The Weathervane-What's Happening?

I've just finished my entry for today and then immediately deleted it! In reading it critically, I found the finished product banal and without any original thought and without any new insights. What's happening now is really so bizarre that often times when I receive a forwarded email I write back and ask, "Is this a joke?"

I happened to be out of town when the news came that President Pinocchio had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Ann and I happened to be in Oslo on a 50th anniversary cruise (ours, not the ship's) in May and I had a chance to ask one of our city guides a few questions about the mindset of the people, primarily the youth. The guide, who happens to double as a journalist for one of the numerous, local papers, was happy to talk about the local pulse. I wasn't very fair when I phrased the question like this: "Are the young people frustrated by the high taxes and how this keeps them from getting ahead?" Even though he probably hears that question a lot, he was very pleasant, answering that even the young people had no problems as everyone lives pretty well. "Pretty well" means living in an apartment , bicycling or walking and from what I could tell, a lot of lying around on the lawns of public buildings and drinking coffee. Socialism is apparently such a way of life that even the youth chooses "secure" over "upper mobility".

Exporting the idea of a Republican form of government is hard. We've seen it in the Middle East and I guess while every young person we met spoke excellent English, they just don't get "it" when we use the phrase "personal freedom". With our limited exposure to the Norwegian mind I think I better understand the Nobel being given to a Man of Promises.

P.S. Read the proposals carefully when you go to vote this time (You are going to vote aren't you?), the boys in Austin have cooked up some new stuff for us.