Olympics news competing with War and Sex Scandals

COLUMBUS: The Olympics started over in China, on 08-08-08. That date is supposed to be good luck in China, and it was until 08-09-08. Then the Chinese basketball team got drilled by the American team.

With the whole world focused on the Olympics, Russia decided that was a good day to attack the Republic of Georgia. Those two are about to go to War over a place called South Ossetia. All together now, raise your hand if you never heard of South Ossetia. How many didn’t know Georgia was a republic? President Bush can’t do much about this situation, but he did call Putin to condemn the bombing, “We support Georgia, and we want you to stay out of there. And if you take one step into Alabama, we’ll come and get you.”

The price of oil has been going down. Not far enough, but still, it’s better than going up. Have you noticed, nobody is jumping on the oil speculators lately. I flew out to Tulsa on Wednesday, and the big news in the Tulsa World was about a prominent local company you probably never heard of, SEM Group. They’re bankrupt because they lost $2.4 Billion in the past year speculating on oil. So this speculation isn’t all milk and honey.

We lost another bank last week for making bad loans. This whole mortgage mess came from people speculating that house prices would only go one way. And it was caused by giving a mortgage to people with no way to pay it back. But there is one little change that could’ve prevented the entire calamity: instead of paying bankers huge salaries for making loans, only pay ’em on what they collect.

John Edwards got back in the news. For years he’s been saying we have Two Americas. Friday he admitted he has Two Women. So they took away his spot on the program at the Democratic Convention. But he was offered a new role behind the scenes: Chief Babysitter. Senator Obama has kinda hinted he would like President Clinton to assist him.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers: (on the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles)

“Today (Americans) are looking for the ladies’ milliner that put those French “berets” on our American boys (for the opening ceremony). Those “boudwoir caps” are bad enough on a Frenchman, but on an American athlete they are a scream.” DT #1868, July 31, 1932

“It’s awful hard to get your mind on such insignificant things as Republican or Democratic candidates with 1,500 picked athletes of the world breaking records under your nose. If an athlete wins an event and don’t break a world’s record we hiss him out of the arena.” DT #1871, August 3, 1932

“In the bicycle events out here in the Olympics, our riders couldn’t get there in time to change a tire for the foreigners. Too many Fords parked outside our school houses for our young folks to even know how to ride a bike.” DT #1872, August 4, 1932