#439, January 22, 2007
COLUMBUS: Peculiar news this week. Snow and ice causing havoc down south in Texas and Oklahoma, while Minnesota is still green. The middle of Ohio got it’s first snow yesterday, three inches, hardly worth mentioning compared to Colorado.
Then the news from the Department of Agriculture. They announced that Nigeria bought 195,000 tons of wheat from us in the past year. That surprised me till I found out how they did it. Turns out it was an intense sales campaign where we flooded the country with 800 million emails.
Speaking of floods, how about the deluge of Presidential hopefuls. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney, Sam Brownback, Tom Vilsack, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Rosie O’Donnell, Dennis Kuchinich and a dozen others.
For the Presidential debates they’ll rent an auditorium. The voters will be on stage because candidates will fill all the seats. And that’s where the voters ought to be, on stage. A couple of candidates have announced their platforms: “Whatever YOU want, I want” and “I’m here to listen”. They’re listening all right, hoping to hear a good idea or two they can latch onto and claim as their own.
Candidates are jumping in, about one a day, but don’t think there’ll be three hundred running by the New Hampshire election. No, the pace will slow, and every time another jumps in, two or three will drop out. I may have picked the Colts and Bears to win, but I have no clue on which two candidates will be standing after the conventions.
Art Buchwald, the great humorist of the latter part of the 20th Century, died last week. He died, but he delivered his own eulogy. I don’t blame him; after making a living off the foibles of politicians, there’s no telling what one of ’em might say over you once you’re gone.
Tuesday night the President will deliver the annual State of the Union address. If he talks more about making our own fuel from corn, soybeans and switch grass than he does the war in Iraq, it just goes to show you he is more optimistic about the farmers fueling our Fords than the Muslims. But you’ll know he’s plum nutty if he advises the best way for you to pay for health insurance is to play the lottery and respond to emails from Nigeria.
Historic quote from Will Rogers:
“Our President delivered his (State of the Union) message to Congress. You know that’s one of the things that his contract calls for… that 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 and are a part of 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 February 2, 1930