Welcome President Obama, to America 2009

COLUMBUS: For any of you planning to do your income taxes on TurboTax, I’ve got disappointing news. Despite what you heard last week from the Congressional hearing, Turbo Tax has no such thing as a Geithner Tax Credit. So if you’re wanting to hold back $32,000 from taxes owed, you’ll just have to make up your own deduction, that’s all. Of course if Mr. Geithner gets confirmed as Treasury Secretary, maybe next year they’ll add it.

Gov. Blagojevich, who will soon be impeached, convicted and jailed, went on the news and said he’s like an “innocent cowboy about to be hung for horse stealing.” Well, when you grow up on a ranch in Indian Territory (Oklahoma), you get to know a lot of cowboys, some of them innocent. And their language at times could get a bit colorful, like when a rogue steer broke loose from the herd. But I never ever met one so low down he ever tried to sell a Senate seat.

I’m not happy with all these national TV shows inviting Blagojevich to appear. Here’s a better example of how to treat someone of that kind: “Two weeks ago I had two hours with Al Capone. But there was absolutely no way I could write it [in my column] and not make a hero out of him… What’s the matter with an age when our biggest gangster is our greatest national interest.” (Will Rogers, March 11, 1932)

Did you attend the Inauguration of President Obama? About a million and a half crowded onto the Capitol grounds, although Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on television Sunday she counted two million. You just wait, by the end of the year, at least five million will claim they attended. Personally, I was in Columbus, Ohio, looking East. The only thing blocking my view of the Capitol was a wide-screen TV.

President Obama is a fast worker. He immediately tackled the number one problem concerning the American people today: closing Gitmo. He’s so fast he closed it without figuring out where to send the terrorists. With no money to build a new prison, choices are limited. Maybe send them to Joliet with Blagojevich, or Senator Reid can house them underground in Nevada with the nuclear waste, or split ’em up and let them move in with members of the ACLU. Nobody else wants them.

Frankly, I think the best option is Magic. Go down there, paint it pink, move the entrance to the other side and change the name from Gitmo to Paradise Royal Princess Resort. Announce to the world the terrorists are now housed on a lovely Carribean Island at Paradise Royal Princess Resort. Everyone will be thrilled. And for any news hounds and lawyers you take down there, if you blindfold them and fly in circles for awhile, no one will ever know.

In New York, Caroline Kennedy changed her mind. Instead of joining the Senate, she decided to join Toastmasters. After a year or two of going to those club meetings, she’ll know how to talk without uhs and ums and you knows. She will become an expert at giving a short, clear, organized talk that’s understandable only one way, a skill that will disqualify her from ever being a Senator.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

“We are a funny people. We elect our Presidents, be they Republican or Democrat, then go home and start daring ’em to make good.” DT #2700, April 1, 1935

“Mr. Roosevelt stepped to the microphone last night. His message was not only a great comfort to the people, but it pointed a lesson to all radio announcers and public speakers what to do with a big vocabulary: leave it at home in the dictionary. Some people spend a lifetime juggling with words, with not an idea in a carload.” DT #2061, March 13, 1933