The Patriot Post® · Views From Burt's Perch

Many years ago, I recall seeing Clement Freud on TV and he made a lasting impression. The grandson of Sigmund, he had spent some time in an English mental institution. At the time I saw him, he had decided to run for Parliament. When the interviewer asked him what qualified him to help decide national policy, he said that when he was released from the asylum, he was given a certificate of sanity. He was quite convinced that he was the only politician in the land who had official verification of that fact.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had some politicians who could make that claim? Instead, we’re up to our ears in such mentally challenged dunces as Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Anthony Weiner, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee and Charles Schumer. The fact is, when I look at folks like Henry Waxman, John Kerry and Harry Reid, I find it hard to believe they were delivered by storks. A far more likely means of transport would have been vultures.

When you consider the arrest records of professional athletes, you know that poverty is over-hyped as a major cause of crime. Most anti-social behavior, including acts of Islamic terrorism, has nothing to do with financial circumstances. It has everything to do with values, morals and character.

Does anybody really believe that Michael Vick tortured and murdered dogs because he was poor? What creeps me out is that thousands of fans still continue to root for him on a football field. I know that we are supposed to accept that he went to jail and thus paid his debt to society, but it’s not a view I happen to share. Some crimes are so vicious and so inexcusable – such things as murder, rape, child molestation and cruelty to animals – that I don’t believe that anything short of capital punishment clears the debt.

However, one person even I can sympathize with is Golyna Kolotnytskaya, and not just for the amount of time it must take her to fill out official documents. She is the voluptuous blonde “nurse” who apparently accompanied Gaddafi everywhere. When the rebellion began, she returned to Russia. Ever since then, while Obama flip-flopped on policy and the U.N. took forever to vote its resolution, Ms. Kolotnytskaya has probably packed and unpacked a dozen times. But, then, nobody ever said that being a nurse was easy.

Speaking of blondes, am I the only one who sometimes gets the funny feeling that Fox News has more of them on hand than Stockholm and Reykjavik put together?

Recently, I suggested that if Gitmo has come to symbolize something awful to people around the world, we should simply change its name to Paradise Island or West Mecca. I would also suggest we consider, for similar reasons, changing Wall Street to Main Street or Orange Blossom Drive.

Unlike Bill O'Reilly, I was not surprised or dismayed that the Supreme Court found in favor of the creeps from the Westboro Baptist Church. If the 1st Amendment counts for anything, it’s the protection of unpopular speech. And the more unpopular it is, the more it requires the protection of our Constitution. What I don’t get is why it is, if the Westboro freaks hate homosexuals so much, they try to disrupt the funerals of American soldiers. I mean, just because homosexuals are now allowed to serve openly in the U.S. Military, I’m sure that most of the men being buried are not gays. Instead, I think the church members should beard the lions in their den by venturing out to San Francisco. There are scores of bars and bathhouses they could picket, and I, for one, would be delighted to sit back and watch the confrontations on TV.

It is truly scary when you take a good look at all the dopes in the House and Senate. If we lived in a demonocracy, such as you find in China, North Korea and Iran, you would understand why we would be ruled by brutes and ignoramuses. But what’s scary about America is that we actually troop out to elect and re-elect people like Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, Waxman, Rangel and Barney Frank.

It occurs to me that Washington, D.C., wouldn’t be such a bad place if it had decent weather and a better class of people. But, then, the same could be said for Hell.