Couldn't resist sharing this Yardeni quote in article in KC Star:

President Clinton threw in his two cents on the Y2K issue during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, but the effort became little more than a joke.

Clinton, who was interrupted by applause 95 times during his speech -- and who was always interrupted when introducing a new topic -- had to interrupt himself to get Congress to take notice of his Y2K comments.

"We also must be ready for the 21st century, from its very first moment, by solving the so-called Y2K computer problem," the president started.

The reaction from Congress? Almost dead silence.

Laughing nervously at the lack of congressional Y2K enthusiasm, Clinton said: "Now, we had one member of Congress stand up and applaud, and we may have about that ratio out there applauding at home in front of their television sets. But remember, this is a big, big problem. And we've been working hard on it."

Clinton got some congressional response when he mentioned that the Social Security Administration is now Y2K compliant. And he went on to ask local and state governments and business to make Y2K "the last headache of the 20th century, not the first crisis of the 21st."

Seems as if the president just can't get the right spin on the Millennium Bug.

Last year, Clinton was criticized for not saying anything about Y2K. This year, he was criticized by activists like Sen. Bob Bennett for making his comments too late in an already overlong speech.

Asked about his take on the president's giggly Y2K effort, Ed Yardeni, an economist with Deutsche Bank Securities who is one of the more pessimistic experts about the year 2000 problem, told us:

"Funniest president we've ever had in my opinion."

-- Len (wwjd@mbayweb.com), January 24, 1999

Answers

Just in case any of you missed Clinton's Y2K comments, you can see them with RealPlayer at:

http://video.altavista.com/cgi-bin/avsearch_state?query=22% we+also+must+be+ready+for+the%22

If you have RealPlayer, just click on the picture of Clinton to play the clip.

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), January 24, 1999.

http://video.altavista.com/cgi-bin/avsearch_state?query=% 22we+also+must+be+ready+for+the%22

Sorry 'bout that typo in the first link.

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), January 24, 1999.