I think it's reasonably sexy

Seeing our British cousins in a funk always saddens me, and it's worse when they seem ready to riot in Piccadilly over high matters of state. So I performed a research study in hopes of offering wise counsel from the Colonies.

That is, I carried a copy of the portrait around, all over the length and width of Camp J country. I enquired of every chap I know, "Would  you (a) kiss this woman and (b) willingly have her on your arm in the A-list haunts of local society such as the American Legion Club?"

To a man, nearly,  it was "Yep" or "Damned Straightt" or "You Bet."  The single exception was my very youngest interviewee who hesitated, shrugged, then brightly added, "But my dad sure the heck would."

It exactly the result I predicted and verifies my suspicion that the English aren't really all that upset about the picture. They are just in one of their periodic states of  national ennui when any excitement, any controversy at all, is embraced as a welcome relief from the boredom of being in Britain.

Personally, I don't think the Kate picture dustup has legs. There just isn't enough emo content in the "poortrait"  argument to excite even an East Ender for very long. What the Sceptred Isle really needs is a good old-fashion war crisis, what with muskets and cannon and brave leftenants waving swords as they lead their companies into into wog hordes.

To that end, and out of pure motives -- a shot of Red Bull injected directly into John Bull's national arteries -- I've dispatched a courier to Buenos Aires suggesting that now would be a compassionate time for a new move against the Falklands. The last one was was such sport, eh wot?

Travis McGee, economist

I can't recall which adventure, but in one of them Travis and Meyer have rescued a beautiful young widow from villainous clutches and recovered some of her money. They discuss how to invest it for her. (In those days it was well understood that the little gals shouldn't bother their pretty heads about such stately matters.)

Travis remarked that the portfolio should carry some equities which might ameliorate the inflation bite against the day "when a new Chevy costs $40,000." 

And we all giggled and snorted at John D. MacDonald's wild imagination and sense of the ridiculous.  I was as guilty as anyone, having in that era purchased a brand new Plymouth Volare station wagon for about $4,700. (Excuse: wife, two kids, dog, long commute, scuba tanks. I was such a damned Republican.)

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Of course the trillion dollar coin would be absolutely and precisely identical to pixie dust.  So what? What the Hell do we think that hundred-dollar bill we keep stuffed in our wallet's secret compartment represents?

The diversity cliff

Good gawd. I think my electric teevee -- like Tam's car radio -- has been hijacked by a transmitter from Planet Zongo.

Because I've learned from  CNN and MSNBC that National Problem Number One is that we are doomed because His Ineptness, the partially black president, is a racist for appointing adult white males to his cabinet. A diversity cliff.

Among the wailers is Congressman Charlie Rangel who makes Page One by calling the latest cabinet picks "embarrassing as hell."  No, Charlie. The  national  embarrassment is that you still occupy a plush congressional seat instead of the cell next door to  Roddy Blagojevich.

I think Obama did it on purpose. If folks spend all their time thinking about the APL* and the dangle/dimple ratio in high bureaucratic circles, they'll be less likely to stumble across the notion that the trillion-dollar coin may become an everyday necessity for making small purchases.

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*Average Pigmentation Level

"I own a gun!"

So says New York's hysterical Governor Cuomo who fleshes it out with "I've hunted...I own a Remington shotgun...You don't need ten bullets to kill a deer."

1. I wonder how many of those background checks lately have been on gun-grabbing politicians who don't want to get caught lying when they trot out the obligatory  "I own a gun, but...".

2. When the gun arrives do they call in a gun consultant who begins, quite necessarily, with  "Now, Governor, you hold on to the wooden parts and point the metal parts at the deer. Try hard not to get  that part  mixed up."

3. Your Remington shotgun, Governor, is likely a Model 870 or variant and hence one of the world's deadliest assault weapons at close range -- such as from one end of a classroom to the other.  While it holds only six bullets, each one of them may legally contain eight or nine littler bullets, each as big around as a medium pistol bullet. So you're slinging an offensive weapon capable of firing 48 to 54 bullets without reloading! Why, that's  almost twice as bad as having two 30-round magazines cuz after first one runs out of bullets  you have to reload, giving the hall monitor time to knock you out with  a Dixon No. 2.

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I think you're a little out of your league here, Sir, both in knowledge of your chosen subject matter and in demagogic skills. You might be better off to study the technique of the governor just up the coast from you. Governor Malloy has it down pat. When  faced with a serious policy issue, call in the teevee cameras and cry.