If we close our eyes tightly enough, it’ll go away…
In his reply to President Obama’s Not-a-State-of-the-Union Address to Congress earlier this week, the avatar of the new Republican Party, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, invoked “volcano monitoring” as an example of government waste…
Scientific American explains just what he was attacking. Readers may conclude, as your correspondent has, that the lesson learned by Republicans from the debacle of Katrina was no lesson at all.
And all of this, while the governor’s nose was growing, right there on national television…
As we recall the Boy Scout motto, we might also remember that it was on this date in 1883 that Oscar Hammerstein patented the cigar-rolling machine… and began to amass a fortune that he promptly reinvested in theaters and concert halls, becoming one of Americas first great impressarios… a fact worth honoring, as history tends to overlook Oscar the First in favor of his grandson, Oscar Hammerstein II, the librettist/lyricist and partner of Richard Rodgers.
Hammerstein (on left, with cigar) and conductor Cleofonte Campagnini