Just when I was about ready to give up on them people in Washington, they went and did somethin' nice fur me. Yep, the gubmint is cuttin me a check fur nothin'. It's like gettin' a present just fur bein' a citizen. Kinda makes you proud to be American again, don't it? Bein' that I'm luckier than a lot of people and I don't have to spend my check on stuff like food or life saving medicine, I been thinkin' about what I'm a'gonna do with dat money when I git it. So far I come up with a couple pretty cool ideas. At least they're pretty cool if ya ask me.

First, I'm a'gonna git a new mirror for my truck. Dat one on the shotgun side had a nasty run-in with a mailbox. The good news is that it stayed fixed to the truck like where it's s'posed to be. The mailbox didn't come out so good. Ole Cooter at the gayrage tells me he can fix me up with a new mirror for about $70. I spected it'd cost me more like twice as much. He says they's bringin' them mirrors in reeeel cheap like from China. Guess I'm gonna stimulate China some.

The second thing I'm buyin' will be a new lawn mower. I gots two of 'em already but one's 'bout 20 years old. That's the one with the handle held on by hose clamps from where it broke a couple years ago. It gots heating duct for a grass chute that I screwed on there when the real one rusted off. I'll prolly keep the old mower cuz, shucks, it still works, and I'm gotten kinda fond of it after all them years. If'n I does buy a new one I think I'm a'gonna git real fancy and git one of them ones that drives itself going forward and you just walk behind it with your hands on it.

I'm gonna hafta do these things really quick like though, cuz I hear we gots some trouble comin' down the pike. It's lookin' like that Barack Obama feller is gonna git hisself voted to be da prezeedent. It's not that I gots anything against the feller wantin' to be in the big office, he gots a right to do that. But it's lookin like his $845 billion United Nations Poverty Tax is gonna git jammed down our American throats reeeel quick and quiet like. I'm guessin we won't be seein too many more free gubmint checks after that.

One of my least favorite human beings, Donald Trump, is making headlines with his suggestion that he could do a quicker, less expensive completion of the over-budget, delayed renovations taking place at the United Nations headquarters.

Trump told the Associated Press that "It's a total disgrace. First of all, it's going to take seven and a half years to renovate; it should take 18 months .... It shouldn't cost more than $750 million. What's happening to all that money?"

But the UN, which awarded the $1 billion contract to Skanska USA, says that it wished Trump would have stepped forward earlier. Vivian Van de Perre, the U.N.'s chief of administration for its capital master plan told the Associated Press that it had encouraged Trump to bid on the renovations but that he didn't: "We wish he had put in a bid for $750 million."

So here's my question: If efficiency expert Donald Trump, who has managed to lose a boatload of money running casinos, could do it for less than $750 million, why did he let someone else take it for $1 billion when he'd been invited to bid?

Methinks the Combed Over One doth protest too much -- He's frustrated that his show's a flop and he isn't making headlines anymore.