Is Vancouver Wash Sending Its Best Across the Border?

Three decades ago – maybe four – in the waning days of music on AM radio, the era of morning drive-time disc-jockey teams supposedly being light-hearted and humorous, a pair of funny guys on one Portland station had a running gag, blaming incompetent Washington drivers for any traffic problems. Now in 2019, a study by something called WalletHub ranks Washington motorists number 48, the worst in the continental United States. Numbers 49 and 50 are Alaska and Hawaii respectively.

Vancouver – not the British Columbia Vancouver – sits just across the Columbia River from Portland – the Oregon Portland.

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Before Nancy Pelosi There Was Thomas B. Reed

“The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch.”

The current occupant of the White House, the greatest negotiator ever, the purported author of “The Art of the Deal,” met his match with Nancy Pelosi. Speaker of the House Pelosi learned her deal making from her father, a mayor of Baltimore, and later in the bruising political environment that is San Francisco. She has the current President so flustered that the best he can come up with for a denigrating nickname is an ineffectual “Nancy.” Pelosi, in turn, said that the border wall, “is like a manhood thing for him — as if manhood would ever be associated with him.”

The Speaker’s power that Nancy Pelosi is exploiting goes back more than a century when another powerful politician wielded the gavel. Thomas B. Reed was Speaker of the House from 1889-1891 and again from 1895-1899.

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“Lifeboat” – No, Not Alfred Hitchcock’s

“Sea-Watch is a group of volunteers who heard that people were drowning off the coast of Libya, and instead of just sitting around twiddling their thumbs, they purchased a retrofitted research vessel, motored down off the coast of Africa, and started pulling people out of the sea.”

The 1944 movie “Lifeboat” received three Academy Award nominations: Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock), Best Story (John Steinbeck) and Best Cinematography (Glen MacWilliams).

See the interesting digression below.

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Flying Over The Wall

The advertisement has been featured on the national news – CBS, CNN, Fox, USA Today – and the YouTube video has gone “viral.” Aeromexico offered discounts on flights from the U.S. to Mexico. Fares are reduced the same percentage as the passenger’s percentage of Mexican DNA.

In case you haven’t seen Aeromexico’s ad:

You won’t find it on the airline’s web site. The discounts were offered through travel agents in the southern U.S.

DHO Studios of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida produced the two-minute commercial. Founder and Creative Director Danny Holguin is a native of Colombia. He has won numerous awards for short films and documentaries in addition to DHO’s advertising work.

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Dave Barry’s 2018 Year in Review

It’s January, time to reflect on the year just passed. Dave Barry, as he does every year, gives us a trip down the memory hole of 2018, helping us to remember much that we tried to forget.

“What made this year so awful? We could list many factors, including natural disasters, man-made atrocities, the utter depravity of our national political discourse and the loss of Aretha Franklin.”

Re-live the year just finished. Read Dave’s month-by-month report.

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John Boehner: Still Smokin’

“I’m all in on marijuana.”

Republican John Boehner resigned from the House of Representatives in 2015 after nearly twenty-five years, the last five as Speaker. He has since found a life after politics.

“I’m all in on marijuana.”

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