Decency Dealt a Blow: Gerald Rudolph Ford, July 14, 1913 - December 26, 2006. When he took the oath of office on August 9, 1974, he declared, “This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts." Upon your death, Mr. President, we say, “Amen, amen.”

Score Card – Progress Iraq: 0 As I write this piece, Saddam Hussein stands in the lengthening shadows of the gallows and the world stands transfixed by the ghoulish prospect. In death he gains martyrdom; in death he provokes renewed killing mania; there has to be a better answer. Meanwhile, Bush and company continue to ponder an Iraq strategy. Had they thought (to use the term loosely) this hard about going into Iraq, we wouldn’t be there now and we wouldn’t have been there then.

Hello Dolly! The US FDA has big T tentatively deemed cloned meat and milk from cloned cows, goats, and pigs (no sheep?) and their offspring safe to eat. Rest assured there will be a lot of yelling and agonizing and we may never see other than clone free products in our supermarkets and meat markets, but measuring how a cloned animal is produced against one produced out in the barnyard, I’d opt for cloned products in a lab minute.

Trans Fat. No, not the blood-stopping gunk used in French fries and other formerly delicious junk food, but Transfer Fat, the kind used to lure chief executives and other high-ranking officers to corporations. In the biz, it’s known euphemistically as a golden hello (a nice balance to the golden parachute that protects executives being ‘forced out,’ another euphemism, this one for ‘axed’), and believe me, these hellos are truly golden, running to tens of millions. They’ve been designed to shield corporate hopping executives from facing hardship as they move from palatial office to palatial office closing plants, shipping jobs offshore, and otherwise eliminating jobs of the working grunts who get what is known in the biz as the ‘shaft,’ an euphemism for screwed.

Toyota Thunderbird? In what has been described as a courtesy call, the new CEO at deeply troubled Ford met in Tokyo with Toyota’s Chairman as Toyota sits poised to become the world’s largest automobile company. Ten thousand kilometers is a long way just to say, “Konichiwa.”

SEC Sudoku? Three cheers for the SEC that has taken some perfectly unintelligible rules and regulations and turned them into an incomprehensible set of instructions. Now when you want to know how much the CEO of the company in which you have your hard-earned bucks invested, you don’t have a hope of finding out. Before, you could at least trick your mind into believing you might hire someone smart enough to figure it out. I wonder why simple disclosure and truth haven’t occurred to these overpaid bureaucrats and execs.

2008 Presidential Election Handicap * DECLARED CANDIDATES Ranking Name Party 3 Edwards, John – Former Senator, North Carolina, and VP candidate– declared 12/27/06 in New Orleans, LA D 2 Kucinich, Dennis John - Democratic member of the U. S. House of Representatives – declared 12/12/06 in Cleveland, OH D 2 Vilsack, Tom – Governor, Iowa – declared 11/30/06 in Mount Pleasant, IA D 2 Hunter, Duncan - Republican member of the U. S. House of Representatives – declared 10/30/06 in San Diego, CA R UNDECLARED CANDIDATES Ranking Name Party 6 Obama, Barack – Senator, Illinois D 5 Clinton , Hillary Rodham – Senator, New York D 3 Biden, Joe – Senator, Pennsylvania D 3 Richardson, Bill – Governor, New Mexico D 4 McCain, John - Senator, Arizona R 4 Romney, Mitt - Former Governor, Massachusetts R 2 Brownback, Sam – Senator, Kansas R 2 Gingrich, Newt - Former House Speaker, Georgia R 2 Giuliani, Rudy - Former NYC Mayor R 2 Rice, Condoleeza - Secretary of State R 2 Thompson, Tommy – Former Governor, Wisconsin R 1 Pataki, George – Governor, New York R 1 Delusional - 10 Yes! Yes! Yes! *Note: These rankings have nothing to do with official polls or rankings. They are mine and mine alone.

That’s all for this week, my friends. Happy 2007!