It’s fortunate for John McCain that he is not running for the presidency of Tanzania. In that nation, albinos are routinely hunted down and dismembered for use in witch doctor rituals, the thinking being that the blood and body parts of albinos are good luck and will make a person rich swiftly. Not necessarily good luck for the albinos, though, in a nation where even the authorities share this notion. Johnny Winter would be wise to cancel any tour plans of the area until education and reason take root over there.
In other news out of Africa, Nigeria has announced severe budget cutbacks due to falling oil prices. Most of their citizens won’t notice, however, since they live a sort of Bronze Age existence in one of the world’s leading oil exporters. The budget cuts will mainly effect the Gilbert & Sullivan costume budget for their military leaders. It’s not cheap being the very picture of a modern major general. The price of gold braid, brocade sashes, riding crops and shiny knee boots has skyrocketed.
In Britain, a lot of secret tunnels are up for sale, built during World War 2 as bomb shelters for key government officials. Similarly, in The United States, the imminent departure of Vice President Shotgun Dick Cheney from office is expected to flood the real estate market with undisclosed locations, all of them boasting amenities like hot tubs, extra bedrooms for Secret Service agents, lots of medical equipment like defibrillators, life support apparatus and bionic body part recharging ports.
The population of West African chimpanzees has declined nearly 90% in recent years. Scientists wonder where they went. Neutral observers note that the chimps started “disappearing” about the same time the world’s largest banks and mortgage lenders started hiring some very questionable talent to fill executive jobs in the loan and credit departments. Some investigators into the worldwide financial disaster are pushing for DNA testing of some of these executives to see if there is a link between the missing apes and the undisciplined gang of knuckle-draggers who treated the world’s money supply like a bunch of, well… chimps.
!950’s nostalgia is always a popular thing in America. The ’50’s represent to many of us a more innocent, stable and prosperous time for this nation. President Eisenhower was like a benevolent grandfather presiding over the baby boom, doo-wop music, the first exciting rock & roll recordings, a strong economy and a feeling of well-being after the trauma of the Great Depression and World War 2. But not all was sweetness and light in the 1950’s, and Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachman of Minnesota apparently wants to revive one of the most disgraceful chapters in American politics, the McCarthy witch hunts. This clueless dingbat is making all sorts of bigoted noise about who is “Anti-American” and who is “Pro-American” and wants Congress to decide who is who, in a return to communist witch hunts and blacklisting. Many Americans think she ought to be the first person listed as Profoundly Anti-American and tossed on her fat ass out of Congress.