Episode 60: Gassy

Geezer To The Rescue

Let me help. We can dilute so many problems with just one simple piece of legislation:

Mandate that gasoline prices will not be permitted to drop below $4.00 for the next four years, filling in the gap between actual pump prices and that fixed price level with a sliding tax scale.

This will (1) ensure that Americans will continue to curtail consumption, (2) discourage the purchase of gas guzzlers, (3) motivate Detroit to innovate in designing energy-efficient vehicles, (4) continue to reduce the price of home heating oil, (5) start paying back the $700 billion bailout with the resulting enhanced revenues, and (6) give fits to the leaders of countries that don't wish us well - Russia, Iran,Venezuela - while they try to figure out how to stabilize the plunging economies they pumped up when the price of a barrel of oil was over $145 (which, as of today, has dropped to $58).

And yes, Geezer knows this proposal hasn't a prayer.

*****************************************************************************

The Governor Makes Herself Perfectly Clear

Freed from the restrictions imposed upon her by McCain's handlers, Sarah Palin is stocking up on interviews by the dreaded Mainstream Press. She was in her kitchen whipping up snacks for the First Dude and the gang when she dropped these quotes on interviewers.

*About why she wanted to make a concession speech Election Night despite the convention that only the head of the ticket speaks on that occasion:

"But, you know, I thought, even if it was unprecedented, so what, y' know? Geez, let's do something a little bit out of the box there."

* About her frenzied reception at campaign rallies:

"But not me personally were those for," said Sarah Syntax," but it was just for the representation of a woman on the ticket, a mom, somebody who loves this country so much, somebody very, very committed to policies that I will believe will progress this country in the right direction."

* About her future:

"I'm like, 'Okay, God, if there's an open door for me somewhere -this is what I always pray - I'm like, don't let me miss the open door'. Show me where the open door is, even if it's cracked open a little bit, maybe I'll plow right on through that and maybe prematurely plow through it."

* About Africa:

"My concern has been the atrocities there and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent. Never, ever, did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don't know about this issue."

Late-night comedians have to be delighted that they'll still have Sorority Sarah to kick around.

***********************************************************************************

Breaking News:

A pediatricians' group warns that young children shouldn't have contact with hedgehogs.

***********************************************************************************

On Getting A Life

The letters-to-the-editor page of our local newspaper is the frequent repository of the ravings of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who figure things started to go wrong with the Emancipation Proclamation.

At the other end of the intellectual continuum are letters to such journals as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and, in the case quoted below, The New York Times Book Review, in which an over educated twit strives to give elitism a bad name:

"Had Pirsig never read any phenomenology or personalism, any Heidegger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Luigi Giussani, Alasdair MacIntyre or Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), just to name a very few off the top of my head? For academic departments breaking through these dichotomies, he might look at the JohnPaul II Institutes in Washington and Melbourne, or the Center of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. Or just subscribe to the journal Communio!"

Just so.

************************************************************************************

If you came across this blog while surfing and would like to receive advance notice of future episodes, please send your Email address to www.TUCKg3@optonline.net.