Jan. 22, 2012

COLUMBUS: South Carolina muddied the water for the Republicans. It took about two seconds after the polls closed for them to announce the winner; in Iowa it took two weeks.
The Republicans are down to four candidates, the same four who got the most votes in the National No-Till Primary in St. Louis. In that primary, Newt announced that voters should be glad he had three wives instead of just one because a President must be good at Multi-Tasking.
So Santorum, Romney, Gingrich and Ron Paul are in a horse race as they gallop around Florida for a week. If Congressman Paul wins they will each have a victory to brag about to their contributors.
Gov. Romney finally agreed to release his income tax returns on Tuesday. We’ll learn that he made millions, donated a big chunk of it to charities, and paid a few million in taxes but not enough to satisfy a lot of people who made a little and paid nothing. Mitt is shrewd to release them just before the State of the Union address because the news will end up on the back page.
President Obama has been traveling the country gathering material for his speech Tuesday night. He spent a couple of weeks scouring the beaches of Hawaii for gems of information, visited Disney World to pick up some Mickey Mouse ideas, ate with bankers and Wall Streeters in New York City, announced some appointments in Cleveland, and stopped in Chicago to refine his message on ethics in government.
The President has pointed with pride to the 2.7 million people working on green energy. Since he is shutting down coal-fired power plants and refusing to drill for oil or pipe it in from Canada, he had better offer a plan for the government to hire about 10 million more and put them on treadmills for 8 hours a day so they can generate electricity to make up the difference. Once the folks drawing unemployment checks get wind that those are the only jobs available they will be dropping off the unemployment list even faster than they have been recently.
He will propose a plan to give more opportunities to the middle class. From now on, he will hire only those who have never earned more than $100,000 a year to Cabinet posts and various management positions in Washington. I suggest he start with EPA, Treasury, Attorney General, and the Federal Reserve.
He says he wants to promote fairness by having millionaires contribute more to the economy. Well, he should name those he feels should give up  another million dollars a year, including brokers, famous athletes, movie stars and politicians, and require them to hire 50 downtrodden families, put them to work and pay them directly. That way the money will go straight to those who need it instead of getting filtered out as it passes through Washington.
Joe Paterno died today, just a few weeks after his football coaching career ended at Penn State. It pains me to recognize his greatness because my home school, West Virginia University, contributed more wins toward his total of 409 than any other school. His death reminded me of another famous coach, Bear Bryant, who died shortly after retiring from Alabama.
The Super Bowl will be the championship of the Northeast, the New York Giants against the New England Patriots.  It seems a shame to make them go all the way to Indianapolis to play the game.  There will be a Manning at quarterback but the Harbaugh family got shut out.

Historic quote by Will Rogers:
“One of the few stipulated duties of the President is that every once in awhile he delivers a message to Congress to tell them the “Condition of the Country.” This message as I say is to Congress; the rest of the country knows the condition of the country, for they live in it.  But the Senators and Congressmen being in Washington all the time have no idea what is going on in America.  So the President has to tell ’em.”  WA #371, Feb. 2, 1930