The McBournie Minute: Recall Punxsutawney Phil and his cronies

The American people have a long history of taking people to task. If the public puts its trust in you and you fail, willingly or not, or you harm the country in some way you should have to answer to the people. It’s one of the things that makes this country so great.

For example, after years of stagnation and polarization, the American people had had enough of Congress’ inability to get anything done. That’s why last fall, true patriots went to the polls and re-elected nearly everyone who ran. The only way you were voted out was if someone more uncompromising was running. And so, we got a very public retreat from an assault weapons ban. Progress!

In this tradition, we need to hold accountable those who injure us in the most grievous ways. The people are coming for you, prognosticators!

Dedicated readers will already have heard about the indictment of Punxsutawney Phil, for misleading the people by claiming there would be only six more weeks of winter. Much of the country has been hit by snow storms well after the groundhog promised the season would end. Just this morning, a storm dumped a few inches of snow from the Midwest to much of the East Coast.

It’s clear that the ground-dwelling varmint lied to us all, so Butler County, Ohio prosecutor Mike Gmoser was right, even if his name does look like a typo. But now, the Punxsutawney powerful are trying to deflect the blame from their lying mascot.

Bill Deeley, president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club’s Inner Circle, says that if anyone is at fault, it’s him. He has told reporters that when he held up the groundhog, he misinterpreted, and this is true, Phil’s “groundhog-ese.”

I’m not so sure, it could have been Phil’s fault or Deeley’s, or perhaps the two of them made some sort of a deal to give the town publicity for more than that one day a year. To be fair, I say they both need to be brought up on charges, or voted out of office, or whatever it is we’re supposed to do in this important situation.

Another group of prognosticators that need to go the way of Miss Cleo and St. Christopher is the March Madness pundits. Despite studies showing year after year that sports insight has no real power in this tournament, despite clueless people who picked based on mascots winning the office pool last year, we get duped into listening to their advice.

There’s no way they had Oregon or FGCU going to the Sweet 16. And if you’re taking advice from Charles Barkley, you should be voted out, too.