600 The Third Best Kept Secret

600 The Third Best Kept Secret

There are three secret combinations of stuff that form the backbone of modern American life. In order of importance, they are the codes in the nuclear football, the formula for Coca Cola and the method the Old Farmer's Almanac uses to predict the weather.

Only the President and some close aids and Pentagon types know the first.

No one at all knows the second, though parts of it are divided among seven different wizened old chemists in Georgia, picked because they hate each other, don't speak among themselves and therefore will not tell each other the individual parts or steps needed to make coke syrup.

The third best kept secret has escaped from the book's headquarters in Dublin, New Hampshire and while not in general circulation -- at least not yet, has the potential to become widely known for the first time since its creation 218 years ago. You can know this, because the source is unimpeachably authentic, Judson Hale, Sr., chairman and editor-in-chief, who blithely let it go during an interview heard by anyone with a radio this week.

Judd's a fine man, a fine editor and gives a wonderful interview. But somehow he let the cat out of the bag. No, no, not the whole secret. Not even the whole bag. But he did admit he has shared the secret with (gulp!) a meteorologist from the commercial weather forecasting company Accu-Weather. Not only that, but he admits to having done this as far back as 1996.

This may account for an increase in the "accu" part of the company's forecasting. But "so what" you say, one more guy knows the formula, works for the forecasting company and for the Almanac, and who cares?

Ah, yes, but it is the beginning of the end of the secret. Suppose the guy is forgetful and has written it down somewhere and leaves it on his desk some day? Suppose he is captured by a secret ring of weather crazies and they water board it out of him? Or they plant a spy.

The possibilities for the end of the secret are endless. Something more to fear.

Shrapnel:

--The Baucus health care "compromise" is a pile of bat guano. How can a guy who gets all those bucks from the insurance industry create a fair piece of health care legislation? Not possible, so instead they put up a plan that was neither healthy nor caring, as Walter Cronkite said of the system in general.

--Without either a single payer or government option option, the health care bill is a piece of paper with nothing on it. Do we really need legislation that doesn't do anything, but costs a fortune? The answer is "no, not right now, thank you."

--First Ellie Greenwich, now Mary Travers has died at the age of 72. We used to argue about what constituted folk music. She lost, all the way to the bank... r.i.p.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2009