The Olympics

Many challenges face this great nation. Among them is the urgent need to recruit curlers as cute as the Japanese girls.

That is all I have to say about the Olympics today.

The End of the World as She Knows It

This would be a routine weather-stranding story if it weren't for Holly (Whosis). I don't know Holly, but I'll bet she has great hair and is on the most intimate terms with mirrors everywhere.

Holly and Jeff were stranded on Interstate 29 between Omaha and Sioux City Sunday when foul weather and accidents closed the road for some 24 hours. They were lucky enough to find a hotel room and even a convenience store.

But Holly's life went downhill from there. As the Des Moines Register reports it:

"They ventured out of their motel room Monday afternoon to look for shampoo, conditioner, a deck of cards and some puzzles. 'We're at a convenience store,' Holly said. 'They're all out of shampoo and conditioner'."

And so I note for my whacko wookie-suited brother and sister survivalists: Relax a little. To the extent that Holly is representative of the population, the competition for post-SHTF resources isn't going to be all that severe.

Re-registering disgust

The wires are reporting that the woman accused of being the Huntsville shooter owned a gun which was not registered. Perhaps a future rehash will add that there's no reason on earth it should be. Alabama has overlooked the pressing humanitarian need to register rifles, pistols, or handguns.

Imagine the comfort that would come from knowing that the murder weapon was officially recognized.

The Last Kennedy in Congress

It seems the universal newspaper lede is that the departure of Patrick Kennedy next year leaves the Republic without a Kennedy in congress for the first time in 60 years. The fact is represented as having staggering import to our future as a nation.

Patrick of Rhode Island, son of Teddy, now has the nation's press straining to find language evocative enough to present him as the latest tragic victim of the Kennedy Curse. (You'll recall that curse was laid on by Barry Goldwater and is renewed annually around boiling cauldrons on the moors by covens of Nazis who, in everyday life, pass themselves off as citizens simply unpersuaded by the Kennedy brand of statism.

I won't beat up on Poor Patrick at length, but it does add balance to remind the Hyannisport groupies that the man was reported to be a drunk, a drug addict, mentally ill, and a bad congressman. Any similarly flawed politician who holds more libertarian or conservative views is pilloried, not wept over.

AP quotes Patrick as saying his decision to quit congress removes a heavy weight from his shoulders.

Ours too .