If the first robin chirping, petunia blooming days of the season have already got your back aching and/or your allergies allergy-ing, blame Iran.
And not just because blaming Iran has, in recent years, become the easy, go-to person, place or thing to blame for whatever you feel like blaming.
It's because, researchers tell us, it is Iran we have to thank for that most back aching/allergy allergy-ing inaugural ritual as the hazy shade of winter gives way to the bright sunshine of March, April showers and May flowers.
Talkin' spring cleaning, here, kids.
According to some historians, the origin of spring cleaning traces back to the Iranian Nowruz, which is the Persian New Year. As opposed to the mild, mature Times Square gathering America enjoys each December 31, the Iranians ball, or balls, drops on the first day of Spring and locals, to this day, continue the practice of "khooneh tekouni", literal translation "shaking the house".
The primary purpose and/or goal for all of us who greet the new buds of begonias with a bucket in one hand and a Swifter mop in the other remain the same.
Cleaning up the old to, if only symbolically and/or metaphorically, begin the new... fresh, clean and tidy.
A lot of that springtime un-sullying has a lot to do with the more material meaning of the cleansing catchphrase, "out with the old, in with the new".
And there need not be any new, per se, involved in the process at all.
Replacement is not a mandatory requirement in the practice of purging.
Put simply, those ratty, filthy, old, once upon a time pink and fluffy bedroom slippers, that are now clinically qualified to be used in bacteria testing, just need to go, lady.
Spring cleaning, in fact, presents a lot of situations and opportunities to rid ourselves of clutter in our sheds, pantries, closets and lives.
And de-cluttering, turns out, is not just an activity limited to the lower stratas of society.
Those in possession of multiple bank accounts also, occasionally, do a little tagging and bagging when it comes to things they find worn out, obsolete or simply impractical to use any longer.
Even people who live in big houses...with rolling grounds, beautiful gardens...and magnificent columns front and back.
One such house (no pun sought, but a nice tie-in) springs to mind.
At 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington, D.C.
We'll talk a little about some Oval Office level designations of debris in just two shakes of an Iranian house.
Here's something you probably need to know.
If you're planning on, or even just thinking about, needing some kind of useful, helpful, even life saving affordable health care in, say, the next couple of years, congratulations.......
...you're the proud winner of another think comin.'
Donald has announced that the Republican "great, terrific, just terrific healthcare program" they, read: "he", promised in the 2016 campaign has two chances of showing up in any way, shape or form before the results of the 2020 election are in.
Actually, make that three chances. If you throw in an ice cube.
The rude, ungracious, certainly cynical observer would observe that what's happening there is nothing more, or less, than a threat and/or warning, wrapped in a remarkably bad attempt to make a promise for the future.
If you want that healthcare I promised you three years ago, you're going to have to wait another year and a half and then vote for me.
If you don't, then, I'm not going to be able to keep that promise I made to you over three years ago, not coincidentally, the same promise that I'm making to you now and will make to you for the next year and a half.
Oh, and by the way, if you do vote for me, than I'll have four more years to lie to your eager, hopeful glistening faces about why, well, see, the thing is, it's just not gonna happen.
A lot of factors weighing in there. But let's just save time and cut to the chase.
He doesn't know what the hell he's doing. And he's not likely to ever figure it out.
But enough about the fake news that I'm not going to keep the promise I made in 2016, even though, of course, every one on the planet just heard me, personally, myself, say that there isn't going to be any new healthcare until at least after the 2020 election.
And let's talk about what's important.
Immigration. I know a lot about immigration. I know a lot about wind, too, but this piece isn't about cancer, so let's just stay with what I know about immigration.
And here's what I know.
Those judges? You know the ones who sit behind those big desks, wearing those robes and banging that little hammer?
Yeah. They need to go.
And, by go, I don't mean on vacation to my BFF Putin's magnificent villa on the Tura River in Tyumen.... or to Mar-A-Lago for a fun, filled luxury golf resort weekend, with my personal assurance you will receive the Friends and Family discount.
I'm talking need to go like be gone. No more. Hit the road, RBG, and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.
During a press interview this past week, He Who Knows Much About Immigration And Wind had this to say in answer to a question.
"...and we have to do something about asylum...and, to be honest with you, you have to get rid of judges..."
Predictably, the gasp factor was off the charts and knees jerked from sea to shining sea with op/eds and commentaries (and bears, oh my) repudiating Donald's request to sing "dere go da judge" to his laugh track of an admiring audience.
Never mind that ten seconds of reflection would have any reasonable brain processing what the Terror of the Turbine actually meant when he said what he said.
(And not to wander too far off the road, but, after all this time, isn't it way past time, to appoint some kind of actual, official White House advisor whose sole job is to explain to "we, the people" what Oliver Wind-all Holmes actually means when he says what he says? Kellyanne stumbles around in a candy ass effort to do that during her stand up gigs on CNN, but she's so comprehensively annoying that even her husband has stopped listening to her)
What he meant was:
...the system needs to be "repaired" so that fewer, if any, cases actually get to the judge level...in other words, take the judges out of the equation....or take the judges off the table.....a simple "we need judges on the bench who will enforce new, effective immigration law" would have done just fine....but Donald doesn't do simple......a quirk, ironically, not uncommon in people who are simple...
..."get rid of judges" is Trump twaddle for "put an uber-right wing judge in every robe behind every bench holding every little hammer" from here to eternity.
Ideally, for eternity.
That said, though, Donald has made no secret of his disdain for the whole judge thing from the get go. It's pretty much the standard issue, garden variety Donaldisdain for anything that prevents Lola, or Donald, from getting whatever Lola, or Donald, wants. Frankly, I'm surprised that he hasn't yet pulled that "enemy of the people" shit when it comes to our jurists.
The free press must have copyrighted that sucker when Donald pulled that shit on them. We'll check on that and get back to you.
It occurs, meanwhile, that the whole notion of "getting rid of" is, at least, intriguing. And since tossing out things that aren't, at least perceived as, useful is in keeping with our spring cleaning theme today, let's take off the red MAGA one size fits all and strap on the old thinking cap.
Get rid of the judges. Hmm. Well, that would certainly solve the problem of the bottle necked, gridlocked condition of the court system in the good old US of A, ya know?
Of course, crime ranging from petty to homicidal might tend to curve upward a skosh or two on the old bar graph chart, what with n'er do wells suddenly freed of the concern that at the end of the lawbreaking timeline there might be someone ready and able to sit in judgment on them.
No judge, no judgement. Pass the Glock, baby, we're going jewelry shopping.
What else could we throw out on the street with the ratty slippers, grungy old mattress and those boxes overflowing with back issues of Maxim?
The free press? Yeah, we've talked about that before. And nothing has changed since then. Let me refresh or reiterate, as applicable.
No matter who makes your political posterior purr, you really don't want to live in a nation without a free press.
Sadly, there's only one way that can be proven to you.
God help you...and the rest of us....if that way ever becomes a reality.
Politicians. Well, hell, who wouldn't be just fine with packing up politicians and dropping the boxes off at the nearest Goodwill box...or ravine?
With the exception, of course, of politicians.
I will say this. (radical, outside the box thought alert): I think we could do with a whole lot of thinning the herd. And by thinning the herd, I don't mean less representation per state in the Senate and House.
I mean let's scale the Federal Government down to the point where it serves three, and only three, functions.
Maintenance of all "national" highways, boulevards, Interstates, etc and corresponding infrastructure.
A "national police force", FBI be cool, that would work co-cooperatively with each state's law enforcement, so as to prevent criminals from pulling heists, rapes, murders in one state and then shooting over the border to a state that wasn't as death penalty crazy as the state where the crime took place.
And...maintenance of the national military, so as to protect us from foreign enemies. Well, except for Putin and Kim Jong, because they're still on the Friends and Family discount dealio.
All the rest?
States rights, mama.
Next to "drain the swamp", "throw the bums out" and "wind causes cancer", the most oft-heard political battle cry of this, or any, century since, say, the days of Ike.
Just between you and me, I never really understood the whole nation notion of a nation made up of states, wherein the nation was in charge of things that the states were also in charge of making for a lot of problems, at least in terms of overlap and conflicting regulations and tribal tendencies.
When a presentation, process and/or program is put in the hands of more than one person, what you got there, then, is a committee.
And a zebra.
A horse...put together by a committee.
Obviously, any notion of neutering the nation after all these decades is limited to whatever amusement and/or entertainment we might experience from it.
Guffaw and chortle, at most, wishful thinking, at least.
And here's a thought like an oversized pill. Gonna be tough to swallow, but, ultimately, good for you.
The system, such as it is, works.
I purposely left off the "just fine" at the end of that sentence because while the system does, in fact, work, it very, very, very seldom works "just fine".
Just like any thing conceived of by man, organized by man and administrated by man, the system that is America is in constant, perpetual, infinite need of upgrading, revision, readjustment and re-booting.
Like your family. Like mine.
Leaders of vision understand that. They walk a path and follow an agenda that accounts for that.
They have an insightful understanding that America is, to metaphor the moment, a baby.
The challenges, obstacles, crises of the week, any given week, every given week, are dirty bath water.
And you don't throw out the baby.
That's an unacceptably extreme approach to spring cleaning.
Earlier, we listed some things we might want to consider throwing out in our quest to de-clutter our lives....and our country.
Some think it's time to consider tossing the whole notion of the presidency.
It has,sometimes eloquently, been described as old, worn, impractical, even obsolete.
The notion of a nation without a single symbol of leadership is actually what's impractical.
And unnecessary.
All that's required is finding and recruiting someone of vision, who walks a path and follows an agenda that accounts for our quirks, challenges, obstacles, crises of the week, any given week, every given week.
It's quite an amazing system. With unlimited potential that could be dramatically realized with the right person walking that path.
Spring cleaning.
Lots of useless, impractical, obsolete stuff needs to go.
America doesn't need to include presidents on that list.
America just needs to replace one.
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