Justice Delay-ed

I cannot speak with any expertise about Tom Delay or his politics. I don't feel strongly about him or the charges that convicted him of money laundering. I am not sure I am against money laundering. I have heard most of our currency is contaminated with traces of cocaine. Go ahead. Launder the money. I don't care.

Looking at the former politician, my impression is that he is guilty of something. Bad clothes? Too much Botox? A facelift? The worst contestant on Dancing With the Stars?

Mr. DeLay's attorneys will appeal his recent conviction. They cite trumped up charges and trying him in a liberal Texas county. That surprised me. There is a liberal county in Texas?

Inspirational Message

One of the pitfalls of being retired is the lack of urgency to do tasks. There is always tomorrow. I used to clean house on a scheduled day off. Use my time wisely. That vanishes when you are in the zone of the put-out-to-pastured. I can always do it tomorrow. My schedule can be rearranged.
Imagine my relief yesterday with the agreement between the US and Iraq for troop withdrawal. We have agreed to a "general time horizon" for withdrawal. I understand needing to not tip our hand to the enemy about our plans. Don't advertise a specific date and allow the terrorists to cause pandemonium. Former President George Herbert Walker Bush set a good example years ago when he refused to publicly disclose our troop movements in the first Gulf War. I agree. Announce your intentions but not the specifics.
The verbage of this agreement is brilliant. Can't miss. It is on the horizon. I think cleaning those lower level windows and sorting out the shelves in my laundry room will now be on my general time horizon. No guilt. No problem if I don't do that today. I am truly liberated. I might just hop on my bike and peddle off humming, "Beyond the blue horizon". I can always start a file called "Somewhere over the rainbow" for projects like cleaning the kitchen cupboards. God bless those politicians and diplomats.

This Week in Politics. Observations of Someone In the Middle Lane

No endorsements. Just things I have heard, read, or seen this week in politics.

Iowa caucused. Not everyone does that. Minnesota caucuses. In addition to that we have a primary. Covers all the bases. Declare who you want publicly then do it secretly in the polling booth months later. Who planned that?

Minnesota's legacy for years was to be considered a "Blue State". We were a blue state before the rather recently designated blue state/red state handle. (That started with television election coverage in 2000.) This is the land of Humphrey, Mondale, Gene McCarthy, and of course, Harold Stassen.

You have to be about my age to know who Harold Stassen was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Stassen He was a perennial candidate for president. A former boy governor from Minnesota who wore a bad hair piece. We tried not to notice him. We tried not to be embarrassed by him. Then we elected a boa-wearing, trash-talking, chrome domed former wrestler turned talk show host as governor. Well, governor, that should have embarassed us good. We outlasted him. He quit in a huff after four years. This week he was again in the news promoting his new book, "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me." Samples from the book made the newspapers. He tells of advising President Clinton to accidentally bomb Jerusalem off the face of the map. That would solve the fight to the death struggle in the middle east. He said we could claim we had a "computor misfunction". Might be hard to get that one past the Lord who plans to rule from that hill. Oh, Jesse...What were we thinking?

Maybe it is a good thing Minnesota doesn't have the first caucus in the US. We learned our lesson and won't pick Jesse again, but it looks like Chuck Norris might be interested in politics......

Hillary came in third. In spite of her strong well funded organization, she came in third. Some have called her calculating. I think she was miscalculating. After the White House, she moved from DC to New York. In the Iowa caucuses a guy from Arkansas was a decisive winner. Maybe she should have gone home. The heartland might have liked her better if she came from Arkansas. Hee-haw.

A note from history. Bill Clinton's approval soared in the 1992 election after he played the saxophone on national TV. Huckabee plays a pretty fair guitar. He was a guest on Leno the Monday night. Anyone with political aspirations better practice when they are young. Didn't Truman play the piano?

Last week Mitt Romney fielded a question from a reporter about the campaign manager of an opposing candidate saying he would like to punch him out. Mitt answered with good humor, "Just don't touch the hair", he said. Mitt, this competition wasn't about hair after all. John Edwards tried that and didn't win either.

I also heard that the people with the most expensive political managers did the worst. It seems the people had something else in mind. Change. Change. Change. We are a little nervous about the history book showing this lineup of presidents: Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton.

Maybe Jesse does have a future on the national level. First, he will have to move back from retirement in Mexico. If he is not available, it looks like tough guy Chuck Norris is getting interested in politics. If Huckabee picked him as a running mate we could have a president from Texas (H.W Bush), one from Arkansas (Clinton), one from Texas (GW Bush) followed by a president from Arkansas and VP from Texas. That doesn't sound like change to me.