Bits & Pieces
Bits and Pieces from this reporter’s notebook. Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet...A news report says that Democratic party officials think that Al Gore might have to spend some of his campaign loot to "fend off", as one person put it, the challenge by Bill Bradley. Fend off? When Gore gets up and look back, he’ll be too late to see the back of the stampede that ran over him. These party pols, who are merely hedging their bets, sound like an updated degraded version of Paul Revere. The British are coming. The British are...here.
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet...I’m sorry, but when I hear about the Ryder Cup, I can’t help but thinking of Ryder trucks, which is what they want, and about the Ryder truck used in the devastating Oklahoma City blast, which they don’t want. But putting that together, one wonders if instead of a golf match, the folks at Ryder might want to sponsor a demolition derby featuring teams blowing up buildings that need to come down. At least they’d be confronting the image issue directly.
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet...The Russians are at it again in Chechnya. It is a quagmire worse than Afghanistan. Steve Erlanger of the New York Times had two excellent comments in his reporting from that area a few years ago when the fighting was intense. "At the war-blasted Grozny airport, now a busy Russian military base, there is a marble plaque on the wall, dedicating the construction of the airport 20 years ago to the 40th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazism. Underneath, a Russian soldier has scrawled: 'For the 50th, we destroyed it'." The other Erlanger line, "Once again, Moscow has declared premature victory in secessionist Chechnya. If Pyrrhus were a Russian, he would recognize the landscape." Pyrrhus, of course, was the Greek king whose victory over the Romans at Asculum in 279 BC was at a terrible cost.
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet...And speaking of things wasteful and lethal, Congress is forking over another quarter of a trillion dollars to the military. Actually, $288-billion dollars. This is for more high-tech weaponry, like the B-2 bomber that can’t fly in bad weather. It’s radar is so bad, it can’t distinguish between a rain cloud and a mountain. I think I’ll take the train, thank you.
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet...the medical industry is looking for cures in all the wrong places. They’ve now come out with medicine for extreme cases of shyness. Gimme a break. How ‘bout just a little cayenne pepper under the tongue. The screaming would engender comments of sympathy, and soon there’d be a valuable dialogue going. But buyer beware...there’s a reason why some people are shy. And it’s a reason best kept to themselves.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
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