Mating habits is strong language, here. I’m talking about getting a date with someone who might actually want to see you again. I am uncomfortable with the terms “starter wife” and “trophy wife”, as the first one reminds me of needing to make a fire today (cold-rainy out with last year’s firewood all wet) and the second one is an animal head mounted on the wall. These are women, you know, who probably make decisions as to whether or not to see you again based on your charm (or wallet, or car, or house…) and you would likely not be seeing any women a second time if it were not for their assessment of your redeeming qualities.

I have never worked for Newmont because I am not their “preferred type”. They get a quizzical look on their face when I am in the room talking to them, like “Where are her keepers?” I based my assessment of this highly-generalized and terribly stereo-typed character based on guys I worked with who went over to them and found a happy home there. Those “preferred type” of guys I worked with had nice hair-cuts and didn’t do very much core logging or mapping or drafting sections. They liked to write reports. I am not saying everyone at Newmont is like that, but the guys I knew who went there are like that. And no, they would not like to work with me for reasons known to other people (like my huzbun) who keep that to themselves so I don’t get all hurt and self conscious… I do all right and I stay out of those offices for the most part (unless the office is in a really remote region of the world and I am there to teach some kind of software to guys who have bones in their nose – I am the perfect candidate for that kind of corporate representation….)

Remeber this: be, am, is, as, was, were, have, had, has, will, shall, would, should, or could. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with that but if you want to be a writer they will make you memorize that back in the fifth grade.

You know what they say:
“If you can’t grow it, and you can’t mine it, you have to fish it.”

Ummm, anyone remember mining in here? Huh? The MINING industry?? That’s OK, we are here to provide the forum, the electricity, the infrastructure, the platform and the ambiance whether or not anyone realizes where all the comes from…

Anyhow, even though I have more money in fly rods than Minelabs, I have a hard time putting down the detector to go an fish. But then again, it’s a hobby for me and not a living.

Like Mark, I’m disturbed by the amount of money spent on campaigns. I have a very simple solution for campaign finance reform: ban radio and TV advertising for both candidates and ballot issues. That is where nearly all the millions of dollars go in a campaign. The ads are virtually always deceptive (for various reasons, among which it is nearly impossible to address any significnt issue in 30 seconds), and therefore have no value in assisting voters to choose a candidate.

I heartily agree with Dave on almost all points. I too love your writing, remember the killer rabbit and the weak president, and I agree that Reagan was a very strong president. When he died I told my three young blessings that his changes to the tax code and free enterprise were responsible for much of the economic worth of our great country and his view of America’s defense and role in the world brought freedom to millions.

As much as I like Iacocca as a business leader I would like him even better if he had not asked for and received a federal bailout for Chrysler. The coming bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can be traced to previous bad ideas such as that. While we are on the Government Sponsored Entities, can’t we all agree to the pending legislation (blocked by Reid and Pelosi) which would prohibit these entities from bribing (I mean lobbying and contributing to) Congress?

Iacocca is right that Bush should have immediately landed in D.C. and I think he should have walked the length of the Washington Mall while the cameras rolled. Regarding his slam on faith, like most of our leaders, Iacocca has no understanding of, or respect for, people of faith which I resent.

I am happy to resolve Mark’s dilemma and volunteer to be the National Director of Personnel. The caliber of the candidates would improve because I would exclude people who started running for president as soon as anyone heard of them, everyone connected with a well known political machine and those with no serious job experience. I would also exclude everyone that does not have a plan for what they want to accomplish. Trust me, that criteria would exclude people on both sides.

I agree with Mark that you should interview each of the acceptable candidates for hours on live TV and that we need rational regular people (which naturally excludes judges and politicians) to redraw all of the election districts so that everyone in a district actually live in the same general area. I would add that we need actual debates. I had more heated and productive debates with classmates in high school than we require for testing the future leader of the free world!

Where are your hard core liberal friends? I don’t see comments from any of them so to get the ball rolling I want to propose that they read “Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works.” by Newt Gingrich. I have not always liked or agreed with Gingrich but I found a great deal of ideas in his book that I agreed with. Anyone with a comparable liberal book with new ideas is welcome to suggest it.