MAY BE WE COULD LEARN FROM THE CANADIENS

A minor glitch occurred during the opening ceremonies for this years Winter Olympics. It appears one of the arms for the Olympic flame malfunctioned and caused a slight delay. So what do they do about it? Simple, they incorporate it into their closing ceremonies and made it a comedy routine. In other words, they were able to laugh it off, and poke a little fun at themselves.

Now if this incident had occurred in the United States, FOX, CNN and MSNBC news channels would be tripping over each other to see who would garner the most experts, to give their versions on how something like this could have occurred. Every person in the stadium would be interviewed, as to how their lives were dramatically damaged forever by this event. Lawyers would be scrambling to see who would be the first to file the thousands of lawsuits, that would be sure to follow.

Congress would try to calm a distraught nation by having hearings in both houses to access blame. The reverends Al and Jesse would work to find a racial aspect to the incident to get their few minutes of TV time. All the other made for TV reverends, would be telling us how God had caused the arm to malfunction, to punish the Olympics, for allowing gays to participate.

Thousands of books would be written as everyone from aliens to terrorists would be blamed for the few minutes delay. Conspiracy groups would claim government cover ups; forcing the president to call for an independent investigative body, all to squelch all the rumors that were spreading via the Internet.

Rush and Beck would be screaming at the top of their lungs blaming the president and the democratic party. While at the Huffington Post, the blame would be laid at the feet of Bush and Cheney, with claims that the malfunction was inherited from the previous administration.

The only thing good that would come out of all of this is that South Park would be able to air a few episodes of this disastrous situation.

I apologize to all the people that I omitted that would get their five minutes of fame, by making ludicrous claims, on why and how it happened.

Thank you Canada for showing us how adults handle minor calamities.

HOW TO QUICKLY ELIMINATE OUR NATIONAL DEBT.

Enough of all this dire talk about our ever increasing debt. I have found the solution that will have congress dancing in the aisles with exuberant joy. They will be able to spend to their hearts content, as they pad bills with unlimited pork projects and hand out lucrative government contracts to their big donors. I have found a way, that the more they spend, the lower the deficit would go.

The skeptics may think I have gone off the deep end, but hear me out. All we have to do is use the same math that they do in tallying the unemployment numbers. It appears that the more people, that lose their jobs, the lower the unemployment percentage rate goes. Why just today, it was reported that 20,000 more people lost their jobs., and miraculously the unemployment rate dropped from 10% to 9.07%.

If we started using this new math, we would soon be on the road to prosperity.

HIGH SPEED RAILROAD OR HOW TO SPEND BILLIONS AND NOT ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING

The president received a standing ovation as he spoke about spending billions to build high speed rail in several parts of the country. According to him, this will stimulate the economy by creating jobs while improving our rail transportation system.

It did sound good, until the facts and figures got in the way of this ambitious plan. It appears we won't be breezing trough the country side at break neck speeds, as they do in other parts of the world; 170 plus m.p.h. at maintained speeds during the journey.

Here, we will increase it to 110 only for stretches; that will increase average speeds from 53 to 62 m.p.h. Billions spent and only 9 miles gained. I wouldn't call that a wise way to invest our tax dollars. Besides, these so called high speed trains will continue to share the same rails with freight trains, so that even tho they may hit 110,they still have to pull over for the frieght trains. The average will remain the same as before because freight trains have the right of way over passenger trains.

Instead of wasting money on a quick fix, that will only benefit another big corporation by having the rails fixed at tax payers expense; find out if America is ready to give up their love affair with the auto and airplane as their basic mode of travel to switch to rail as an alternative method.

Only then should we invest in high speed rail. However, not the ones they are proposing now, but the ones that are traveling 200 plus around the globe. Invest in ones that make a profit for the investors; rather than sucking up tax dollars as Amtrak does now.

A new phenomena has occurred in this country, as we now throw money at ideas that only sound good to us, rather then ideas that are really good for us. Govenmeant has perfected this to an art form, since they spend billions before realizing they have made a mistake.