Viewpoint
The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Tuesday
November 18, 1980
Slouch
By Jim Earle
iHg-So
‘These stickers? They’re for heroic service on the bonfire.
By DAVID S. BRODER
United Press International
WASHINGTON — When the Democratic
leaders of Congress scheduled the post-election
lame-duck session for this time, they had no
idea how many broken-winged birds there
would be. By my calculation, there will be 17
senators and at least 65 representatives who will
be filling their perches for the last time in this
shortened session.
The case for caution in passing much legisla
tion of any moment in such a session is obvious
and overwhelming. The Democrats arranged
the session in order to avoid the political embar
rassment of formally ratifying a $60-billion
budget deficit in a pre-election vote. But they
took the bitter medicine of defeat anyway.
When the new Congress comes in next January,
their 18-seat Senate majority will have turned
into a 6-seat deficit, and their House margin
will have been shaved from a healthy 114 seats
to a shaky 51.
There is some necessary housekeeping work
on budget, appropriations and related matters
for the lame-duck session to complete, and a
few big bills that were passed in varying forms
by the House and Senate, which could be
moved off the agenda. But the main business
before the two bodies — or at least those mem
bers who will be returning — will be to com
pare notes on the meaning of the mandate the
voters sent.
There will be as many interpretations of that
mandate as there are members of Congress, but
I heard two interpretations from young con
gressmen last week that I found particularly
interesting.
One of those congressmen takes the oath of
office for the first time in January. State Rep.
Barney Frank (D) of Massachusetts may well be
the most liberal individual elected to the House
last week. He is the successor — in every sense
— of retiring Rep. Robert F. Drinan (D-Mass.),
the Jesuit priest who was ordered out of politics
by the Pope.
Frank is a leader of the liberal Americans for
Democratic Action and a man who tried to
dump both former Gov. Michael Dukakis and
President Jimmy Carter, on grounds they were
not sufficiently liberal for his tastes, only to see
both of them lose to markedly more conserva
tive figures.
All of this background adds poignancy to his
interpretation of the Reagan-Republican land
slide. “The voters were saying they are unhap
py with the state of the world, and they think
the Democrats and liberals are to blame for it,”
Frank said in a phone call from Boston. “We’ve
been running the show for so long, I think we
got ourselves painted as the defenders of the
status quo.”
The political implication of this view, he said,
is that “we Democrats don’t obstruct Ronald
Reagan. He is the President and he and his
supporters are entitled to their shot. It would
be a great mistake for the Democrats in the
House of Representatives to let Ronald Reagan
say he was blocked from doing what he and the
Republican Senate wanted to do by a group of
willful Democrats in the House.
“We can’t let him,” Frank said, “run around
the country in the 1982 campaign saying we
kept him from changing the status quo. ”
The other comment came from Rep. Newt
Gingrich (R-Ga.), who was elected to his second
term last week from a previously Democratic
district. As a freshman, ex-professor Gingrich
was exceptionally active and vocal in promoting
Republican alternatives to basic Democratic
budget policies, and he was one of the initiators
of the mid-campaign ceremony on the steps of
the Capitol, where Reagan and congressional
Republicans pledged to work in concert for the
enactment of new national policies.
When I asked Gingrich what he thought the
triumphant Republicans would really do, “now
that you are in power,” his answer was as sur
prising as Frank’s comments. “We are not in
power,” he said. “If the Reagan people let that
idea get abroad, we are in real trouble.
“We do not control the senior bureaucracy as
yet and we do not control the House of Repre
sentatives. If Tip O’Neill (the Democratic
Speaker of the House) is shrewd, he will en
courage the Reagan people to think we re in
power, and he’ll encourage the country to think
we’re in power. And then he will systematically
slow us down. And two years from now, when
nothing has changed, he’ll let us take the blame
... If Reagan seeks to govern by seeking accom
modations with the people in power in the
House of Representatives, he will leave us terr
ibly vulnerable in 1982.”
These two views seem paradoxically contra
dictory. The liberal Democrat, who might be
supposed to vow die-hard resistance to Reagan
schemes, says, “Don’t obstruct him. ” The con
servative Republican, who might be thought to
be savoring power, says, “Don’t think for a
moment — or let the public think — we have
really taken control.”
But they are not at odds. Both understand
that the vote last week was a sweeping conde
mnation of the political and governmental sta
tus quo. Both understand there will be further
penalties from the voters in 1982 if that status
quo has not been changed. And both are saying
“If there is not change, my side better be in a
position to claim it was the fault of the other
guy-”
I think that is a realistic preview of the poli
tics of the new Congress and the new adminis
tration, an intriguing chapter that will begin as
soon as all these lame-ducks are removed from
the scene.
Warped
Sadistical tendencies emerge
upon siting of (yech!) roaches
Even though I have a geology lab assignment
due tomorrow, a research paper due in history,
Spanish homework AND a story to turn into
The Battalion tomorrow, I’m going to take time
out to write about a problem — a problem
common to all College Station residents, one
that cannot possibly be solved by me writing
this.
Roaches — those beastly, little nasty crea
tures!
You ask, “Why do you want to write about
roaches?” I guess because if I wasn’t writing
this, Td still be cringing from my latest encoun
ter with a roach.
I was sitting at my kitchen table with my
tasty, hot bowl of chicken noodle soup when I
decided I needed a few crackers to go with the
it. So I pulled out a previously opened package
of crackers and checked them out thoroughly
for roaches. (I’ve learned to do this since living
in College Station.)
They passed the test, but just to be sure, I
discarded the top cracker. So when there were
only a few spoonfuls of soup left, and four of the
crackers were resting nicely at the bottom of my
stomach, I heard this funny, crackling noise. I
looked up and saw a blasted roach crawling in
Staff notebook
By Cindy Gee
between the remaining crackers and the wrap
per.
It’s hard to describe the feeling of knowing
you’ve just eaten those same crackers that roach
was nibbling on only minutes before.
No, this wasn’t the first time something like
this had happened to me. Then there was the
time I was munching on Fritos. About the third
handful I pulled out, I found two little roach-
lings weaving in and out of the croutons.
There was also the time I got up extra early so
I could fix pancakes. As I was pouring out the
Bisquick mix, out came a big, brown roach. He
was so big he must have been the granddaddy.
Needless to say I didn’t eat pancakes, but at
least that time I hadn’t already eaten some of it.
There was also the time when I ran my bath
water, and as I was about to step in discovered a
roach floating on the top. Or the
vered a roach crawling on my toothbrushli
was in a container I specially bought to W
roaches off.
Or the time when I was eating dinner atsu
friends’ apartment and listening to them hi
about not having a roach problem. Nos*
had they finished telling me when someth
fell from the light fixture and into the plate|
pork chops. We looked down to find-it
guessed it — a roach crawling out
mushroom gravy. It’s always funnier wki
happens to someone else!
However, I don’t think they were lyingakl
not having many roaches because they ddi'l
react like veteran roach killers. They went»i|
whereas I would have calmly gotten upfroirl
table, taken a paper towel and smashed
heck out of that little devil.
I have to confess roaches do bring out I
sadistic nature in me. It’s almost a
them with Raid and watch them squirm,ortai
on the hot water when they’re in the sink
I’m looking forward to the day when!®
reporter living back in West Texas and Hit
able to laugh roaches off as just another out!
those college experiences.
//Mmmm.
Real politics to begin
Universi
mic and
Zachry.
Agg
mer
Planet’s smog indicates higher life forms
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Reverse evolution — Saturn explained
By DICK WEST
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Astronomers profess
themselves baffled by some of the data sent
back from Saturn by the Voyager 1 space appar
atus.
Perhaps they are looking at it from the wrong
angle.
My memory is about as reliable as a Tehran
hostage communique, but as I recall it was
architect Buckminister Fuller who provided
the proper perspective. For he was the father of
Niwrad, the theory of reverse evolution.
Niwrad (Darwin spelled backwards) chal
lenges the notion that man descended from
monkeys.
“Man may have come to Earth from another
planet,” says a Niwradian precis. “Evolution
may be going the other way ... it is possible that
we may be making monkeys of ourselves. ”
For some strange reason, the concept of ear
thly life beginning at its highest form and gra
dually undergoing diminution never quite
caught on.
Nevertheless, it seems to fit right in with the
Voyager 1 signals that have caused so much
perplexity.
For example, Voyager found one of Saturn’s
moons enveloped in a smog-like cloud. Astro
nomers conjectured the smog was a natural
phenomenon. But when the Saturn smog is
considered within the framework of reverse
evolution, a more plausible hypothesis
emerges.
It may be postulated that Saturn once had a
life form higher than any known on Earth, in
cluding Henry Kissinger.
Over the eons, as the reverse evolution pro
cess worked its inexorable pattern, this life form
steadily degenerated to a level only slightly
above what is now your basis Earthling.
That, of course, explains the smog. Rather
than being a product of nature, the toxic haze
was created by our Saturnian ancestors.
Being, as I said, somewhat superior to pre
sent day Earthlings, the Saturnians could fore
see that smog would render their planet unin
habitable. Also because of this superiority,
space travel was no problem. So they all mi
grated to Earth and points south.
Had our ancestral life form remained on
Saturn, reverse evolution would have con
tinued much as it has on Earth.
As the smog grew thicker, Saturnians p
have taken ape-like to the trees, hopini
would be better up there. Then they w
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hoping the smog would not seep downthatfc
From their subterranean existence, --
would have moved under water, firsts* wstlytool
amphibian characteristics and then totallw
like.
From that point, as evolutionary timeisi# *
sured, they would soon have turned into I
blobs of protoplasm.
If you play out the Niwrad string, you
that the end result of reverse evolution is
complete disappearance of the species. Itfl)
happen here.
The signal from Saturn is clear: Some 'L
there may be nothing left of life on Earth e,®?
cosmic gasses and presidential candidates,
By Scott McCullar
The Battalion
U S P S 045 360
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