Political Satire: Having trouble surviving these times? You’re not alone. Join us in columnist John F. Di Leo’s exploration of an alternate universe, where we imagine the impossible:
Joe Buckstop, an aging, corrupt old fool, somehow becomes president in his basement, and every night, an aide has to bring him his soup and discuss the events of the day as he prepares to receive his nightly meds…
Note: With this chapter, we conclude our selections from Volume II. In today’s episode, Joe Buckstop’s soup aide finds it necessary to confront the old man on his regime’s ongoing war on the cattle and dairy industries.
Cattle, Dairy Farms, and Cream of Celery Soup
Dateline: July 18. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir. I’m here with your soup…”
“Oh? Is there soup tonight?”
“Well, sir, there’s soup every night, so I would assume so, sir…”
“Oh, goody! What do we have tonight?”
“Well, sir, the cook said that when she saw your post about National Ice Cream Day, she figured she should make a cream soup, sir.”
“Oh! Good idea!”
“So tonight it’s cream of celery soup, sir. Before you ask, yes, there are crackers.”
“Oh, goody!”
“Here you are, sir. Soup, crackers, napkins and soup.”
“Yum!”
“So what did you do for National Ice Cream Day, sir, besides tweeting about it?”
“Tweeting?”
“Yes sir, your tweet made the news, sir.”
“Oh. Goody. What tweet is that?”
“Your selfie in an ice cream parlor or restaurant, or something, with some people in a booth? You had an ice cream cone, and they just had empty glasses. The tweet made the news…”
“Oh. Must’ve been my staff.”
“The picture looked like you, sir.”
“Maybe it was an old picture. I’ve been in my basement today.”
“Oh, I see, sir.”
“Staff looks out for holidays. You say it’s National Ice Cream Day, huh?”
“Yes sir. President Reagan made the day official, sir, almost thirty years ago. Now it’s always the third Sunday in July, sir.”
“Mmm…. I love ice cream.”
“You wouldn’t know it from your policies, sir…”
“Huh? Come on, man!”
“Well, sir, it’s just that, if you love the dairy industry, sir, you have a strange way of showing it, sir.”
“Hey, you lying dogfaced pony soldier! I love the dairy industry!”
“Then why are you trying to drive them all out of business, sir?”
“Hey! Come on, man!”
“Well, sir, ever since you got in, you’ve been hitting that industry harder and harder, sir. You wouldn’t exactly think you were their pal…”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, sir, let’s look at the ice cream shops first. Everything’s in coolers, right? The shops are air conditioned, all the stock is kept in a big back room freezer and all those freezer display cases, and they’re always very well lit, right?”
“Well, sure… that’s how ice cream shops work. What’s your point, kid?”
“Porter, sir. My name is Porter.”
“Whatever. Okay, Porter, so they use freezers. So what?”
“So you’ve been increasing the cost of energy across the country, sir. Killing the Keystone Pipeline, stopping lots of oil drilling on federal lands and offshore… fighting against fracking…. shutting down coal mining… That’s all your policies causing energy rates to climb, sir. Those ice cream parlors are going to get more and more expensive to run, sir, as you keep on driving up their energy, sir.”
“Oh, well… big deal. They’ll adjust.”
“Don’t count on it, sir. Okay, next, how about exports? How do you think our export activity is doing in the dairy industry, sir?”
“Huh? What does export policy have to do with dairy?”
“Well, sir, one of the main markets for our dairy industry is Canada… and NAFTA failings had allowed an almost-unnoticed trade war with Canada over the years, sir. Canada had put high punitive tariffs on a lot of US dairy products, and the Trump administration dealt with that in the USMCA negotiations, sir.”
“So what?”
“Well, your administration immediately restarted the trade war with Canada by illegally shutting down the Keystone pipeline, and our dairy industry suffered, because part of Canada’s immediate response was to just restore those high punitive tariffs on our dairy industry, sir!”
“Oh. Really? You sure?”
“Yes sir. Maybe your regime should have thought first before pulling that particular trigger, sir.”
“Oh.”
“And then there’s the minimum wage, sir. This crazy national effort that you’ve joined, to push big jumps in the minimum wage, sir.”
“Well, what about it? There NEEDS to be a national minimum wage!”
“No, sir, actually, no, we don’t need a national minimum wage. But even if you’re insistent on it… big minimum wage hikes ALWAYS cause huge job losses, sir. You people are talking about doubling the minimum wage across the country. Some industries can afford that; most can’t. Ice cream shops hire a lot of teenagers; it’s often a young adult’s very first job.”
“It is?”
“Yes, sir, it is. In most of the country, most ice cream shops employ mostly seasonable labor, since demand skyrockets during the summer. Can your average ice cream shop afford to pay these new rates? They’ll be short staffed in years to come, sir. If you’re interested in ice cream shops, you’d better be prepared for those lines to move a lot more slowly in the future, sir.”
“Well, umm… I guess maybe…”
“And then there’s trucking, sir. Your war on fuel has caused diesel to almost double in the past six months, sir. That raises the transportation cost, of the milk and cream from farm to dairy, then again from dairy to retailers… You’re going to see prices climb, sir.”
“Well, but it’s for an important reason, you know….”
“Yeah, sure, sir. Then there’s the drivers of those trucks, too, sir. We have a terrible truck driver shortage already, sir, and now on top of that, sir, the stalling at the ports because of those idiotic ‘covid protocols’ is keeping even more truckers out of commission, as our overworked and understaffed trucking companies have people sitting at the ports and rail yards all day, waiting hours for pickups that ought to be quick and routine, sir.”
“Well, I’m sure you like the sound of your own voice, young man, but I don’t understand any of this.”
“Well, sir, okay, then here’s an easy one, sir: Your regime has fully bought into the crazy green lobby’s ideas about manipulating the market and changing laws and other regulations, specifically to reduce the use of cattle, to stop people from eating beef.”
“Well, now, that’s not really going to happen; you can’t just get rid of cattle…”
“Sir, do you even listen to AOC and the rest of her psychotic squad, sir? Those nuts want us to stop raising cattle, sir, to stop people from consuming beef, sir.”
“So what if they ban herds of cattle? Dairy just needs cows. Who cares if they don’t have bulls, young man!”
“Well, sir, cows and bulls are sort of the same animal, you know, sir. If you attack one, you attack the other, sir.”
“Hey, but I don’t care about the bulls! I only care about the cows!”
“Well, sir, as I said, you wouldn’t know it. Right down the line, sir, from the dwindling staff to the transportation problems, from decreased export opportunities to increased fuel costs for delivery. All your administration has done, on this as on so many other issues, sir… all your administration has done has been to make life harder for them in every way, sir.”
“Gee. I wonder… would it be okay if, after my soup, I got some ice cream for dessert, sir?”
“Oh, sure, sir, we can get you some ice cream for dessert. But for flavors, we’re down to just a few, sir. Just so you know, sir.”
“Oh, I can order vanilla or chocolate. I’m not picky. Hmm… or maybe with a ripple stripe… or maybe some with mint .. and maybe some of those cookies-and-cream style….”
“Well, sir, enjoy your dessert then, sir. And let us know how it is, sir.”
“Oh? How what is?”
Copyright 2021-2024 John F Di Leo
Excerpted with permission from Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume Two, from Free State West Publishing, available in paperback or eBook exclusively on Amazon.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was just released on July 1, and is also available, in both paperback and Kindle eBook, exclusively on Amazon.
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