Spreading positive doubt to the masses

— Bumper sticker of the week: My only fear of death is reincarnation.

— Quotes of the week: “If the phone doesn’t ring, it’s me.” —Jimmy Buffett

“No matter what side on a argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.” The Peever

— Spreading some positive doubt:

• I doubt the Chinese will ever do anything in Galesburg, although would labor force is beginning to get use to working for less and less. When we get to about $10 per day, we better start teaching Chinese in our schools.

• I don’t see that Super Wal-Mart is going to help Galesburg. They should be paying quite a bit of sales tax, and real-estate tax, but I doubt that will offset the lose of jobs created by their grocery and huge floor space and ever expanding inventory. Ma and Pa Kettle ain’t got a prayer. Neither has EconoFoods and HyVee.

• GREDA, formerly the EDC, has not done anything in the 20 years I have been keeping track. They take credit for things that would have happened anyway, and some things that they have nothing to do with. Since they like to keep everything secret, it’s hard to tell exactly what it is they’re not doing.

• If Galesburg ever becomes a “no honk” train town, I’ll quit writing this column. That’s my promise to the city council, which they can hardly afford to ignore. (This is commonly called “baiting”).

• Let’s face the facts, Galesburg needs a full-time mayor. We need someone in charge and responsible for our ongoing failures.

• I doubt a Knox College education is worth $35,478 per year. You’d be better off getting the $141,912 from your parents, putting it in a CD at 5.5%, and continuing to live with them until they throw you out, which my be never, if you can provoke enough guilt.

• The media is being bought up by large corporate interests in the name of generating a huge marketing network designed to push their products. Acquisitions and mergers have totaled in the billions over the last several years. Journalists and reporters are reticent to write anything that might rankle their corporate bosses. The upside is that this corporate filtration of the news has spun off a whole new source of information on the internet. Bloggers have taken up the cause. Now, anyone on the street with a cell phone camera and a blog site on the internet can be a reporter. In fact, most of the leading stories today originate from blog sites. We no longer need the corporate news. It’s not worth a nickel anyway.

• From day one, I have doubted whether the war in Iraq had anything to do with democracy and freedom. That doubt continues, and is now approaching the fifth year. That’s a lot of doubt.

• If the world had never heard of Karl Rove, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Al Gonzales, Condoleeza Rice, John Roberts, and Robert Gates, we would all be better off.

• The only thing I like about rich people is their money.

• New Orleans would seem to be better off way below sea level.

• Mitt Romney won the Iowa Republican straw poll. Of course, Iowa is pretty close to Utah.

• Our government now practices stealing from the poor and giving to the rich. This is Robin Hood in reverse. Apparently his tights are too tight.

• I think registering with the legal authorities is a good idea for gun owners, sex offenders, and ministers.

• They should start putting warning labels in underwear. They all seem to shrink.

• My emails keep telling me that size really matters. Crap, wouldn’t you know it.

08/23/07