Mullings by Rich Galen | Secret Decoder Ring for April 30, 2001

Presented By

100 Down, 1361 to Go"
Monday April 30, 2001

TITLE: "100 Down, 1361 to Go" According to my Palm Pilot built-in calculator function there are four years at 365 days per year, plus one day for leap year, minus the 100 days just past = 1,361.

"… strategic shift …" After getting through the first 100 days of the Congress and making good on the promise to bring all 10 items in the Contract with America to the Floor for a vote, the House found it very difficult to operate.

"…eerily Orwellian manner …" In his book, "1984" Orwell pointed out that Big Brother needed an enemy. It didn't matter who the enemy was, so long as there was one. At one point in the book the ally and the enemy traded places with nary a beat lost.

"… Luncheon a the White House …" There was an opportunity for a cheap MSS Hillary joke here about her attending solely for the purpose of filling in the missing soup spoons and butter knives from the service for twelve, but I was trying to raise the tone as I wrote this on the Green at Dartmouth College from which, if the campus police knew about my seven year undergraduate career, they would have made me move.

Mullings' Catchy Caption of the Day:

"No problem. That'll buff right out."
-- Xinhua/Reuters

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