RUST COMMENTARY: A BUSY WEEKEND IN THE BIG CITY

Labor Day weekend I concluded some business in western and mid-Missouri before flying into the Spirit of St. Louis Airport to meet Wendy who had driven son JON to Lambert Field to catch a flight to Boston.

It was a big weekend in St. Louis. The Japanese Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden is always a must stop. Likewise the lamb-shank dinner at the GREEK Church Festival Days.

The BIG MUDDY BLUES Festival at Laclede's Landing found us rubbing elbows and everything else in this jammed, swaying crowd of music lovers. Probably their biggest recent crowd as they went back to free admission and quit the failed test site of Baden Park (in West St. Louis).

Wendy and I missed the RAMS football game, but the sport everyone was talking about was baseball and the achievements of MARK McGWIRE. All activities were playing second fiddle to his exploits ... and tying BABE RUTH with No. 60 and ROGER MARIS with No. 61 along with the good weekend weather brightened the personality of the entire city.

We saw some excellent art movies at the new FRONTENAC CINEMA and couldn't help notice the superb photography, acting, simple story lines and good dialogue. Sure beats the explosion, stunt-oriented, fast-cuts pace of most of the popular movies of the day.

However, when I flew into St. Louis, I was reminded that the ST. LOUIS COUNTY FAIR and AIR SHOW was scheduled for the weekend. I managed to get there early Monday as Wendy dropped me off while making a garden nursery tour (I had my plane to fly back). It's the first time I'd visited the FAIR, which contained static displays of some of the nation's military aircraft and helicopters along with some fully restored vintage aircraft. It gave me a real appreciation and perspective on the early aviators and the jet pilots of today.

It had been about 10 years since I'd seen the BLUE ANGELS. Still unbelievable, tight precision flying along with rolls, high-speed climbs and maneuvers.

Also on hand was the fascinating HARRIER jet, Bud Light etc. Those who weren't aware that a lost engine doesn't mean a crash were witnesses to a glide landing by one of the AT-6 Aerobatic Team airplanes when it "blew a jug" at showtime and glided in for a safe, dead-stick landing.

The average airplane can glide about two miles horizontally for every 1,000 feet of altitude. Thus, when flying at 8,000 feet (which is my normal cross-country altitude) I could glide a 16-mile radius. Normally there's an airport within that range or at least a suitable field.

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A free press, capable of getting and distributing an independent account of events, is a frequent source of inconvenience for government. -- James Wiggins

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Although HILLARY CLINTON was spreading the impression that she -- a scholar, a lawyer, a sharp political operative in her own right -- was naively unaware of the president and Monica Lewinsky's relationship, maybe hours before Clinton's confession ... in a recent Newsweek Poll some 84 percent of the respondents said they didn't believe her. They believe she knew much earlier ... many when she herself blamed the "vast right-wing conspiracy."

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The Monday Metro section of the St. Louis Post Dispatch had a column by JO MANNIES on politics. Some of the most scathing Clinton criticisms are now coming from Democrats.

The following excerpts are from Mannies' column covering a speech by former U.S. Sen. TOM EAGLETON given to several hundred people at a Mercantile Library luncheon last week:

From one Democrat to another, former Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton offers some blunt advice to President Bill Clinton -- borrowed from William Shakespeare:

"The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."

With that in mind, Eagleton says Clinton can forget any dream of making that Top 10 list of best presidents.

He'll likely have to settle for the Worst 10 instead, sharing company with others that Eagleton puts on that list: Warren G. Harding and Ulysses S. Grant.

For Eagleton, Clinton's negatives go beyond the personal scandal surrounding his admitted relationship with a former White House intern less than half his age. What may impact the nation even more, said Eagleton, was Clinton's failure to keep a 1992 promise to overhaul the nation's system of funding political elections.

"Along with his personal problems, he will be the president who did nothing to correct the chaos" of a political system corrupted by money, Eagleton said.

Instead, in 1996, "Clinton set a new standard for despicable fund raising, odious fund raising."

He rejected Clinton's declarations that he knew nothing about who gave what to his 1996 campaign and the Democratic National Committee. "It defies logic that the president wouldn't know the names of the biggest contributors," Eagleton said.

He added that he hoped Attorney General Janet Reno will finally appoint an independent counsel to look into the fund-raising controversy."

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October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February. -- Mark Twain

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.