Pun Salad

… in my Amazon "Recommendations for you, Paul":

No, Raylan! He's one of the good guys!

I was, of course, happy to see Hillary thoroughly trounced in the New Hampshire Primary. But that's the good news. The bad news is the trouncer was Bernie Sanders.

Here's just one little thing I noticed in Bernie's victory speech:

Now, what the American people understand is that our great country was based on a simple principal [sic], and that principle is fairness.

This assertion is pretty easy to check given the "Find" functionality in your favorite web browser.

• Number of times the string "fair" appears in the Declaration of Independence: zero

• Number of times the string "fair" appears in the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the remaining amendments: zero

Bernie wants to paint his agenda as patriotic, rooted in bedrock all-American fundament. That assertion is based in deception or delusion (or, possibly, both).

I am not sure what valid arguments could be made in support of what I take to be Bernie's overall campaign points:

• The Federal Government is hopelessly in thrall to the plutocratic wealthy;

• So we should give the Federal Government vastly more money and power.

I am depressed that so many people see Bernie as a hero and "democratic" socialism as a swell idea.

Just wanted to get that off my chest.

Another fine outing for C. J. Box's game warden hero, Joe Pickett. I am disappointed that I didn't notice Box's fine talent sooner. This is number 7 in his Pickett series, from 2007, and number 16 is coming out next month. The algorithm managing my to-be-read pile rules, though.

As the book opens, however, Joe has been shitcanned from his game warden job. He has honest work with his wife's mother's husband, but it's not really what he was born to do. A shot at getting back to it arrives by jet, in the person of the newly-elected maverick Wyoming governor. A nasty multiple murder has been committed in Yellowstone by a sleazy lawyer, and due to a big loophole in the jurisdictional hodgepodge and Constitutional rules, he has walked scot-free.

One of the victims wrote a mysterious letter to the Governor just prior to his demise. Joe is rehired to perform a secret, barely-official investigation to see if there's anything the National Park Service and the local law authorities missed. (Hint: yes, they did.) The Governor has noticed something about Joe: he's scrupulously honest, and has an uncanny knack for (discovering|blundering into) the dangerous truth.

Joe also has personal issues with Yellowstone dating back to his youth, and a subplot takes an unexpected and poignant turn. (Joe's wife and kids have relatively small roles here, compared to other books.)

Much of the book describes the natural (but dangerous) wonders of Yellowstone, and sent me scurrying to the Google to learn more about them.