Showing posts with label TSA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TSA. Show all posts

Monday, November 22, 2010

Weekly Comments: Pat-downs, deficits, and giving thanks #630

Nov. 21, 2010

COLUMBUS: If you’re one of those airline passengers fretting over the new security procedures, I suggest you call your doctor and request, as a precautionary measure, an "internal urological examination." After they look around in there a while for kidney stones, even if they come up empty handed, those TSA pat-downs won’t seem so intrusive.

Ireland announced they need a bailout. I’ve always had a soft spot for Ireland. And I figure if every American who can trace their roots back to Ireland would send them a check for maybe $50, why that would help get them out of a hole. Of course it was the bankers who caused the financial meltdown (does that sound familiar?) so you may be reluctant send your dough to a country whose big bankers are just as shrewd, conniving, and underhanded as ours.

The United States is in a hole far deeper than Ireland’s. President Obama appointed a Commission to look for ways to eliminate the deficit and last week the Chairmen, Mr. Boles and Sen. Simpson, gave a preliminary report. From the reaction in Washington, you would have thought the world was ending. Republicans whined about paying more gas taxes and cuts to defense. Democrats howled about eliminating tax deductions, lowering tax rates, and the prospect that a 5-year old might have to work an extra two years before collecting Social Security. This yammering was caused by some reasonable men and women who have come up with ways to reduce our overspending by half. Imagine the ruckus if they had proposed eliminating it all together.

When you are spending $3.6 Trillion and taking in $2.1 Trillion, you gotta do more than skip a meal once in a while to balance a budget. One of their suggestions is to eliminate 20,000 federal employees (out of 200,000). I think it can work if we find the 20,000 who are responsible for spending the excess $1.5 Trillion every year, and get rid of them along with their budgets. We might lose a few Senators and Congressmen in the process (and a couple of Cabinet Secretaries), but that’s just the price you have to pay for sanity.

This is Thanksgiving week. Besides being thankful for the farmers who provide the food for a bountiful feast, I’m glad to live in a country where a nut can write stuff like this and put it in a newspaper without fear of arrest or getting shot.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

"This is Thanksgiving. It was started by the Pilgrims, who would give thanks every time they killed an Indian and took more of his land. As years went by and they had all his land, they changed it into a day to give thanks for the bountiful harvest, when the boll-weevil and the protective tariff didn't remove all cause for thanks." DT #417, Nov. 23, 1927.

"I have been in twenty countries and the only one where American tourists are welcomed wholeheartedly by everyone is in Ireland. They don't owe us and they don't hate us." DT #3, Aug. 1, 1927

"A Senator named (Millard) Tydings the other day introduced a bill where the government couldn't appropriate more money than was coming in. That is, if you didn't have any money you could not dole out any. Well the Senate like to mobbed him. They called the idea treason, sacrilegious, inhuman and taking the last vestige of power for a politician, that is, the right to appropriate money which you don't have." DT #2024, Jan. 29, 1933

Randall Reeder
Will Rogers Today http://willrogerstoday.com
614-477-0439 willrogers@aol.com
Need a Speaker? Hurry up and hire me before I die... again.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Weekly Comments: Chicken wings, hogs and horses. Plus Fox and FFA. #574

Oct. 25, 2009

COLUMBUS: I am proud to report that, considering the boycott of Fox News, President Obama and his administration are not ignoring me any more than they used to. Whereas they have ordered newspapers and networks to disregard Fox News stories, no one has been barred from repeating any stories I dig up, humorous or otherwise.

Still, I am concerned. So to avoid upsetting the government any more than I did eighty years ago I am screening my readers. This screening is kinda like the TSA, except you get to keep your shoes on. Anybody who shows a pained expression from trying to read between the lines is obviously from the government and will be asked to skip to the funnies. Those reading with a smile and occasional hearty laugh are clearly bright, well educated, and recognize foolishness when they see it.

At least our government is not as bad as Saudi Arabia. Here, if you report something they don’t like on television news you get snubbed; over there you get 60 lashes.

This whole country is upside down. They want to reduce payments for doctors, nurses and insurance companies but expect them to give better health care. They want to reduce the deficit by spending more. Their solution to unemployment is to give more people jobs in government.

Even chicken prices are upside down. Do you like chicken wings? Well, those flapping appendages of skin and bones and a little meat are more expensive than chicken breast. Folks are just wild over chicken wings and it’s created a national shortage.

Bars and restaurants tried disguising chicken legs as wings, but there’s way too much meat on ‘em to fool anybody. Tyson has breeders working overtime trying to produce White Leghorns with four wings.

This wing deficit was serious till they solved the whole thing by cooking tiny pieces of breast meat, doubling the price, and selling them as “boneless wings.”

Hog farmers, who have lost more money and said less about it than anybody, used to advertise “Pork: the other white meat.” Their new slogan is “Pork: it tastes like wings.”

The All-American Quarter Horse Congress ended here today. Seldom do you see so many beautiful horses at one place.

Meanwhile, in Indianapolis the national FFA convention wrapped up. The farm boys and girls from Oklahoma won top honors in so many categories no other state even came close.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

“Last week when I was (in Kansas City), there was 1700 young boys and girls brought there by that great Paper, the Kansas City Star, from over 30 states. They were taking vocational (agriculture) training and had led their various districts back home in the studying of farming, and stock raising.” WA #207, Nov. 28, 1926

Randall Reeder is Will Rogers Today
http://willrogerstoday.com willrogers@aol.com
614-477-0439
Need a Speaker? Hurry up and hire me before I die... again.