MISSOURIANA

We guess the reason the U.S. has been so slow to respond to famine in Somalia is because everyone at the State Department has been going through old passport records.

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A good way to tell how close you are to Christmas is by how many servings of creamed turkey are still left in the refrigerator just waiting to be microwaved.

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Help the homeless: Give a Republican state official a job.

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It's hard to please politicians. Before an election, they want all the publicity they can get, and the moment they get elected they don't want any at all.

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Missouri officials are beginning to argue over which agency should supervise riverboat gambling. Given the law of politics, the odds are 9 to 5 that several hundred new employees will get the job.

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A citizen's job is never done. Not only must we worry who governor-elect Carnahan names to all those state jobs, we also have to fret about who's going to hire Ozzie Smith.

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With many of the state's major corporations laying off workers, about the only growth industry in Missouri these days is the Republican job-location agency in Jefferson City.