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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (3603)	7/22/2003 11:19:51 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793549

Be glad you are not in Ohio. Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Is the Senate ready for the Pied Piper of Bottom Feeders? BY DENNIS MILLER Saturday, July 19, 2003 12:01 a.m. Well, Jerry Springer is mulling over a run for the Senate and John Adams is no doubt turning in his grave so furiously that if we could just hook up a turbine power cable to his headstone we would probably solve all our energy woes. It's no secret that the gene pool, in addition to being a tad brackish as of late, is also so shallow now there doesn't even need to be a lifeguard on duty. Springer has stood astride that pool like a latter day Colossus Ignoramus of Rhodes for well over a decade now. Now that's not to say I don't periodically find the "The Jerry Springer Show" intellectually stimulating. Indeed, how many times have I been walking through the parking lot of a laundromat and seen two obese women in halter tops slap fighting and thought, Wow . . . I wonder what the back story is on that? But at this point, Springer would have to hire a team of sherpas to assist him on the long trek back up to the lowest common denominator. As a matter of fact, the last time I was channel surfing and stopped on the Springer show my channel flicker filed a restraining order against me. The Pied Piper of Bottom Feeders, Ringmaster of the Cirque de Salieri, and now he's set his sights on Congress. Just think of it as Mr. Registers-at-Hourly-Rates-Hotels-Under-the-Name Smith Goes to Washington. Well, one thing's for sure. Capitol Hill hasn't seen bouncers this big since the members of the House were kiting all that bad paper during the banking scandal of '92. But is Jerry's pluck at the Grail really that aberrant a notion? His talk-show experience will at least allow him to commingle easily with his fellow senators, yet another studio audience of preening narcissists voracious for their 15 minutes but in truth needing an intermission to fill the time. It's not like I think the Senate is a hallowed chamber where you have to be particularly smart to get in. To me, Congress is just a place where we send oft-times mediocre men and women to be Earl Scheibed into looking kinda, sorta, vaguely consequential. There's also a geographical track record to consider here. The good citizens of Ohio in the past have seen fit to elect Jim Traficant to Congress and trust me, Traficant makes Springer look like Hammurabi. So I'm torn. I can't decide if Springer is underqualified or overqualified. But here's My Final Thought. One thing I do like about Springer is that he always manages to convey that he's a wee bit sheepish about it all. Not sheepish enough to resist cashing the checks, mind you, but just enough to let you know that he'd like to settle up his societal karma deficit as he heads into the denouement of what has heretofore been a reasonably idiotic life. Additionally, maybe if we one day glimpse C-Span and see Jerry Springer actually being sworn into the United States Senate it will shock us--like Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes" looking up and seeing the chimp on top of the pony--and trigger some much needed electoral reform. Say, an IQ Quizometer on the door of the voting booth where you have to get seven out of 10 current-events questions right before you're allowed in to cast your ballot. All right, settle down, liberals. Make that four out of 10. Well, I have to go now. I'm cutting the ribbon this afternoon at the newly erected Morton Downey Jr. Memorial and Secretary of the Interior Wally George is picking me up in 15 minutes. "Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!" opinionjournal.com

To: carranza2 who wrote (3603)	7/22/2003 12:12:22 PM
From: NickSE	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793549

I can't believe the public voted in such outrageous spending increases. Off to google to learn me some California budget. Btw, here are some figures to chew on... ~~~~~ Annual spending increases, which averaged a once-exorbitant 8 percent during the last four years of his Republican predecessor, exploded during his first two years. In 1999-2000, spending soared by more than 15 percent. During his second year, spending jumped by another 17 percent. Thus, during Davis's first two years, the general budget increased from $57.8 billion to $78 billion. The increases occurred during a period when inflation rose by less than 6 percent. Not surprisingly, Mr. Davis received an 'F' from the Cato Institute's ''Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors: 2002.'' The analysis revealed that California's state payroll increased by 33,000 during Davis's first three years. The increase in public employees was larger than that of the next three biggest states combined. Meanwhile, Moody's has downgraded the Golden State's bond rating twice. Mr. Davis did not help matters much by borrowing $6 billion in the midst of the state's energy crisis to pay for future energy deliveries at prices that are two to three times the current market price. chronwatch.com