In his State of the Union speech, President Obama patted himself on the back for making peace with Iran while, at that very moment, Iran held 10 American sailors in violation of international law and the Geneva Convention.  The next day, Secretary John Kerry thanked the Iranians for not keeping the servicemen as hostages.

In the same speech, the president also lamented his failure to create an atmosphere of bipartisanship and cooperation, while passing up no opportunity to snipe at everyone who disagrees with him.

After South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley responded to the president’s address, the angriest voices loudly condemned her  for condemning the angriest voices.

Hillary Clinton, who can boast the lowest national rating on trustworthiness since Richard Nixon, dismissed a new FBI investigation into her mishandling of classified information by declaring “that’s just not the way I treated classified information.”  Transparency, at last.

However, none of this made much of an impression on an American public entranced by the dream of winning a 1.5 billion dollar lottery, even though about half of multimillion-dollar lottery winners eventually admit that sudden wealth proved more of a curse than a blessing.

Now that three winners are going to share the unprecedented payoff, they might want to take a page from the book of a middle-aged man in Atlanta who, back in the 1990s, won a $4 million dollar lottery – what was an exceptional amount for the time.

The winner had been working a double shift as a garbage collector.  When asked what he intended to do after winning so much money, the man replied, “I’m going to quit one of my shifts.”

“Only one?” asked the incredulous reporter.

“A man has to have work,” replied the new millionaire.