Page 3         These aren’t beets By Fort Collins Staff Reporter DAVENPORT, IA — Lester Squeets is madder than a wet hen. Ask him why and the 73-year-old grower turns red. Beet red. “These aren’t beets, they’re carrots. If I wanted carrots, I would have planted carrots.” Things at the Squeets household haven’t been the same since nephew Carl “Stringbean” Squeets and Paris Hilton called it quits after three months of marriage. “First, the breakup. Then the rabies shots after the ferret bit Stringbean. And now this.” Holding up a bunch of carrots, Squeets shakes his head. “We’ll get through it. We always do.”       Tripped over Kerry’s flip-flops?   By Dorothy Collins Staff Reporter WASHINGTON, DC — Pointing to the Band-Aid on his chin, President Bush joked with reporters at a hastily called news conference that yes, he had been taking it on the chin during the election campaign, but “this is ridiculous.” When asked if it’s true he’d just fallen off a turnip truck as the Kerry campaign was alleging, his mood turned somber. “There are no turnip trucks within a hundred miles of the nation’s capital,” said the President, “and Senator Kerry knows it. The fact is, I tripped over the flip-flops Senator Kerry left on the pool deck at the Holiday Inn in Bethesda. I know it. He knows it. And now the American people know it.” When learning of Bush’s remarks, Kerry, at a campaign stop in Albuquerque, denied wearing flip-flops, and “even if I did, I’d never leave them on a pool deck at the Holiday Inn. I only stay at Marriott’s.”     From your friends at SUNRIPE