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The Battalion • Texas A&M University • Tuesday • August 7, 1979
And the race is on...
Candidates attract high-rollers
By STEVE GERSTEL
United Press International
WASHINGTON —The presidential season is still in
its earliest stages but a few gutsy politicians are already
taking long-shot gambles and signing on now with a
candidate.
Win or lose, the stakes are high and those big-rollers
looking for the early line are taking their chances.
Politicians, especially presidential candidates, are no
torious for remembering who was aboard in the un
certain early going and who clambered on when it
looked like smooth sailing to the nomination.
It is generally agreed, however, that big-name poli
ticians don’t carry the clout they once did.
The days when a strong governor, senator or mayor
could stack a delegation and deliver it to the candidate
of his choice is gone. But endorsements, properly
packaged and displayed, provide nice trimmings for a
presidential campaign.
Although most prominent office-holders are biding
their time as the chase for the Republican presidential
shakes down, there are exceptions.
Predictably, Senate GOP leader Howard Baker is
mining his backyard with the most success.
Some time ago, he named Sen. Richard Lugar of
Indiana as his campaign manager and Sen. John Dan-
forth of Missouri to head his issues program. Then last
week. Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island signed on with
an endorsement and was given the chore of helping
pull New England into the Baker camp.
Baker, looking at his first three public catches, pro
nounced them a “good mix” philisophieally.
The balance of Lugar, a conservative, Danforth, a
moderate, and Chafee, a liberal, was artfully designed
to lead credence to Baker s claim that he can unify the
party and that he is the most electable of the Republi
cans.
Ronald Reagan, going basically with the same team
which came so close to winning the 1976 GOP nomina
tion, has again nailed down Sen. Paul Laxalt of Nevada
as his national chairman.
The major difference is that in the pre-1976 effort,
Laxalt was little known and lightly regarded. His work
in the campaign brought him into high regard.
There are a number of other senators who worked
closely with Reagan — notably Sen. Jesse Helms of
North Carolina — who are certain to join the Califor
nian again but have not done so yet.
Sen. Robert Dole, having trouble cranking up, fi
nally broke through and named his Kansas colleague.
Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, as national co-chairman, a
catch of questionable value in a 50-state campaign.
Most of the Democratic governors signed a resolu
tion of support for President Carter at a recent confer
ence of state executives.
But four of them abstained and a fifth, California
Gov. Edmund Brown, is going to run against Carter for
the nomination.
Many prominent Democrats, either dismayed at
Carter’s performance or unwilling to get lined up with
a potential loser, are being extremely careful.
For instance. Senate Democratic leader Robert Byrd
and his top aide, Sen. Alan Cranston of California, are
giving Carter no encouragement in these troubled days
for the president. They are staying neutral.
Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, the 1976
presidential candidate, wants Carter out of the White
House.
Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington, beaten by Car
ter in 1976, nominally still supports the president but
predicts that he will falter and bow out in the
primaries.
McGovern is an out-and-out supporter of Sen. Ed
ward Kennedy. Jackson feels Kennedy will be the
nominee.
Kennedy, himself, has steadfastly insisted that he
expects Carter to win the nomination and has pledged
to support his campaign for a second term.
Yet Kennedy, more than anyone else, could help
Carter. A declaration by Kennedy that he will not seek
or accept the nomination would dispel much of the
president’s political problem.
That kind of an endorsement would have an impact.
Elections not good for what ails us
By DAVID BRODER
WASHINGTON — In the beginning,
there was the Election, and that was good.
The election let the people choose the
President, and that was good, for the wis
dom was in the people.
And the election was in November. And
that was good, because it gave the people
something extra to be thankful for at
Thanksgiving. They could be thankful
that, for another four years, the election
was over.
After the Election came the Inaugura
tion, and inauguration was in January. And
that was good. January was always a bit of a
drag, until God invented Super Bowl
Sunday. And the inauguration gave the
bands a chance to play and let the people
cheer. And that was good,
j j Before the Election came the Conven
tions. The conventions were in the sum
mer. The conventions also let people
cheer and bands play. And before God in
vented conventions, no one had been able
to figure how to get 30,000 out-of-towners
to come to Detroit or New York for a week
in July or August. So that was good.
Before the Conventions came the
Primaries. And that was good — for a
while. There was a spring primary in Ore
gon, and that meant salmon and sunflow
ers and long stretches of Pacific beach.
And there was a winter primary in Wis
consin, and that meant German dinners
and beer, and schnapps to help ward off
the danger of catching cold. And that was
good.
And then God got a little carried away
with a good thipg and gave us 34
primaries. There was a primary in Florida
in March, when the hotels didn’t need the
business. There was a primary in Illinois
when the Cubs were still off in Arizona at
spring training. There were primaries in
places like New Hampshire and Nebraska
and Ohio and New Jersey, where you
really had to want to be President awfully
bad to run. And that was not good, be
cause it cluttered the air with political
commercials and disrupted TV schedules
all the way from February to June.
And then God invented the state-
convention - party - dinner - all - candidate -
cattle - show - and - preference - poll, and
things started going to Hell in a handbas
ket.
According to the Book of John (Apple),
confirmed by the Gospel of Jules (Wit-
cover), the first of these phenomena oc
curred in Ames, Iowa, in November of
1975, where God commanded the Demo
cratic presidential candidates to appear, in
a herd, and emit sounds of different regis
ter.
And after their sounds had died away.
God commanded the Des Moines Register
and Tribune to take a poll of the diners at
the state committee dinner, and He
caused the results to be published in The
New York Times also, and thus it came
that a great new star, named Jimmy Car
ter, was discovered.
And now, God help us, they are spring
ing up everywhere. Iowa Republicans are
having a cattle-show-dinner-poll in
November. Massachusetts Republicans
are promoting one on Cape Cod in Oc
tober, but a fear of hurricanes (or perhaps
impoundment at Hyannisport in a sudden
Kennedy coup) is keeping many conten
ders away.
God knows where it will end. And so do
I, so you do not have to wait until you hear
it from Him. Or Her. Eventually there
will be another election. And between the
Election and the Inauguration, the mem
bers of the electoral college will meet, in
their state capitols.
And God will cause there to come
among them, in each of their meeting
places, correspondents of CBS and The
New York Times, who will ask: “Now that
the 1980 election is over, who would you
like to see chosen for President in 1984?”
And they will answer (because God has his
way of dealing with those who decline to
answer) and there will be tables and
charts, broadcast and published, and the
whole process will begin again.
And that will be good — but not for
what ails us.
(c) 1979, The 'Washington Post Com
pany
The longer it chetvs, the sweeter the milk
Next step in technology: low-fat cows
By DICK WEST
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Some of the boys at
the Agriculture Department have figured
out that the longer a cow chews a mouthful
of hay, the richer her milk will be.
I swear to you I’m not making this up. It’s
right here in a department press release.
What they did was outfit some test cows
with chin straps that were hooked up to an
electric counter that recorded chewing
movements.
When the cows were fed long-fiber hay
that required a maximum amount of masti
cation before being swallowed, the butter-
Humor
fat content in the milk went up.
But when fed chopped hay, which could
be gobbled down with relatively little jaw
power, the cows gave low fat milk.
Establishment of a correlation between
bovine chin work and butterfat production
strikes me as a genuinely remarkable scien
tific achievement. I would never have sus
pected such a connection existed.
When I was a lad growing up on the
plains of Texas, a popular song of the day
bore the title “You Cain’t Never Tell the
Depth of a Well by the Length of the
Handle on the Pump.”
I have always regarded that sage obser
vation as one of the eternal verities — truly
words to live by. And I would have as
sumed it was equally impossible to tell the
richness of the milk by the length of the
fiber in the hay.
The press release does not make clear,
and the department spokesman I talked
with was uncertain, what it is about prot
racted chewing that promotes butterfat.
Researchers still are studying that aspect
of the experiment, the spokesman said.
However, they are proceeding on the
remise that the amount of saliva produced
y chewing raises or lowers the butterfat
content.
The beauty of the discovery, I gather, is
that it makes it possible to program a cow to
give pre-skimmed milk.
As it stands, most raw milk must be pro
cessed to bring it down to the butterfat
level demanded by consumers on low
cholesterol diets, consumers with weight
problems, and assorted health nuts.
That extra step presumably can now be
eliminated. Just feed the cow the right
length of hay and you get dietary milk di
rectly from the udder.
The department does not suggest the
chewing-butterfat ratio has any application
outside a cow. However, that possibility
would seem important enough to warrant
investigation.
Correction
It was incorrectly reported in the Au
gust 2 Battalion that there were no Hous
ton Fire Department emergency medical
technicians present at the Woodway
Square apartment fire last Tuesday when
the Texas A&M University Emergency
Care Team arrived. The article should
have stated that all Houston emergency
care service vehicles were called away dur
ing the course of the fire, but Houston
emergency care technicians did stay at the
scene of the fire with a Houston
emergency care equipment truck. The
Battalion regrets the error.
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News Capsules
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STATE
Judge disallows confession in trial
A judge in Beaumont Monday refused to admit into evidences
ex-policeman’s oral and written confessions to the 1975 kidnap-slaying
of a 16-year-old Amarillo girl. Prosecutors and defense lawyers never
theless proceeded with jury selection for the trial of Jimmy Paul
Vanderbilt, 26, in the death of Katina Moyer. Lawyers said jury
selection likely will take 10 days to two weeks. Vanderbilt was con
victed and sentenced to death in 1976 for Miss Moyer’s killing, butthe
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals voided the conviction last February
on grounds the original Amarillo judge admitted a partial confession.
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Murder closes town, crab packers
A 9 p. m. curfew was ordered and a crab-packing plant in Seadriftwas
closed Monday because of a weekend killing and the bombing ofa
home, blamed on three years of feuding between Vietnamese and
other fishermen. Billy Joe Aplin, 35, was shot to death Friday night
and Chinh Van Nguyen, 20, and his brother, Sau Van Nguyen, 21,
were accused of murder. Chinh was in custody in lieu of $75,000. Sau
remained at large. Calhoun County Sheriffs Investigator John Sexton
said a house occupied by unidentified Vietnamese residents was
firebombed over the weekend but damage was slight. He said three
Vietnamese fishing boats had been burned recently. Sexton said he
had no suspects in the burnings. The city council held an emergency
meeting Saturday and imposed the 9 p. m. curfew. Counciman Walter
Futch said the curfew would continue at least until Tuesday to avoid
trouble associated with Aplin’s funeral Monday. Officials said trouble
began when Bo-Brooks Inc. of Baltimore, Md., opened a crabpacking
plant in the town of 900 three years ago and 25 Vietnamese women
“crab-pickers” and their families — a total of about 100 persons -
moved to town.
Munson s peers, fans say farewell
Over 500 persons, including teammates, baseball officials and
friends, packed a room in the Canton, Ohio, Civic Center Mondayfdr
the final farewell to Thurman Munson, the scrappy New York Yankee
catcher who died in a plane crash last week. Another 1,000 fans waited
outside the Civic Center to pay their last respects and hundreds more
lined the five-mile route to the Sunset Hills cemetery where Munson
will be buried. The crowd began gathering early today under partly
sunny skies and temperatures in the low 70s. The funeral procession to
the cemetery was escorted by about a dozen motorcycle poicemen
from the Canton City Police Department and Stark County Sheriffs
office.
WORLD
Bolivian Congress looking fork
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“"Bolivia’s Congress, fearful of a military coup that would end its new
democracy, adjourned early Monday in La Paz hours before the presi
dential inauguration, unable to decide who the president would be.
Legislators voted to return to resume negotiations Monday just one
hour before Gen. David Padilla, the military president, was scheduled
to turn over power to a civilian president. Inconclusive July election
results led to a standoff in congress between the two strongest candi
dates, Hernan Files Zuazo of the leftist Popular Democratic Union,
and rightist Victor Paz Estenssoro of the National Revolutionary
Movement Alliance. As the deadline neared, legislators turned to the
idea of an interim president, senate president Walter Guevara Aruze,
until new elections could be held within a year. Congressmen said they
feared Gen. Padilla would decide to stay in power if they did not solve
the political crisis. "At 11 a.m. today the military junta by its own
decision is going to turn over power,” one representative said to the
chair. “My question is, to whom?”
Mass marks Pope Paul s death
Pope John Paul II marked the first anniversary of the death of Pope
Paul VI Monday with a private mass in the summer palace apartments
in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, where the late pontiff died. The Mass was
attended only by the late pope’s private secretary, Monsignor Pas-
quale Macchi, a limited number of relatives and Vatican officials. Paul
VI died at Castel Gandolfo on Aug. 6 of last year six hours after
suffering a heart attack. He had been pope for 15 years. On Sept. 28the
pope will celebrate a Mass at the Vatican marking the first anniversary
of the death of Pope John Paul I, the former Cardinal Albino Luciani,
who succeeded Paul VI and reigned as pontiff slightly more than a
month before dying of a heart attack.
Israelis will not discuss U.S ideas
Israeli officials in Haifa, Israel insisted Monday they will not discuss
U.S.-backed proposals that the Israelis say would encourage creation
of an independent Palestinian state. The Egyptian proposals, made at
the previous round of discussions in Alexandria, Egypt, are aimed at
giving Palestinians governmental authority, allowing Arabs in East
Jerusalem to take part in the autonomy plan and permitting repatria
tion of Palestinians living outside the occupied territories. Israel says
instituting those proposals could lead to the creation of a Palestinian
state, which it adamantly opposes.
The Battalion
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