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