Heat in Washington leads to a wacky idea
COLUMBUS: Heat and drought has taken over most of the country. It’s been dry and hot in Oklahoma and Texas for months, but folks back east paid no attention until it struck them too.
Television announcers have been advising everyone to stay inside where it’s cooler, and do nothing. And that’s exactly what Congress and the President are doing. Nothing. At times I have said we should not complain when Congress does nothing because “when they do nothing they don’t hurt anybody.” I also said we should not settle anything during hot weather because “heat and reason don’t go together.”
But since they could not settle the debt problem back when it was cooler, we just have to take our chances with the heat. When you’re spending $10 Billion a day, and only taking in $6 Billion, your banker had better be your best friend. Why, every morning before breakfast President Obama signs another $4 Billion IOU to the First Bank of China.
Republicans in Congress passed a bill called Cut, Cap and Balance. Democrats don’t seem to like it, but have offered no bill of their, at least not in writing. Nobody can agree on nothin’.
Suppose they compromise this way: The Senate Democrats and President Obama go sit in a corner and write a deficit reduction plan for the next 6 months. Lay it out exactly. Then the Republicans go in the opposite corner and write their plan for the 6 months after that. That way the debt ceiling get raised and both sides get an equal shot at reducing the deficit and improving the economy. Next July let the Supreme Court analyze the half year under the Democrat plan, and the half year under the Republican plan. Whichever plan the Court figures did the most good for the country will be adopted for the 6 months after that. Regardless of which plan the Supreme Court picks, the voters will have the final say in November 2012.
If you say, “that idea is wacky”, well, just blame it on the heat.
Historic quotes by Will Rogers: (from Weekly Article #665)
“These Eskimos have one of the most (scheduled) lives there is, almost to a day of the various months or seasons, they will go from the hunting or trapping of one animal to the other. White fox takes up just so many days, perhaps a couple of months, but there is almost a certain time that they will stop and move to another place to take up another game. Muskrat, then their seal and fishing for their supply of dog food. They all come in and hold a celebration on Christmas, then by New Years they are out again.
Then the polar bear season occupies so much of their time. He is pretty hard to get…Then they got the caribou to hunt. There is literally thousands of caribou all over Alaska and the Yukon, and Northwest Territories…
A whale used to net ’em about 18 or 20 thousand dollars, when whalebone was selling, but the minute the women started reducing, and trying to get some sort of shape with a rubber corset, the old whalers were pretty near put out of business… Polar bear hides are not worth anything now they say. Furs have been pretty cheap.
It’s a great country, where you have to live off the country, hunt, trap, kill and live. Four mails a year into that place, two and a half months when it’s not frozen in.” WA #665, written about Aug. 14, 1935