Morons of the Oxy variety

Roane County Tennessee has its very own little newspaper, and, like all little newspapers, the personality of the paper reflects that of its editor. After studying our new Publisher I have to ask this question:

"Since the Earth is obviously flat, if you move too far in one direction, say..to the right...won't you eventually fall off the edge and get eaten by sea monsters?"

The best writing in small town papers is often in the letters section. Well maybe not the best but often the most interesting. This is often the forum for personal vendettas against the School Board, the Mayor, the Sheriff, and anybody anywhere in the whole county that has anything resembling an idea.

(Please do not read in this that I am accusing the Mayor, Sheriff, School Board, etc., of ever having an idea...No that was not my intent. People having ideas would be quite separated from any position of authority in any small town based community)

There is a column written by the ex editor of one of our old papers that got absorbed into what's left, and though what's left is definitely not "left", the Old Curmudgeon is a bit to the left of Genghis Khan who was a bit of a Liberal according to a new column humorously entitled, "Conservative Thinking". Conservative Thinking is supposedly a group written column taken from letters to the editor ranting about something the Old Cur has written.

See? Fair and balanced...The Old Cur and Conservative Thinking.

There is a serious problem with titling a column Conservative Thinking and that would involve finding anything to print. One would assume that to get into such a column, a letter would have to involve something conservative and some actual thinking to go along with it, but so far this has eluded our editor. He has been unable to find a brain wave on the Conservative side so he has let people put their names on Republican talking points and publish it as original "Thinking".

President Bush's attempt to piratize Social Security has ripped a hole in the breast plate of conservatives, letting all the world see the rot within. One nice man tried to demonstrate conservative thinking, using the President's numbers to show why piratizing Social Security is such a good idea. The problem for the President is that trusting folks like this one might actually look at their own calculations and say, "Hey...this isn't right... It won't work...He's lying!"

See, right there in our newspaper right in the Conservative Thinking Column, this nice man does the Presidential numbers for us using a 10 percent annual return for his piratized account, even though the actual rate of return for the stock market is actually less than half that figure and that figure actually won't work either.

See! He didn't think!

If he had used the actual historical rate of return for the stock market since George W. Bush has been in office he would have had to use a negative number for his calculations and he would have lost money big time...which now that I think about it, everybody pretty much did lose money big time.

So there we have it. The term, "conservative thinking" now joins such illustrious others as jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, and business ethics in the land of Oxy Morons.

Watch out for sea monsters.

Peace,

Steve