ROGER SIMON COLUMN
JULY 27, 2005
WASHINGTON - - I am having a hard time caring about things. I am blaming this on the heat.
I know I should care more about CAFTA. CAFTA is important to everyone in this hemisphere. (Or at least that portion of the hemisphere that we actually give a darn about, namely us.)
CAFTA will either add or cost us jobs. It will either bolster or depress trade. I am having a hard time caring. In part this is because the other day I swear I heard somebody in line at Starbucks says, "I'll have a decaf CAFTA with 2 percent milk."
I also know the heat is causing me to care less about Karl Rove. Karl Rove has been caught up in the scandal surrounding the outing of an undercover CIA agent.
Almost everybody I know thinks Karl Rove will skate, however. Nobody will bring down Rove, they say. He is too high, he is too smart, and, besides, if he falls from power, who will run the country?
Among the Washington press corps, Rove is widely believed to be the "Boy Genius", the nickname the president has given him.
Rove, however, is 54 and no boy, and way back in back in 2000 I said he was no genius. Anybody who loses the popular vote to Al Gore is no genius as far as I am concerned.
True, Rove and what's-his-name won re-election in 2004, but they had a mole in the John Kerry campaign: John Kerry. There is no other explanation for how that campaign was run.
Anyway, I am having a hard time caring. I am also having a hard time caring about John Roberts (Is that his real name? It sounds fake to me), the AFL-CIO, the housing bubble,
and the energy bill. (I am too tired to think about energy.)
It's the heat. It is sapping the strength of the entire nation. This is not an exaggeration. I have proof. This story recently appeared in my local newspaper. I have changed nothing:
"A man in a nutrition store asked a clerk for a dietary supplement, then pulled out a knife and warned the clerk not to call for help. He took the supplement and fled."
He took the supplement and fled? No demand for money? No "Give me all the flax seed oil and lecithin you've got?"
No, he commits a felony over a dietary supplement. He didn't have the strength, the will, the concentration to ask for anything else.
He undoubtedly will be caught. (He will try this stunt again next time he needs some
echinacea and will get nabbed.) And at his trial, I can guess his defense:
It was the heat.