Tuesday's Insight

Law School exams are hard.

I am excited to make this post. I hope this will turn out to be a weekly column. These are excerpts from an exclusive weekly newsletter sent out by a talented writer. The New Right is the only place to read him on the web. We'll call the author "Uncle John." This inaugural posting will be a double edition. Please comment and let us know what you think of the new feature. Thanks.

The front page of today's Post Disgrace (er, Post Dispatch) shows an artist's rendering of a scientist's projection of sea waves rolling through high rise buildings. Well, maybe it's not such a happy Earth Day after all. We all must still keep in mind that it wasn't that many years ago that the first Earth Day scientific symposium had global cooling as it's agenda. I'll bet serious money that many of the prognosticators have been in both camps. Happy Arbor Day. Be sure to plant heat resistant and water resistant trees. I am given to understand that if you plant enough trees you can cat around in private jets and maintain a clear conscience as regards your zillions of pounds of CO2 emissions. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but it must be true. The person who says it won the popular vote for the US Presidency, won an Oscar, is about to win a Nobel Peace Prize, and invented the Internet.

Postage is going up to 41 cents. Good grief. I wonder what the average postage rate is on all the junk mail we get daily.

The Don Imus mess is settling down. I'm not sure that so many people should be so shocked when a shock jock says something shocking. The reverends Sharpton and Jackson got their usual air time (I don't think they made any money out of this one though) and I'm getting very tired of that.

I took my first bike ride of the Spring yesterday. It was a 22 mile deal at a very leisurely pace. Usually I have many, many miles under my belt by this time of year. I'm not so sure about global warming but I am sure about global blowing. It is windy every day. I do not like the wind.

A recent email about urine tests raised a very cogent point. If workers must take urine tests to prove they are drug free so they can keep their job and their salary and keep paying taxes, then why aren't the recipients of those tax dollars required to take urine tests to prove they are drug free so they can keep their welfare? Seems fair to me.

Mike Shannon, baseball announcer extraordinaire, said of the promising rookie, "His future is still ahead of him." Truer words were never spoken.

I notice on my charge card statements that they will accept a minimum payment that is 2% of the balance! This is an unvarnished attempt to lure customers into carrying absurd finance charges. There ought to be a law. (For an extra 0.89% of the balance each month, I can buy "protection" in that they would "suspend" my payments for a spell should I fall ill, lose my job, or move.)

It is reported that 36% of "boomers" want refrigerators in their cars. This amazes me. I've never of any heard grass roots movement in this regard. Who took this survey and why? Are they sure that it's really 36% and not, say, 35% for example? Last but not least, who cares?

This one sort of challenges ones ability to assimilate. The WY government (legislation from its Congress and signed by its Governor) has banned motorized traffic on all roads (except Interstate highways) from July 16-22. Those exiting the Interstates will be directed to a nearby parking lot. From there, they're on their own. It started out as a suggestion to encourage more walking and biking. If this doesn't prove that no idea is safe in the hands of elected officials, nothing will. I almost feel like going to WY then just to watch the chaos.

Howard Dean says "No one tells what they really think when the media is in the room." Since everything we ever hear or read attributed to our friends in government are things they say when media are in the room, it follows that we have never heard or read what they really think. This is unfathomably reassuring to me. Come to think of it, the media generally mis-report information anyway so at times they probably do accidentally indicate what the public "servant" really thinks. I resume my depression.

A man in Texas got a 30 year sentence in a child porn sting. A lady in STL got 37 months in the same sting. A lady teacher in CO got 45 days for actually engaging in the sort of thing the others merely had pictures of. Strange. Sort of like the good Congressman Folley who was caught having sent inappropriate emails to pages and was pilloried, tarred and feathered, run out of town on a rail, and hung in effigy when compared to the Congressman from MA who actually engaged in illicit acts with a page and got a standing ovation from his Dem colleagues when he turned his back on the House during censoring procedures and who was widely reelected every two years thereafter.

So Presidential candidate Edwards got a $400 haircut. Presidential Candidate Hillary must be insanely jealous.