The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 led Enlightenment thinkers to reject the idea that natural disasters have a moral dimension, representing punishment for personal moral failings. Rick Perry leads the charge of the hordes who reject that idea.

Rick Perry and I go back a ways. As a reporter in the 1980s, I covered his undistinguished years in the Texas House. As a staffer to a Democratic lieutenant governor, I sat in meetings with him and watched him getting teased by his colleagues for his vanity. He clearly loves him some Rick Perry. He’s reported to shave his legs. Something about jogging speed. It’s earned him the name, “Nair Do Well,” but maybe shaved legs are de rigueur among the coyote-whacking-while-jogging set.

Sadly, there is one good aspect I can see coming out of this year’s ‘exceptional’ drought level throughout the state of Texas, and neighboring Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico. It may finally teach farmers that high irrigation crops such as corn are not a good thing to plant here.

Pawlenty’s candidacy was very much predicated on winning Iowa, a neighboring state to Minnesota. He hoped the momentum from that early victory would slingshot into other states. He spent months in Iowa and put up the first TV ads of any candidate there. But he never gained traction, either there or nationally.

She’s like McMegan but without even the pretense of even trying to appear smart.

So at at time when large parts of the world are thinking America has gone completely nuts, its President is incompetent, and its Congress is a clown show, you’d think any self-respecting cable or network news program would at least try to book sensible and knowledgeable grownups to be this week’s guests and panelists.

Popeye starring in Gopher Spinach. This Associated Artists Productions Famous Studios King Features cartoon was released on December 10, 1954.

So, Rep. Michele Bachmann won the Ames Iowa Straw poll. One might be tempted to say “So what?” but it really is of a bit of importance. Think back the first time you really noticed Rep. Bachmann.

For all the conventional wisdom of the GOP operatives that she can’t become the nominee, winning this silly straw poll and all of the coverage of it will give her a patina of respectability and inevitability. It will attract donors and volunteers that Rep. Bachmann can use to fuel a chance at winning in Iowa sometime this coming winter.

Although majority support for marijuana legalization is a good sign for this Colorado campaign, it should be noted that in 2010 the California marijuana legalization measure, Proposition 19, was ahead in early polling but ended up losing narrowly on election day. This Colorado effort should be in slightly better shape than Prop 19 was because they are trying to put the issue on the ballot in a Presidential Election year. Presidential elections tend to see much higher turn out among young voters who strongly support legalization.

With this mammoth step toward civilized behavior, SA becomes another better country to live in. Hopefully, one day the United States will catch up.

Our country became substandard by yet one more nation when SA took this impressive stride forward. Presently the U.S. is 37th in ranking for health care among nations. South Africa stands at 175th. This will set it forward, and the U.S. farther back.