Post #100! It Goes to Uncle John.

I'm going to be singularly circumspect from now on when I enter a public men's room. You never know when a US senator may be in a stall. You never know when one of our protectors and servers may be in a stall. And if there is some catchy tune rambling in my head I will resist any urge to tap my foot. And if I happen to drop a piece of toilet paper on the floor, that's where it will stay.

A podiatrist has been charged for fraud against Medicare. All the alleged frauds involve trimming of toenails. Mind you, not all toe nail trims are covered. If the MD submits that the trim is necessary to alleviate pain from walking, then Medicare is happy. However, this MD was saying that the toenail trims were due to a fungus condition and Medicare is not about to cover that. I know that medical care is very expensive and I know there are many indigent folk. That's why God invented Medicaid. As far as Medicare is concerned, perhaps we should all agree that some procedures should be done by the individual or at least paid for by the individual. I submit that toe nail trimming may be a good place to start.

A 70 pound tortoise managed to escape his pen in a local pet shop. He has been missing for three days now. The caption in the paper read, "He can hide but he cannot run."

I see the Indiana State Fair is very proud of itself for eliminating trans fats from their deep fry vats for deep frying Snickers, Mars bars, and you name it. I think someone may be missing the larger point of the dietary alarm about deep fried candy bars. Anyway, when I was reading about the Indiana State Fair, I was thinking if I were living where the Wilds or Casey or Kristin live, I'd jump on my bike and ride the Monon to the State Fair Grounds. Very slick.

A man in Texas was serving a life sentence for murder. He had steadfastly said he never knew and had never seen the victim. After many years, another convict had an epiphany, was born again in jail, and confessed to some crimes he had not been charged with. One confession was for the murder of the victim in the aforementioned case. The Texas authorities did not necessarily take him at his word. But they did follow up. With DNA testing, they concluded that the original man serving the life sentence was innocent. Now I want to know just what DNA test they ran that cleared the innocent man that could not have been run earlier, much earlier.

Nifong, the prosecuting attorney in the Duke Lacrosse case was found guilty of lying to the judge about having turned over exculpatory DNA evidence to the appropriate defense attorneys. The judge handed down a sentence of one day in jail. That will be a lesson Mr. Nifong will not soon forget.

Well, well, well. I see Waukesha is in the news. I got no reply from there or anywhere else about flood problems, so I guess "southern Wisconsin" didn't include Waukesha. So, the story goes that a Mark Stahnke woke up in his neighbors yard without his pants. Normally one would not run to the police to report this, but he did. It seems he had several hundred in cash and a check for $41,000 in his pockets. The article says the police were skeptical. I can understand that. But it turns out. The pants were found by a dog at an intersection and the pants and money were turned into the police and then returned to Stahnke. Some people are born under a lucky star. If I were the cops, he wouldn't have gotten the goods until he could tell how it was that he and his pants became separated.

From 1999 to 2005 the USDA paid $1.1 billion farm payments in names of deceased individuals. Of these, 40% had been dead for three or more years. One dead farmer got over $400,000 over 7 years. Thus reports the GAO. Congress reacted swiftly with a new 742 page farm bill.

US News and World Report ranked universities. Purdue ranked 6 places behind Ohio State. This is tragic. On the brighter side, it ranked 2 places above Iowa, 3 above Miami of Ohio (condolences to a host of kin from Ohio), 7 above Minnesota and 11 above IU. The judges were obviously too generous with IU. Good old Mizzou finished another 16 places down the list. Any questions asked about Harvard's rating are going to be ignored.

Asthma inhalers are being phased out because they damage the ozone layer. Give me a break. The new medicine happens to cost about 7 times more. Hmm.

When our President was asked if he would speak French when the delegation arrived from Paris he replied, "No, I can barely speak English."

In keeping with the current administration's tradition, our Attorney General utterly denied rumors of his departure over the weekend then released the announcement of same first thing Monday morning. This has happened with the last several Cabinet changes.

From last week's government report on the poor: The poor eat more meat than the rich. Their protein intake is over 100% above recommended level. The poor in the US have more floor space per person than median wealth families in Paris, London, Brussels, etc. Some 97% have TV, 62% have cable or satellite, 78% have VCR or DVD, 75% have at least one car, 80% have air conditioning, 6% are over crowded by government criteria, 2% say they don't get enough to eat. We have over 35 million in "poverty" in the US but this poverty probably isn't what much of the world would classify as poverty.

The last lyrics challenge was from Chicago's "Saturday in the Park." The new lyrics challenge is: "Well I'm runnin' down the road,/ Tryin' to loosen my load,/ I've got seven women on my mind./ Four that wanna own me,/ Two that wanna stone me,/ One says she's a friend of mine."