This week I was planning to write about immigration (which nobody can agree on) but then our Lame Duck Congress passed a $1,800,000,000,000 Inflation Increase Act.

Will Rogers had the perfect description of a Lame Duck Congress. “It’s like where some fellows worked for you and their work wasn’t satisfactory and you let ’em out, but after you fired ’em, you let ’em stay long enough so they could burn your house down.” (DT #1980, Dec. 8, 1932)

The bill has over 4000 pages of fine print and Senators had only a few hours to read it. It’s a Democrat bill, but 17 Republicans voted for it, maybe because it has several million for border security. Those Republicans missed the tiny paragraph that it is for securing the borders of Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries. No money to protect our own border. So, it’s okay for ‘em to wade across the Rio Grande, but not the Nile.

There’s $3,000,000 for “Bee-friendly highways.” First, bees don’t need a highway; they fly. If you want to make our roadsides friendly to bees, stop mowing. That would save a few million and attract bees. However, if you get a flat tire, that’s bad enough without being attacked by a swarm of hornets.

And former First Lady Michelle Obama gets $3,600,000 for a trail. I guessed it was to build a walkway from the back door of their mansion at Martha’s Vineyard to the beach. But it’s in Mississippi. Will she fly from Massachusetts down to Mississippi every morning to walk her trail? Besides our former President has $70,000,000. Let him give his wife a trail for Christmas.

Stanford University made News this week by publishing 13 pages of banned words. Words they want replaced include: immigrant, handicapped, grandfather, American, and the colors black, white, red, yellow and gray. This was compiled by a grad student who wrote it as a thesis for a Master’s Degree. But “Master” is banned so they gave him/her/it/them a Ph.D., which appropriately for this research, means Piled Higher and Deeper. (I’m joking about the grad student. The list was made up by employees and a couple of professors in the information technology department. That wasted more money than paying a lowly grad student.)

I heard that a quarter of toys are bought by adults for their own pleasure. If you think this is a new fad, read the first Will Rogers quote below.

Historic (Christmas) quotes by Will Rogers:

“I am too busy replacing presents to write today. I bought some mechanical and electric things for the kids and wore ’em out playing with ’em myself.”  DT #120, Dec. 23, 1926

“Men, act surprised this morning as if you didn’t know the tie was coming.”  DT #121, Dec. 24, 1926

“Well, tomorrow is ‘wish’ day. Everybody is ‘wishing’ somebody something, and I guess it’s just as well everybody don’t know what they are being ‘wished.’ But, generally speaking, we do have good cheer in our hearts on Christmas. ‘Course, we can’t hardly wait till the day is over and to get back to our devilment again.” DT # 1379, Dec. 24, 1930

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Reeder family. And from the Will Rogers family.