Elliot: In Iowa, Kim Reynolds’ plane hop was ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ fine

Apparently, our very own governor with the girl-next-door smile, Kim Reynolds, hitched a free ride on a plane owned by a vendor who does business with the state.

Iowa+Gov.+Kim+Reynolds+speaks+during+her+first+Condition+of+the+State+address+in+the+Iowa+State+Capitol+in+Des+Moines+on+Tuesday%2C+Jan.+9%2C+2018.+

Joseph Cress

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks during her first Condition of the State address in the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018.

Beau Elliot, Opinion Columnist

One thing about the weather, it seems to have a lot of fronts. Just like the weather to hide behind fronts.

On the idle-thought front, we wonder if Nebraska football coach Scott Frost is still keeping Dec. 1 an open date for Nebraska football because the Huskers might play in the Big Ten title game.

Once your fit of screaming laughter is over, say, two or three days from now, you might want to contemplate sitting up and taking some nourishment. Of some sort.

And yes, we know, we could recruit 22 fully random (the best kind of random) guys from the aisles of Hy-Vee and have a better chance of appearing in the Big Ten title game than Nebraska.

The Huskers, after all, just lost to Troy, and Troy hasn’t won anything since the days of the famous gift horse so far back in the mists of time we tend to get fogged in.

Come to think about it, Troy lost that one, too. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, the adage commands, and so Troy famously followed that instead of horse sense. (Beware of Greeks bearing etc.)

And the rest of the story turns out pretty much the way James Joyce told it. Yes.

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On the governor front, it seems there’s some unexpected weather fronting along. Well, unexpected if everything you learned about politics came from watching “Ozzie and Harriet.”

Apparently, our very own governor with the girl-next-door smile, Kim Reynolds, hitched a free ride on a plane owned by a vendor who does business with the state. To an Iowa State bowl game, of all things. (We warned you about unexpected weather.)

Of course, in Illinois, this sort of thing would be met with “What’s the big deal?” Of course, in Illinois, rumor has it they still canvass the graveyards for votes. Native Illinoisans will pooh-pooh that, saying all those people in the graveyards with clipboards and e-tablets are just searching for old Cubs fans to tell them the Cubbies finally won a World Series.

Meanwhile, back in Iowa (where we pretend we’re not Illinois), it turns out that the Reynolds’ plane hop was “Ozzie and Harriet” fine. The Iowa ethics czar says so. The plane ride was a legal campaign contribution, because the governor was on her way to campaign with a gaggle of donors.

So don’t sweat it. At the end of the “Ozzie and Harriet” episode, Beaver will fess up, and everyone will live whitely ever after.

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Of course, you’d be forgiven for wondering why Iowa has a czar. But it does go some of the way to explaining why the privatizing of Medicaid in the state contains so many Potemkin villages. Such as the millions and millions in savings that chief privatizer and then-Gov. Terry Branstad promised the state would accrue through privatizing. So far, only in Potemkin’s dreams. (And, perhaps, in Catherine the Great’s.) You’d be excused for wondering if they’re dreaming about a Medicaid managed-care’s parent company dropping a contribution into the governor’s campaign coffers a few days before the managed-care outfit got a $100 million state bump. But maybe it’s just a dream.

Speaking of which, on the Potemkin front (ha-ha), there’s Paul Manafort. Front and front. Remember what The Grand Buffoon said about Manafort that he had “such respect for a brave man” who “refused to ‘break’ — make up stories in order to get a deal.”

Well, hmm. On Sept. 14, Manafort cut a deal with the Special Counsel’s Office.

That cracking you hear is the sound of some heavy weather moving in.