September tweets of the month

(422 words)

Looking forward to a day of televised sports and remote parenting. On deck for tomorrow: “Trouble with the Critics,” my take on the widely slammed new Clint Eastwood movie, “Trouble with the Curve.” I liked it!

And, yes, I still like Clint, too!

Check out the tweets @8days2amish and have a great Sunday!

• I plan on spending tomorrow saying same things over and over, repeating ad nauseam & beating proverbial dead horse. It's Happy Belabor Day!

• Can anyone explain why in San Francisco there's a big orange bridge right where everyone told me to look for a golden gate?

• The word clusterf*** is very misleading. Sounds like something we should all enjoy. "We're having a big clusterf***! Bring a casserole!"

• There are just two true rock stars left on the entire planet. One of them is Mick Jagger. The other is married to Hillary Clinton.

• God knows all/sees all. I wonder if He reads http://www.EightDaysToAmish.com .

• I'm thinking it's physically impossible for someone who is Finnish to hitchhike.

• Another absurd story saying men think about sex 250 times a day. C'mon! I thought about sex 250 times in the time it took me to type this tweet.

• I’ve cut my nose off so many times to spite my face it’s become physically impossible for me to stop and smell the roses.

• A single splash of water killed the Wicked Witch of the West. Logical conclusion: Not only was she evil, she also reeked.

• If Three Dog Night had performed before Caesar they would have been called Tres Canis Nox.

• I wish Apple would cease making new iPhones and instead develop an engine that runs on all the iPhones they’ve snookered us into discarding.

• My mother looks at the new TV remote the way the ancients must have looked at a solar eclipse

• It'd be neat if our sneezes revealed our personalities. Cheerful people would sneeze confetti; sweet people jelly beans; politicians, crap.

• Chefs with rashes are the best at cooking from scratch.

• “Live and learn” is a popular phrase with no practical application. Most people live and stay stupid.

• Runways among our most illogical words. Planes never run on runways. If we named them after what happens most on them they'd be waitways.

• Can't prove it, but I'll wager Superman was the first person to ever say, "I see London, I see France ..."

• When is some entrepreneur going to seize the obvious opportunity and open a set of chain stores that sell nothing but chains?

• The problem with most people isn’t just that they have their heads up their asses. The problem is how many can’t stop admiring the view.

• That which does not kill me usually leaves me with one whopper of a hangover.

• Let's find homeless Happy Days star Erin Moran work. How about an antiquing show? "Joannie Loves Tchotchke!”

Related . . .

• I am now the bar’s official Twitterist

• Twitter = Wit confetti: Holland Taylor follows my Tweets!

Re-run Sunday: Fake boobs to confound real ones

This one enjoyed a mini-surge this week. It charms me whenever readers revive some of these old stories. This was from March 2009. I re-read it and thought, you know, you don't hear foreign policy arguments like this on "Meet the Press." It's a pity. Read on and I think you'll agree.

This is bound to be controversial, but here goes: for the good of our national interests, Hillary Clinton needs a boob job.

I’m not talking something that will enhance the Secretary of State’s already womanly figure. I’m talking about porn tits. Major league yabos. Ta tas ‘til Tuesday.

And, yes, she needs to do this for Uncle Sam, and to be perfectly clear, I’m referring to the symbol of our shared national interests here and not the lecherous uncle who used to make you fish through his pockets for bent Tootsie Rolls.

This diplomatic overture occurred to me after I skimmed a recent story about how Sarah Palin’s voluptuous looks may have actually worked against her during the 2008 election -- and let’s again take a moment to revel in the marvelous reality show of a race that was.

It wasn’t too long ago that every national election involved four uniformly boring white men. The introduction of an unknown babe like Palin was a sensation that just keeps on giving. It’s impossible for her to say something that doesn’t enliven each and every news cycle when she manages to pry herself away from the tedium of North Pole politics.

We can all be grateful that she, her whack job family and pill-popping in-laws are going to be electrifying the national news for at least the next 30 years (and those of us who lean liberal can be grateful she’s a solid conservative).

Whether her dynamite looks cost her votes is disputable. But no one can argue the impact she had on the global politics when she made a memorable show biz visit to the United Nations.

To me, it was the highlight of the whole election. Palin handlers ushered her through a day of drive-by meetings with leaders from hotspots around the world.

It may have been the first time in history a push-up bra was deployed to demonstrate gravitas.

Fox News immediately trumpeted the predictable reaction of these dour men from mostly authoritarian countries to being greeted by the jiggly Palin: “Foreign leaders enthusiastically endorse Palin. . .”

Typically, Fox only gave half the headline and left out ". . . for their harems!”

No reaction was more comical than that of Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, the still grieving widower of assassinated premier Benazir Bhutto. He used his face time with Palin to gush on camera, “You are so gorgeous! Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you.”

When an aide suggested the two shake hands, Zardari beamed boyish sunshine and said, “If he’s insisting, I might hug!”

He did regain enough focus to talk some strategy.

“And how does one keep looking that good when one is that busy?” he asked.

Yes, love was in the air.

It occurred to me that Zardari and men like him are still living in the ‘60s. The 1360s. They’ve never had a chance to enjoy lusty relations or bawdy ambitions with someone like the comely Sarah. It’s a pity and I think the unnatural repression is a reason that many fundamentalists around the world become so kill crazy. They’re stuck home alone on weekends with their religious studies while everyone else is out getting some.

It sort of reminds me of the unfulfilled longings from my own adolescence, except my internal frustrations boiled to the surface in the form of, not homicidal mayhem, but sprawling fields of unsightly facial pimples.

Make no mistake: We are at war with fundamentalists who resent our way of life, our exuberant liberty and the fact that they can’t put women like Palin in a drab burqa and a stifling muzzle (in reflective moments, John McCain probably shares half that sentiment).

That’s why Hillary needs to get some massive new boobs, some low cut dresses and a bra that’ll shove those hooters right up under the noses of our fundamentalist enemies.

She needs to look them in the eye, dare them to maintain eye contact and say, “This is who we are. Like it or not, this is the future and there’s not a thing you can do about it. And maybe you should loosen up that turban and think about giving it a try, big boy.”

It would make Hillary an historic feminist icon around the Muslim world and might eventually lead to seismic changes in how Arab males treat women.

Now, if I could just find a powerful politician with enough international respect to articulate the wisdom behind this groundbreaking diplomatic initiative . . .

I wonder if Bill Clinton would think this is a good idea.

Cheer up, America!

It hasn’t even been 10 years since 2002 when Dick Cheney famously said, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”

It was the reason he used to justify the massive Bush tax cuts to then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. Those trickle-down tax cuts and the Iraq War fiasco are the reasons the $230 billion Clinton surplus went, “Wheeee!!!”

Now last night in the museum dedicated to the sainted Reagan all the leading Republicans asserted nothing but deficits matter.

Well, Cheney was for the most part right. Most deficits don’t matter, certainly not to the hysterical extent the Republican presidential candidates currently contend (at least until one of them becomes president).

But there is one key deficit that goes unmentioned because it runs counter to the scare-mongering so prevalent in Congress.

It’s the optimism deficit.

The country is morose at a time when it should be getting ready to strut.

Why?

The biggest reason happens Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

We’ve survived 10 of the worst years in the history of the republic. The attacks and our misguided overreaction -- Iraq -- could have devastated America. Instead will wind up fortifying us.

Historians will look back and wonder how we survived the last decade.

We survived Bernie Madoff, Fannie & Freddie, al-Qaeda, gulf oil spills, Abu Ghraib, Katrina, the steroid dismantling of baseball’s most hallowed records, the collapse of Detroit, Sanjaya, shoe and underwear bombers, TSA pat-downs and the 15th anniversary of Radio Disney.

Man, are we ever due.

We survived the untimely death of Texas troubadour Stephen Bruton (1948-2009). He co-wrote many of the songs for the fine Jeff Bridge’s movie, “Crazy Heart,” a 2009 Oscar winner dedicated to his memory.

This is from his 1995 song, “Right on Time,” and it strikes me as Americana apropos of the past decade.

I watched my luck run right out that door

I felt the future slam in my face

You know with luck this bad, I just had to smile

I’m only sticking around to see what else is gonna take place

We are witnessing the end of a really messy epoch in American history. It won’t bookend until the next election.

But, I swear, we’re on the short end of it. Detroit’s been miraculously reborn and businesses are sitting on nearly $1 trillion in profits and are bound to soon pull the trigger on more hiring.

The daily headlines scream you should be afraid.

Nonsense.

This isn’t about defeating the menace of global Communism or killing Osama bin Laden.

We’re being terrified by a bunch of accountants.

To me it seems almost treasonous to be so afraid of a future in a country so historically exuberant. This country positively percolates with great, innovative men and women who when challenged kick ass.

We defeat polio, bloodthirsty tyrants and nations audacious enough to think they can beat us to the surface of the moon.

These have been some damned tough times. People are struggling.

Hang in there. It’s going to get better.

Here’s a quick booster shot of some things that ought to make you more optimistic when the headlines scream you’re a fool for feeling that way.

• The NFL’s back and Brett Favre isn’t.

• With the exception of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the Republicans at the debate didn’t all look as batshit crazy as you’d think they might have been. That bodes well for an issue-based 2012 presidential race.

• In 2001, the pessimists predicted we were on the verge of Islamic theocracies sweeping the Middle East. Ten years later the Arab world is rising up to demand Democracy. They’re dying for it in Egypt, Libya and Syria. And Bill Clinton hasn’t even paid them a visit yet.

• We’ve still got Clint Eastwood!

• Tea Party influence has peaked and so has Sarah Palin.

• You’re starting to see evidence everywhere that major corporations are finally starting to take eco-issues seriously.

• Kate Gosselin’s out of work.

• A coalition of CEOs led by Starbucks honcho Howard Schultz is gaining traction in a movement to get America working again. The group is pressuring Congress and business leaders to focus on innovative job creation. This could get interesting.

• Moammar Ghadafi hasn’t had a good day in at least five months.

• Only 16 shopping days until I rerun my ever-popular Lt. Frank Burns tribute on September 29, birthday of the late, five-times married actor Larry Linville!

I’m not sure if any of that will help perennial pessimists who are morose about the future.

But I’m optimistic it might.

Parking lot pervert? Nope. Just me

I guess I can’t blame her for thinking the worst. I was sitting alone in the parking lot outside the bar with the windows rolled down. I had to keep wiping my forehead with my arm to keep the sweat from dripping on my keyboard.

My face, I’m sure, bore the pained expression it gets whenever I’m trying to muster what Moe calls “real thinkin’.”

“You’re not doin' something dirty, are you?”

She works in the kitchen at the bar that’s just beneath my internet-free office on the second floor.

It’s a question that deserves a lie. I’m sure if I said, “Why, yes!” she might have shucked her apron and dove in through the passenger window for a lewd little siesta.

But, man, was it hot, too uncomfortable to instigate a sticky scandal.

I haven’t had WiFi in the office for about two years now. But I can pick up a stray signal if I park beside the dumpsters out in the parking lot.

So I go out there after lunch to check e-mails and see if there’s been a titanic lurch toward my forlorn blog’s popularity (in three years, it’s never happened once).

It’s odd having an office above a working man’s bar. Many of my friends there drive trucks or work in factories. Many of them can not fathom someone earning a living writing stories.

Heck, my wife can’t fathom it either. I have trouble believing it myself.

It’s not easy. I tell people I’m working basically for beer money.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not seeking pity. In fact, it’s kind of a boast.

I drink a lot of beer and they don’t give the suds away for free. Working for beer money is far superior to working for peanuts (those’ll cost you here, too).

I figure about 51 percent of the people in the bar like me because I have a sunny disposition, buy the occasional round and finally stopped trying to impress everyone by conducting loud, make-believe cell phone conversations with imaginary sources like pretend Bill Clinton and pretend Mike Tomlin.

Get busted for that once and, geez, they never let you forget it.

Then there’s about 47 percent who merely tolerate my company. They don’t like me. They don’t dislike me. They show me no warmth. They pay me no mind. They barely acknowledge I exist.

I guess, for them, that sort of makes me their bar wife.

That’s perfectly fine with me. Many of these men are probably packing heat and being ignored these days is safer than being noticed.

That leaves the two percent, 1 percent of which just was trying to discreetly peek into my car to detect if I was wearing pants.

We’re friendly but she has no idea what to make of me, and all she knows about computers is perverts use them to do dirty things in parking lots.

Maybe I should get a telecommunications sign to put on the side of my Saturn. Maybe then people wouldn’t think it’s odd for me to sit in there in the parking lot typing away while everyone else is working.

Or maybe I should try and find a job.

But getting a job sounds like, well, a lot of work.

I’d guess I’d rather just keep scraping by and hoping something good some day falls into my lap.

Doin’ something dirty?

Just about every time my fingers hit the keyboard.

Where have you gone, Ross Perot?

It pains the academic in me to realize the best way to educate a forgetful America on the folly of the Tea Party simpletons is to urge them to seek a classic 1992 clip from Saturday Night Live.

It may have been the most uproarious skit the show’s ever done. It features the late Phil Hartman (oh, how I miss him!) and Dana Carvey.

Hartman played Bill Clinton and Carvey incumbent President George H.W. Bush.

But Carvey had double duty. Through split-screen chicanery, he also played a man who at the time surpassed even the current Tea Party in political impact and sound-bite stupidity.

That would be H. Ross Perot.

If you’ve become fired with political passions in just the past two years it probably means two things: One, you’re a Tea Party Patriot convinced you have all the answers; and, two, you’ve likely never heard of Perot.

And that’s a pity.

Just five months prior to the ’92 presidential election, he was leading in the polls over both Bush and Clinton.

The Texan became a self-made billionaire through founding Electronic Data Systems. And he oversaw a daring a rescue mission of two hostage employees from Iran in 1979, an operation that became the basis for Ken Follett’s “On Wings of Eagles,” a best-seller and eventual miniseries.

He was one of the most admired men in America.

Then he made a crucial tactical error.

He opened his mouth. And America learned the only thing more entertaining than hearing Carvey lampoon him was hearing Perot speak for himself.

He was folksy. He got $5 haircuts. He talked about going to Washington to clean out the barn and giant sucking sound we’d hear if we elected anyone but him.

He just made it all sound so simple.

And he wasn’t interested in compromise and would mercilessly ridiculed as elitist anyone who disagreed with him. He made his operatives sign loyalty oaths.

Any of this starting to sound familiar?

I remember one presidential debate in which Perot -- I swear to God -- held up a poster of an outline of Arkansas with the silhouette of a chicken dominating the entire state.

He was saying if we elected Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton president we’d all wind up plucking chickens.

To quote Secret Agent Maxwell Smart, “Missed it by that much!”

Clinton took over a sluggish economy, raised taxes on the rich (Perot, to his credit, was perfectly okay with this), and launched one of the greatest job-creating economies the world has ever seen. It was eight years of peace, prosperity and all that other stuff.

He left office in 2000 with a balanced budget augmented by a $230 billion surplus. Economically, his presidency was such a success it’s surprising the Republicans haven’t tried claim him as one of their own.

But what happened to Perot?

It’s like he rode that giant chicken into the sunset never to be heard from again.

His near complete disappearance from public life is incredible.

At 81, he has a net worth of $3.4 billion and Forbes ranks him the 99th richest man in America.

Yet the man who once had all the answers today refuses to address any of the questions.

John McCain, who as much as any man alive helped conceive the Tea Party, yesterday on the floor of the U.S. Senate denounced them as “hobbits” inhabiting a “bizarro” world where they are “deceiving” their constituents.

The few grownups that remain in the Republican Party look feckless and scared in the face of the Frankenstein monster they raised up on birther hysteria, anti-tax mania and the demonization of the government they view the way the rest of us view the Taliban.

Yes, America, just as that Moses of the Tea Party warned, there is indeed a giant sucking sound.

And it’s becoming increasingly clear as to the identity of the ones who suck the most.

Newt, the alien & me

I’m rooting for Newt Gingrich to overcome his myriad stumbles and do well in his run for the GOP nomination.

Gingrich and I share a natural affinity.

We both grew up in Pennsylvania. We both enjoy history. He loves zoos and I’m a party animal.

The Gingrich campaign is in the news today because a whole bunch of people I don’t know and certainly wouldn’t like have abandoned Newt.

Gingrich has vowed to press on. I hope he does.

The race for the GOP nomination promises to be one of the most odd, shrill and self-defeating political events any of us has ever witnessed and a bombastic gasbag like Gingrich only adds to the folly.

Really, in this race with no clear favorite, absolutely anything could happen.

An unknown might emerge. Strange alliances may be fostered. An alien endorsement could vault an underdog straight to the nomination.

And when I say alien, I’m not talking Sarah Palin.

Many people have forgotten the pivotal role a politically motivated extra-terrestrial named P’lod used to play in American politics.

That was back in the 1990s when the Weekly World News was still a supermarket staple setting brilliant new standards in news gathering.

“When a woman calls and tells me her toaster is talking to her, I don’t diagnose a mental health disorder. I tell her to put the toaster on the phone.”

To me, that may be the most succinct statement of journalistic purity ever uttered.

I heard it from an actual Weekly World News reporter in a tavern in Lantana, Florida, where both the Enquirer and the Weekly World News shared a building (it was the building that was poisoned in the surreal first anthrax attack in 2001).

I was an Enquirer correspondent from 1992-2000. It couldn’t have been more fun and every six months or so they’d fly me to Florida for two weeks. There may have been some practical reason for the junkets, but it wound up being purely social.

Each and every day reporters from all the various tabloids would gather at the same divey bar and try and outdo each other with stories from the world’s most raucous outlaw publications.

Hands down, the winners were always guys from the Weekly World News (sample headline: “Baby Born With Wooden Leg!”).

There was BatBoy, Bigfoot, and the alien P’lod and his uncanny ashtray-sized eye for picking presidential winners. For years, I had a WWN t-shirt featuring the 1992 cover of the one where P’lod correctly picked Bill Clinton who exalted, “I’m glad he saw through Bush and Perot!”

I always think of that wise alien anytime Gingrich’s name pops up.

It was 1995, just after Gingrich’s late mother Kathleen made headlines for whispering to Connie Chung that Newt thought Hillary Clinton was -- shhh! -- a “bitch.”

It ignited a huge controversy.

It was into this hornet’s nest I was thrust. The Enquirer had a tip that a family housekeeper was seducing Momma Gingrich with a wacky religion as a way to steal thousands of dollars.

It was one of the most hostile interview situations I’ve ever endured.

Not because of Kathleen, who was perfectly pleasant. No, it was because of Gingrich’s step-father, Robert, who’d become an impromptu media critic.

He kept glaring at me and asking insinuating questions about my background, my politics and who the utterly apolitical Enquirer’d endorsed the previous election.

I began to believe he’d never read a single newspaper when he asked if The Enquirer was the paper that had run the picture of Newt with an alien.

“No, sir,” I said. “That was The New York Times.”

The tip we had turned out to be untrue. We never wrote anything about the rumor.

Kathleen Gingrich died in 2007. I don’t know what happened to Robert, but Newt everyday does something to, well, alienate conservatives who for more than 25 years have been assuring us that Gingrich is a genius exemplar of the whole movement.

As for P’lod, who knows?

I hope he still has something to say. I hope he has guidance to offer. I hope there’s at least one journalist out there who’s not so cynical as to disregard the insights of a savvy old alien.

And I hope the talking toaster lets him get a word in edgewise.

My Biblical confusions

I remember reading what to me seemed a profound Biblical phrase from when I was about 25. My recollection of the precise wording was: “He who uses well what he is given shall be given more.”

My memory of it is crystal clear.

So I was surprised this morning when I went to look it up and saw that for nearly 25 years I’ve had it all wrong.

The passage attributed to Jesus Christ that struck me as so indelible is from the book of Matthew 13:12 and says, “For to him who has will more be given and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

I don’t know why I’m surprised I had it wrong. I often forget the “not” part in many of the Ten Commandments, oversights that are forever getting me into hot water with my wife, my neighbors and, I guess, the Almighty rule maker.

And -- sorry, Jesus -- my version’s better. It’s more concise, makes more sense and doesn’t ramble about in such confusing fashion.

What do you expect? He’s just a carpenter. 

I’m a professional blogger, well, as professional as any blogger who doesn’t earn a dime relentlessly blogging can be.

So let’s go by my phrasing and issue a report card for over the past 20 years. That’s a fair enough time for a reckoning. What have I apparently used well enough to be given more?

Let’s run it down:

• Spare change -- If you ever need a quarter, I’m the man. I’ve always kept piles of change handy in my life. Ever since 1986, I’ve always tossed the daily change into an old wine carafe. Once it fills, I count it up and usually get about $115. So if my interpretation of the Biblical phrase is true, I’ve done well with change and have been given more.

• Friends -- A morose friend of mine was saying the other day he believes we only have one real friend in our lives. Nonsense, I told him. I’ll bet I have about 50 really good friends -- and I’m not talking about people whose mere company I enjoy. I have hundreds of those. I’m talking about 50 people who will without question help me do things like bury bodies in the woods. I tried to cheer the guy up by telling him, “Hey, there are probably two or three people right in this bar that are your friends -- and you’re not even very popular.” I’m glad I have so many good friends because that man is now very pissed at me.

• Wives -- It gets tricky here because, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on what the definition of the word “use” is. I’ve only had one wife and, believe me, that’s plenty. But have I used her wisely? I know some very religious men who insist the wife should be submissive. These men, one in particular, must use their wives very well because they are working on acquiring their third and fourth ones. I’m convinced most men don’t want real wives. They want mail-order brides unfamiliar with the English language. Maybe I should try that. I could really use a mail-order bride.

• Golf balls -- This confuses me because I don’t use a golf ball very well. I can’t hit it straight, far or near where I aim. Yet, I have hundreds of them.

• Folding money -- I think this is the source of why I remembered that phrase with such clarity. It seemed like such a simple roadmap to riches. Use it well and you’ll be given more. If that’s so, then it’s damning evidence that I’ve done poorly with my money. I believe I use my money wisely. I’m not extravagant. But frets about money have dogged me my entire life. Life is not giving me more and I’m certainly not going to demean myself by running around after it.

• Time -- What gives with this? I’m a man with all the time in the world. I’ve fatigued proselytizing Hare Krishnas who fled my house saying, sorry, time to run. I’ll spend 15 minutes talking nonsense with the guys who work the butcher counter at the local supermarket. But have I used my time well? I’m 48 have no achievements and made no mark. I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun, but is that a wise use of my time?

Maybe one day it’ll all make sense, but it seems the one thing in my life I’ve really used well is, alas, my cents.

Fresh air about cash for clunkers

I’m enchanted by “cash-for-clunkers” because I’m hopeful the program will fulfill an offbeat prediction I heard years ago in a progressive publication.

The magazine quoted experts who said the way to solve air pollution problems was to take all the cars from the 1950s and simultaneously empty the air from all their tires.

This would release the sweet, wholesome air of the Howdy Duty era and allow it to crowd out the pollution. The ozone hole would magically close, asthmatic coughing would be eliminated as the more pure air circulated, and network TV censors would find themselves out of work as people began to say things like, “Gee, Beaver . . .” instead of “Holy @*&#!” when stuck in traffic.

The magazine was the great Weekly World News.

Feel free to dispute the wisdom of “experts” who would allow themselves to be quoted on pages next to stories headlined,
“Baby Born with False Teeth!”

How that lively magazine went out of business while weekly snoozers like Newsweek and Time remain solvent still mystifies.

But the story points out something even today’s bona fide experts are overlooking, and that is that good things can sometimes come from unexpected places.

I tried to make this point the other day with a cranky WWII veteran from The Greatest Generation.

He told me the country is in the midst of a historic collapse. He cited the exploding deficits, the trade wars and the legitimacy of a president who may not even be a real American.

Want to take a wild guess where he gets his news?

There was a time not long ago when I would reflexively bow to the opinion of any man who’d bled on the beaches of places like Normandy.

No more. I’m no longer a young whippersnapper. I’ve been alert and informed for more than 40 years now.

Sure, for many of those years I’ve been tipsy from various heady inebriates, but the parking lot at the VFW near my home’s always full, too, so it’s a fair fight.

And he may have toted a M-1 in Europe, but he’s not going to outgun me in any political argument about current events.

“Now, hold on, friend,” I said. “Are you telling me this isn’t the greatest country in the world? Are you saying we can’t, when challenged, roll up our sleeves and solve any problem?

“Because I refuse to believe that. We are the most exuberant and energetic people the world has ever known. We have for more than 200 years been an enormous force for good and liberty.

“Solving an economic problem is nothing. Remember just 25 years ago when Reagan exploded the deficits there were stories that your generation was ruining the future for my generation? Well, that never happened. Bill Clinton balanced the budget, vanquished nutty Ross Perot in the process and wound up leaving George W. Bush an enormous surplus.

“This is the county that produced Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, and Bugs Bunny. We are capable of greatness when summoned. So I’ll not stand here and allow you or anyone else to bad mouth the United States of America.”

It was roughly the same speech Otter gave to Dean Vernon Wormer in “Animal House” when the Omegas were trying to have the Deltas thrown off campus.

We are in the midst of historic times. I believe there is innovation about to be unleashed that will render many of the old arguments obsolete. Our brightest minds have at their finger tips problem solving computers that would make Albert Einstein snap his stubby little pencils in envy.

Prepare to be amazed by some of the startling improvements that are going to appear out of thin air.

Not to mention old tires.