DEMOCRATS LOSE THE SENATE

Now that Democrats have lost the Senate, again, all hope of impeaching the president is sunk. Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota, collapsed in his office after becoming confused in a conference call, and was admitted to George Washington University with a stroke. The governor, Michael Rounds, a Republican will now appoint a fellow Republican to fill Mr. Johnson's position, making the Senate a 50-50 tie with Dr. Death, Dick Cheney casting the deciding vote and throwing control of the chamber to the Grand Old Party.

Less subtle than Putin's polonium pellet, we now need to find the brazen GOP operative who slipped Johnson the stroke inducing drug.

Elsewhere in the news, a reader wrote in asking, "Hey, what's with all this PNL lifestyle stuff of late? You're not going to let Bush off the hook are you?" No. But the "lifestyle" category has a longer shelf life than politics (see www.my-pnl.blogspot.com). As a Wall Street Journal editor once reminded his employees, "What we do today-- will be used to wrap fish tomorrow."

Well, at PNN we've got them beat. I'm proud to say PNN columns will be used to wrap fish today. Our news is so fresh, so ripe, it's old even before it happens.

Of course, PNN raises its periscope to look out over the horizon. Tomorrow is where the news is. By predicting what will happen, we can get a few more days out of our stories. Incidentally, this strategy only works while the current occupant of the White House remains in charge. Predicting failure with this administration, is like predicting the tide will come in.

If you don't see PNN's news stories elsewhere on the news outlets, just wait a few days.

In a related story, Republicans, in rewarding their biggest political contributors, outsourced the modernization of the Coast Guard fleet. Seventeen billion dollars (as in 17,000 million bucks) had been awarded to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to deliver a new breed of coastal vessels to protect our shores.

Our two largest defense contractors built the 147 foot long, $564 million behemoths. Come to find out, the ships are not "seaworthy." Oh contraire: they're seaworthy all right. In sea trials, the vessels flip over and sink.

Other than that, the boats look great. To get of view of them from a Coast Guard submersible, go to the White House home page, click on "Junior" and then click on www.mytubtoys.gov.

In allowing Lockheed and Northrop to do the Coast Guard's oversight, no one in the government checked to see if the ships would actually float. Nowhere was it specified that the boats must float. One by one, the craft were champagne-commissioned, rolled down the ramp and ridden, like Dr. Strangelove on the bomb, to the ocean floor.

It was be the biggest sinking since Pearl Harbor. To quote Bob Newhart, it was the largest peace-time tonnage ever sunk. The helicopters, which were part of the appropriation, went down with the ships.

Democrats, being Democrats, were up in arms over the cost of the boats. Democrats are idiots. They are angry that Republicans were awarding fat contracts in exchange for votes and want the taxpayer reimbursed to the tune of $6 billion, or 33%.

So why do Democrats want a third off the cost of the boats? Why would anyone want a discount on a boat that won't float? What good is a submarine that won't submerge? An airplane that won't get airborne? A Republican that won't be lobbied? A Democrat that won't impeach? Somebody stop me.

It's like the guy who was about to buy a farmer's plow horse for $2,300 -- when the town's veterinarian informed him the horse was lame and soon to be euthanized. Confronted by the buyer with the fact the horse was about to become glue, the farmer conceded, "Okay, make it an even $2,000."

Homeland security in this country is truly scary. Just under a billion dollars ($975 million) is missing from the Government's Katrina relief program and Iraq and Afghanistan are spiraling out of control. And let's not forget that with both 9/11 and Katrina, we had over a week's warning. What's going to happen when the next dire threat doesn't grab our Decider in Chief by the lapels and say, "Wake up Mr. President?"

Rome was neither built nor sacked in a day, but history will show that the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, four airliners, New Orleans, and now the Coast Guard, sank in less than a New York minute. If this is any indication of our emergency preparedness, we're in for the ride of our lives.