MORE OF WHO'S IDEA WAS THAT?

Who decided to ask New York Governor David Paterson to stop making revelations about his personal life? Paterson was Eliot Spitzer's Lieutenant Governor until a couple of weeks ago when Spitzer got caught using prostitutes and resigned as Governor. So Paterson figures he'll clear the air about himself right off the bat and starts telling everybody that he had multiple love affairs outside his marriage, and his wife had an affair too. I guess he figures let everybody know he is who he is and lets get on with our lives without the childish prying into the sex lives of others. Then he says he used to use pot and cocaine. Fair enough, he admits it and gets that out of the way too. Now I'm wondering what's next. Three-ways? Orgies? Opium dens? Robbing liquor stores? Then somebody talked him into shutting up about his personal life just as it was getting interesting. Dang, I figure he was about to reveal that he killed a couple of guys once in a beef over a poker game in a bordello

Who's idea was it to give Donald Trump a show? Do we need another obnoxious megalomaniac on TV? We've already got Bill O'Reilly and a bunch more like him. Unlike O'Reilly, Trump has other talents besides being annoying. He's a builder and a developer who has erected an impressive number of buildings, most of them with his name on them in forty-foot high letters, so it's not like he needed the publicity. Be that as it may, nobody that met him actually liked the guy, and some genius saw fit to let the whole country get to know and hate him. I wonder who gets to fire The Donald when they cancel his show. Line forms to the left.

Who thought it would be great to hold the 2008 Olympics in China? Other than the Chinese government, of course. They want to rehabilitate their image as being short on human rights and long on economic development. Well, the economic development part is going great guns if you check the "Made in China" labels on practically everything you wear or plug in. It's those pesky human rights complaints that have the Chinese government ticked off. So ticked off they've cracked down on all sorts of people who are questioning their right to imprison people on a whim and banned political commentary of even the mildest sort from their billion and change citizens. And we're not talking a desk appearance ticket and a 50 dollar fine here for violators. Think more of along the lines of prison, work camps, torture and heavy reprisals on one's family.

China has also conquered and occupied Tibet and her soldiers are earnestly beating unarmed monks in robes as we speak for having the gall to point out that China is one of the most repressive regimes around. Too bad the United States wasn't in a position to call them on this, what with our own problems incarcerating people for no reason and having conquered and occupied Iraq in no less brutal fashion. Then we could boycott the Olympics like Jimmy Carter did to protest the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. Oops, looks like that's out of the question too. If we'd listened to President Carter, a man who advocated boycotting nations who abuse their own citizens' civil rights and start wars of aggression, we wouldn't be in this mess.

As things stand now, we'd have to boycott ourselves. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what Mr. Carter's successors have done, shipping all our manufacturing jobs elsewhere. They have achieved what no other foreign power was able to do, making a "Made in America" label as rare as an honest politician. Many people say the Carter administration was a failure. Could it be that America failed the Carter Administration? Mr. Carter had a better idea of what is America and how we ought to behave on the world stage than any recent president. Reagan tripled the size of the Federal Government and was pretty much of a senile old coot who saw no evil as he presided over scandal after scandal, Bush the Elder was a political and corporate hack , Clinton sold our jobs overseas and Bush The Younger is the worst president we've ever had and the most anti-American, a man who doesn't seem to be aware of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to say nothing of his rapacious imperial foreign policy. Carter had a better idea of what is America than any of these guys. I guess peace and human decency is is a tough sell in the political marketplace.

And who's idea was it to vote "No Country For Old Men" the Oscar for Best Picture even before it was edited and finished? It had the makings of a good story but that story never really unfolded, did it? It did, however, provide us with a cool new psychotic villain, Anton Chigur, played by the great Spanish Actor Javier Bardem. Nobody does sociopaths better than American movies. Then again, we've produced more than our fair share in real life, even electing one to the Vice Presidency, good old Shotgun Dick Cheney, who upon being sworn in immediately took over the presidency from Bush The Younger, who probably still doesn't know.