It’s just a question but what did Congressman J. Randy Forbes have to do with Colonial

Farm Credit returning $876,951 to Colonial’s farm customers? But there was his picture in this newspaper with three officials of the Suffolk Farm Credit agency, holding up a large fake check. Have you ever seen him pictured when congressmen are taking money away from farmers, for instance taxes? Words come to mind:

&uot;any photo op will do.&uot; Maybe this shot will turn up again during his next campaign ritual. It won’t make any more sense then than now but will look good to the less observant. Politicians don’t miss a trick. He should have been at the Indian press conference, pushing that project.

George Carlin’s brain is still with us and many of his observations are worth passing on. &uot;Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.&uot; Carlin states that Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah, Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian Faith, and Baptists do not recognize each other in the liquor store. Sure, his humor is a little out of whack and he asks, &uot;What’s a whack?&uot; If he keeps his remarks clean, we can all enjoy his thoughts and most of them make sense. Like why do croutons come in airtight packages when they were stale bread to begin with? He suggests that Fed Ex merge with UPS and become Fed Up. And what hair color do they put on a driver’s license when the driver is bald? Closer to home, he asks if Lipton Tea workers take coffee breaks.

Picked up an expression that puts Constant Wharf in a new light, it’s been renamed to Constant Work. Last time I drove by nothing was happening on the site, which gave rise to the hope that the project would be abandoned. But today I saw them in the rain pounding &uot;Dead Men&uot; in behind the seawall, I suppose to help straighten it, which certainly indicates something. I thought the footbridge to nowhere would have been removed by now but it’s still there hiding the 16&uot; sewer line that crosses the river at that point. Many of us still have visions of there being only a park with shade trees, cold beer, pie and ice cream, hot dogs and lemonade, and TGIF. Yeah, and we thought they’d keep the old Louise Memorial Hospital buildings intact.

I still can’t fathom why Henry Murden’s endorsement is such a factor in choosing his replacement as Clerk of the Court. I’m sure much of his expertise was gained while on the job; he surely didn’t begin with all of it. I’m confident many candidates are as capable as he was at the start. If he is not the person who decides who gets the position, why should it make any difference which he endorses? I don’t question his judgment; I will be 84 in a few years, but why is his selection so media newsworthy? Does his pronouncement spell doom for the rest? Who is to say that this is not just plain politics? If I could pick the winner I’d do it with a coin toss. By the way, who does the picking?

Don’t you have a belly full of Pentagon military people shouting down Don Rumsfeld&uot;s efforts to modernize all branches of the service, inducing them to finally work together as they did so brilliantly in Iraq? If the Air Force continues to resist they will find them-selves back as part of the Army. You can’t read all of Rumsfeld’s remarks in the liberal media but he is fighting great odds when trying to effect reforms. He says it takes five months to hire a civilian employee and 18 months to get rid of one. Attempts to implement even a minor reform forces him to deal with one or more of 1,300 union locals and negotiations can last months, even years. He said that’s OK in the industrial age but not OK in the communication and information age. He stated, &uot;The adversaries our nation faces today are not burdened by red tape or bureaucracy. They move with the speed of satellites, cell phones, cyberspace and jet airliners.&uot; He is correct, our governmental molasses, at all levels, reminds me of the book, &uot;The Enemy Within.&uot;

Church bulletin: &uot;For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.&uot;

Robert Pocklington is a resident of Suffolk and a regular News-Herald columnist.