BARLEY SERVICES: no ordinary plumber

I am anxiously awaiting my check from Uncle Sam so that I can sign it and send it back to him, thus reducing my taxes for next April 15th.

My economy doesn’t need stimulating. I already go through money like a paper shredder. There is an endless line of payees waiting for me to fork over some dough as soon as I can earn it.

Why is the govenment passing out checks? This is just a big, big version of “walking around money,” where a candidate’s henchmen would go around buying votes at election time.

Is this supposed to help the economy? It reminds me of two images:

(1) One is that of a storekeeper who goes out on the sidewalk and passes out money in hopes that some of the recipients will go into his store and spend it there, thus helping his business.

(2) The other is of a man who dips water out of the deep end of a swimming pool and pours it into the shallow end, and then wonders why the shallow end doesn’t get any deeper.

In other words, it’s our money already. The gummint doesn’t have any money to pass out. Either they take it from us first, or they borrow it and give it to us and we have to pay them back later in taxes.

(Edited on May 11th to add: I see that Walter Williams made nearly the same observations in a recent article. Apparently he and I heard the “swimming pool” image from the same source.)

Recently I was at my older son’s house and commended him for how nicely he had trimmed his bushes. Then I pointed out a pet peeve of mine and suggested that he do something to keep the rose bush from encroaching upon the sidewalk where people approach his front door.

It’s something I’ve observed for all of my adult years, at least. We plant bushes or trees so that they will please us. Then we let them take over so that we have to yield to them.

I see it in pet ownership, too. The animal is supposed to serve the owner, but the owner allows it to make him (and me) miserable.

When the Clampetts mistakenly got the message that all of their money was gone, they thought they must have been spending it too freely, so they began tightening the belt every way they could. In one scene, Elly Mae comes into the kitchen with a possum on her shoulder, saying that she needed some feed for her critters. Granny exclaims “That’s the problem right there: back home, we was livin’ off the possums; now the possums is livin’ off of us!”

Some people, such as animal hoarders, are just sick and psychologically twisted, and they are beyond helping themselves. For the rest of us, though, there is an ongoing need for clear thought as to who is supposed to be living off of whom.

Q: How can you tell when a politician is lying?

A: Check to see if his lips are moving.

Okay, it’s an old joke and you’ve already heard it, but I just can’t resist. Today Obama claims he is outraged by his pastor’s worldview, and he carefully and thoroughly explains how he could have this dude as a pastor for twenty years and only just now realize the problems with him.

Obama is obviously sincere and obviously outraged and obviously just like you and me, so let’s just forget about Pastor Jeremiah Wright and vote for Obama.

Sorry, Barry; no dice. If it takes you twenty years and three press conferences to figure out that your pastor is a white-America-hating Marxist, you’re just too stupid to be the Democrat nominee.

In fact, however, Barry isn’t stupid at all. He’s very bright, and he’s a politician.

Obama’s preacher is nothing new. That guy is a proponent of Black Theology, a noxious ideology I was privileged to learn about while studying for my first master’s degree. The greatest mass murderers in history have been animated by Marxism. It is, at root, evil. And Black Theology is “Marxism for Blacks” and hatred for Whites. That’s why Obama’s preacher sounds so evil.

Of course, to Obama, that preacher is okay. That’s why Obama went to his church for twenty years. Did you notice how Obama schmoozed the whole affair today? “My preacher said some wrong things, but so has my white grandmother. Besides, it’s white folks’ fault that my preacher is so angry.”

From giddy comments I’ve seen here and there by people praising the speech, I perceive that Obama has blown a lot of smoke in their eyes. To clear away the smoke, just imagine a comparable situation involving a conservative candidate–oh, like Mike Huckabee. Create the scenario in your mind, identify the characters and what they said, imagine the public attempt to schmooze it all over. Then ask yourself how giddy all the chattering groupies would be.

Heh heh. They’d hang him so fast, they’d have rope burns on their hands.

Obama is nothing new, either. I have made a hobby out of listening to black talk shows on the radio here in Memphis, and otherwise decent people will lose all their good sense when it comes to their resentment of whites. It’s positively amazing to hear what they say when they don’t think whitey is listening. I recommend that you tune in and hear it for yourself. Then you’ll understand why Obama attends that nuthouse of a church and why millions of people see nothing wrong with it.

I like Obama. I’ve been hoping that he’d get the Democratic nomination, mostly because I think he’d be easier to beat, but also because I think he’s a better person than Hillary is. Who came up with these tapes of his preacher? If it was conservatives, I think they made a horrible misstep. This could tank his campaign and throw the nomination to Hillary.

On Friday and Saturday I attended the Southeastern Regional meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, reminding me that one of the benefits of being a scholar is the opportunity to use polysyllabic terminology without being unmannerly. It’s like Q-tipping your ear: it just kinda feels good.

At such a conference, you bring a seventeen-or-so page research paper and read it to any who decide to attend your session. Then, as punishment, you have to attend other sessions and let those scholars read their papers to you. In this way, you learn some new things, get up to date on some current research, and get to interact with others in your field, which is intellectually stimulating.

Like most of what I write, I presented a paper that demonstrated how the accepted interpretation of something is actually incorrect, and I showed what the correct interpretation is. And what good did it do? It added two lines to my resume, in case anyone ever bothers to read my resume.

I made a strategic error in my twenty-year academic preparation. I assumed, for no good reason, that if I knew my stuff better than anyone and could teach it more effectively than anyone, schools would want to hire me. In fact, in hiring a college teacher, there is a whole array of additional factors that have nothing to do with those two things.

The world of plumbing isn’t like that.

Political campaigns are nauseous. (Note: that word does not mean “nauseated,” although today’s illiterates universally use it so.) A politician’s plea consists of “I’ll give you stuff you want, but I’ll make some other dumb ______ pay for it.” Can I get a witness?

One of the worst examples is the Billary/Osama promise of universal health care. I practically never go to a doctor, but auto repair eats me alive. Why don’t they offer universal car care? Does that sound like a stupid idea?

Sheldon Richman is possibly the finest writer in the economic field today. Everything he produces is a model of lucidity and incisiveness. Read today’s article about the health-care con games.

The first time I changed oil in a car was when I was sixteen and working in a gas station. Before that, I’d never even seen it done. I became an expert, though, and have always been responsible for one, two, or three vehicles. I may have done a hundred oil changes, but none approaches the oil change I’ve been working on for two weeks.

It’s coming soon, the first oil change in my “new” work van, a 2006 GMC Savana. I bought it on December 1st and the onboard computer has studied my habits and announced that I need an oil change. But this won’t be just any oil change, no sir! This one-ton truck’s Duramax diesel engine costs a fortune to replace, and a properly maintained diesel can last nearly forever, so I’m giving this project everything I’ve got. Logistically, it’s starting to remind me of plans for the invasion at Normandy on D-Day.

It began by reading extensively at the Diesel Place web site. Through recommendations there and study elsewhere, I decided on Schaeffer’s Supreme 9000 synthetic oil. Schaeffer is the oldest oil company in America. Most of the Conestoga wagons had Schaeffer grease on their axles. I found a good deal on the Internet and a case of twelve quarts (and shipping) set me back $82.69. That’s $6.89/qt.

Possibly the finest oil filter is made by the Amsoil company. With a $22.67 price tag, it should be.

I also purchased a doo-dad called a Fumoto valve. It replaces the threaded plug in your oil pan and makes it possible to drain your oil by just turning a lever. Somebody should have thought of this ninety years ago. Shipping and all, $31.81.

These days you can send off a sample of your used oil to have it analyzed by a chemical lab. That’s what real diesel devotees do, so I got Blackstone Labs to send me a kit so I can find out how my engine, filters, and oil have been holding up. It only costs $22.50 plus $2.00 postage.

The Savana has a two-stage fuel filtering process, and the fuel filters on a diesel are very important. Dirty fuel can wreck your engine and it is time to change my filters, so I got a good deal on the Internet and had the filters and o-rings shipped here for a total price of only $73.74.

Adding these all together, I get $235.41; but if I have two quarts left over, that knocks off nearly fourteen bucks! And I suppose one might not count the fuel filters, so maybe this little oil change is really only costing $147.89, plus labor. (I wonder how much I should pay myself?)

I’m pursuing something called “extended oil drain intervals.” That is, I’m going to see how long I can go without changing my oil. The used oil analysis tells no lies, and it is quite possible to go hundreds of thousands of miles before needing an oil change. If so, then I should come out ahead financially one day.

When I began my illustrious career at Roto-Rooter in February of 1990, I hardly even knew that water runs downhill. I had been a pastor and student for nine years, and a salesman, security officer, and student before that. I had been a home-delivery milkman, a janitor, a warehouse worker (moving boxes), and a beer joint musician before that. In other words, I was not a tool-using animal. They hired me because I owned a van I could work out of. I took the job because nobody else would hire me and R-R said they’d train me.

That was eighteen years ago this month. I rode with others for three weeks and I was considered “trained.” Not being used to working with objects, I didn’t learn nearly as much as I needed to. They unleashed me upon an unsuspecting public and the real process of learning began.

I cannot count how many times I resigned in my mind that first year. One occasion I particularly recall saw me digging a hole in a bad neighborhood in the rain in the middle of the night. I knocked a hole in the top of a sewer pipe and was struggling to get my blades through the hole so that I could run them down the line and clean the drain. I was lying on my stomach, rain intruding around my waist because my rain suit was pulled up, and I cut my hands while struggling with the blades and broken pipe under the backed-up sewage as the runoff from the ground around me continued to fill up my hole. I resolved then to resign the following morning, saying to myself, “You have got to be a stark raving mad crazy-in-the-head IDIOT to stay in a job like this!” I may have been correct. Nevertheless, when morning came, I went to the shop as always, told my war story to the other guys who were telling theirs as well, and I kept at it. I had three kids, a home-schooling wife, and a PhD effort to support.

There’s no substitute for spending years struggling with the real world. What does it take to clean a drain? Turn the machine on and push the cable through the pipe, duh! That’s the answer you get from a plumber who THINKS he can do drain work. I used to encounter them when I was with R-R. Occasionally it was my misfortune to arrive at a job site where some “Master Plumber” had a drain problem, but no machine, so he called us. Invariably he was a fountain of authoritarian blather, telling me what the problem was, what caused it, how to fix it, etc. As a rule, he was an ignorant jackass. I was just a drain man, I didn’t know 10% of what he knew about plumbing, but I did know drains. I’d have to fight in order to get him to shut up, leave me alone, and let me fix his problem MY WAY. The nonsense he was spouting would have wasted a whole day with no effect.

I was reminded of these things recently when a plumbing company was unable to locate a sewer line at a home, tried everything, and finally referred the owners to me. I saw where they had dug holes and searched, and how they’d even tried to run their cable through a roof vent to get into the drain and solve the problem. No question, they’d tried very sincerely. But they didn’t know what they were doing.

I knocked on the door, greeted the lady, and asked “Can I take a look inside?” I made a careful note of exactly where the bathroom fixtures lay and then went outside and measured precisely (by stepping it off) where the sewer line should be. I then jabbed my shovel one inch into the ground, pried upward, and up gushed a fountain of sewer water. It took me about sixty seconds from the time the lady had first answered the door.

The first plumbers were looking in the wrong place because they used clues that weren’t as reliable as mine. They had gone to Plan B and Plan C, but had failed to use Plan A. And here’s the real secret to the whole thing: they called someone else and then drove away! When I was with Roto-Rooter, we didn’t have that option. Buddies would come and help and eventually we’d get-r-done, but you stayed on that drain until it was cleared. That kind of punishment is analogous to the physical training that goes into a football team. Nobody can run that lap for you or slam into that lineman for you. You take a beating again and again and again until you become what you have to be.

One day I might tell the first guys what they did wrong if I happen to see them. But it won’t affect their character or their diagnostic abilities because they didn’t suffer until they achieved their objective. They are plumbers, good plumbers, but they aren’t drain men.

But do they still respect us this morning?

Super Tuesday created a lot of fun for a lot of people who don’t have better things to think about. Hoopla over the presidency has always seemed to me to be disproportional to its actual importance. The power in this nation resides in the House, where all money bills originate. They can strangle anything and they can limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. A president won’t get far without their help.

But the Representatives are not chosen for their conservative stances, they are chosen for just the opposite. Voters, falling for the fictitious idea that everybody can live at the expense of everyone else, vote for the politician who promises them the most loot. And so the nation continues to slide toward that place where all thieves go. And that in a handbasket, to boot.

As for the presidential race, I rather hope that Barack Hussein gets the Democrat nomination. His voting record is even more Communist than Hillary Clinton’s; in fact, it is the leftmost of the entire Senate. If he is elected, at least there’ll be no deception regarding the things he aspires toward. Furthermore, he appears to be on record as a nice person. Hillary, on the other hand, is described by many who have worked with her as the kind of woman who gives witches a bad reputation.

McCain’s victories have folks like James Dobson in tears. I heard him on the Glenn Beck show this morning, so depressed he could hardly speak. I, being a Ron Paul supporter, had no hopes of victory, so I feel fine.

One difference between me and Dobson is that he has been trying to save America. I used to do that. Eventually I came to the profound conclusion that America doesn’t want saving. They’re like Eliza’s father, Alfred P. Dolittle, who said that he was one of the undeserving poor, he liked it that way, and he intended to keep on being undeserving. America, collectively speaking, wants to commit suicide and they are doing it at breakneck speed. Would I step out onto the Interstate to intercept a driverless eighteen-wheeler that was running toward disaster at 95 mph?

I’ll do my part to affect people’s thinking, but I have no hope for the political process. Plenty of us want to be free, but most of us don’t, and that portion of the electorate is too big, too heavy, and rolling at 95 mph at least.

I’ve added a page on my web site listing the books I read this past year. I got this idea from reading the Grub Street Plumber’s web site, although he doesn’t seem to have his lists on his site presently.

I like to read other people’s lists. An old greeting used to be “Read any good books lately?” You don’t hear that one much any more, which explains a lot of what’s on television.