I Guess He Forgot to Knock on Wood

You know how you cringe when hearing someone say "I've never had an accident?" We tend to assume people are jinxing themselves when they make pronouncements of that sort. Well, ever since VISA started running commercials of the four jerks bragging about never missing attending the Superbowl football game I've been waiting to hear that one of them missed their flight this year. Well, wasn't a missed flight, but one of the four guys won't be there tomorrow.

Family members say 79-year-old Robert Cook, of Brown Deer, Wis., is hospitalized and has sent his two daughters to Dallas instead. Cook's wife, Sarah, tells The Associated Press they were packed and ready to go Thursday, but her husband became very weak and ended up in the hospital. Sarah Cook says her husband is very depressed that he was unable to make it to Dallas.

Robert Cook and three other men who've been to every Super Bowl since 1967 created the "Never Missed a Super Bowl Club" and gained recognition in a recent Visa credit card commercial.

Get well soon, but you're no longer a member of the club.

What Do We Buy With All That Foreign Aid?

The United States government takes a lot of money from tax payers. A good deal of that confiscated money gets given away in foreign aid. I've heard several different arguments in favor of this expenditure. Whether the argument is humanitarian needs or political considerations I haven't found any of them to be all that persuasive. Primary reason I haven't been sold on the idea is my belief that if you attempt to buy friends you will wind up with no money and no friends.

What brings the issue of wasteful foreign aid up today is the deteriorating situation in Egypt. We have been giving Egypt more than a billion dollars of aid every year for decades. There is word today that their embattled president Hosni Mubarak is getting prepared to go into exile. As part of the story on his impending departure Bloomberg News talked about his net worth being between 40 and 70 billion dollars! Hmmm, wonder where he got all that money? Oh yeah, we took it from our tax payers and gave it to him.

End all foreign aid now! No additional foreign aid should be allocated until we have budget surplusses and then all aid should be direct humanitarian aid.

Today's Political Comedy

In an article about who a New Hampshire Republican party official will support in 2012 we get this snippet:

“He’s a nice guy. But there’s a number of guys I’d vote for. He’s not one of them,” Wrobleski said of Pawlenty. “I don’t think he’s conservative enough.

So, Wrobleski, a supporter of Mitt Romney, in explaining his reasons for not voting for Tim Pawlenty says he's not conservative enough. Pawlenty is not charismatic. He's not exciting. He's probably not one of my first choices, but Pawlenty is about as conservative a candidate as you're going to find from Minnesota. What makes this funny is the comment coming from a Romney supporter. However Romney is selling himself these days don't let anyone fool you into believing he is an arch-conservative. Heck, when he ran against Ted Kennedy for the U.S. Senate he tried to position himself to Kennedy's left on some issues and then as governor of Massachusetts he led the way to enactment of a state health care overhaul used as a blueprint for Obama-Care. You can support Romney for various reasons. Whether you like his business acumen or you think his competent demeanor would be a sharp contrast to President Obama, there are legitimate reasons some might choose to back his doomed run for the presidency. However, claiming his potential primary opponents are not conservative enough will just get you laughed at as a fool.

On that point, if, as it appears, the health care nonsense is going to be a key issue in 2012, then Mitt Romney would be the worst candidate for the Republicans to run. How will House and Senate candidates reconcile support for the national ticket with hammering their opponent on their vote for HCR. It is very difficult to beat an incumbent president, but you don't pick a nominee who will undermine down ticket candidates.