The news started being filled with success stories of entrepreneurs, while we also quit seeing racist and intolerant minorities showing up with sob stories.

Factually, most of this was the Mainstream Media trying to get ratings out of controversy - the more they stirred it up, the longer it lasted. They had some funny idea that they could "control the narrative." Far from the truth.

"Can't we all just get along?" was the phrase we started using - and the history of that statement speaks volumes about how minority "oppression" is exploited by various sources for their own good.

The LGBT community had to swallow a bitter pill - that they had to tolerate other's beliefs just as they sought (and marched and boycotted) to get theirs.

Because you win in the courts doesn't mean you ever won over the majority which put that law into action originally. Hearts and minds are different things. Such take time to change and to heal.

The Mainstream Media was always pitting the overpopulated coasts against the more traditional middle (Flyover Country.) And they held to this odd-ball concept that controversy kept their advertisers (mostly drug companies) happy.  Makes sense, in a perverse fashion.

The more interesting point was how people were watching less and less news in favor of stories which they could get online that weren't so disaster-driven.

Mostly, our work in Washington was to get the government out of the meddling business. Since that "community-organizer-in-chief" (aka "reverse-discriminator-in-chief") left, things calmed down rapidly. When the White House was asked for a comment, the standard line was to ask a question back - such as, "What would you have us say?" Then a conversation would ensue - the PR person was coached to encourage discussion amongst the reporters - and the whole thing was covered on CSPAN so people could make  up their own mind.

(Our own website would often excerpt these, posting to YouTube and then embedding it for all to see. Very calming when your favorite reporter has a personal paradigm-shift on national television.)

Press Conferences Gave Back

In fact, my press conferences (held each Ides of the month, poetically) got  quite interesting. The ground rule was set: For every question, the person on the podium was then able to ask that person a question.

Long "exclusive" interviews were filmed by CSPAN as well as that station, so that the entire give-and-take was recorded, unedited. Generally, the interviewer got 25 questions and I got 25 questions.

This got real interesting after awhile, where reporters were asked personal questions about how they personally felt about things, and their own employer's policies. This kept my staff busy researching reporters and the media - and those reporters soon learned about living in glass houses.

Soon, some reporters quit asking for interviews. And the ones that did (and could thrive in that give-and-take) usually got a bigger following on the social media.

Minority Intolerance

Because a person was "gay" or "islamist" meant no difference to me or to the government. The laws of the land were as they were. When a person was discriminated against, then they could seek relief from the courts. But where a person discriminated against others in order to push forward some extremist-minority view which attempted to force others to change their own beliefs, then the shoe was on the other foot.

Gays had no right to force a person to sell stuff to them. Like the old ploy of the government forcing contraception coverage on religious groups. Commerce is not a natural right or law. It's governed by man-made laws.

Chiefly, we stayed out of things and referred them to state and local areas for resolution. And we encouraged outside groups trying to take advantage of a scene in a local area to "butt out." That community needed to resolve it's problems on it's own. It's been the natural order of things since history started being written.

Governments only exist through vast majority opinion. Minorities should be heard, and also have their rights to exist and to believe as they want. But you can't use any government to force someone else to change their beliefs just for your own personal benefit.

Those who were shouting loudest for tolerance usually ended up exposed as hypocritically intolerant of those who didn't believe as they did.

Weird, huh?

It just goes back to what a person says. You get back what you give out. Be supportive and understanding, and you'll get more of this back in your life. Let people choose their own beliefs - and as long as this doesn't deny natural rights and laws to others, then you can pretty much do what you want.

It was our job to move the government back to honoring natural rights and laws as much as possible, just like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence states. A right to the pursuit of happiness.

Not so remarkably, revenue jumped up without an increase in taxes. More jobs opened up, less crime happened.

And yes, we pretty much ignored the U.N. - other than holding ambassadors responsible for their staff's parking tickets (those that could come to the U.S. because they weren't terrorism sponsors.)

Lots of commerce for everyone. American dream and all that.

"Jim and ghost huck finn" by Edward Winsor Kemble

Some comments by Mark Twain through the eyes of his character “Pap Finn,” the father of Huckleberry Finn.

Note: while this contains the correct dialect of this era, some of the terms may not sit well with our more “enlightened” age. In fact, this is from one of the most banned books of all time, while pointedly anti-racial. If you have eyes which are overly sensitive to patois, please avert them.

 "Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like. Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him—a man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for HIM and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call THAT govment! That ain't all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. Here's what the law does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A man can't get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I TOLD 'em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come a-near it agin. Them's the very words. I says look at my hat—if you call it a hat—but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. Look at it, says I— such a hat for me to wear—one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.

 "Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver- headed cane—the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me —I'll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger—why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out o' the way. I says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and sold?—that's what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the State six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. There, now—that's a specimen. They call that a govment that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the State six months. Here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and—"

 Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language—mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.

From the book “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” - available at most booksellers and Gutenberg.org.

Solving the terrorist franchises.

(photo: Gulsen Ozcan)

Simple: paid bounties to informants for bombing sites.

Then go in with drones and bomb the location. Expensive, but simple. Spread all that money the Fed has been printing around. Of course, we had to work to verify the site. And sent leaflets 24 hours in advance - or so. But the terrorists tended to take each other out with this scene.

Sure, the local graft and corruption tended to grab all the money they could.

Until they got some radar and anti-drone technology that worked, this tended to solve things pretty well.

The other scene, as mentioned earlier, was to arm all the neighboring states as best we could.

Oh, and did I mention we went ahead and bombed all the oil fields that the terrorists took over? Also bombed any airfields.

The biggest problem was getting peace to take over long enough to rebuild their agriculture - which takes years, if not decades. But that is the underlying problem to all these failed states - they simply can't raise enough nutrient-dense food and so get all violent as a solution.

The only immediate solution is to cordon those areas off and deliver food to the peripheral areas where it's possible.

Meanwhile, it was like that area was a plague. Once a person went in, they generally didn't come out again. Our policy on Visa's and passports were exact. You go, you stay. The few exceptions were extremely hard to obtain and took a very long time to vet and verify. Sorry.  Just the way it is. Terrorism tends to be contagious.

That policy also included reporters. After they went through that vetting process once, they didn't want to go back again. Very uncomfortable being away from friends and family that long. Months. MRE's get boring after awhile, as well as only being able to watch Fox News...

Oh, and we did work to get terrorism banned off the Internet by the various companies - hate crime.

We started winning, eventually. And the rest of the world got on with it.

Constitutional Crisis Averted. 

Cracker-barrel Humorist Takes Office.

(Photo: Alejandro Meteos)

No one was hurt in this process - the ASPCA was happy with how the pets were treated. But the nation had an wake-up moment.

The Vice President had been making inane goofs for years. Mis-speaking, etc. Really embarrassing gaffes at times. Some just quietly referred to his being an "old white guy."

It was in his medical checkups which lead to some problems. Seems he had something going on with his brain that wasn't normal Some said it was too many years in the Senate, which had done that to a few people. The bottom line is that he was getting more demented all the time. Meanwhile, he was going to get worse at embarrassing people and himself - and the Administration.

So he resigned "to spend more time with his family."

How I got here.

Kind of a funny story. You see, I've never even campaigned for a job. The most public post I ever did was a junior member of a local water board in a rural county. Otherwise, I kept mostly to the farm and out of politics. Other than cussing their stupidity when I listened to what passes for "news", I kept pretty quiet.

It was the Governor who set me up. Seems a representative quit (signed up with a Washington lobbyist firm) and my name came up as an "Independent" who could fill the shoes for the rest of that term. So there I was, a greenhorn in Washington, nearly as naive as Jimmy Stewart's character.

When the VP had to be replaced, someone came up with this great idea to put me in there.

You see, I have this great habit of responding to the press with quotes from midwestern humorists like Mark Twain and Will Rogers - sometimes even Ben Franklin. The press loved this. And they'd seek me out for interviews and talk shows to "add color" to the normal old white guy talking heads.

Afterall, it was only going to be the last two years of a term - what could happen?

My rise to popular fame.

And then I found Twitter and my staff started sending out tweets with these types of quote in them. They set up a Facebook page and had fun with this. (I swear I didn't have anything to do with these. Really.) That made me even more popular. Rogers and Twain and Franklin had some really pithy things to say at times. All I had to do was sit and do my reading, plus sign some papers and do some voting.

You see, I was just there to hold the spot until the next election. I didn't have any concerns about "leaving a legacy" or anything. Just represent the people in my little gerrymandered district, and vote the way I think they thought.

But the media loved me. Because I quoted others people and made politics interesting. Particularly after the big speeches.

So, being an Independent and loved by the media (and the Twitterverse) - I was someone's great choice to fill out the VP's shoes for the last couple of years of this presidency. It would make people love the President and his decisions, I was told. (I had my doubts, but just gave another pithy quote as a reply - which make the news.)

Filling some big shoes

I had just started settling into the schedule of meeting and greeting, and spent my spare time boning up on my reading - and then the "crisis" happened.

Someone found (hacked) their way into all these emails between the President and a huge amount of others. Then they dumped them on the Internet, duplicating them on all sorts of foreign sites so they couldn't be taken down.

Turns out there were more than a few skeletons besides Solyndra, Fast and Furious, Immigration, secret negotiations with rogue nations, etc.  Quite a few more.

Yes, they're still looking for the guy (or gal) and plan to extradite him to an unknown prison. But the horses were out of the barn, so the doors could fall off for all anyone cared about that barn anymore.

And the only unelected President in history took office. Which someone said was a crisis on its own.

Since I was an "Independent" - I took the obvious logical step first. I told everyone I wasn't running for re-election, that fixing this mess was more than enough work for me. I laid it all out in a memorandum and sent it to all the media. (Drudge got his copy first, though.)

I just let everyone squabble over what they wanted to do. I had a lot of mess to sort out. Lots of mess.

First steps.

Well, I gave the former President an amnesty, whether he wanted it or not. He certainly didn't ask for it. He was busy vacationing in Norway while it all settled down. Figured they'd love him there for his Nobel Prize and was too far away for the media to hound him (although they gave it a try.) We talked on the phone a couple of times, but he was pretty miffed about his legacy being ruined before his eyes.

Next was simply suspending all his executive orders and memoranda pending review. Because some of those emails pointed out that he hadn't been exactly truthful about his background - and might not have actually be qualified to be elected for the job. So I gave all the legal guys some room to move - and meanwhile, took out a lot of these quibbles which were happening all around.

I started giving some Saturday talks which were simply fun - optimistic and upbest. "America's best days are ahead", was the theme. Then both parties and any one with a dog in the fight could give a response.

Seemed fair. I had a job to do in cleaning everything up. People could do what they wanted.

So that's how I got there.