There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries for dinner. - H. L Mencken

I once said cynically of a politician "He'll doublecross that bridge when he comes to it." - Oscar Levant.

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even when there is no river. - Nikita Khrushchev

My name is Barbara (Bobit) Logue. I'm 25 now, still very happily married, living and working in Scottsdale, AZ, and enjoying the "sun-belt" scene closer to Pop. So close, in fact, that you are stuck with another of my annual efforts to substitute for the "great one" while he is stretching out three conventions. - New Orleans, Houston and La Costa around Superbowl XV. What a life (plus an expense account ... and his flask of Beefeaters)!!

The quotes chosen are to bridge a gap between a number of items in the file Pop sent me for this dissertation. More to the point, and talking a bit about Washington during these transitional months, I cannot think of anyone who would be more flattered by what is happening these days than Abbott and Costello. Considering the past few months, the inauguration and the lack of speed in turning things around, Messrs. Abbott and Costello just might want to sue the government for stealing their "who's on first" routine.

Reagan's 16 member federal transportation policy transition team appears chaotic with their initial report, and we await the counsel and judgment of transportation secretary designate, Andrew Lindsay Lewis, Jr. This report proposes to stop all federal aid for new rail transit systems (subways and light rail); abolish the federally subsidized transit demonstration programs, i.e. downtown people movers, etc.. ("they lead to politically motivated failures"); and end operating subsidies for existing subway systems. It also suggests that we abandon the finishing touches to our 47,500-mile interstate highway system (environmentally controversial).

Following along the same lines, new DOE designate-head James Burrows Edwards, former governor of South Carolina and currently an oral surgeon, agrees with the transition team's intention to eliminate the DOE entirely within two years and assign certain worthwhile functions to other departments.

Holy smoke! I'm not saying this is bad, but if all these things take place, America is going to be back in love with the car. That is an affair that Pop would approve of. Are you listening, Detroit?

Washington isn't the only place that our Abbott and Costello routine fits in. Some other random notes are worthy of mention.

In her "final hours," Claybrook at NHTSA took Ford to task on the so-called "transmissions slipping out-of-gear" syndrome. Ford prexy, Donald Peterson assured Pop that there really is not a problem at all.

Every car manufacturer shares this problem if some Klutz does not put the shift lever properly into "Park." Ford furnished Ms Claybrook with documented data that there are over 200,000 shifts made per minute daily in the .S. The reported klutzes tallying 100 "slippages" a year do not appear to constitute a national problem as she suggests. (Where are you, Abbott?)

With domestic sales stifled (temporally?) and the economy even affecting the imports, it is interesting to read about Mitsubishi trying to set up its own dealership distribution network in the U.S. Competitor Isuzu is committing $7 million to their first year of advertising (1981) as backup for their 150 initial dealers and 19 cars and truck models. Just maybe they have not seen the quote from Honda's sales veep, Clifford Schmillen, recently referring to lower import sales activity during December '80:  "I'm optimistic about the future. But I don't know when the future is."

A-a-b-b-oo-tt!