The Patriot Post® · Shooting From the Hip

When I recently gave a thumbs-up to Donald Trump, I heard from a lot of conservatives who were eager to tell me why that was a bad idea and why I was a dumb bunny. Frankly, I didn’t take their complaints to heart. For one thing, a lot of the things they said sounded like stuff they’d read at the Huffington Post or heard at MSNBC. In other words, the same derogatory crap the liberal dunces trumpet about Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker and any other Republican who attracts a following.

I’m not saying that Trump has the same conservative credentials that these other people do or that he was even the horse I was betting on. But he is at this point the only potential candidate who seems to have the brass appendages to take on Barack Obama without worrying about what either the New York Times or the NAACP says about him.

What I do know is that I will vote in the California primary for any Republican who will at least state that he or she is willing to acknowledge and engage with America’s two most vile and dangerous enemies, Islamics and those on the Left.

Speaking of Trump, I don’t go along with his notion of confiscating Iraq’s oil fields, unless, of course, Iran comes in and fills the vacuum once we pull out, but I do know that I’d price our wheat and corn sales to the Arab nations at the exact same price that OPEC prices our oil.

As much as I despise Obama and his cronies on Capital Hill, I fear that I don’t entirely trust Republicans. That’s not to say that I don’t prefer Republicans. They, after all, at least seem to take the $14 trillion deficit seriously.

My problem with Republicans is that once they get to Washington, human nature kicks in. For openers, no matter how grateful they may be to the folks back home who elected them, they suddenly realize that it’s not the voters who determine which committee assignments they’ll get or how much financial help they can expect from the RNC when their next election rolls around. In Washington, as in most places, people tend to go along in order to get along.

So, while I will vote for anyone who opposes Obama in 2012, I won’t actually expect that a Republican president will get rid of the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Resources or even Education. That’s because most Republican politicians aren’t really opposed to big government, they’re merely opposed to Democrats running it. Were it otherwise, it would contradict human nature to such a degree, the shock would probably knock the earth off its axis. It’s the rare individual, after all, who desires a tinier staff, a smaller salary, a dinkier office, and less power and influence, than his predecessor.

That is yet another reason why I favor term limits for all politicians. If a president can only serve two terms, why should a John Kerry, a Charley Rangel or a Henry Waxman, be allowed to grow old and increasingly self-important on the job? Let’s face it, if being a senator or a congressman required special skills or even a triple digit IQ, none of those nitwits would have the job.

Speaking of nitwits, I assume you have all had ample opportunity to see Obama chastising the Texas TV reporter for, as he put it, not allowing him to finish answering a question. Last year, he admonished Bret Baier for the same offense. Talk about chutzpah! You can see him thinking, “Why can’t I just say off with his head and be done with it? Who came up with all these damn checks and balances?”

For openers, considering that in two short years Obama has seen the unemployment rate rise, the national deficit soar by four trillion dollars and the price of gasoline double, he’s clearly in no position to tell anyone how to do his job. For another, this creep insists on allotting reporters a very few minutes of his time, and then insists on wasting those minutes giving canned speeches instead of answering direct questions.

On the other hand, he’s never too busy to have his royal bottom bussed by David Letterman or the ladies on The View, and will spend days jetting around the country attending $35,000-a-plate dinners, so that deep-pocket liberals can listen to partisan pep talks and pony up millions for his re-election campaign.

While we’re on the subject, if he’s going to use the presidential jet for these cash-raising junkets, I don’t want him using my tax dollars to pay for the fuel.

Now, in my constant effort to be fair and balanced, I’ll share a few thoughts about Miller Time on The Factor. While I marvel at Dennis Miller’s ability to access and string together arcane pop culture references, they aren’t all that amusing. Also, until O'Reilly recently broke the news, I had no idea that Miller’s memsahib greeting, with which he regularly opens his segment, was supposed to be an homage to Johnny Carson’s Carnac the Magnificent. If it’s really intended to be a tribute to Carson, I would suggest Miller drop it in favor of a golf swing or a pencil flip, which wouldn’t be nearly as cornball. My wife Yvonne, ever the problem solver, has suggested that if he’s going to keep doing it, he should at least wear a turban.

Also, when O'Reilly says something just slightly amusing, Miller would be well-advised not to pretend he finds it side-splittingly funny. We folks at home heard the same line and we didn’t immediately assume that O'Reilly was channeling Henny Youngman or Jackie Mason.

A clear sign that Miller is only feigning laughter is that as soon as he regains control, he starts searching for an elusive eyelash. In poker, that’s referred to as a tell. And if Miller did it in an actual poker game, he would lose his shirt and not merely his credibility.