#436, December 11, 2006

COLUMBUS: In long awaited news, the Iraq Study Group gave their report last week. They had been nine months fixin’ it up. They were nearly ready in October but waited till after the election to see which way the wind blew.

The report has 79 things they want us to do related to Iraq. Seventy-nine. That’s how they reached a consensus; any time anyone objected to anything, they just asked, What do you want to make it better? and that’s how they kept adding till they got to 79 and found out everybody had run out of anything new to ask for. When you have 79 objectives, that greatly improves the chance of a passing grade. See, if you finish even 50 of them, it’s a C. But, the President, he only had one plan, and that was to win. So when you don’t get your one and only plan, then you don’t win, and you turn the whole thing over to the diplomats, thereby guaranteeing you won’t win.

President Bush announced today, the “Decider” has Decided to let someone else do the Deciding. He’s conferring with the Middle East countries. He says, “You boys work it out yourselves.” Then he nearly said, “As usual, send us the bill,” but he caught himself just in time. He remembered what James Woolsey told him, that we are already paying for both sides of this war. If you pay for both sides of diplomats and both sides of the war, then you’re paying four times with nothing to show for it. It’s kinda like playing the Lottery, but in a lottery you do have a one in a million chance of winning something.

The suspense in the race for president in 2008 is over. No more waiting. Today, Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland announced he is running again. His platform is, “I am not a Senator.” Don’t laugh, it has worked for every successful candidate since Kennedy.

In professional football you folks have your favorite players and teams, depending on where you live. In San Diego the coach says he has the best running back that ever put on a uniform. Now that’s saying something. LaDamian Tomlinson scored 29 touchdowns with 3 games to go. No bragging by LaDamian; he’s humble, just lets his feet do his talking for him. Now whether he is really better than Red Grange and Jim Thorpe, you might get an argument from the old timers. Maybe Jim Brown and Gale Sayers, too. But none of them ever scored 29 touchdowns in a season, and neither have some teams.

Didn’t I tell you Troy Smith would be a gracious winner of the Heisman?

Well, did you hear about Jimmy Johnson, the NASCAR driver. He goes all year driving 150, 160 miles an hour, bumper to bumper traffic, no problems, and then last week breaks his wrist. He fell out of his car. Only it wasn’t his race car he fell out of, it was a golf cart.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

“There’s the one thing no nation can ever accuse us of and that is Secret Diplomacy. Our foreign dealings are an Open Book, generally a Check Book..” WA #45, October 21, 1923

“America never was very good in conference. We are great talkers but we are mighty poor conferers. America has a unique record. We never lost a war and we never won a conference. We can say, without any degree of egotism, with our tremendous resources we can lick any nation in the world single-handed, and yet we can’t confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on.” Radio broadcast, April 6, 1930