illegal immigrants selling tacos. “I’m pleased to announce that the leftover barrier panes installed along our border have greatly enhanced our ability to block both illegal aliens and drug smuggling. In the past two weeks alone, we have apprehended four busloads of illegals while they were stopped at the barrier to allow the women to comb their hair and put on lipstick. Also, a heavily armed group of Mexican Cartel drug smugglers ended up in a furious three hour battle with a seemingly equivalently armed border patrol. They finally fled in disarray, having two men killed trying to rush the border guards with a flame thrower, and another nine injured by ricocheting bullets. I must say that all of us are impressed by the amazing ability of those barriers to withstand brutal punishment. The CEO of Pane Glass said the pane material was originally developed as part of an effort to supply glass to the “IN CASE OF FIRE, BREAK GLASS AND PULL LEVER” market. While the unfortunate burning down of three apartment buildings limited their profitability in that business, it ended up being a godsend for the military and the border patrol. We believe the heavy losses sustained in the battle by the Cartel will make them abandon efforts to move drugs across our border. So you dumbass Californians better put up a similar border or you’re going to have a lot of traffic. ”
    His speech was interrupted by an officer of the Sierra Club, who called installation of the barrier panes a potential environmental disaster. “Because of hungry illegal aliens crossing the border, the Mexican Turtle and Hacienda Snail are already on the Endangered Species list,” he shouted. “Now those turtles and snails face the added danger of smashing head-on into the barrier. Additionally, the EPA reports a big increase in the number of rattlesnakes with severe headaches. This data can only be explained by acceleration in global warming.”
    In related news, the Supreme Court released its eagerly anticipated decision on the legality of the new Arizona law encouraging police officers to check the immigration status of Hispanic women with neatly combed hair and well applied lipstick. In a 7 to 6 decision, the justices voted along ideological lines that the law was legal. At a hastily called press conference, the Chief Justice denied reports that a fight had erupted when Justice Scalia slapped Justice Elena Kagan with the right wing of a roasted turkey and she retaliated by clobbering him with the far left side of a union picket sign.
    At the press conference, the Chief Justice was interrupted by the Sixty Minutes CBS anchorman. “Do you think that American news media is too stupid at math to suspect the supposed 7 to 6 vote? You only have nine justices. So how could you end up with an even dozen votes?”
    The anchorman went on to say that Sixty Minutes had just taped a scathing expose of the Supreme Court’s strange vote total. To give the program strong credibility, they had brought in Professor N. Competent, Dean Of Lots Of Things at the Diploma Duplication University in the Cayman Islands. Professor N. Competent has a wall lined with doctoral degrees from seven Ivy League schools, Stanford University, Notre Dame, and Phoenix Correspondence School. Additionally, he was a 2009 Nobel Prize winner for his groundbreaking thesis confirming the theory that ‘Complex data is easier to understand if you write down the conclusions before studying the information’.
    The Chief Justice leaned over the top of the podium. “Your problem is that you used the wrong expert. This is a legal matter and only a lawyer could provide the proper critique. All nine justices graduated from Ivy League universities with degrees in law. Thus we represent the absolute pinnacle of legal brilliance. If you had consulted a similar expert, he would tell you this. A vote of 7 to 6 is a total of...” he paused to punch in numbers on his handheld calculator. “...thirteen. In all legal cases, lawyers receive thirty percent of whatever is there. That leaves...” he punched in more numbers. “...seventy percent for everyone else. Seventy percent of thirteen is 9.1, statistically matching the total of the nine Supreme Court Justices votes.”
    The Chief Justice smiled as murmurs of awe came from the crowd. “Now you understand why we insist that all judges at all meaningful levels must be lawyers. Otherwise, the entire legal system would collapse into chaos. That would destroy our fundamental right to have lengthy, seemingly endless trials; for criminals to go free based on vague legalities; to make all documents and legislation voluminous and incomprehensible; and for lawyers to get rich from frivolous lawsuits.”
    In other news, the President again refuted allegations of the Republican leadership that he had “grimaced and rudely walked out of the three hundred and twenty second meeting on deficit reduction”. He had merely made a necessary trip to the restroom as a result of considerable pruning over the past two days. He quickly reassured anxious senior citizens, government employees, and big contributors that his use of the word pruning referred to a personal need and certainly did not mean he was now going to reduce the rapidly increasing federal government spending.
    MSNBC said that a survey of their staff indicated that seventy percent of them strongly supported the President’s explanation. Twenty-eight percent said they couldn’t give an answer until they determined whether the current president was a wonderful dedicated liberal or a mean right wing extremist conservative. MSNBC said it was dealing with those who knew the political status of the current President but still said the President was wrong.
    Fox News Network said that their poll showed seven out of eight people blamed the President for the lack of progress on deficit reduction. Realizing that they had somehow queried a Democrat, they revised the poll to show seven out of seven.
    The Atlanta public school system reported that providing a federal government tutor to help students during standardized tests had virtually eliminated cheating by teachers and had also slightly increased test scores. The director of the Federal Education Department said those encouraging results meant they would use this approach in their Every Child Shoved Ahead Regardless Of Capability program, with a goal of having seventy percent of all students scoring above average on federal tests by 2020. “I know that many of you say it is impossible to have seventy percent scoring above average,” she continued, “but we firmly believe it can be done in just..uh..whatever number of years there are between 2011 and 2020.”

Epilogue

    The President expressed pleasure at the quick rebuilding effort in Fresno during a brief trip away from the daily debt reduction/tax increase/government spending cuts meetings with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders. Before flying out for Washington, he also told workers to remove the “Mission Accomplished” banner still fluttering from the gutted city hall and presented a medal to the soldier who first notified his commanding officer that they were attacking a place in California. That information was rushed quickly through the Pentagon, resulting in an end to the attacks seventeen days later.
    Asked by the news media how he knew it was California, the soldier, Private Dudley, said he noticed that there were Medical Marijuana Stores on virtually every street corner. His commander was initially dubious. But the commander believed him after Dudley pointed out the one billion dollar public school system elementary school with plush swimming pools, gourmet cafeterias, a mini Disneyland, and imported Italian marble hallways; all designed to make students want to stay in school. Some had already been in the elementary school for nine years, proof of the idea’s merit. The pending bankruptcy of the city as two more schools were being built was attributed to the refusal of voters to triple the city tax.
    Asked how his tank managed to be the first to break through the defenses and reach the center of the city, Dudley said he realized that, with three of them in the tank, they could use the Carpool Lane. He chuckled as he related watching his gunner spot a man alone in a car, a clear violation of Carpool Lane rules. “Always hated those cheaters,” the gunner said, as he blew the car over eight lanes of the congested, deadstop freeway. “The only delay we encountered,” Dudley said, “was when I stopped after plowing through a traffic jam, to push the crushed vehicles aside so others behind me could continue into the city. I did it because I felt kinda bad that I was texting while driving the tank and didn’t see the traffic jam until I had already hit it.”
    In another texting-related incident, the President returned from another pruning-related trip to find all the congressmen from both parties gone, except for one New York Democrat who was busy texting and didn’t notice everyone had left. When questioned by the press as to what was so important to text, he said he was briefing the National Defense Center. Shortly afterwards, a high school student working on a class computer assignment inadvertently hacked into the National Defense Center secret files and discovered that the congressman’s briefing was actually a series of pictures of himself in Michael Jordan briefs sent to all the women employees. The Congressman said that he had not intended for them to receive the pictures. He was actually putting them on Facebook, but for some reason Facebook forwarded them into the top secret files of the National Defense Center. Congressmen in both parties expressed outrage at the computer breach, declaring that Facebook needed to get their computer system straightened out so that it didn’t keep hacking into confidential government files.
    After walking out of the meeting, Congressman Bonehead, majority leader for the Republicans, again reiterated their proposal to cut spending by five trillion dollars over the next ten years, beginning with ten billion the first year and rapidly escalating by making some kind of significant reductions in spending, to be determined sometime in the future. The Sixty Minutes anchorman announced that their program would do a scathing expose of that proposal. They would again draw on a world renowned expert, Professor Diddily Squat, Dean of Economics and Heroin Procurement, at Afghanistan Pollyanna Tech. Professor Diddily Squat won a Nobel Prize for his brilliant thesis “My Economics Program, based on having everyone work for the government, will assure that every nation will have balanced budgets, economic growth, and well being for all citizens”. Greece was the first to put Diddily Squat’s plan into action seven years ago. Spain and Italy adopted many parts of the program two years later. When told that all three nations were currently bankrupt, Professor Diddily Squat declared that the countries had only reached having 50% of their people working for the government and that they needed to quickly escalate to 100% to avoid further fiscal problems. When asked about the Sixty Minutes program, Congressman Bonehead replied, “I don’t know Diddily Squat, but stand firmly behind this proposal.” The proposal was developed at a Tee Party meeting, where they were distributing tee shirts with the slogan, “No matter how bad things are, government run by the Tee Party can make things worse”. Later, a Tee Party representative claimed that the last word was supposed to be “work” rather than “worse”. He said the mistake was made because of language misinterpretation by the Bangladesh company that manufactured the tee shirts. The Tee Party promised to furnish, free of charge, MarksALot crayons produced in China ,so people could cover up the wrong word and write in the correct one. They also began distributing tee shirts with the “Buy American” slogan.
    Meanwhile, Al Gore praised Santa Claus for trying his proposal to switch from using a sleigh drawn by reindeer to a GM all electric Volt. He admitted that the frequent stops to recharge the Volt had slowed down the delivery of gifts to children, but that Santa Claus insisted he would be finished delivering no later than mid March. Santa Claus said Gore’s addition of a solar panel on top of the Volt had not helped since he only delivered at night. Gore said it was unfortunate that there wasn’t a full moon on Christmas Eve. He proposed having two air force B-47 planes circling above the Volt at all times with large electrical batteries and long extension cords so that the Volt could be recharged while in flight. ”I’m just trying to save the planet,” he commented.
    In a surprise move, the President and Congressman Bonehead announced an agreement to resolve the debt limit increase/government spending/deficit reduction impasse at the conclusion of the six hundred and thirty-second meeting. The President will accept Bonehead’s proposal, which would lead to a rapid reduction in the national debt by 2050. In exchange, Congressman Bonehead agreed to the President’s proposal to add three-thousand new government administrators, authorized to hire as many additional employees as needed to drive a relentless program aimed at reducing government spending and excess manpower.
    When interviewed by the news media, most taxpayers said the results of the legislation would be similar to the results of the President’s pruning.



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