They've started roasting the green chile here in southern New Mexico. This produces one of the great food aromas in the world, like baking bread or fresh-brewed coffee or grandma's roladen.
All great chefs understand the importance of the olfactory element in food. So, too, do dogs, often with results that displease their human companions.
A few fortunate folks have developed keen olfactory skills for political odors, as well,. In this country they're called liberals. Every now and then they catch a political aroma like green chile roasting. More often than not, in these United States, what they smell is rotten meat.
They are underwhelmed of late by a really bad stink on the wings of the winds out of Texas. Gov. Goodhair, as he was dubbed by the late, great Molly Ivins, wants to be our President.
Honest Injun! THAT Gov. Goodhair.
The one whose only policy decision about the state's record, impoverishing drought was, "pray for rain." (It didn't work.)
The one who brags about the "Texas miracle" of increasing jobs during the recession, whereas in fact in true job creation data Texas ranks last among the 50.
The one who has compelled the state's history teachers to tell their pupils that Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlaffly are "great Americans," whereas Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez are not.
The one who primed his base for his presidential run by staging a great pray-in featuring some of the most whacko, racist, ill-informed Christofascists on the face of the earth.
The one who set the all-time gubernatorial record for executing prisoners who suffered from mental disability.
Ramblin' Rick thinks he can pull Texas out of the union with a stroke of his pen; calls Social Security and Medicare unconstitutional and -- get this -- thinks the way to get this country moving again is to suspend ALL Federal laws and regulations. And one of his lesser gaffes: Fed Chief Ben Bernanke commits "treason" when he takes even mild regulatory action to keep the country solvent.
In Iowa, a handful of kooks got together in Ames to eat pork tenders and proclaim Michelle Bachmann, a Minnesota congressperson, their favorite for the Republican presidential nomination. This makes her Gov. Goodhair's principal rival.
What a pair!
Bachmann could improve her knowledge of her country's history by studying even Goodhair's cockeyed version of it. Last I heard she thought Paul Revere crossed the Delaware to warn Manchester, NH, that the British were comin', which alerted Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain boys to win the battle of Lafayette, Ind. Something like that.
She and her hubby made their little fortune by praying homosexual people into heterosexuality, the way God intended it. Maybe her contest with Goodhair will come down to a praying contest. What a choice to inflict on God!
Meanwhile, vile odors waft unto us from Minnesota and from Texas. Fortunately, they come together right at the point of heavy green chile roasting, which neutralizes them.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
