Burt Prelutsky

Political prognosticators are a lot like Iowa and New Hampshire in that it's only every four years that people pay them any attention. Something you can always count on is that at some point they'll stop gazing into crystal balls and reading tea leaves long enough to remind us that the taller presidential candidate tends to win elections and that the candidate with the longer name has an even better track record. Occasionally, such notable exceptions as Richard Nixon and George W. Bush break the rules, but it's pretty rare.

While studying up on the subject, I discovered that Barack Obama isn't 6'4", as I had assumed, but only 6'1". That led me to wonder if one of the prerequisites to being invited to join his administration was to be short so that he can always appear to tower over advisors and cabinet members. I mean, 6-1 is certainly above average, but nobody that height would invariably be the tallest person in a group, unless the Small People of America was holding its annual convention.

Just for the record, Mitt Romney is 6'2, while Newt Gingrich is 6 feet even, although his weight makes him appear shorter. Both have longer last names than Obama; make of that what you will.

Speaking of the GOP contenders reminds me that if Timothy McVeigh hadn't existed, Ron Paul would have had to invent him. I mean, has there ever been an occasion when sane people have been discussing the existential danger of Islamic extremists when Rep. Paul hasn't felt it necessary to climb aboard his portable soap box and remind us that native-born terrorist McVeigh was not a Muslim? Apparently at some time in the distant past, someone told the congressman that he had come up with an excellent reason not to take the fight to Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Iranian mullahs, but someone should tell Mr. Paul that it's not quite the argument clincher he seems to think it is.

Thanks to the GOP debates, people once again are talking about illegal aliens. One of the sillier things they're saying is that we should inaugurate a guest workers program. With millions of unemployed Americans, do we really need to import workers? Of course, like everybody else, I have always heard about those jobs that Americans won't do. I just don't know what jobs they are. Would those be in hospitals, hotels, restaurants and the construction industry? Funny, but I seem to recall Americans doing that sort of thing.

Or perhaps they're referring to jobs involved with agriculture. If so, I'm confused. It seems to me that with 12 to 15 million illegal aliens already here, we'd have sufficient numbers to pick the damn crops. Heck, if farmers paid a decent wage -- and with all that expensive machinery and expensive acreage, you'd think they could somehow manage to swing it -- I suspect they'd have to beat off able-bodied workers with a stick.

If it truly is impossible to grow lettuce, pay people a reasonable salary to harvest it, and still turn a profit, maybe we could simply start up the slave trade again. At least those folks wouldn't expect welfare, in-state tuition and the right to vote. Or, if all else fails, we could simply get the "L" out of BLTs.

Finally, to show the depths to which America has fallen, radio talk show host Michael Medved recently disclosed that the two most popular names for newborns these days are Jacob and Isabella. I happen to think that both names are rather nice. The only problem is that the reason for their popularity is that they happen to be the names of the two main characters in the "Twilight" movie series devoted to vampires.

I suppose we should all be grateful that an earlier generation had more sense than that, or today a lot of us running around would be named Vampira or Dracula.