Monday MOTOs; Vol. II, Ed. 3

Time once again for another installment of the Colonel's regularly irregular Monday Mastery of the Obvious (MOTO) awards, for public pronouncements demonstrating the speaker's death grip on reality. The awards committee, chaired by a man curmudgeoned before his time, will present medals in absentia today at 1300 Tallahatchie Standard Time, on the front porch of the capitol building at Eegeebeegee, Mississippi, capital of the Tallahatchie Free State, a government in opposition formed as much with hand on wallet as with tongue in cheek.


The Colonel's Monday MOTO bronze medal is awarded to Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez (who leads the closely followed TCMM medal count by a substantial margin) for his blustering, "I warn you this revolution means business," (according to Patricia Rondon in a March 4 Reuters dispatch from Caracass). Hugo "Castro Lite" Chavez's government had just announced seizure of a parboiled rice plant owned by the American company Cargill, as the dropping tide of oil prices supporting his "bread and circuses" populism ran him aground upon the shoals of economic reality. The Colonel's source in Caracass (codenamed "Toucan Sam") claims the reporter left off the last part of the Chavez pronouncement: "...and the state will become one and the same." Socialism (aka: liberalism, progressivism) has but one totalitarian aim--consolidation of power in the hands of a few--and conceals its motives in the populist camouflage of social fairness.


The Colonel's Monday MOTO silver medal is awarded to Marti Maguire, staff writer for the Raleigh News and Observer, for the headline, "Tornadoes are not 'to toy with'." Amen, sister! I can testify! Also, for your further mastery, Ms Maguire, I submit the following obvious points: Tigers and chimpanzees don't make good house pets; Marines are trained to kill; and all politicians lie.

The Colonel's Monday MOTO gold medal is awarded to pollster John Zogby who explains that President Obama's soaring popularity, in the face of a slew of broken campaign promises and an economy spiralling out of control, is based on his “sheer personality.” I'm more and more convinced, day after day, that there ain't but a handful of us, you and I included of course, that get it. Everybody else can't tell the difference between what's going on in the real world and what happened on "The Bachelor." Leaves this Marine just a tad bit disappointed.