AL FRANKEN, SENATORAL JOKESTER

I read today that Al Franken, the recently seated Senator from Minnesota when questioning Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayer asked her yesterday about her favorite "Perry Mason" episode. For the most part though Senator Al Franken has stayed true to his script and not strayed too much into his comedic past when he was a frequent part of the "Saturday Night Live" television show as a performer and writer.

Maybe Senator Franken realizes when he arrived in Washington to join the Senate that there are already enough clowns in the Senate and if he resorted to his comedic past it would just be "piling on" to use a football term with all of the current jokers who call themselves senators. Maybe it takes a comedian to get serious and start to change the laughing stock actions of our current government.

The current government has run amok spending like a drunken sailor on pork barrel pet projects while unemployment rates are the highest in twenty-six years. Maybe there is a competition to see if this can be the worst administration in history although so far ex-President Jimmy Carter can rest easy that he still holds the title in my opinion as "worst president". President Carter abandoned the Shah of Iran which lead to the rise of the Islamofascist Mullah regime that still controls and represses the Iranian populace. Under President Carter we had gas lines at the pumps, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, high inflation and interest rates. President Carter's solution to the energy crisis at that time was to put on a sweater.

Never before has this nation faced the prospect of trillion dollar annual deficits as we do now. Big government is taking over more and more of the economy with their stake in the auto and banking industries. National health care is next on their plate. Get ready to buy some comfortable shoes should you ever get sick and need to see a doctor or go to the hospital as there will be long waiting lines and rationing of care to look forward to so you might as well have shoes that soothe your feet.

Reducing the incentives in the economy by raising taxes on entrepreneurs, small business owners, and the innovators will not spur economic output. Get ready for the return of the "Carter stagflation years" of misery and malaise. Can Government Motors (GM) and nationalized banks give us "The change we have been waiting for?" Is government planned capitalism the way to achieve a growing economy? Time will tell. The joke is probably on us.