Well, there's still the comics.

Today's Tids Issue 2,218
Opening Stuff:

This weekend looks like prime leaf time around here. Actually, there just isn’t anything bad about this time of year. The seniors have all moved to Florida, so the golf courses are playing fast again. I’m enjoying the comfort of corduroy pants as I crunch leaves on cool forest paths. The ocean glistens like a lover’s eyes. The air invigorates a body emerging from summer sluggishness. All in all, life is pretty fantastic.

Except for Juan Williams, who’s sudden boot by NPR is proving once again that the national gang of liberal intelligentsia are all for the 1st Amendment as long as what you are saying supports their beliefs.

When watching our current Congress at work, we should be taking a lesson from Mexico, a country that has seen an incredibly rapid deterioration after the criminals were allowed to run wild.

And…speaking of politicians, a magician is a “super duper”.

In addition to saving the future for pensioners, Sarkozy’s action on retirement age may have additional collateral benefits. For instance, the rude and culturally poisonous Lady Gaga has cancelled her Paris concerts in some kind of brain dead reactionary sympathy move. The French don’t know how lucky they are to be spared from that glitzy monotony.

The Question:
TV Guide just listed their favorite all time TV Families. They were in order Huxtables, Simpsons, Tanners (Full House), Sopranos, Partridges, Fishers (6 Feet Under), Bluths (Arrested Deelopment), Keatons (Fam Ties), Bunkers, Bradys, Conners (Roseanne), Seavers (Growing Pains), Waltons, Walkers (Bors & Sis), Cleavers, Jackson/Drummend (Diff Strokes), Ewings (Dallas), Barones (Raymond), Pritchetts (Mod Fam and Jeffersons. In a limited poll, viewers rated their favorites. Which of the above do you think came out on top? Name a show you think they missed.

The Headlines:

--Marlets Zig-Zag Waiting For G-20.
--Economic Growth Gage Falls To Six Week Low.
--Anonymous Person deposits $10,000 In Crisp Dollars In Memorial Donor’s Box And WTC Site.
--Cholera Outbreak Hits Rural Haiti; 142 Dead.
--Gulf Corals In Oil Spill Zone Appear Healthy.
--0-Man and MonicaMan Are Running Wildly Across Country To Save Out Of Control Congress.
--Verizon Profits Drop 25%; Beats WS Estimates; Investers Await Addition Of I-Phone..

Back to More Stuff:
If you have been watching the earnings report you might think our economy is based on companies that keep you idle, over feed you and put you back together fall apart. And you would be right. The bellwether industries this quarter are Electronics-Wireless-Computer-Internet, Fast Food and Health Care Products and Services.

Pakistan’s successful blockade of critical US supply transports hasn’t gone unnoticed by our deep pocket’s Congress and Admin. The US has increased military aid by $2,000,000,000! What a country.

Remember when Will Rogers said "I only know what I read in the papers"? Jeez, would he be in  trouble now!

Think about how much good the celebrities could do if they really understood the facts instead of reacting to some emotional artificial stimulus. Basically it just proves once again that actors are just good at reading other people’s lines. And these days their lines are being written by by people who don’t seem to like what America has been.

How come the pictures of shouting people I see in the French pension protest look like college students?

Silly State laws Department:
In Montana, it is against the law to have sheep in your truck cab without a chaperone! I wonder what that’s all about?


Reading between the Lines Movie Reviews:
--The trailer for Clint Eastwood’s latest “Hereafter” makes it appear as though it is entirely a Matt Damon vehicle. In fact it is three stories – Damon a psychic is looking for lava and a normal life without death; Cecille, a French TV reporter, is haunted by her near death experience; And Frankie McLaren is a foster child morning the sudden death of his twin brother. The stories eventually come together. You will find it slow and somber at times, but the end is uplifting in this movie that is spiritual and tends to support an afterlife. But then, what would you expect from an 80 year old director.
--I don’t like prison movies, so there is a high degree of probability that I won’t see “Stone” starring Edward Norton as a tough guy prisoner and Robert DeNiro as his very religious parole officer. For some reason, Norton has his sexy wife seduce DNiro thinking it will get him out of jail sooner. The religious DeNiro bends to the attraction quickly. Norton has regrets. It’s actually kind of an irritable movie.
--Woody Allen’s new little sex comedy “You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger” looks good to me. It has an all star cast including Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, Gemmma Jones and Antonio Banderas among others. Watts and Anna Friel look for love in all the wrong places. The film which opens and closes with song “When You Wish Upon A Star” shows how people’s wishes for romance don’t always turn out to be the sweet dreams they had hoped for.

In the Town of King NC (Pop 6,000) the ACLU acting on complaint by one citizen got an injunction against the display of a Christian Flag at a veteran’s memorial. 63 year old Ray Martini, an Air Force Vet, was irate. He decided to put the flag back out there. He then set up camp beneath it to guard it. He has received food and blankets from towns across NC and from many other states. The town is now awash with fluttering flags. The same Christian flag hanging from hair salons, barbecue joints, general stores—well, just about anywhere in the town. Except government buildings. I’m wondering if it is the same single citizen who when living in East Greenwich had a seventy year old memorial to a good doctor, a cross, removed from a triangle at an intersection. Send a note to Ray!

I was surprised to see the cover of the October 4 Time Magazine with the feature story headline: “How the first nine months shape the rest of your life.” Could this traditionally abortion supporting editorial staff be having a change of heart?

In the first line of a predominantly anti-Republican rant in the Providence Journal’s editorial support of Barney Frank, they say: “Recovery from the financial crisis requires ‘intelligent’ leadership. The entire editorial reads like something you might hear from Lady Gaga or Rosie.

In case you missed it about Barney’s Babies, Fannie and Freddie, it was reported this morning that the terrible twosome needs another $215 Billion. I love that intelligent leadership.

The Answer:
The two that “the folks” seemed to like best and which were significantly ahead of the rest were The Huxtable’s and The Keaton’s of Family Ties. Also doing quite well were the Cleavers, Barone’s and Seaver’s, and they were followed by the Partridges, Bunkers, Brady’s, Walton’s and Conner’s. I think they left out My Three Sons and 8 is Enough. And, if you are really old you might throw in Father Knows Best! All the rest were so-so or worse.

The End:
If the press stopped following ideologies and started thinking again, we might have a chance of getting this government back in shape. If this formerly august group honestly interpreted the truth of candidate statements, ignored blatant dirty tricks and stopped being blind cheerleaders, maybe intelligent people would start running for office again.

Some of these Republican and Tea Party candidates say some of the dumbest things I have ever heard.

The brightest, warmest sun ever.

Today's Tids Issue 2,211
Opening Stuff:

I was going to start off this morning with an eloquent paragraph about the early morning fall sun glaring off cruise liners as they made their way through our East Passage over quiet glistening waters awaiting fluttering sails of trim boats. But then I thought…there is no more eloquent, glistening sun than the one that the Chilean miners saw as they emerged form their dark dungeon. That’s the sun that counts.

Joan Sutherland was a helluva singer!

The Question:
What is – 2 cups of flour, ¼ teaspoon salt, 2 sticks of unsalted butter, ½ cup powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract? And, why is important to know this?

The Headlines:
--The World Hugs The Freed Miners; One Miner Emerges From the Bowels Of The earth About Each Hour.
--New Ancestry Data Shows Obama And Palin As Related.
--JP Morgan Chase Profits Rise 23% To $4.42 Billion: Bank Able To Set Aside $1,55 Bil To Cover Personal Banking Division Losses Going Forward.
--Ahmadinejad Trip To Lebanon Expected To Increase Middle East tensions.
--Security Rises At India’s Commonwealth Games After terrorist Strike Warning.
--Secy Of Defense Gates Says Courts Should Not Set Policy On Gays In Military.

Back to More Stuff:
I don’t know if Connecticut’s Linda McMahon will win or not, but she is sure making it obvious that if voters get tangled up in their party allegiances and elect Blumenthal, the state will be represented by a myopic loser.

When you come right down to it, everybody out there working hard is hoping some day to get the gravy.

Most Tea Party leaders are saying that if the Republicans had done the job when they had the Congress, there would never have been a Tea Party movement! The Tea Party, they say isn’t Republican or Democrat, but represents a sensible alternative to a governing body that has grown immune to the needs of voters and taxpayers and is virtually ineffective for the people.

The newscasters are worrying about whether or not the Chilean miners will suffer claustrophobia on the trip back up to the earth’s surface. They’ve been living in a dark hole a mile under the ground for two months! God what idiots!

But Useful Idiots for leftist politicians.

They must know that communist countries have always shut down the press, but for some reason here the main stream press seems to think a socialistic form of government is a good idea?

Through the Same Eyes: Epilogue continues. –The kids were all over me during my first days home. Attentive and very loving. Happy they said that I was all right. But I could sense that their feelings were much deeper, and that the tragedy so close to them was affecting their sense of security. I loved them twice as hard back.
Paul? Well…Paul…Paul was just Paul. Looking at me like a new lover. Yet with the eyes of a man who knew everything about me and accepted me for what I meant to him. He always was like that. I often anguished over my intoxication by Kent because of the unequivocal love that Paul had for me. It’s why I questioned myself. The character of who I had become in the arms of Kent Middleton. Maybe me, Mrs. Independent thinker, actually held a great sense of entitlement that enabled me to disillusion myself. Maybe my life of achievement has really been one of denial.
Here I am -- a person who cheated on her husband and was used by people she thought respected her; A life’s work that lead to brutal murders and a complex business fraud – sitting in the corner office of LR&H feeling comfortable that this is where I should be; That I am the only person who can put it all back together again.
Jack Wiley, a man I believed in and trusted with my life and future had used me. He always wanted more than his successful but small Boston investment bank provided. And it had provided for him extremely well. But, not in his mind, and especially his wife’s. Isabelle was an old classmate of his, and he learned from her about some brilliant scientists creating a new business in the high growth potential Bio-genetics business. They became lovers and he pulled some strings with his local cronies to generate start-up financing and appoint Izzy as President of the new company BiEm. Kent, the founding scientist, knew what it would take to beat other smart competitors and he set up the convoluted vandalism plan that would eventually produce live subjects for testing. And the death of Bromsky. The dreadfully weak Symington was another old school pal of Wiley I learned later, and became the inevitable snitch in my operation. They -- Izzy, Jack and Jeff -- were essentially controlling my every move. The one thing they hadn’t figured on, was that Kent would fall in love with me.
“Hi Boss.” Bill Claxton, no worse for wear after his beating, had stepped into my room. “Legal just called me. The new Name for BiEmbyo is approved – “Middleton Genetics”.
“Good”, I smiled. “Roll out the publicity on our hero scientist…and make sure they know how much Kent was loved!”

The Mexican investigator in charge of the case about the shooting of an American on a South Texas lake was found decapitated; His head was in a suitcase. I have a great idea for a nuclear bomb strike.

Why does the public have to endure endless apologies by ESPN for sexual predators like Kobe Bryant, Ben Roethlisberger, Tiger Woods and now the tedious Brett Favre. It just shows how an investment in personality can dilute moral integrity

One of the reasons I’m never too impressed by celebrities is that all too often I see them wearing Ya-Ya-Ya…(Well…You Know Who I Mean)…caps. I mean how smart can they be?

The Answer: If you follow the directions about you will make delicious short bread, one of the finest foods on earth. It is important to know this because you can dip it in chocolate. Crumple it over ice cream or make an amazing pie crust out of it. It is one of our most important food groups.

The Tids would have a lot more daily information if I could read my handwriting in my notes.