®

                      Be a Mullings Subscriber! Click here.

Who They DID Blame

Friday, November 22, 2002

• TITLE: "Who They DID Blame" Here's the link to the pre-election Mullings.

• "... No SDR ..." Here's what happened:

  I drove to the old homestead, Marietta, Ohio, to give a speech to the NFIB.

  It was a little over five hours each way but, as I've mentioned before, although I didn't grow up there; I came of age there so I respond to all manner of requests.

  The owner of a new motel, just outside of town, offered to comp a room which I accepted.

  It is a perfectly good, modestly priced hotel. It's easy to get to from the interstate (known as the Four-Lane, in Southeastern Ohio) and easy to get from there to downtown.

  However.

  On this particular day the phone lines were such that I could not maintain a dial-up connection on my computer.

  I go to great lengths not to do anything on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday nights because them's writin' nights.

  I had pretty much written the column on Monday, so all I had to do was to construct the Secret Decoder Ring Page, upload the whole business to the various servers and allow them to do their magic.

  Without a working phone connection, however, I was in a panic.

  I gave the speech (pretty well received, I'm told) and then borrowed a cable modem connection that someone in the audience had at their house.

  It worked, but I couldn't very well take over their computer connection for the 60-90 minutes the SDR takes to prepare.

  So, that's why there was no Secret Decoder Ring.

  It was Rush Limbaugh's fault.

• "... President Nixon ..." On the day President Nixon resigned he delivered an extemporaneous farewell speech to the White House staff which was assembled in the East Room. The speech rambled around a bit, but became a little frightening when Mr. Nixon began speaking about his mother whom he termed, "a saint."

  Mullfoto of the Day:
  
  
  
  Ignore the fact that this was taken on the 405 at about 70 MPH driving one of Hertz' new "No Hands" rentals. The sign says, "Carpool Violation $271 Minimum Fine."

  Here's a question for you California readers: Was there one of your really swell initiatives which required that highway fines must be prime numbers?

  ---

  
  
  
    British World War II Poster
  

•     Mullings' Catchy Caption of the Day:
  

  
  President Bush to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder:
  "Keep smiling. Keep smiling. If you ever do anything like that again, I will personally come over there and kick your fat German butt into bratwurst."

  (REUTERS/Larry Downing) ____________________________________________________________________________________