Latest on politics and dim bulbs
From Slick Willie to Trick Hillie: Elect one and get both.
How could we be so stupid? I’ll vote for anybody who can beat those crooks. Bill is due to reap $30 million soon from a recent financial deal and Hillary has more skeletons in their closet than Mafia bosses ever did.
What can voters be thinking? Or ignoring?
So there. Now I feel better. From now on, until next November, I’ll try to keep my columns free of further erudite analyses of those two bad actors. Hock-tooey.
Now to return to my usual fare of tender expressions and light touch. Such as: Washington wants to avoid another recession by throwing cash out of airplanes, with bipartisan hurrahs, and hoping consumers will spend it all and hype the economy. Swell, but don’t expect any change except a growing national debt. And when all those GOP presidential candidates claimed they’d also reduce government speaking, I hope everyone laughed out loud.
Perhaps from all the above, you may suspect I’ve become pessimistic lately. No way. True, unemployment is rising, the stock market is sick and so is the real estate market. And even our county’s budget teeters precariously, worsened by our new board of supervisors that is clearly falling apart as we speak.
But wait. We are now winning the war in Iraq, thanks to our troops and their enlightened leaders. Kudos to U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman: “It is our obligation as a free people to honor our heroes who sacrifice so that we may remain free.” Right on. The Iraq outcome, in the long run, will matter more for the USA than all our other current worries put together, except for our choice of a new president next fall.
On the lighter side, so to speak, I hear that we’ll soon have to throw out all our incandescent lights and screw in the new compact flourescent bulbs, which are dimmer. Why? To fight global warming, of course. You see, our old bulbs emit heat and the new ones don’t. But since the new ones require less electricity to burn (while costing much more), who cares if your winter heating bills rise as a consequence.
Further, as you know, when you drop an old bulb, all you get is broken glass. If you drop a new one, you’re in big trouble. One woman, according to a story in Forbes, dropped one and called to learn what to do, since she knew it contained mercury. Her poison control hotline directed her to her state’s environmental protection bureaucracy. They showed up and found the bulb boosted her mercury levels to six times the state standard. Inspectors gave her an estimate of $2,000 to clean up the room where the bulb broke.
Are we overly spooked by such alleged dangers? Obviously. When I was little, I broke an old thermometer just to play with the mercury it contained. Didn’t hurt me a bit. Where was I? Oh yes, Hillary cackles, and and Giants slay and and…
I failed to mention it, but my wife and I went to Florida in January to get away from the cold. It was mostly cloudy, so no sunburns--a disappointment. However, while there we took a day to drive to visit The Villages, that huge restricted cluster of homes for 55-plus folks like us (97 percent white, of race and hair) south of Ocala.
It was charming. The big town square was alive with nice shops, a polka band and lots of happy souls who were only too eager to extol the place and its more than 30,000 residents. Approaching in my rental car, I noticed there seemed to be more golf carts tooling along than cars. I remembered reading somewhere that the residents had only recently established a new Guinness book of world records by arranging the longest golf-cart parade in history.
Then I looked for a parking place, especially a convenient one for the handicapped, since I had brought along Carole Lee’s placard. There was none so designated. Puzzled at first (the mercury effect?), I soon realized that most everyone there could also qualify for one, so there weren’t any.
By the way, it was easy to guess that John McCain would win the Florida GOP primary election. He looks like most of the residents in The Villages, for sure, and also most of my white-haired friends around here. In contrast, Romney looks more like our boomer children.
Whatever it takes, just remember, ABC: Anybody but Clinton
How could we be so stupid? I’ll vote for anybody who can beat those crooks. Bill is due to reap $30 million soon from a recent financial deal and Hillary has more skeletons in their closet than Mafia bosses ever did.
What can voters be thinking? Or ignoring?
So there. Now I feel better. From now on, until next November, I’ll try to keep my columns free of further erudite analyses of those two bad actors. Hock-tooey.
Now to return to my usual fare of tender expressions and light touch. Such as: Washington wants to avoid another recession by throwing cash out of airplanes, with bipartisan hurrahs, and hoping consumers will spend it all and hype the economy. Swell, but don’t expect any change except a growing national debt. And when all those GOP presidential candidates claimed they’d also reduce government speaking, I hope everyone laughed out loud.
Perhaps from all the above, you may suspect I’ve become pessimistic lately. No way. True, unemployment is rising, the stock market is sick and so is the real estate market. And even our county’s budget teeters precariously, worsened by our new board of supervisors that is clearly falling apart as we speak.
But wait. We are now winning the war in Iraq, thanks to our troops and their enlightened leaders. Kudos to U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman: “It is our obligation as a free people to honor our heroes who sacrifice so that we may remain free.” Right on. The Iraq outcome, in the long run, will matter more for the USA than all our other current worries put together, except for our choice of a new president next fall.
On the lighter side, so to speak, I hear that we’ll soon have to throw out all our incandescent lights and screw in the new compact flourescent bulbs, which are dimmer. Why? To fight global warming, of course. You see, our old bulbs emit heat and the new ones don’t. But since the new ones require less electricity to burn (while costing much more), who cares if your winter heating bills rise as a consequence.
Further, as you know, when you drop an old bulb, all you get is broken glass. If you drop a new one, you’re in big trouble. One woman, according to a story in Forbes, dropped one and called to learn what to do, since she knew it contained mercury. Her poison control hotline directed her to her state’s environmental protection bureaucracy. They showed up and found the bulb boosted her mercury levels to six times the state standard. Inspectors gave her an estimate of $2,000 to clean up the room where the bulb broke.
Are we overly spooked by such alleged dangers? Obviously. When I was little, I broke an old thermometer just to play with the mercury it contained. Didn’t hurt me a bit. Where was I? Oh yes, Hillary cackles, and and Giants slay and and…
I failed to mention it, but my wife and I went to Florida in January to get away from the cold. It was mostly cloudy, so no sunburns--a disappointment. However, while there we took a day to drive to visit The Villages, that huge restricted cluster of homes for 55-plus folks like us (97 percent white, of race and hair) south of Ocala.
It was charming. The big town square was alive with nice shops, a polka band and lots of happy souls who were only too eager to extol the place and its more than 30,000 residents. Approaching in my rental car, I noticed there seemed to be more golf carts tooling along than cars. I remembered reading somewhere that the residents had only recently established a new Guinness book of world records by arranging the longest golf-cart parade in history.
Then I looked for a parking place, especially a convenient one for the handicapped, since I had brought along Carole Lee’s placard. There was none so designated. Puzzled at first (the mercury effect?), I soon realized that most everyone there could also qualify for one, so there weren’t any.
By the way, it was easy to guess that John McCain would win the Florida GOP primary election. He looks like most of the residents in The Villages, for sure, and also most of my white-haired friends around here. In contrast, Romney looks more like our boomer children.
Whatever it takes, just remember, ABC: Anybody but Clinton
posted by Ben Blankenship at
5:10 PM
