News Release: Caterpillar World Cup Ad Features Bill Clinton

The Caterpillar Co. has signed former president Bill Clinton for an advertising spot during the upcoming soccer World Cup in South Africa in 2010. CAT figures there will be at least 2 billion real-time viewers of the game and the ad.

Briefly the ad will feature CAT's largest Waste Handling Tractor. It's known as the D10 TWH. It weighs in at 70 tons (144,000 lbs.) and has a 580 horsepower. The ad/skit will have a microphone between Bill and the D10. Bill's challange will be to get to the microphone and recite as many good deeds he did during his life. The operator of the tractor will be me. I will have a camera mounted on my construction helmet. The camera will have crosshairs aimed at his mouth. The camera will not have a deep-focus feature so if Bill wants to be recognized he will have to get very close.

Las Vegas bookmakers have published an even money bet that Bill can speak briefly enough to avoid being plowed under. It will be great fun. We all will see Bill either made into hamburger or suicidal with a loss of air time.

Hybrid Cripples Invade Olympic Games

When does a cripple's crutch make him more competitive than an able bodied athlete? When a double-amputee uses the trademarked Cheetah Flex Foot. Yesterday South African Oscar Pistorius was granted the right to try out for the Olympic games. The liberal Court Of Arbitration For Sport created in 1984 overturned the 1912 founded International Association Of Athletic Federations' determination that the Flex Foot was indeed a performance enhancer that was unfair to normal competitors.

Sounds familar. And now unfair affirmative action has made a beachead in the Olympic Games in the form of hybrid technology. Cheetah gives Oscar, who is already 30 pounds lighter because of the missing limbs below the knee, the ability to run down the track on ultra- light carbon fiber blades that effectively mimic pogo-like springs attached to his thighs. There is less wind resistance with the blades, there are never the problems of sore feet or sore lower leg muscles. Also with less body mass, the vital dynamic of oxygen distribution is concentrated in a smaller muscular areas.

Enough already. With the human population approaching 7 billion on the planet we should be celebrating excellence and not degrading the heretofore ultimate physical competitions of the Olympic games. Handicapped people have their own Paralympian games. Oscar should stay where he belongs.