How do people get to be this dumb?

We are staying in the JW Marriott hotel which is a few rungs above the hotel in which we usually stay – and in this place Ducky Pharma people are treated like royalty. They have their own Ducky Pharma breakfast cards printed and their own shuttle bus to Ducky Pharma HQ.

We are on the 25^th floor and I can see Victory Field where the Peoria Indians play ball and the Lucas Oil stadium where the Peoria Colts play football (there is some consternation that Peyton Manning may not start the season after surgery earlier this year).

I cannot see the brickyard where the world famous Peoria 500 race is held each year. In fact I have never visited this most holy of race tracks and am saving this for a special occasion.

This hotel has its own Starbucks – which I am planning on visiting today – and oodles of very friendly staff who just cannot do enough for me. Yesterday in the Velocity Bar (which moved not an inch when I was in it for lunch), Meghan told me that I was ‘very welcome’ on seven separate occasions.

At breakfast Shannon is our server of choice and gets us double Espressos and Cappuccinos as fast as her legs can carry her. What a woman.

Last night Cate had dinner in the hotel with her two bosses – one of whom is the Grand Fromage.  I was instructed to be invisible. I think she had this fear that I would get drunk and lurch into the restaurant, vomit on the table and tell them what I thought of the hours that she had to work to keep me in luxury in Vienna.

I was in fact asleep so missed this opportunity – but I am not sure why she would think I would do this – I am quite positive I have not done it before.

I do have memories of getting smashed in the cocktail lounge in the Swissotel Bosphorus in Turkey when she kept me up till 3:00 AM while she was having a meeting with her boss - but I sort of lost track of time and I certainly don’t remember molesting anyone. In fact I did not even know where they were. She had told me to wait for her and – ever obedient – I did.

There is man in the streets here with a big sign telling me that the end is nigh and that I need to repent or I will go straight to hell on judgment day.

Well – he was here last time I was here and the end was nigh then - and it still has not happened and I have it on good authority from the Catholic Church that there is no hell anymore. Not that I believe the Catholic Church in particular but they must be at least as reliable as a man in Peoria with a sign on a stick - and who shouts a lot.

There are also many panhandlers and buskers but they seem to be home grown - unlike those in Vienna who we have to import from Romania. The Viennese being so snooty that they will not even do their own begging.

Anyway it was about 86° here yesterday and tomorrow it is going to be 96° and I saw on the weather report this morning that right across the mid-west it is near the century. According to Fox this is nothing to do with global warming – even though Oklahoma has had its hottest temperatures since they began recording them.

I have refrained from commenting on the Republican candidates for the Presidential nomination but I must say that I am shit-struck in awe by the stupidity all of them – except one - who think that god created the world 6,000 years ago - and that this should be taught in schools.

And almost all of them think climate change is a giant hoax cooked up by 97.5% of the world’s scientists working in cahoots - and then there is Ol’ Crazy Eyes – she who thinks gayness can be cured – and the first thing she would do as President would be to shut down the EPA.

Well we have seen what good old corporate America has managed to with the EPA in place. Can you just imagine what those corporate citizens would do without the EPA? I just cannot wait for that!

This is dumbness on a scale so unimaginable that it makes me frightened for the future of America. What is really scary is that there are certainly enough stupid people to elect someone like Perry or Bachmann President. (A recent survey showed that 35% of Republican voters in Iowa believed in evolution and 21% believed in global warming).

Can you imagine it? Someone who would make George W Bush look like Albert Einstein.

How do people get to be this dumb?