LikeTheDew.com

Mark Johnson covered it brilliantly in his most recent post and I touched on it a while back, and this recent spell of really cold weather has led me once more to that putrescent fount from whence I draw much bile-arousing material: the commercial teevee networks and *The News*.

Taking the cue from their second cousins in the US, Australians have pretty much got used to news anchors whose expertise seems to lie more in the choice of the smart frock or the nifty tie than in an understanding of the world beyond the studio…

According to officials with the North Carolina State Board of Education, the Tar Heel State’s high school children don’t need to learn about the founding of our nation or the Civil War. The Board is proposing changes to the high school history curriculum that will eliminate teaching about any historical events prior to 1877.

Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Washington’s focused on them like a laser. Yesterday, Harry Reid (soon to be former Democrat Senator from Nevada and current Majority Leader), announced the revised Senate bill designed for bi-partisan appeal and to help create the nine plus million jobs needed to offset just those that have been lost since the worst depression since the great one began.

The cost of the total package, according to estimates released by Reid, would be about $15 billion over 10 years. This is what he said was actually in the bill (I’m not making this stuff up)…

With both Valentine’s Day and snow moving into the South, here are a few things in the news to think about — all, oddly, involving food.

When Connie Taylor of Byron, Georgia, went to make potato salad, she discovered that the 5-pound bag her boyfriend had bought at Freshway the day before contained not one but two heart-shaped potatoes.  According to macon.com, the Idaho Potato Commission reports at least two single heart-shaped potato finds in recent years, but there’s no record of a previous double-whammy.  “Maybe we’ll have a ribeye and a baked, heart-shaped potato on Valentine’s Day,” she told a reporter but said she’s leaning more toward pickling them to save.

Cheryl Freeman of Loris, South Carolina, had no magic Valentine potatoes when she walked inside Food Lion late one recent evening to buy milk and bread, the Southern staples for snowy weather.  Nobody, she says, mentioned the store was closing, but “when I got up to the front I thought I saw people leaving in a car in the parking lot” — and the door was locked.  She didn’t have her cellphone with her, but, while trying unsuccessfully to find a phone in the store, she set off the burglar alarm.  That brought police and rescue.