I do hope we get enough that I can get some pics of the Dot's possible last east coast snow romp.

Gov. Moonbeam Has Landed   by Mike Royko

New York,  Summer 1980

    I don't think many people noticed, but somebody finally made a highly intelligent speech to the Democratic Convention.  It dealt with issues that haven't been talked about.  It avoided most of the tired cliches that the speakers were tossing around the podium.
    And it passed almost unnoticed, which is what usually happens to any thoughtful observation made at a political convention.
    No, the speech was not made by Ted Kennedy.  He specializes in grandiose spending plans, pie-in-the-sky social benefits and sentimental slop that dulls the mind,
    Nor was it made by Jimmy Carter.  Carter is capable of saying something smart, but the challenge of trying to keep Ted Kennedy from wrecking his candidacy and the Democratic Party is almost more than Carter can handle at one time.
    The speech was made by Jerry Brown, governor of California, who is sometimes referred to as "Governor Moonbeam".
    I have to admit that I gave him that unhappy label.  I'm sorry I did it, because the more I see of Brown, the more I am convinced that he has been the only Democrat in this year's politics who understands what the country will be up against in the future.
    That's been Jerry Brown's problem as a national candidate.  He won't talk about creating millions of make-work jobs, spending billions of dollars, following economic policies that will lead to even higher inflation, and getting involved in a mad arms race that will probably blow us all up.  He won't pander to organized labor, tell a well-fed and materialistic America that it is deprived, or try to convince voters that only the federal government is capable of solving our problems.
    So what did Brown talk about?
    Strange things, by the political  standards of this convention.  You could tell they were strange by the way the delegates became glassy-eyed or drifted into conversational groups.  And by the way the networks became itchy and looked for people to interview while Brown was talking.
    The delegates didn't know how to react when Brown said:
    "It is not time for a candidate and a party that believe the only long-term threat to our survival comes from one particular nation 5,000 miles away.  Rather, it is time for a candidate and a party which sense the profound change to be wrought by the addition of 2 billion new citizens to this earth in the next 20 years."
    Some delegates appeared confused when he went on to say:
    "it is time to redirect the vast pension funds of this nation to more socially responsible objectives.  There are $650 billion in deferred wages, earned by the working men and women of this country,  This is the single most significant source of investment capital for the decade of the '80s."
    A few moments later, he said:
    "As a small minority of the world's population, we must live by our wits, think better and work harder.  We cannot sustain a way of life that uses one third of the world's basic resources for but a few percent of its people.  But we can invent new ways to live better.  We can learn to place quality above quantity and caring above consumption."
    People just don't talk that way at political conventions,.  Make do with less? Quality"  Quantity?  Less greed and selfishness?  That's the way most of us have to live, but it isn't the kind of political rhetoric that brings standing ovations.  Which Brown didn't get.
    And he thoroughly confused most of his listeners when he went into this view of America's future:
    "I share your dream that all Americans can advance together, but that we do so in a form of regional interdependence.  I see a type of common market or economic community that will bring along with us our brothers and sisters who share this land of North America.  Mexicans, Canadians, Native Americans - North and South - all are part of our destiny and it is time that we recognize that we are part of theirs.
    "We are a country that is growing older and diminishing in our relation to the exploding populations of Mexico, Africa, Asia, and South America.  We must see our challenge as not only East-West, capitalist-communist, liberty-tyranny.  But also we must see the challenge as North-South, dark and fair skin, rich and poor, hungry and well fed, equality and inequality.
    "Even if the American people give Ronald Reagan his Kemp-Roth tax cuts, his nuclear bombs, his breeder reactors, and his superiority over Russian imperialism, I say it will be as verbal cellophane and an empty symbol when marshaled against the outraged enmity of one billion hungry people.  Without hope, their last refuge will be revolution, anarchy and terrorism.
    "In a world made small by jets and satellite communications, our oceans and our missiles will not protect us if we separate ourselves from the wider longing of humanity.
    "Liberty for us?  Certainly it is our most precious possession.  But also justice for all, wherever on this earth.  That can become the dream of tomorrow."
    I hope Brown is still around in 1984.  I think the moonbeam has landed with his feet on the ground.

Though, I hear Big Dog was out for some payback awhile back. I hope he's cooling it with that.