GETTING CONGRESS TO DO…NOT JUST BE
(…may need an old Missouri mule-skinner’s method…)

Congress’s continuing failure to do what needs doing to get our financial house in order, rather than just being an expensive gaggle of career politicos taxpaying voters can no longer maintain (living fat, while everyone else makes do with lean cuisine) may need an old Missouri mule-skinner’s method…to change its ways.

We all know about such expressions as…stubborn as a Missouri mule…mule-headed… mulish, etc., and in this case Congress definitely deserves all of them; but, let’s not be disrespectful or unkind to mules for comparing it…to them, because, mules, are much more accommodating creatures…willing to work their asses off (er..sorry..haunches) to get a job done for you…than any of those Congressional folks.

My home state of Missouri, of course, has long been known for the quality of its mules. In fact, the town of Mexico, Missouri, is known as the “Mule Capital of the World”, and, during WWII, and even as late as Korea, the Army bought a lot of its Missouri-bred mules for service in some very difficult campaign places, like the jungles of the Pacific, in Italy, Burma, and of course Korea, all because of their reputation for size, strength, and… endurance. However, since most young GI’s were mostly city boys, unfamiliar with how to handle such creatures, the Army had to set up a sort of –boot camp- to train those young soldiers on how best to work with them.

Among the instructors hired to do that was a grizzled old Missouri mule-skinner famous for his ability to get any single mule, pair, or even teams of them, to do any task of any kind. Thus, one day, the old boy found himself the subject of an interview by a bright young reporter sent out to do a feature about him. After a bit of introductory chit-chat they got down to business, and the interview went something like this:

Reporter – So, tell me sir, what’s your secret for getting mules to work so well for you?

Skinner –  Ain’t no secret, sonny. I just figured out the right way to communicate with ‘em.                                                                                                                                                              

Reporter – Really? What do you mean by that?                                                                                              

Skinner – Well, y’see, mules ain’t stubborn at all. Fact is, they’ll work all day and twice on Sundays, if’n y’know how to communicate with ‘em.                                                                                     

Reporter – Fascinating! So…how do you that, sir? Can you explain how you do it?

Skinner – Sure! See, with horses, you can just cluck, say giddap, or whatever, and they’ll take off…even if it ain’t in the direction you want. But with mules…if you don’t know how to communicate with ‘em…you can hoot and holler at ‘em till the sun don’t shine… and they’ll just stand there calmly munchin’ away…deaf to it all.

Reporter – Gee! So how did you ever overcome that problem?                                                          

Skinner – See this here ash wood two by four, sonny?                                                                                          

Reporter – …uh…yes…so?                                                                                                                  

Skinner – So, I figured out the best way to communicate with mules was to give ‘em a good whack with it between their ears…to get their attention. Once I got that…then the rest was pie-a-la-mode-easy to make ‘em do whatever I wanted.

Reporter- But isn’t that’s a terribly cruel way to treat them, sir!?                                                                                            

Skinner – Nah! It don’t hurt them none, ‘cause mules got real thick skulls, don’t y’ know… so…that’s my secret …’cause it works pretty good…every blessed time!

Reporter – Thanks ever so for sharing that with us, sir.                                                                                    

Skinner – Y’ bet! Y’all take care now!

And that, fellow taxpayers, may be the approach we need to get Congress doing what it needs to do for us all, by applying the political equivalent of that old mule-skinner’s two by four. And the best way to do that is for each of us to rush down to the nearest voters’ registration office and re-register ourselves as –Unaffiliated – or – Independent- voters, thereby causing a massive defection from both the Democrat and the Republican parties. If enough of us voters do that…it just might get their attention…enough…so we can tell them what we want them to do for us.

Yeah, okay, so maybe it’s a very slim chance Congress would even understand that kind of communication. After all, compared to mules, its members more resemble dumbass… oxen.

C’est la vie!

CENTURION