# 307, January 29, 2004
COLUMBUS: Oklahoma has been hit by a blizzard of politicians. Clark, Edwards, Lieberman, even Kucinich. It was unusually cold on Tuesday, but those candidates all arrived Wednesday, and it heated right up again. Tonight the heat wave moved east to South Carolina.
Senator Lieberman escaped New Hampshire in fifth place. In Oklahoma he tried out a new platform idea on health care. It’s a bold attempt to move up to fourth. He said, “I plan to fix what’s wrong with our health care, but keep what’s right”.
Now there’s a policy you can’t argue against. Why if he had been saying that, and only that and nothing else, why he would have swept Iowa and New Hampshire. Every voter in this country, a hundred percent of them, would agree with that one simple statement. But here’s where the fun comes…getting ’em to agree on what’s wrong, and what’s right.
Our Oklahoma Governor, Mr. Henry, has his own health plan. He wants to raise taxes on cigarettes, by 52 cents a pack. He figures what’s wrong with our health care is too many of us are smoking. In his plan, the poor folks that can’t afford to smoke will give it up, and naturally get healthier. And the ones that keep smoking will pay millions of dollars in this extra tax, and that’ll cover their hospital bills, and the bills for all the obese and other sickly folks, and even the doctors’ malpractice insurance.
In Tennessee, the Nashville schools say they will stop announcing an Honor Roll. Lawyers claim an Honor Roll is unconstitutional because the ones left off might feel embarrassed. Well, I always thought that was kinda the idea, to make them work harder next time. But no, it seems there’s a certain group that’s proud of their C’s and D’s, and because they can somehow afford to hire a team of lawyers to represent their cause, there’ll be no more honor rolls in Nashville schools.
These school officials also announced that while high school basketball games will continue to be played, they won’t keep score.
They also asked Nashville’s own Vanderbilt University to adopt a new plan whereby they would hand out academic scholarships randomly to their high school seniors, regardless of ability. Kinda like they do now with football scholarships.
I got a plan for any Presidential candidate that’ll adopt it. It’s the Route 66 strategy. On Tuesday there’s four of those Route 66 states up for grabs: Missouri, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona. Any candidate that can sweep those four, and then clean up in the other Route 66 states… Illinois, Texas and California… why, he will wrap up not only the nomination, but the election too if he can hold ’em through November. So get your kicks (and delegates) on Route 66.
And forget about Tennessee. Nashville won’t let ’em count the ballots, even if a couple of the candidates are beyond embarrassment.
Historic quote from Will Rogers:
“The greatest thing to recommend the Democrats is optimism and humor. You’ve got to be optimist to be a Democrat, and you’ve got to be a humorist to stay one.” Radio broadcast, June 24, 1934