New notebook and Jalepeno for the New Year

Finding an open coffee shop on New Year's day wasn't easy. Our streets were swaddled in fog--the only cars I saw seemed to also be people cruising for a coffee shop. Finally, I landed at White Castle, where the cheery, pleasant Asian woman took my order in barely understandable English. I could hear the drive-through orders. Didn't know that some people order 5 jalepeno cheese burgers for breakfast.

Looking through my notebook that I take with me in the morning to the coffee shop, I noticed a number of stories that seemed to disappear from the newspapers and TV after the election. I have a new notebook, fresh and ready for the New Year, but I feel like I’m letting these stories dangle.

1) Flu shots. Miraculously, either they came back on the market, or the press stopped blaming George Bush.
2) Swift vets. Wasn’t Kerry going to sue them? Weren’t they going to pursue the missing records?
3) Poverty in Ohio. Suburban poverty. Lines at food banks.
4) Outsourcing of jobs.
5) The worst economy since the Depression. All of a sudden, within a week of the election, all we were hearing was good economic news. Amazing--a one week turn around.
6) Tort reform--will the Republicans stay on top of this or was it only to defeat Edwards?
7) The Iraq explosives cache that got moved in 2003.
8) Tuition price controls.
9) Entertainers and writers who plan to emigrate to Canada or Europe.
10) Supposed abuses of the Patriot Act.