More Random Thoughts On the Day's News

Spent the night of July 4th at the in laws. This morning, when I woke up, they informed me another celebrity had been busted for speeding and drugs, this time in Southern Orange County. My first impulse was to think: Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan or Nicolle Richey, but then that unholy triumvirate usually does its damage in L.A. County.

When told it was Al Gore's son, clocked at 100 miles per hour in his Toyota Prius, with marijuana and illegal prescription drugs in the car, my first response was: damn! I didn't know a Prius would go that fast! Seriously, anyone driving that fast at that time in the morning with illegal drugs in his car can't be too bright. Let's just say Al Gore's apple tree appears to be planted on a very, very steep incline.

The latest CBS poll puts George Bush's approval rating at 27%. At this point, Mr. Bush is plumbing truly Nixonian levels. Moreover, and pollsters differ on this, but most say that between 10% and 20% of poll respondents will always say "yes" to the approval question because, well, he is the president and we should always support him (think Britney Spears). This means that, at best, only 17% of the people in this country who possess a brain still support this guy.

My informal research indicates the 17% is comprised entirely of: A) managers and executives of the fifty largest multi-national corporations in the country, including Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Banking and Walmart; and B) extremely rich people who own significant shares in the fifty largest multi-national corporations in the country, including Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Banking and Walmart. For everyone else Bush has pretty much been a disaster.

Lost in the celebration of removing the bald eagle from the endangered species list is this: according to the L.A. Times, the Bush administration has added just 58 species to the endangered species list, and 54 of them were in response to litigation by various environmental groups. By contrast, Bush's father, in just four years, added 231 species to the list. And there is no truth to the rumor the Bush administration favors adding "fiscal conservatives" to the endangered species list because, in the words of a Bush spokesman, "it's too late, they're already extinct."