News of the Nation

Pat Robertson claims to have leg pressed 2000 pounds. I didn’t actually read the article on this one. I actually don’t care if he can or cannot leg press a ton. If he can, good on him. If he cannot, well, I’m past the point of being surprised by his claims. You want to impress me? Let me know when he’s strong enough to pull his head out of his ass. Thank you.

Republicans in congress won’t raise minimum wage, but will increase their own pay and slash taxes for the wealthy. Just in time to run around campaigning that they’re fighting for America’s workers. Hopefully, one or two will stop by my house so I can ask why Republicans want to tax you inversely proportionate to how hard you worked to get your money. If you work full time or more, you pay the income tax. If you take money you’ve earned and but let the market increase it (capital gains), they want you to pay less in taxes. If you inherit someone else’s money (no work necessary), they don’t want it taxed at all. Gotta love those Richpublicans.

The Toddler of Action has been with us for a year. No hyperlink. You’ll have to trust me on this one. It’s fun to watch him grow and learn. It’s tiring to try and keep up with him. It’s educational to learn what upsets him and calms him. The more I know about what upsets kids, the more fun I can have when I see parents and kids in public places.

“The Mosquito” will keep kids out of malls. It’s a device that emits a pitch which most adults can’t hear but most youth can hear. Shopkeepers are using it to annoy kids enough to keep them away. I’m always surprised by shop keepers who want to keep people away from the stores. But, then, I don’t have a business degree, either. Still, using noise pollution doesn’t seem ethical to me. If I ever own a shop, I’m going to pour nuclear waste outside my door to keep teenagers out. You pick your pollution; I’ll pick mine.

But the youngsters fought back. The pitch can be used for cell phones and text messaging. They took a swing at shopkeepers and hit their teachers in the collective mouth. You see, the students could use the ring tone to pass answers back and forth in class, which means that teachers will have to be ever more vigilant in class. Also, parents may be less likely to keep track of their children’s phone calls: which means that parents may not know when kids are planning to go to the mall. Still, it is a very good “If life hands you a lemon, make lemonade” moment.

Rochester held its annual fest last week. The only event we attended, although we had hoped to attend more, was the Mayor’s Cup Hot Air Balloon race. Brother, when they tell you it starts at 6:00, be there at 6:00. It doesn’t take very long for those balloons to fill up and take off. Surprisingly, it also doesn’t take long for everyone else to take off. Have you ever stopped to watch a hot-air balloon float by? It’s a pleasure to see. Watching it glide gracefully across the sky. Wondering what the view would be from up there. It’s peaceful just thinking about it. However, the moment the balloons got off the ground, spectators packed up and left. They didn’t bother to watch the balloons float away. In fairness, some of the folks were crew and had to hightail it to the end line to catch the balloons, but that didn’t include everyone. It’s a little like going to a restaurant and ordering, but leaving before the food gets there. For shame!

One last bit on the race. There was a Target stores balloon. Yep, slowing floating over NRA-lovin’ Red-Staters was a large balloon with concentric circles. That, my friends, is a hoot.

Moron, . . . er . . . more on Rochester. Rochester has a new slogan: “Rah, Rah, Rochester.” I don’t care for it, but I don’t see that it is any worse than any other city slogan. I’m not a big city slogan fan. The funny part of this was that the local newspaper did a poll to see if people thought the new slogan was “lame” or “sassy.” Sassy was doing well in the poll until a programmer at the paper discovered that 221 of the votes came from an ip address in Milwaukee. Milwaukee happens to be the home of the consultants Rochester used to recommend the new slogan. I’ll go with lame on that one.

A little further back in time, the hot news topic was immigration, illegal. I have nothing new to add here except for one thing. I find it humorous that, if everything had gone the Republican’s way over the past 6 years (and most of it has), the Republicans would now be sending Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba as an illegal immigrant. Good luck to anyone trying to make common sense of politics while having an attention span of over 5 minutes.

Consider yourself caught up on all the news.

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The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer and do not neccessarily reflect those of the rest of the family.

© 2006, Mark Wentz