Attention CrimeStoppers! Your ever-vigilant FBI has just advised the W Team of a specific and credible national threat. A terrorist duo with suspected ties to the Al Quaida network is believed responsible for a wave of attacks on financial institutions in the Midwestern U.S. The perpetrators, identified as Clyde C. Barrow and Bonnie Parker (NMI), should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Further details when the agents open the box they just found in the hall closet.
 
These are, you will recall, the same alert folks who maintained close surveillance of crazed anti-American terrorists Martin Luther King and John Lennon (Lenin?). Did Lennon and King succeed in blowing stuff up? They did not. 'Nuff said.
 
No need to worry when the Bureau's on the case!
 
Unfortunately, we here in Team W's native California are a bit nervouser about things -- particularly about our bridges. Golden-Staters everywhere are expressing growing concern about the wisdom of assigning the National Guard to protect our bridges from the terrorist rampage that will probably start possibly any moment now.
 
Analysts are worried that the guardsmen are ill-prepared and poorly trained for such duty. It develops that nearly a fifth of the troops have been unable to pass their basic weapons tests -- a concern somewhat offset by the fact that many of them have been discovered to be carrying unloaded weapons, in which case marksmanship becomes a less relevant issue.
 
But the cavalry has arrived at the needed moment. Military planners at the Honk Bleakly Institute for Strategic Running Away have put forth a striking solution. They propose to replace the guardsmen with trolls to be stationed at each end of every bridge in the state. Passage across the newly-designated troll bridges would be granted only to travelers who could correctly answer three questions -- or who happened to be billy-goats.
 
Citing the sky-rocketing costs -- now nearly a million dollars --incurred by billeting guardsmen in expensive hotels, the proposers argue that their plan would pay for itself, since the trolls would not require compensation inasmuch as they would be sustained by forage and the occasional incorrect answerer.
 
Furthermore, planners say, additional expenses could be covered by simply raising trolls.
 
Institute personnel summarily dismiss objections to using mythical creatures to guard against threats to public safety, arguing that the creatures are at least as real as the threats. In any event, they say, their solution could not possibly be less effective than that currently in place.
 
We've adopted a wait-and-see attitude on the issue. One or two aspects of the proposal seem not to ogre well, but we'll cross those bridges when we come to them.
 
Domestic insecurity is only one of the Weary Warrior's recent headaches. In "On Top of the World," the Rodney Dangerfield of international affairs considers his respect-less standing, and offers a few observations from the bridge of the ship of state.
 
Oh, here's a Point to Ponder. Why do so many poor people unerringly pick the most polluted places to live? It gets downright eerie sometimes; they often choose places where hazardous materials facilities haven't even been built yet. Is this some form of self-destructive precognition? There should be investigations.
 
That's all for now; we have to hurry back to finish reading the news accounts of Senator Dianne Feinstein's somewhat surprising defense of racial profiling. At last that gal is beginning to make sense!.
 
So long, and remember: If at first you don't succeed, perhaps it's time to begin considering failure in a more positive light,
 
Your amigo,
Hank