Month: April 2006

Prez GW seeks counsel from one of his smaller assistants.
The White House Correspondent’s Association dinner, broadcast on C-Span, proved to be pretty edgy last night. After Prez GW spoke with a Bush impersonator at his side, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert launched into a routine in his faux right-wing talk show personae that seemed to leave Bush pretty red-faced and unsmiling. Probably one of the funniest moments though came when Colbert acknowledged Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the audience. Colbert flicked his hand under his chin while hailing Scalia, mocking the gesture the Italian-American justice made recently to a reporter that was a subject of controversy. Scalia apparently found Colbert’s joke funny.

It’s hard to imagine this is what a radar picture used to look like.

During this sanity break from my tech-writing project from Hell, I decided to check some of the local weather radars. The reason is that I am just curious if it is raining anywhere around where I am. Apparently not. I could not have imagined when I was a kid and was fascinated with the weather report on television that I would have a relatively accurate and pretty near real-time radar picture I could summon with the click of a mouse. I could not have imagined I would be clicking something called a mouse, for that matter. I feel I am truly fortunate that all this high-tech stuff wasn’t around for me when I was kid because I probably would have been deeply obsessed.

Ah what the hell. I guess I’ll get a Mountain Dew instead.

Senate Republicans are proposing a $100 “gas-tax holiday” in the guise of a rebate check for each U.S. family. This is how our government responds to concerns weighing on the minds of the public at large. “Let’s throw them a hundred bucks. Maybe that’ll shut ’em up until we can get re-elected.”

So who is really getting rich off these oil prices? I can say without hesitation that it isn’t me. The mailman just delivered by monthly royalty statement for some oil and gas interests I own along with my brothers. When I say interest, it’s something more on the order of microscopic interests. On one well, my interest is .000014430. That might make some amoeba an oil tycoon. There is another well in which I have an interest of .000233870. Now we’re talking.

From this well in East Texas — back in February when the price of oil was $66.56 per barrel — the company pumped 5,038 barrels of oil from this “unit.” The gross value listed for this oil was $37,757.37. And did I get a substantial portion of that $37,757.37? Well, if you have a very, very, very low view of relativity I suppose I’m one rich sumbitch. My .000233870 share was worth $8.17. For the 360 million cubic feet of gas that same company extracted from that same well, the gross value was $21,933. So almost $60,000 worth of oil and gas came from “my oil well.” I got a little more than 8 bucks for it and along with the other two wells I am going to have a whopping $13.81 deposited to my bank account on Friday. Gee, I hope no one with the oil company goes hungry because of my royalty check!

They won’t have Scotty to kick around anymore. GW announced today that Fox News pundit Tony Snow is succeeding Scott McClellan as presidential press secretary. Snow is just what the nation needs in a presidential spokesman — a Ted Baxter clone. It is a bit funny that Snow has made quite a few pronouncements in recent times that were less than laudatory about his new Boss. Here is one example:

“His wavering conservatism has become an active concern among Republicans, who wish he would stop cowering under the bed and start fighting back against the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Wilson. The newly passive George Bush has become something of an embarrassment.”

Oops. That’s a little like riding up the elevator on the first day of the job and telling someone about some sweet thing you nailed last night. Only the sweet thing turns out to be the boss’ daughter. But at least Snow comes to the White House from what is the closest medium this country has to state-sponsored television: FNC. I guess maybe GW decided to overlook the nasty remarks. But, I doubt that he has forgotten them.

If I ever worked somewhere for almost 50 years I don’t think I would be a sane man. Ditto for working somewhere seven years, which is my all-time record. Of course, some doubt my sanity anyway. And I am sure there are those who doubt the sanity, or at least the lucidity, of U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va.

Over lunch I caught Byrd on C-Span II, holding forth on the Senate floor about the current supplemental appropriations bill. Byrd is one of the few politicians I get a kick out of hearing speak during legislative proceedings. He is quite comical. He was making some point about a law having “real teeth in it.” Then pointing to himself, he said: “These are real teeth. They may be 88 years old, but they’re real teeth.” He later mentioned something about North Dakota, adding with wit: “That’s north of South Dakota.”

He also manages to consistently bring the pork home to West Virginia. And while pork is a dirty word to some, I would imagine jobs, roads and economic benefits for his state’s residents are words that are not so obscene. Byrd truly seems to enjoy his job. I would have told everyone to shove it years ago.