Month: April 2008

Candidates take aim on Indiana and N. Carolina

COLUMBUS: The Democrats in Pennsylvania voted to draw out the campaign a while longer. They said, If we can hold up for six weeks of this onslaught, then North Carolina and Indiana should be able to survive for two.

Farmers in the Midwest are planting corn, some of ’em sixteen to eighteen hours a day. Of course they want to get all their fields planted, but these long work days is partly just an excuse to get away from all the political commercials on televison.

If the airlines could make money off these candidates the way the television stations do they wouldn’t be going broke. Maybe they could sell ’em ad space on the sides (and bottoms) of their planes and fly at five thousand feet instead of thirty so everybody on the ground could read them. Hang a banner off the back the way you see ’em flying during big football games.

Chicago has jumped back in the news. They were last known as the “Murder Capital of the Country” in the 1930s, and they’re dead set to win back the title. Meanwhile, Al Sharpton is over in New York getting everybody riled up, armed, and ready to shoot. Then kind of in the middle between them is Detroit where Reverend Jeremiah Wright was firing away Sunday night at a meeting of 10,000. Of course, he was using words, not bullets. I don’t know which city’s gonna “win” this battle, but you all know which people are gonna lose.

Senator Obama wishes his Rev. Wright would lay low for a few months, but Barack has as much chance controlling him as Hillary does with Bill.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

“Democrats never agree on anything. That’s why they’re Democrats. If they could agree with each other, they would be Republicans.” Saturday Evening Post, May 1, 1926

“Just passed thru Chicago. It’s not a boast, it’s an achievement… To try and diminish crime they laid off six hundred cops. Chicago has no tax money… What they’ve got to do is to tax murder. Put such a stiff tax on it that only the higher class gangsters can afford it.” DT #1079, Jan. 9, 1930

“Machine Guns have helped Chicago; the novelty of the weapon has as much to do with it as the prominence of the ones annihilated. Detroit is still shooting with pistols… This is what I told the [Detroit] Mayor, and you just notice from now on if you don’t see an improvement in publicity with Detroit’s crime. They won’t have to increase it. It’s just getting it known, that’s what they need.” WA #216, Jan. 30, 1927

Will suggests presidential campaign photo ops

COLUMBUS: The most entertaining Presidential campaign since ’24 rolls on. In Pennsylvania Senator Obama went bowling and Senator Clinton went out drinking. I saw her on television chugging a beer and a shot of whiskey, which shows you she has conceded the Baptist vote.

What do you suppose they will do as they move on to the other states? In North Carolina, don’t be surprised to catch Hillary puffing on a Camel. And Barack may counter with a cheek full of Mail Pouch.

In Kentucky they’ll both go horseback riding. In West Virginia one of ’em will eat at a ramp dinner to woo the voters, and the other will counter with an all-night coon hunt. You know, there’s no better time to reach a coon hunter on a cell phone than at 3:00 a.m.

In Indiana they can visit a farmer planting corn. If the weather’s fine, they better stand at the edge of the field and wave as he goes by, because no farmer wants to be interrupted at planting time by chemical salesmen, insurance peddlers or a politician promising relief for the farmer.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

“I don’t belong to any organized political party… I’m a Democrat.”

 

Will offers tip to political speakers

COLUMBUS: Seems like the last couple of weeks our Presidential candidates are spouting off when they should’ve kept quiet. I had a suggestion for ’em back in the campaign of ’32, and nothing’s changed: “There should be a moratorium called on candidates’ speeches… From now on they are just talking themselves out of votes.”

They ought to just go fishing. Senator McCain can take his boat out on Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam. Obama and Clinton could rent one together and fish on Lake Michigan. Take their spouses with ’em, and a slew of advisors and spokesmen. No phones or fancy electronic gadgets except a fish finder. About the middle of August we’ll signal them to come back to shore and they can count the millions of new votes they picked up.

Not only these senators, but former presidents Clinton and Carter are in hot water for talking too much and to the wrong people. Now of course Mr. Clinton, for most of his married life, has been congregating with some folks not approved of by Hillary, except now they pay him. Sometimes a million dollars a day.

As for Mr. Carter, I guess if George Mitchell can get the Irish to stop shooting each other over religion, maybe Jimmy can pull the same miracle and get the Arabs and Israel to talk peace. He’s been at it for 30 years. Of course they’ve been going at each other for about 1500.

The mortgage lenders and over-optimistic home buyers contrived with each other to mess up the housing market. Maybe not on purpose, but they learned that easy payments ain’t so easy after the rates go up to where they belonged in the first place.

In Cuba, the new (and younger) Castro saw the trouble home mortgages caused some Americans, and announced that Cubans are now allowed to buy a house or apartment. Haven’t they suffered enough? Some of our unscrupulous real estate men are taking a crash course in Spanish and buying a ticket to Havana.

Did you hear about the 2010 Census? The government has given up getting their new handheld computers to work. How hard can it be; all the computer has to do is add up to about 300,000,000. They should’ve turned the Census over to Google and FedEx. Google has a picture of everybody’s house and their address, and FedEx can find ’em overnight. The final count would be ready about January 3.

After wasting billions on it the government says they will take the Census the old fashioned way, with pencil and paper. Now they have another problem: where to find enough census takers that can write.

Congress still hasn’t passed a Farm Bill. They’ve been arguing over it more than a year. Lucky for us, the corn and soybean farmers will go ahead and plant according to the weather, not the politicians. They’ll take their chances Congress won’t pass a law requiring ’em to grow radishes and turnips instead.

So long for now. Gotta get back to my taxes.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

“Borrowing money on what’s called ‘easy terms,’ is a one-way ticket to the Poor House…

Instead of passing Bills to make borrowing easy, if Congress had passed a Bill that no Person could borrow a cent of Money from any other person, they would have gone down in History as committing the greatest bit of Legislation in the World…

Banking and After-Dinner Speaking are two of the most non-essential industries we have in this country. I am ready to reform if they are.” WA #14, March 18, 1923

“See where Congress passed a two-billion-dollar bill to relieve bankers’ mistakes. You can always count on us helping those who have lost part of their fortune, but our whole history records nary a case where the loan was for the man who had absolutely nothing.” DT #1715, Jan. 22, 1932

“The crime of taxation is not in the taking it, it’s in the way that it’s spent.” DT #1764, March 20, 1932