This just in: Chicago didn’t get the 2016 Olympic games.

Lucky them. No, seriously.

The story at the Chicago Tribune is here (click) and I am being perfectly serious. I speak from experience.

Utah had an Olympic games once. We bribed people to get them — my favorite bribe was the hundreds of dollars worth of door knobs someone on the IOC got — and lobbied like heck, and spent a gazillion dollars and got out of it, as near as I can see, nothing.

OK, we got world wide fame. We got some nifty pictures on our highway overpasses. We all have drawers full of cute little pins.

Whoopie-dee-do.

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OK, Jerry Pobanz called me up this morning about today’s column on bicycle/car safety and in the process of talking we came up with a way to solve Utah’s budget crisis.

Two words: Photo radar.

Here’s the deal. My column today is on how people in cars are trying to kill each other, and the rest of us. Seriously, they are. Don’t think so, you obviously don’t drive, or bicycle, or bike, or even walk. Heck, people sleeping in their bedrooms have been assaulted by cars several times this year alone. Nobody is safe.

Jerry wondered if people, who are polite about bumping into other folks in hallways, suddenly undergo a brainectomy when they turn their key on. My own theory is that people in cars think they’re safe, and as long as they’re safe all is right with the world.

One solution would be to have everyone drive around in cars made of papier mache’, sort of like those Trabants the East Germans used to make. When you drove one of those you were very, very safe because hitting a bird at speed could smash in the front of the car which, no kidding, was made of paper.

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This really irritates the heck out of me.

Just got this press release from Sen. Bennett: 

BENNETT ON HEALTH CARE REFORM:   

SLOW DOWN, START OVER, DO IT RIGHT

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) gave a speech on the Senate Floor today calling on Congress to scratch the current health care reform bills being debated, slow down and get it done right.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

 I didn’t bother looking at the video. No need. And, really, they’re not listening to us, why bother listening to them?

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– ”I must have more power!” – I was looking at Facebook and noticed an ad for a “Zero point” magnetic power generator that claimed to allow you to disconnect your home from the power grid by generating electricity through pure magnetic principles, not using water or air or any other sort of external force.

This is complete hokum, of course.

A perpetual motion machines– a device that moves forever without external force applied – is impossible except in a completely friction-free environment (example: Earth rotating around the sun, although tidal friction and tectonic forces are slowing it down as well, so maybe not), and a device that generates more power than it uses is even more impossible.

Anyway, while noodling around looking up stuff on this bogus electrical generator, I found a lovely web site for The Museum of Unworkable Devices (click here!)  which is great fun and very educational. It helps if you’ve studied a little physics at some point in your life, but the pictures and explanations are clear enough so you can puzzle things out with very little trouble.

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Not to push business to the competition, but there’s a story in the sltribulation today by a reporter (click!) who got her training at the S-E discussing Attorney General Mark Shurtleff’s attack on Sen. Robert Bennett for — the horror — applauding President Obama during his recent speech to Congress.

I know there’s a rule against Republicans ever saying anything positive about a Democrat, and a parallel rule that everything Obama says or does shall be assumed to be socialistic and evil, even if it involves saving the life of a puppy.

But Bennett was clapping because Obama had just slammed the former governor a minor state for her “Death Panel” crack which was, and still is, and always will be, a sensationalist lie meant to scare people and make sure that ex-governor’s name stayed in the news.

Kinda pathetic, really.

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So I’m sitting there Sunday morning, reading the NYTimes on my computer (Mac iBook G4, old but reliable) when I click on the next page of whatever story I’m reading, I forget what, and suddenly my screen is full of a big picture of some anti-virus scanning program, or so it says, and it’s got lots of little spinning dials and moving progress bars and whatnot, and huge flashing warnings that it HAS DETECTED VIRUSES ON MY COMPUTER AND MY ENTIRE LIFE IS ABOUT TO BE HIJACKED!!!!!!!!

Scary stuff.

It puts a little window up that asks me to confirm I want to download their anti-virus software that will save my life, and no matter how many times I click “cancel” it won’t go away and i can’t get it to stop, the window won’t close, nothing.

At least once I may have even clicked on “yes” because my computer (Yay!) asked me “You are about to download an .exe program that will install software on your computer. Are you sure you want to do that?” and I told it no, and it didn’t but still couldn’t get the whole thing to to away.

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Needless to say, if I’d heard President Obama’s speech before finishing my column in today’s paper I wouldn’t have changed much, but I would have had another really horrendous example of the sort of boorish behavior that Hatch, if he were a real leader who cared about his country, would condemn very publicly in the very strongest language possible.

I was glad to see Sen. John McCain do so. He’s got the job security and weight to do that without repurcussions, which is exactly why Hatch needs to do so as well. If leaders of Congress can’t work for the country, insuring good productive debate by reigning in that sort of shinanigans, why are they leaders?

And it is about the good of the country. Everyone agrees that this nation’s health care system is broken. Everyone agrees it needs to be fixed. Jerks calling the president names do not help. That idiot from South Carolina probably hurt his cause, and helped the Democrats, more than he knows, but he also added to the polarization, which I get the feeling Obama is really trying to do away with.

It’s interesting to see what that idiot and a few others are hanging their hat on — the health care proposals do specifically prohibit helping anyone who is not here legally with one caveat — they provide prenatal care to illegal immigrants who are pregnant.

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– Amid all the sorrow expressed over the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy last week, I was surprised to hear our own Sen. Orrin Hatch take one particular direction with his arguement.

Everyone knows that  Ted and Orrin were good friends and worked on a lot of legislation together, so I am positive Orrin’s sorrow is genuine. However, his statements that, with Sen. Kennedy gone,  further bipartisan progress in the Senate is less likely puzzles me.

Hatch said Kennedy could cross the aisle like no other, getting dems and gops to cooperate. Which begs the question: Precisely why can’t Sen. Hatch do that too?

Perhaps he feels himself constrained by party loyalty, or worries the folks back home might frown, or he simply harbors a desire to push partisan agendas at the expense of the nation.

But if there is anyone in the Senate who should be able to rise above partisanship, and work for reconciliation at any cost, it is Sen. Hatch.

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