Chem Trails

Driving in to work in the wee, wee hours of the morning, I didn't particularly like the cuts they were playing on the local country stations, and I sure didn't want to listen to the replay of me – so I ended up listening to about 10 minutes of Art Bell. They were talking about chem trails. Time to turn the radio off.

These chem trail folks seem to think that the ordinary contrails we see in the sky all of the time – really nothing more than condensed moisture – are the positive evidence of some sort of evil plot to introduce various dangerous chemicals into the very air that we breathe. It's all part of a government effort to poison us or to alter us chemically, I suppose.

Conspiracies are a hoot. The wilder they are, the more adamant their proponents. Politicians smile. They love this stuff. While Americans are focusing on the contrail left over Oklahoma by Delta Flight 305 on the way from Atlanta to San Francisco, the politicians continue with their plans to disenfranchise voters who actually pay taxes, to use the war on drugs as a wedge to violate more and more civil liberties, and to wage war on capitalism.

Let's not worry about anything meaningful and REAL, like Social Security reform, that could actually change folks' lives. Let's worry about contrails.

Are Fox Television and Fox News Channel owned by the same company? I suppose they are, but it sure is hard to believe.

While Fox News Channel continues to excel and improve in its coverage of the news (with the exception of that hideous morning show), Fox Television continues to slide into a slimy abyss.

Here's the latest.

Fox TV wants to get into the boxing business. Fox wants to stage prize fights.

No – they're not going to bring actual prizefighters into the ring. Fox is going to go out there and find some of the sleaziest characters our society has to offer right now – put gloves on them – give them a bit of training – and let them go at it.

In the Red Corner – once America's most notorious teenage nympho! A lady who doesn't mind getting a little mechanic's grease in her ... uhhh ... hair. The sex kitten who spends her off hours pumping bullets into the heads of her lover's wives. None other than that Long Island Lolita herself ... Amy Fisher!

And you'll tune in, won't you?

Do you notice that when South Carolina Democrat Ernest (Fritz) Hollings holds a press conference there are no other Democratic senators standing around? He's there all by his lonesome.

This is because the other Democratic senators have come to realize something that the voters of South Carolina evidently haven't picked up on yet. The man has lost it. Sen. Foghorn Leghorn is senile. He's living out there in the ozone somewhere.

Yesterday old Fritz really stepped out … big time. He as much as blamed the 9-11 terrorist attacks on George W. Bush! Is Hollings on the sauce again?

Here's some background that may help you understand what Hollings said in his press conference yesterday. Clinton's treasury secretary, Larry Summers, began an initiative when Clinton was president to shut down some offshore tax shelters.

When Bush became president, one of his economic advisers, Larry Lindsey, advised that the actions against the offshore companies may well be unconstitutional. The effort was stopped.

Hollings said that Bush's decision to halt the shutdown of these offshore companies on legal grounds brought us the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. Here's his statement from yesterday:

It's time for the media to start treating Fritz Hollings as an oddity. A kicker to be played with a laugh track for the end of the newscasts.

We have a little poetry for you today.

Prohibition is an awful flop.

This creep, this liar, this racial warlord, this bottom-feeder ... he is still talking up the possibility that he'll run for president. Fine – it's his right. Just so long as he runs as a Democrat. With a little help from on high, he'll be their nominee.

Sorry – I'm not the one who's selling these things. It's a true celebration of free enterprise. The newest T-shirt in Noble, Ga., reads:

"Noble, Georgia: Home of the Unofficial US Olympic Skeleton Team!"

The Democrats threw a little $10,000-a-plate fundraiser featuring Jumpin' Jim Jeffords yesterday. The take? About $6 million.

Jeffords pledged to work extra hard to help the Democrats keep control of the Senate in this year's elections. He knows that a lot is at stake. Can you imagine how Jeffords would fare in the Senate if the Republicans took back the majority?

Thanks, Vermont. We shouldn't be surprised, though. You folks in Vermont did, after all, send us our only admittedly socialist congressman.

Georgia's ultra-left-wing congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney, will be hard at work today at Georgia State University. She'll be hosting the National Reparations Symposium. I think the title of the gathering is something like "Beyond Rhetoric, the Reality of Reparations.”

Let's say it again. If black Americans want to find a surefire way to set back black-white relations in this country, just sign on with Jesse Jackson, Cynthia McKinney and others to push this reparations idea.

Evidently there is some grumbling on the Georgia State campus about The Talkmaster. Someone printed a "growl" in the campus newspaper that "It's getting so you can't be a liberal on this campus anymore without Neil [sic] Boortz whining about it." I couldn't find the "growl." Apparently the campus newspaper doesn't have a Web site.

Years ago I read somewhere of three easy rules to avoid poverty. Three easy, simple rules that anyone could follow. They were:

Galston recently said that you only need to do three things in this country to avoid being poor. Those three things …

Here are the stats that back these rules up. Of those who follow these rules, only 8 percent end up poor. Follow the rules and you're in the 79 percent group that ends up living way over the poverty level.

I wonder if these stats are taught in our schools. Probably not. Too insensitive.